wilting

The seven year old is home with his third case of strep throat since January. He started his medicine yesterday but can’t go back to school until Monday. He was feeling better today so I took him to breakfast at McDonald’s this morning (“Why do they want to hire smiling faces, Mom?”). I reached across the booth to butter his pancakes. He insisted the pancake on the bottom be buttered again because I’d not spread the butter to every edge as I had on the top pancake.

Afterward we went to the post office (“How much do you think this package weighs, Mom?”) and to the grocery store (“Can we make a fruit salad, Mom?”). I like to have fresh flowers for the dining room table and I let him pick them out today. I held three bunches of daisies out–red, yellow, and white–for his consideration. “What about these?” He wrinkled his nose, “I don’t like the white.” He picked two bunches of purple irises instead and I nodded appreciatively. We contemplated adding some statice to the arrangement but both agreed the irises needed no complement.

We had the irises scooped into our arms when some pots of cheerful tulips caught our eye. I felt, suddenly, like I couldn’t bear to take the irises home. No matter how beautiful they seemed, there was no escaping that they were, in fact, dead.

How does it happen that such a thing can make my stomach ache?

My son chose some pink tulips–not the color I’d have chosen but that’s neither here nor there– and we headed home. He was tired and I wasn’t feeling so great myself (sore throat and headache), so we took a nap. I slept the heavy, weighted sleep of a troubled person.

Was it the irises that caused my unease? No, of course not.

It’s the still-frequent ache in my pelvis six weeks after my surgery. It’s the fact that my recovery hasn’t been all that smooth. It’s that I am so far behind at work that I may never catch up–except I have to, because there’s no one else to help me. It’s that my husband is under a tremendous amount of pressure right now and I’m seeing less of him than I’d like. It’s that my son keeps getting strep throat and I worry about him. There are other things.

***

I cooked dinner tonight. I peeled and cubed potatoes and set them to boil while I worked on the fruit salad that my little boy asked for. I filled the sink with cold water and added some baking soda in order to soak the wax off of the fruit. I peeled and sliced kiwi and mango. I added blackberries and strawberries. I cubed red and green apples and handed chunks of them to my child as he looked on. He ambled into the family room and turned on the TV. I admonished him (he’d been in front of the TV far too much today!), and became distracted and stabbed myself in the finger with the paring knife in my hand. I yelped and blinked back tears.

My husband set the table and fixed drinks while I drained the potatoes, added butter, milk, salt and pepper. I opened several kitchen drawers in succession and wondered aloud where the beaters for the mixer had disappeared! My husband opened the drawer I’d just searched and quietly produced the beaters. I accepted them from his outstretched hand and looked around the kitchen again, almost frantically. In answer to Brad’s curious look, “Now I can’t find the mixer!”

“Honey, it’s right in front of you, on the counter.”

And with that, I just leaned into him. Right into the hollow of his shoulder. I rubbed my cheek against his T-shirt and tried to just . . . breathe. And he put his arms around me, kissed my temple near my hairline, and let me just breathe.

Something inside me unfurled. My stomach ache became more of a butterfly feeling. I remembered for a moment who I am when I am not recovering from surgery and worrying about work and being uber-cautious with my child’s health.

There’ll be another day when the thought of a beautiful flower wilting and dying will completely undo me. But God willing, there’ll also be a shoulder to lean against at the end of the day that happens to be attached to a man who loves me, even when I can’t see what’s right in front of my face.

escape

I know I have been a sorry excuse for a blogger for quite some time now. Part of it is just that I have been doing this for nearly 4 years and I never thought it could happen, but it would seem I am running out of things to talk about.

Well, that’s not really a true statement. In the course of 4 years, I’ve become more and more picky about what I am willing to write about. My family reads this blog, my close friends and people from work — some openly and some anonymously and it’s the anonymous ones who make me nervous. If I know you in real life and you’re reading this blog and it’s not because you adore me and want to hang on my every word, then you’re not my target audience.

I’ve always been the sort to be introspective and reflective and to spend far too much time mulling over things that other people wouldn’t waste any time over. But now, looking down the barrel of a hysterectomy, I find that I can appreciate why some of the folks I know are so happy to push uncomfortable subjects out of their mind and forget about them as if they never happened.

