cacophony

and I see my son’s Tonka trucks, gathered into a circle, by me, over the weekend — so that I could take a picture. They look . . . abandoned. Forlorn. It’s a gray day, not very pleasant, and Nate has no interest in playing with them. Instead, he is running around in various states of dress — this morning he was in full Peter Pan costume; right now, he is dressed as Spiderman. He loves to be anyone but himself.

I see the yard full of leaves, showing me that in spite of 80° (sometimes even 90°) days in the last week or two, we are well into the march toward winter. The days are short — sww goes to work in the dark, comes home in the dark, grinds away at work, school, helping to maintain a home — I wonder sometimes if there’s any joy left in his life. I miss the sun. I taught in a classroom for five years that had no windows, no connection to the outside, and I spent many a break between classes dashing down the two flights of stairs, outside for an instant, just to feel the sun on my face. Reconnect with its force. Life is not meant to be lived only in artificial light and in darkness. We are meant to revel in the sun.

I see a squirrel running along the top of the back fence, pausing and sitting up every couple of seconds — for what, I don’t know. We put Nate’s birdfeeder in a tree, and so far I have seen it attract no birds, but many many squirrels. I would like to get some real birdfeeders for our yard. There are a few teeny tiny birds flitting through one of the trees. I have no idea what kind of bird they are; nearly as small as hummingbirds, neutral in color. The squirrel has gone under the Tonka trucks now. I wonder what he expects to find.

I see Nate’s bright blue shovel, that he uses to plant acorns or just to make holes in the ground. I think he misses his sandbox. I see him looking at the backyard sometimes, looking lost — like this is not how it supposed to be; this is not where I am supposed to be. I miss the joy he used to have in playing outside while I sat on the porch and watched. I hope, as he becomes more and more accustomed to the new backyard, that joy comes back.

We’re missing too much joy in our lives. We all need to find it again. Every day I think it’s getting better, but there are moments of every day I feel I’m just deluding myself. It’s just as dark as it’s been for months. The trick is not to let those moments crush me.

but man I wish I had a hand to hold.”
— Edie Brickell, “Me by the Sea”

I am an avoidant person by nature, and very much an introvert. When things become too much for me, I withdraw — as far and as deep as I can, as far away from people as I can get. And I stay wrapped up in myself as long as I can. There comes a point, though, when that withdrawal is too deep, too far, and hurts me more than it helps me.

If I spend a week without writing a word, I am being helpful to no one. If I can look back on an entire month and find no new photos of my child, much less anything else, then I have fucked up. I am fucked up. Denying my drives is never helpful; it always means I have pulled too far away from my life.

I wonder where it came from — this creation drive. Do all people have it, and only some of us indulge ourselves, or are there only some of us that have this slashing, clawing need living inside, trying to find a way out? Sometimes I wish I didn’t have it, because I tear myself up if I don’t get it out of me. Rip myself to shreds. And that is not a very comfortable fit with my tendency, desire, to withdraw into myself. Why do I need to rediscover this over and over and over again? Why do I have to keep fighting with myself to reach an understanding I’ve achieved already dozens of other times in my life? And every time I do this to myself, I get angrier.

There is always, finally, something that snaps me back. That pulls me out of that shell. This time, it was a series of photos from a friend that were both visually stunning and emotionally powerful, a punch in the gut — and the kick in the ass that I needed. Like a light switch was thrown — yes. Yes, this is who you are. This is what you should be doing, see? This is the kind of thing you want to strive to do. Just like this.

And suddenly I find myself iwth pen in hand, camera in hand, and once again — open.

I don’t know what I want to say. I don’t know what I want to take photos of. I don’t know what I want to bring out, what I want to birth out of the darkness, what I want to put out into the world — what I want to create.

Finding out is the fun part.

I want to capture this feeling, bottle it, so I never forget what it feels like. So that when these avoidance tendencies, and this too-deep withdrawal, try to smother me I can chase them away with ease rather than — once again — having to fight myself to get here.

So it was my birthday on Tuesday. I turned 31 years old.

I have a lot of thoughts in my head about birthdays. I don’t know that I’m going to, or even want to, get them all out.

