Daily Jogging

Daily jogging isn't much different than anything else in the work from home routine, except that it marks the transition from low blood circulation to knee pain. I enjoy running the same route every time. I enjoy looking forward to it and enjoy the fact that I have done it. Running the same route means that there is nothing tricky to negotiate, like making choices about streets or having unexpectedly bad traffic, etc. In fact, it can bring little surprises to the surface in a fun way. Oh, today people are getting engagement photos? Oh, today a little boy has a balloon? Oh, there's a little party in the gazebo? Oh, basketball? Everything's always the same but each day is a little different. I have always jogged in this way. I really love it in Santa Cruz when I would jog by the ocean and notice the samenesses and differences in the water itself.

How to Retreat into Self Alienation

Here is a list of ways you can cut yourself off from other people and retreat into an introverted world that is both comfortable and perpetually alienating:

1. Don't answer emails right away. Ruminate on your hypothetical response. Let days or weeks go by. Include in your response an apology about being late to reply.

2. Don't answer your phone. Don't check voice mail. Don't call your missed callers back.

3. Work long hours alone on projects that require intense focus and quiet.

4. Follow up these long work hours with household and family projects that carry you into the evening hours.

5. For fun, pursue solo activities such as writing, biking, jogging, playing piano, or binge-watching shows that no one else can relate to.

6. Pour yourself a drink.

7. Do a deep-clean of something in the house. The refrigerator perhaps.

8. Make sure to allocate time for reviewing the kids' homework, grades, class schedule, and progress. Do this daily.

9. Don't pursue close friendships. Instead, try to cycle through acquaintances. See? You have friends.

10. Lie low. Get your shit done.

Coleman in Adulthood

No topic makes me feel more things at the same time than considering my relationship with Coleman as he becomes an adult. He is an adult!? I guess 18 means "adult" but when I interact with him, I see the whole journey of Coleman, from pre-birth to the person standing in front of me now. The love I have for him is an entire spectrum, it's a depth of feeling for someone else that before motherhood I never knew was possible.

(I guess as a mom I should clarify here that this post is about Coleman, but it doesn't mean I don't have the same range of complex feelings and unfathomably deep love for Coleman's brother, Aedan. Look for future blog posts about Aedan.)

Coleman has been just about the most fundamental part of my life for 18 years now, going on 19. No one else on the whole planet can claim that, not a single person. Siblings are unique in that they are there for the entire ride of your life, and I love my relationship with Ellen, but I can tell you without question that my relationship with Cole has provided me the most satisfying sense of family I have ever known. I am so proud of Coleman! And I am so, so proud to be his mother. I love him so much.

I have tried so hard with Coleman to not make mistakes my mother made with me: over-sharing her personal life, over-controling personal aspects of my life, asking me to be a stand-in father for a younger sibling when she was between relationships, imposing her skewed and naive vision of the world onto impressionable youngsters... Etcetera.

I feel I have been so lucky to have Coleman be Coleman, too. Always so calm and pure of heart, witty, creative, inquisitive, and caring for himself in admirable and respectful ways. I appreciate the way Cole treats me, and I know it is a thing to cherish. Not only did I never want to burden him with the details of what I was going through with Andy, but I wanted to shelter him. And even through this, the simple and honest ways he has given me comfort is without measure. I don't know if he realizes how important it has been for me to hear him reflect our realities with Andy, realities that no one else is willing to discuss.

It's a weird dynamic though, and in some ways maybe that is classic of a single mother and her oldest child. I think Cole wishes he had better protected me, which I have expressed at length was never his job or his burden. And something I carry with me and weighs so heavily... I wish I had better protected Cole. In this way we are sadly bonded, perhaps more deeply than a normal mother-son duo.
All of this is complicated, beautiful, so deep for me. Coleman and is my constant in the world, which I would be lost without.

I'm crying as I write this. It feels trite, so predictable, but it is very emotional for me. It's a mother's path to let go of her adult child, and it will open new chapters for both of us, which we both need and which we will love, and we can continue to share this world on a new plane of reality, and I'm excited to explore it. But, but, but... it is the end of something. And I am full of regret that I did not do a better job, that I kept an open door for Andy for so long to the harm of all of us. I regret not doing a better job preparing him for college, for the rigor of academics. I regret being greedy and distracted with my own passions.

With all those regrets, I also feel so much joy and pride. Like it was all so perfect. I couldn't have asked for two better children or any more perfect experience of motherhood. Like the feelings I've had about John in past months, getting twisted around wishing this or regretting that puts an absurd dark blanket over the very best aspects of my life. It's absurd. I mean, I hate it when people say, "I am so blessed" when we do not live in a world that actually bestows BLESSINGS, but I can say how fucking, how absolutely fucking, lucky I am. I came from a family life that was a struggle for me, and I got THIS? I'm so fucking lucky.

In this autumn time with Coleman, it's time to let the love and the lucky tears well up. He's such an awesome guy. I get to be that guy's mom for the rest of my life.

All Caught Up

A blog a day keeps the psychological diarrhea away! Anyway, I skipped a day so the obsessive compulsive part of me is making me write this fake post to "count" for the post I am missing.

There. That's an extra post. Now I'm all caught up.

Open and Closed

I feel I'm kind of sloppy with being open with others vs. closing myself off to others. Sometimes, I over-share, I go too deep too fast, and I look for people willing to go to the same psychoanalytical place as me, whether it's analyzing others or revealing dark parts of ourselves.