I know that I am a nurse and I have scrubbed into minor surgeries and observed major surgeries. I know that I have pounded on chests and shocked hearts and saved lives. I’ve ran into rooms dragging a big, red crash cart behind me and yelled, “CLEAR!” just like they do in movies. I’ve pushed vasoactive drugs with an eye on the heart monitor and a finger on the carotid pulse. I’ve done all sorts of exciting, scary, and downright gross and gory things in the name of saving and improving lives.

But here’s the thing: It’s different when I am the patient. Suddenly, it seems so depraved and violent that someone is going to hack some of my major organs out of my abdomen. I think of all the arteries that will be tied and cauterized and I think about how brutal it’s always seemed to me to thrust a trocar through layers of skin, fat and muscle in order to make way for the surgical instruments involved in a laparoscopy–and I break into a cold sweat.

I think about the fact that I will be intubated and a machine will be breathing for me– and my airway threatens to close off. I imagine my muscles lacking all tone and the absence of all reflexes–and panic clutches me.

So, I try NOT to think about any of that. Some very sure instinct of mine tells me that this is not the time to sift through my thoughts and explore my feelings relating to my upcoming surgery. I know too much. And I know too little. And it freaks me the HELL out to think about it for too long.

Instead of getting online and pouring my heart and brain out to all of you in some massive emotional, logical purge, I get online and play Scrabulous with Brenda, Jellyhead, Sharon, and Curly McDimple. I play on Twitter with akaMonty, Redneck Mommy, Kimberly, Leanne, and Melissa. I get on Facebook and match quizzes and have zombie wars and play TV trivia with Sweetie, Jean-Luc Picard, and friends from high school. I read my favorite bloggers’ posts on Google Reader.

And that’s about it. The more escapist the activity, the happier I am to engage in it. I’ll have the ultimate escape this weekend when I spend the weekend with a friend watching movies, eating licorice, getting pedicures, drinking margaritas and laughing. A lot.

Then I’ll come home and I’ll enter the hospital to have the part of me that cradled my babies when they were too tiny and helpless to survive in the real world cut out.

Eight years ago, on February 19th, I was in urgent surgery — necessary because the tiny child inside of me had ceased to live. Fetal demise, they called it. This year, on February 19th, I will be in surgery again — to be done forever with the part of me that failed to keep that little one alive.

It’s scary. And it’s emotional.

No, not something I think I’ll be writing about again for at least a little while.

victim of love

She’s had a bad day. She just has. Don’t ask why.

She stops by the grocery store after work. Stands in line and waits patiently while the customer in front of her pays for her purchase –the meat, canned corn, and fresh vegetables with food stamps and the milk, cheese and eggs with WIC. She pays for her cellophane-wrapped package of chicken breasts with cash, throws the fifty-seven cents in change into the bottom of her purse.

She turns on the little stereo in the kitchen. She pulls out pots and pans, milk, butter and flour, teabags, canned green beans, potatoes. The big pot is filled with water. The two skillets are filled with vegetable oil. The chicken is dredged in flour, seasoned with salt and pepper. Butter is added to the green beans.

She peels the potatoes with the paring knife angled toward her hand instead of away from it — a habit that worries and irritates her best friend. The potato skin peels away smoothly, with a satisfying quietness and swiftness. She remembers how hard it was to learn to pare the peel away and still leave most of the potato a lifetime ago when her mother taught her to perform such tasks.

She tries to let go of the stress of the day. She stares ahead but looks inward, reflecting on the day. The paring knife slices downward, flaying the skin of her thumb. The knife is so sharp and the cut so fine and neat that she thinks at first that she’s been spared injury. Then, a tidy, perfectly straight line of blood wells up and she feels stung when water trickles down the dusty potato and into the cut.

She lets it bleed. Holds it under the kitchen faucet for a time. Bandages it and goes back to the task at hand.

As Victim of Love plays over the stereo.

FULL

A couple of weeks ago, I was having all sorts of trouble with my blog. It would go down for an hour or so at a time and give an error saying: FULL.