I remember various birthdays over the years, some more than others. I remember the year that I spent in Pensacola for a weekend with a few good friends. I do not remember which birthday it was — I was young — before sixth grade, when I was still in Catholic school. That was a great birthday — sunburned, sweaty, sandy, and filled with a kind of joy that comes only with being a kid on the beach.

I remember my 18th birthday. Right before my birthday, I went away for a “party” with two of my closest friends in Oxford — our “last blast” before I went far away from them for college. I got drunk — oh so drunk — for the first time, the first time I’d ever had anything more to drink than half a wine cooler. Shot after shot after shot of Bacardi. Looking back, I’m pretty convinced I had alcohol poisoning to some degree. Not my smartest moment.

My actual birthday party, my parents ragged me mercilessly about it. I remember, more than anything else about that birthday, laughing. Gods, the laughing.

I remember my 21st birthday. It was the first birthday of mine that my husband and I were together. He was in school for the summer; I was working in Athens, Texas, living in a hotel room. I’d been saving money for soooo long for one thing — to go to the casinos on my birthday. Future hubby, my college roommate, and her boyfriend all made the trip back to Mississippi for that birthday — and we spent HOURS in the casinos. Everybody won that weekend but me, and I lost in a big way — and didn’t care. I remember that weekend only in bits and flashes — standing outside the Palace casino, listening to the oldies they had playing and singing, trying to get sww to dance with me. Leaning over the craps table, throwing the dice, laughing my ass off. Just the right level of deliciously drunk off of free booze, trying to direct a very sober sww back to my home:

“You’re going to take a right at the next red light.”
“That red light?”
“No, that’s not a red light, that’s a green light.”

I don’t remember what he said to me, but it was most likely said through clenched teeth. In my defense, the light in question was (in my mind) not a real traffic light, because it was on a bridge and only turned red when the bridge was up.

I do not think I made things better by pointing out, when we got to the light, “See, you can’t turn here, you’ll go in the water.”

Again, I don’t remember what the response was. That’s probably best.

. . . .

There were so many things I thought I would do by the time I was thirty — and so many of them undone. And now, at 31, I can’t pretend to myself anymore that they might still happen. I sometimes grieve for the life I thought I’d have — actually, if I’m being honest, lives. There were a lot of places I thought I might be by the time I was thirty; as it turns out, I’m in none of those places. And yet, I wouldn’t give up the life I DO have for anything in the world. That dissonance is — difficult sometimes. Particularly on birthdays.

Thirty is supposed to be a “milestone” year. And, looking back at 30, maybe it was — but not in the way I expected it to be. This year, for the most part, was difficult. Too much change to be comfortable, too much illness, too much . . . just too much. Everything.

But. But. Thirty is also the year I made the big jump — out of the classroom, home with my boy. In my mind, that’s the defining thing — the biggest thing that I did over the last year. And I think it makes the year — the changes, the loss of my mental/emotional balance — worth it. Oh so worth it.

. . . .

Hubby was out of town for this birthday, on a business trip. I did not see anyone all day long but my son. It was a bit lonely, moreso than I expected. But I had a lot of friends — in particular, one very good friend — and all my family who made sure that I knew I was in their thoughts, all day long. Not alone in spirit. All in all, it was a good day. I am looking forward to an even better year.

This is my life history spread out on my kitchen table:

Seventeen years of personal history.

Seems like it should be a bigger pile — but there were some long silences.

The first journal is the purple one at the bottom, with the lock. Looking at it tonight, I realize that at some point I tore out about half the pages. So while it’s true that I have been keeping a journal since I was in the sixth grade, I actually only have entries dating back to the seventh grade. That makes me a little sad.

The first eight entries are all about a boy — the rise and fall of a relationship in 10 days — at least, that incarnation of the relationship. Those particular entries happen to be about Thomas William, the first boy I kissed, the constant boy in my life from the first day of seventh grade until the day I told him I was getting married. (I haven’t talked to him since. He was, apparently, even angrier with me than I realized that day.) This journal is filled with scintillating writing such as “March 12, 1989. Nothing much happened today. I sat around and moped, watching TV, playing Nintendo, reading, imagining. Imagining a lot about Tommy. I still like him, but I hate him for breaking up with me. It’s not fair. I’ll never talk to him again.” High quality stuff. That journal ends with — shockingly — “I’m falling more and more in love with Tommy every time I see him.” (And, in the end, that continued to be true for many years. I can’t think if a single moment in high school that doesn’t have Thomas William woven through it.)

