A Second and Happier Post

 

                                    Photo by Luke McKeown on Unsplash

It was spring of 1993. My husband and I drove to Hampton Beach in New Hampshire. The weather was warmly cool and ocean breezy. I walked out on an outcropping of rocks stretching into the sea. I was wearing a new outfit. To my 19-year-old self it felt so perfectly Atlantic oceany. White denim shorts-not too short, a v-neck thick white cardigan, and a raw silk tank in a perfect deep sea foam. My shoes were white keds-with the little blue tag on the back-my first pair of shoes with branding on them (well, I think I might have had a pair of Nikes in 5th grade). 

The waves crashed up and ocean spray rained upon me. It was perfect. 

A couple months later my mom would visit with my brother, stepfather, and stepsister, and we would taste the fresh fried scallops from the vendor. Deliciously hot. 

There was a rumor that people who drove alone on Pali Highway in Oahu might look in the rear view mirror and find they were not actually alone. I always found the night breezes through the palm trees rather eerie. I don't think I ever drove Pali Highway Eastward alone. Driving home from my Trigonometry course at Leeward Community College at night had its own moments of eerieness, however. I only went to college one semester in Hawaii, but it was a successful venture. My composition instructor asked to use my research paper as her example for the next semester, my world religions web page turned out good (thanks to my husband's coding-though we couldn't get the java to work right), and Trigonometry kept me busy many an afternoon, sitting on the swing working and erasing, working and erasing while the kids played nearby. 

But nights  in the dark had a quality. When Brian worked swings and mids our first year there, going to sleep, even on base was so scary. I guess part of it was my young age and belief in supernatural things. The young are so believing. I grew accustomed to it. The wild loneliness-not wild like the mountains, but different. The isolation was real, but different. Even near the airport (we lived on an airbase next to the Honolulu airport), you could feel the vastness of the ocean all around. We were just a dot in the great large dark water. 

When I would get Tierney and Caleb to sleep and Brian was there, I would slip out for a walk around the "big block." The moon was brighter and whiter there. The stars were lovely. The scent of plumeria was intoxicating. I would hurry home, sneaking up on Brian, who had a tendency to chat it up with other women online. Looking back he was so wrong, but I also could have loved more. I always had my guard up. But we could talk until the the small hours of the morning, which is something I could never do with anyone else. I do miss that. 

When Tierney, Caleb, and Taryn were young in Missouri, and they spent several weeks with their dad in the summer, I fancied myself a budding astronomer. I would get up early (because that's how I roll-always), and have a sweet mango for breakfast. I'd walk up to Missouri State some days and learn General Chemistry 2. Not a premed gal-I only got a B, it's so hard for me to get motivated, but still longing for the stars. I would come home and make a lean cuisine, Enchilada Suiza (?) I think was my favorite, topped with a handful of romaine and hot sauce. For dinner, a slab of salmon, dripping rich with sizzling fatty skin and a handful of blueberries. Then when the sun would go down, I would grab my binoculars and head out to the yard, to see the stars would show me. I had such hope for my life. 

I think if my life had themes or rather...what is that word that I am searching for? Motif? It would be morning coffee, stacks of books, fiction when I was younger, but more nonfiction later-because the internet ruined my concentration. Stargazing, but never really getting good enough to know the constellations. Always hopeful-grasping at the idea or essence of something I could never quite reach. 

Today's  my mother's birthday. I miss her, and I know she misses me, too.

I really just want to be wealthy, living in a big metropolitan city, soaking in the lights, the sounds, the life. Is that too much to ask?

I'm Fine, but Time to Whine

                                                           Photo by Sajad Nori on Unsplash

I haven't been writing much. What is there to say?

The whole of my life can be summed up by loneliness and a strong desire to be alone...except when I don't want to be alone. 

It's funny how the same things affect me year after year. What changes is how I view what is happening. Who is/is not to blame. 

As I have said before, I learned in my forties that I am often the problem. So much of my life, I was caught up in this idea that it was everyone else and I was being mistreated-I was the victim. That is not to say I am just a bad person who deserves a bad life. I just realize, I am who I am. I feel like I learned so many really important lessons late. Maybe too late. Because as I have also said, knowing may be half the battle-but...it's just half the battle. It isn't the tools, the guts, the energy to go out and fix. 

I am lonely.

I am still heartbroken over not teaching math. I know I wasn't teacher of the year. I know the kids didn't like me much. I know I had a lot of room for growth. But I was finally challenged and wanting to grow. I wanted to be successful. I miss teaching slope, and equations, and graphing so much. If I could change any decision in the past year, it would have been to just say no when the principal asked if I was willing to switch to family and consumer science. My second choice would be to just stick with family and consumer science. It would have been fine. 

I just knew I would become more of the outsider than I was. I would be pushed out of the 8th grade teacher group, that I was already just a fringe member of, and on top of that, I would be in the same hall and I would have to see them being all friendly without me. It would be a lot for my rejection sensitive soul to bear. So at first, moving back to sped made sense. I liked the sped staff. I would move downstairs and could pretend I wasn't being pushed away (or rather, just forgotten). But...then I just felt this despair and anger towards the principal because she KNEW I wanted to teach math and she just didn't want me to. She wanted my math skills teaching sped math and I HAVE ALWAYS disliked teaching sped math. Always. So here I am. 

Don't get me wrong, I like my job. I like the kids; I like being in charge of my schedule. I like not having to do some of the more stupid stuff teachers have to do. I am not a huge fan of being kicked and punched and having to restrain kids. I don't like having to try and come up with lessons ranging from Kindergarten to fifth grade. I don't like not knowing what I am supposed to do with the students with multiple disabilities who are nonverbal and hardly move. They don't really teach this stuff in college. 

I hate writing IEPs. They are so mindnumbingly dull.

My paras are great, but one is moving away after first semester, another is pregnant, and wants to stay home with the baby, and the other just wants to leave because her daughter is going to high school next year. And they are all conservative. I stay out of their political discussions, but sometimes I think they know. 

November has settled in and the darkening afternoons are depressing me. I know when Christmas kicks in, it will be a little better. I am just so danged lonely. 

I keep thinking how can I fix it? How can I fix the loneliness. Go to church? I just struggle with consistent beliefs. Especially now that the Christian Right has turned into Nazilike zombies, I am just over it. I thought Jesus was supposed to change your heart--these people are hateful. 

I could go to book club at the library. I asked a couple people about joining one last year, but I wasn't wanted. Well. I probably would have been too shy to go. They have dinner clubs for women in town. I could maybe do that. 

I hardly get out of my room at work-I can barely take a conference, but once or twice a week. I guess I could force one, but I would need to leave my room because there would be kids in there, and I feel such a sense of responsibility. It's hard to leave. I rarely talk to people at work, though they seem kind enough.

But that's the thing. Why bother? People seem eager to get to know me and then it just fades away. Time and time again. It has to be me. I am too boring. Too self-centered. Too selfish. Too paranoid. Too protective of my self. Obviously the fear is I have borderline personality disorder, but if I do, I think it is on the mild side. I think of my friend Christy in high school, who more clearly had BPD. She would swallow pills after a fight with her boyfriend and tried to run another exboyfriend off the road. I am not there. I am a little more self aware than that. But I do shut down and lock people out and some part of them wants to them to know and feel a little bit of pain for not loving me. I suppose people can pick up on that. 

I always did say the wrong thing. Or it was wrong when I said it, maybe. Anyway, it's fine. It is just the dark early evenings getting to me. Tomorrow will be better. 

There was so much more to say. Perhaps a second, happier post is in order.