As irritating as it was, I confess that I almost felt relief. If my blog died, I could quit writing and not feel like I was really a quitter–just someone without a blog. And, you know, the word FULL staring at me every time I tried to view my site just seemed so appropriate. Like maybe the blog was FULL of crap, FULL of my stories, FULL to brimming with senseless babbling that no one really wants to read anyway. It seemed like a sign.

Then the kinks were ironed out and I’ve not had trouble with the blog and no one has told me I’m FULL of it since.

But I still wonder if it’s time.

After all, this blog can never be what I want it to be. It can never be a place where I complain that sometimes it feels like I give more than I take and that I need more than I am needed.

I can’t say that sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be any of the people I care about. What would it be like to be cherished the way I cherish them? What would it be like to have the phone answered every time it rings just because someone can’t wait to talk to me? How would it feel if someone went to great lengths and expense just to bring a smile to my face?

But mostly, what would it feel like to be needed the way I need them? To know that I’m not expendable or considered extraneous to the necessary activities of daily living? To know that there’s someone out there who can’t live without me — and not just because I am the person feeding and clothing them and packing their lunch every morning.

See? I can’t write that. Because all of the people close to me who read this blog would assume I am referring to them and get pissed off at what I’ve said. Or they would be hurt that I don’t know that I am loved and cherished. They’d deny that they mostly need me simply because I cook and clean and wash laundry and bring home a paycheck.

They’d never stop to think that, if I don’t feel needed, the PROBLEM is not with how they feel about me. The PROBLEM is that I am still uncertain as to how they feel about me. The PROBLEM is that I need it proven to me over and over again. It may sound absurd and it may be absurd. But it’s still what I need.

But aren’t I describing the way every woman feels at some point? As nurturers, we program ourselves to put everyone else’s needs before ours. And even though I complain about it from time to time, I’m not sure I’d rather be any other way. I’m certain that I wouldn’t be happy being a person who takes and doesn’t give back even more than I’ve been given. I don’t want to always put my needs before the needs of those people I love and who (I remind myself) love me back.

I just need to be free to complain. Free to voice my insecurities and fears. Free to worry that everyone’s life would go on just fine if I were to fade out. Even if, deep down, I know that’s not true.

But I can’t write that here.

And if I can’t write it here, why do I need a blog?

Except, I guess I have just demonstrated that I CAN say those things here, when I really need to.

That’s nice to know.

teetering

This Christmas season, it feels to me like there must be some sort of cosmic or spiritual warfare happening that I catch only glimpses of here on Earth. Christmas spirit has been mostly elusive for me this year but not because I am not trying. I really do love Christmas. I love to watch the kids open their gifts. I like to spend time with family. I like to eat huge Christmas dinners and to sit in front of roaring fires to look into stockings. It’s just that this year, my holiday cheer is teetering just between being a bit of a Grinch or being sickeningly festive.

When my son stood in front of an audience at his Christmas program and said the lines we’d rehearsed for weeks? Festive. When I learned that my brother wouldn’t have invited me to his Christmas celebration if not for my mother’s insistence? Grinch.

Other examples:

Smiling at the happiness on the kids’ faces when their more than two week holiday break began? Festive. The youngest son getting sick with a cough, sore throat and fever immediately after school let out? Grinch.

My husband’s happiness at spending time at his grandparent’s house in Wichita Falls this weekend? Festive. Seeing his grandmother too weak to even turn herself in the hospital bed in her livingroom? Grinch.

Receiving gifts and cards from friends and family in the mail? Festive. Returning from out of town to find a breaker to the aquarium tripped and my husband’s beloved saltwater fish and corals mostly dead? Grinch.

Coming home to find that the puppies fared fine while we were gone? Festive. Finding that they tore up the couch and pulled most of the stuffing out of it? Grinch.

Knowing we budgeted well enough to pay cash for all of the Christmas presents this year? Festive.  Knowing that many parents will be unable to buy their children even one present for Christmas? Grinch.

The fact that Brad camped out at a game store in the middle of the night in order to surprise the boys with a Nintendo Wii for Christmas? Festive. The fact that the Wii will be from Santa and the boys won’t know that their father so wanted to see the surprise and happiness on their faces on Christmas morning that he shivered in the cold night and was exhausted for days? Slightly Grinch-y.