The journals got better. I got more real with myself. I got more honest. The small book with flowers all over it is among my favorite material things in the world — and there’s not a single “entry” more than two paragraphs long. It’s just a collection of random thoughts, images, and dreams from my last year of high school and my first year of college. The journal with the heart on the front is almost solely letters to an ex-boyfriend, in which I came to terms with some nasty stuff in my past that was affecting my ability to form solid relationships. I don’t ever reread that journal; it is too painful. There’s one book that I kept while I was in recovery from depression, finally getting treatment, and I read through that one whenever I want to be astonished by myself. There’s one that is more an art journal than a personal journal — and I love that one. I love to leaf through it; the riot of color is fun.

I love these books. They are mostly boring as hell; they contain nothing earth shattering, and very little even interesting. They can be humiliating in their superficiality, but every so often they are stunning — at least to me — in their truth. I would not be who I am without this history, captured in just this way.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” — Anaïs Nin

So the question has to come up. Why? Why do this? What’s the point? What’re you trying to achieve? These are all things I’ve asked myself while considering and putting together this blog. If you think about it, the personal blog is a funny thing — the private diary made public, in real time — but then again, maybe it’s not. Writing intended for publish, even in this rather inelegant way, can’t ever really be private — so it becomes less about writing for myself and more about something else. Is it a basic human need to communicate, or is it just some of us who are wired this way? Is this some kind of search for validation? I don’t know.

I am and always have been enraptured by personal writing. Diaries, journals, logbooks, collections of letters — they are a well of endless fascination for me, always serving up something I can use to quench the need for connection that I have. I am in love with the idea of personal journals, records of the journey and how all of us travel it differently. I’ve kept a journal, on and off in some form, since I was in the sixth grade. I’ve always had conflicting desires — lock them away in the most secret hiding place I could devise AND share them with anyone — anyone! — I could find to sit still long enough to listen. For years, all the journals sat in a filebox in the garage or in the attic or somewhere locked away. Right now, they are all lined up on a bookshelf, next to knitting magazines and books about bookmaking. I leave them there trusting no one will pick them up. I think I’m going to have to move them soon.

So I couldn’t do anything but be infatuated with blogs, ever since I first learned of their existence. It’s been a fascination that I’ve explored from the outside for years — reading other people’s blogs, reading about blogging. It was inevitable that eventually, finally, I would end up here — publishing my own public personal journal, throwing my words and pieces of myself — my own constant cacophony — out there into the world to see where it leads me.

I don’t know why I’m blogging. I don’t know why I keep journals. I don’t know where the force inside that pushes me to record, to explore, to “spill words all over myself,” came from. I only know that it is a siren call and I will follow merrily.

This could be a blog about many things. It could be a blog about infertility (secondary IF, to be exact) and the quest to have a child. It could be about coming to terms with a PCOS diagnosis, and what that means. It could be a weight loss blog. (Or at least, I hope it could. At least it could be a blog about struggling with weight.) It could be a photoblog. Or a parenting blog. Or a political blog, with particular emphasis on the politics of education. And the stay-at-home-mom as feminist.

It could be a beginning runner’s blog, or a blog about fighting toward a more solid grasp of CSS and XML. Or about the process of moving into a new house and making it a home. It could be a blog about a thousand more things as well; all those things that — note by building, blaring note — add up to the cacophony that is ever present, ever playing in my brain.

But it won’t be. There will be nothing that this blog is about, no defining theme that can be used to classify it, to say “the people who will be interested in reading this blog are these people.” Because my brain doesn’t work that way. There is no theme, no unifying thread, no way to pull it all into something cohesive. There is just this unrelenting noise, and that is what will spill out onto this computer screen.

This will be the blog of a 30-year-old scientist turned teacher recently turned stay-at-home-mom, who has no idea what she wants to be when she grows up but definite ideas about how she wants to get there. I don’t know where the experiment that is this blog will take me. I don’t know that anyone but me cares. But I’m looking forward to finding out.