I’ll get the Christmas spirit. Really, I will. I will wake up tomorrow and bake a chocolate pie and prepare a fruit salad to contribute to our Christmas eve dinner. I will do some last minute gift-wrapping and smile at the kids when they beg to open their present a few hours early. I’ll sleep late. I’ll listen to Christmas music. I’ll talk and laugh with family.

But today, right now, at this very moment while I am tired from driving and sick with the five year old’s cold, while I am sad for my husband as he tries to save the marine life in his aquarium, while I am frustrated at the holes torn in my couch by the dogs, while I am reflecting on the cruelty of the drawn out, miserably slow death of a sweet woman — I’m teetering.

bad day

I had a bad day today. I mean, a really bad day. There was no one thing that happened to make my day bad. It was just one of those days.

I woke up with the feeling that I should snuggle deeper under the covers and stay there. I’ve learned that it is always a bad idea to ignore the instinct to hide under the covers or crawl under a rock. But who has that luxury? I had to work today. I had to go to a book fair at the boys’ school. I had a meeting at work. I had to go to the bank.

There were a lot of things I had to do. Staying in bed was not an option.

Mostly, my mood just sucked today. Every.Little.Thing got on my nerves. Brad forgot to shave this morning and I found myself growing irate and thinking, Don’t you ever look in the flippin’ MIRROR? God!

My dark mood was palpable and he asked, “Are you in a bad mood?”

“Yes.”

“Then do you mind if I leave?”

“I wish you would,” I muttered.

He kissed me on the cheek and hustled out of my office, post haste.

In a meeting today, Brenda asked, during my agenda item, “Can we please move on?” and I shot her with the laser beams from my eyes. I told her later and she said, “Dang! You ARE in a bad mood. You are never mean to your friends! Ever.”

I was a little scary today. I admit it.

What I really wanted and needed was for the people who knew I was having a rough day to care enough to call or come by and check on me even if I was scary and mean. When I get like this and everyone avoids me or gets exasperated with me, I feel so unloveable.

Aren’t I worth checking on even when I’m not happy or funny or nice? Don’t I get to have an off day? Don’t I deserve a little bit extra when I am like this? Isn’t it okay for me to need some TLC?

But really? I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to be around me. I really can’t.

Instead, I ended the day curled up on the couch, in the dark, watching Law & Order and counting the hours until bedtime.

I’m waiting for my eyelids to grow heavy so I can slip off to sleep where there will be no extraneous stimulation — just quiet and dark and rest. I think I will be okay when I wake up if I can just get those few priceless hours of nothingness.

*No, I am not depressed. Yes, I am okay. It’s a bad day just like everyone has now and then.

Quiet

I tend to withdraw inside myself when I have serious emotional work to do.

What this looks like to the outside world is that I am quiet and sad. Sometimes, my quietness is misinterpreted as aloofness because I tend to be slightly agoraphobic and prefer to stay within the walls of the home that I’ve bedecked with the things I love, thus making it feel safe and cozy.

When I say I have serious emotional work to do, it doesn’t mean that it is all bad. Sometimes, I have to take the time to take my happiest memories and tuck them in to my heart the same way I tuck my children in to bed at night. I take some time to cherish them and commit them to memory so that I will never forget the way I feel, right now. I take the time to memorize the sight, smell, and texture just as I take the time to ruffle my son’s hair and lean close for his freshly clean smell from his bedtime bath. I lay my memories gently down in a soft place in my heart and pull the softest of covers about them. I wrap them in my arms and feel their warmth one more time before turning to leave, closing the door behind me.

When I was in college, I tried to start my car one day and the ignition fell apart in my hands. I called a locksmith to fix it but, while I waited, I collected the springs and screws and little steel balls and studied them. Somehow, after looking at the pieces to my ignition for a while, it all began to make sense. By the time the locksmith arrived, I had reconstructed the ignition and all he had to do was secure it in place on the steering column. He complimented me and told me I could come to work for him anytime; that he needed someone who could figure things out on her own.

I do the same thing with my not-so-good feelings. I take the things that make no sense — the hurt feelings, the confusion that I sometimes feel — and I dissect it until it is nothing but a bunch of springs and screws and steel balls. I look at it until it begins to make sense. I try to figure just why my feelings were hurt in certain situations. I reach deep inside my psyche for explanations when I have a particularly strong reaction to stories of someone else’s life.

And then I put it all back together into something that I can innately understand, without so much work.

In the meantime, I get phone calls asking, “Are you still alive?”

I’m still alive, I’m still here.

I’m just working.

Me

There are some who say I am an emotional person. If pressed, I’d have to say I agree with them.

I was paying bills Thursday afternoon and was slightly irritated at the little stacks of papers and envelopes spreading across the desk. I decided to get organized and gathered the papers in one hand and set about looking for the bill file. I found a bill file, but it was empty and that couldn’t be the file I needed. Could it? On closer investigation, it emerged that, apparently, I had not filed any of our paid bills since November. Yes, November. As in, nine months ago.

There was a time when all of my bills were paid and filed promptly. There was also a time when, although my house wasn’t spotless, I at least worked mightily to try to keep it from being too messy. There was a time when my laundry was actually put away in dressers rather than sitting folded in baskets. Furthermore, there was a time when I did most of the laundry and cleaning around here rather than paying the babysitter to do it.

And that time? Well, it was prior to November 2005. That’s about the time when I started feeling that I was going to lose my mind. There was a reason for that. It’s a little bit complicated but mostly I got very stressed out because we thought we were going to move to a town 400 miles away but it seemed like there were always factors that made the move an up-in-the-air, uncertain thing. And then we finally got the green light on the move only to get a very good offer to keep us here.  So, I walked around feeling like I was choking with uncertainty for months, cried over leaving my family and friends, finally came to accept and look forward to the move and then ended up in the same place where I started. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot of stress to you but, for me, any sort of change is stressful and uncertainty completely does me in. I always like to be absolutely certain of the things I am certain of. Certainly.

Anyway . . . long story short: I experienced debilitating anxiety and depression, went to the doctor, and felt better but still not quite 100%.

But lately, I really have been feeling more like my normal self which is why I felt compelled to tackle the task of filing away bills. But when I realized that it had been nine months? I kinda lost it.

I sat on my bed and made stacks of bills organized by month and cried. My husband called and heard my sniffling and asked, “Are you okay?” I answered, “I haven’t filed our paid bills since November!”

“And?“

“And, so maybe if I’ve neglected the filing for the past nine months, maybe that means that I haven’t taken good care of you and the boys for the past nine months, too!”

Brad was alarmed by my crying, which was more like wailing by that point, and he shushed me and assured me, “Noooo, baby. You’re a great wife. You’re a great mom. You’re doing a great job.”

“But, but, but the house is always a mess!” I cried.

“We have two little boys, Heather. The house is a mess five seconds after we clean it. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“But, I hardly ever cook dinner anymore! We always eat out!”

“Well, that’s true. But you cooked dinner last night and things are going to slow down now that summer’s over. It’s okay that you haven’t been cooking dinner.”

“But . . .”

“No more ‘buts!’Â You are a great wife and mother and we love you, so please stop crying.”

Then he came home and rubbed my neck and shoulders, took me out to dinner and rubbed my feet as we sat on the couch later that night. That man really knows how to cheer a girl up.

I really was beside myself when I realized that I had neglected a task for nine months without even realizing it. It really did scare me because I wondered what else I had neglected without realizing it. The fact that the paid bills were abandoned to a pile on the desk as of November, it seemed so symbolic of the downslide my emotions took at that same time.

Now that I’ve had time to think about it and recover, I realize that it is a good sign that it bothered me to discover the neglected stacks of bills. Obviously, it never bothered me any other time over the last several months.

It’s a good sign that I am becoming me again.

Invisibility

I know I’ve been gone. I’m sorry. I really didn’t think anyone noticed until Melonie asked me, in a very steady, quiet voice yesterday, “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I am okay”

“Are you sure you’re okay? Because I just went to read your blog and the top post is one from Memorial Day.”

So maybe I wasn’t quite okay. Maybe I was planning to disassemble the blog. Maybe things have been a little rough. Maybe I feel like I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I am gulping down margaritas as I type. Maybe I gulped down margaritas as I cooked dinner tonight. Maybe I shall keep a margarita in my hand at all times until this awful feeling goes away.

I just realized that I am describing the birth of an alcoholic. But I’m still going to finish my margarita, dammit. It’s the best possible way to avoid a nervous collapse while also preserving my bottle of Xanax for another day.

Things here have been a little rough. The reason I haven’t been writing is because there are far too many people who are related to me either by blood or marriage who read this blog. There are also way too many people who are either a)my employer or b)close personal friends who know some of my relatives. My personal philosophy has always been that it is wise to share as little as possible about any disharmony in a person’s life with their family and certain friends. The reason is that it is human nature to choose sides in any situation. Anyone who loves me will almost always take my side in any conflict I might have with Brad. But then? Two weeks later? When I am all happy and made up with my husband and think he hung the moon and stars? Well, the person I confided in will still be mad at him. And then it will be uncomfortable for me to talk to that person because I will feel the need to defend my husband. And then, pretty soon I will stop calling or visiting that person because it is just too stressful to know that he/she disapproves of a decision I made. And before you know it I’ve lost a friend and/or have an uncomfortable relationship with a family member. You can apply that same algorithm, with minor adjustments, to fit non-family situations that have nothing to do with spouses, too.

So. My husband is driving me crazy. My kids are driving me crazy. My job is driving me crazy. My finances are driving me crazy. Pretty much, my whole life is driving me crazy. And I understand that the common denominator in all of the above? Is me. So, one could easily come to the conclusion that I am the one making myself crazy. Go ahead, say it. You’ll hear no argument from me.

It’s just . . . sometimes I look back on my life and wish that I could have some sort of proof that I have made the right decisions along the way. I wish that I could look back and know for sure that I’ve helped those who’ve crossed my path. I wish I knew for sure that, when I am dead, people will say, “She was kind and good and blessed our lives.” My fear is that they will say instead, “Thank God we don’t have to put up with her emotional outbursts anymore. That was one high maintenance woman, I tell’ya.”

The thing is, I know I am emotional. I know I am high maintenance. I know I am melodramatic. I know I need a lot of attention. But I also know that I am kind and loving and generous and loyal. I just wish I could know for sure that my good traits outweigh the bad.

I was walking through a store tonight and came across some big, beautiful vases full of flowers. I couldn’t help it; I found myself trying to remember the last time I got flowers for any reason other than it was Valentine’s Day. (My stepfather always buys me flowers on V-Day.) If I’m right, it was six or seven years ago when a patient sent me and my friend Carolyn a bouquet of flowers and thanked us for being kind to him during his hospital stay. It made me stop and wonder if it has been that long since I’ve been caring and kind to another person? God, I hope not.

Then, I found myself wishing that, every now and then, I could receive some sort of tangible acknowledgement of the contributions I make. Something to make me believe that all of the loads of laundry washed and all of the dinners cooked, all of the homework checked and all of the baths drawn, and all of the encouragement given and conversations had with family and friends means something at the end of the day; that it isn’t just hot air and actions performed by rote, without feeling. Because I do all of those things out of love. There are days when I feel overwhelmed, sure, and like I wish I could go hide in a cave where I can’t bother anyone or be bothered. But isn’t it kind of the point of loving someone that we will do even the things that are most tiresome or uncomfortable for us in order to make our loved ones feel happy and secure? But does that also mean that it is wrong to dream about a bouquet of flowers being delivered unexpectedly or a surprise date or a card in the mail or on my pillow?

And I guess that is really the root of the problem; knowing that I need something but also knowing that I can’t ask for what I need. I need to be not only loved, but appreciated. I need to know that I would be missed if something happened and I was gone tomorrow. I need to know that I am not invisible.

Trying to be the best wife, mother, daughter, friend, nurse, employee and [insert all of the roles I've forgotten here], and yet finding myself feeling exhausted and unappreciated at the end of the day has contributed to my feeling that I am invisible. What I do doesn’t matter. What I say doesn’t matter. What I think and feel doesn’t matter.

The end result of feeling invisible is that I work especially hard to make others aware of my presence. I make them pay attention to me, one way or another. I am like the child who acts out because even negative attention is better than no attention at all.

So, I have been doing a lot of acting out and a lot of pushing back. And it is exhausting. And I’d like to stop now, if you don’t mind.

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