And sometimes, I do not want to enter the outside world at all, with all my thoughts looming. I will not return phone calls or texts, I'll be "too busy" to go anywhere. I will loathe small talk with every fiber of my being if I am forced into these situations with my mind not there. I'll drink just to get through the situation.

I feel I spent my summer between these two extremes. Each extreme was the same feeling though: me carrying this giant boulder in my chest and trying to figure out what to do with it as I talked to people, talking to people reaching around it, or yelling from behind it, or just letting it block me from them entirely.

I guess this is another reason I started this blog: to regularly clear the mind so that I can more authentically experience life with other people, without my own psychology getting in the way. Like making sure to blow my nose regularly because I have allergies.

But back to the "open vs. closed" idea. I have a shaky history when it comes to choosing friends. I just don't vet them very well or think strategically before making time commitments to people. I operate in the moment and I love most everybody if I get to know them well enough. Maybe because of this, I tend to go with friends-of-friends, where I don't have to be on the hook for being a good friend. I'm quick to feel like I am a bad friend, and I'm quick to forgive and not really care about my actions when it comes to friends. But mostly, I think I keep people at kind of an arms-length and rely on my domestic relationships for the core stuff. It always feels like maybe I'm missing out on something in the world of friends, or letting people down. I think because in the end, I like being closed to everyone but the very, very, very inner circle.

I have no idea if others are like this; it seems like they aren't. I've always been.

All I Can Offer

Sometimes all I can offer is very little. Like tonight, when I had ideas all day about writing about:

• What institution of marriage really means (in response to a TED talk radio thing I heard while jogging)
• Haha, what that stupid movie Chef really is
• My mom's stroke ('cause I learned today that was so soon after I graduated from high school and it was weird to put the numbers together - we passed the 20 year anniversary unobserved!)
• Being a corporate personality and also a real person who is just faking corporate culture after all

All great topics! None of it will be explored tonight because of stuff (logistics) (kids) (logistics of kids) (fuck it's 10:07). But my mental cleanse carries on. Every day, it's the little rattling thoughts. That's this blog. It's you and me dear reader, in my deep weird space and I love that you're here. Some days it's just about looking each other in the eye.

Short Post

A blog post a day is a LOT! I am inspired by this project but not every day will be as impassioned as the last. Maybe today I will simply share the dream I had last night. First, a little background: Aedan is going to California on Thursday, returning Monday night. The idea when Andy moved back to California in the summer was to help facilitate the kids visiting him. In reality, only Aedan has much interest in visiting and it's not a ton of interest. Also in reality, the only one who can fund these visits is me, since Andy doesn't work, have an income, or have any organizational skills. I am beginning to question the value of these visits.

OK, so onto the dream. In my dream, after facilitating getting Aedan on the plane for this trip, I came home and discovered through Facebook that Andy was actually visiting Portland seeing his ex-girlfriend Jess during the days Aedan was in California. I was so that he was missing his son's visit! But I also didn't want to confront Andy or even risk having to see Andy in person while he was in the same town as me, so I just let it ride, knowing Aedan was having a fine time visiting cousins & other family members. But I was also really outraged, like this was some final step and I wouldn't take it any more, but also not really knowing what that meant. It was a dream about wanting to confront and make change but at the same time I was attempting to ride things to ride out peacefully and feeling shitty about it.

It was a dream very reflective of reality.

What should I do with my dad?

My dad is emotionally stunted. He is also, separately, completely insulated in Mormon culture. But the two inform each other. He is not someone anyone can "connect" with, even within his insular culture, but in Mormon culture that doesn't really matter. With Mormons, the expectations and rules are clear; theoretically there are no messy feelings or unanswered questions. I myself appreciate this draw of religion and, while I'm grateful I was never the type of person who would ever get sucked into it, I am jealous of the certainty that religion brings, and (sort of) understand how my dad fell prey to it after an emotionally painful divorce. I also think religious people are crazy, foolish, and just simply wrong. So my "understanding" honestly doesn't go very far.

A few years ago, I told my dad that it upset me that he moved away from me and my sister when we were so young. He seemed surprised by my feelings, but didn't really react in one way or another. I think he was feeling regret that he didn't try harder when I was young to bring me into the Mormon religion, because then maybe, if I were Mormon like him, I wouldn't be feeling so mixed up.

It's weird that in my family I am the only one who seems upset by my dad's actions. But, I feel I am owed a sincere apology from him -- like an EPIC apology. I feel I am owed acknowledgement that his choices were selfish and that they impacted his daughters' relationships with men forever. I will never get this apology from him.

What I have been getting lately, in somewhat increased measure, are things like trivial postcards, or a hand-written letter about things like the weather. I can tell he feels some vague stirrings over not having a relationship with me and with his grandsons, one of whom is a spitting image of him when he was young. He sent us some home-grown citrus about a year ago.

Two snail-mail pieces in the last couple of months seems especially weird though. I feel he is trying to connect with me in some way. After spending years growing up with my mom berating me for not writing to him enough, and with no emotional reciprocation from him, I feel very disinclined to write him back. I'm just not sure what to do with his outreach? I feel that he knows where I stand and if he wants to rebuild things, he needs to work for it. I even admit that I like ignoring him because I feel it gives me some kind of power, or that the scales are evening and long may that continue. I appreciate that he is doing something that is making him vulnerable. Witnessing his vulnerability through unemotional handwritten notes might be the closest I ever get to him.

My mom plays a part in these feelings because she is such a sucker for needy people. Her advice (I've talked to her about it) is to use this as an opportunity to connect with him. But nobody has ever connected with him, and I do not believe real connection is possible. Right now I am trying to heal myself in the wake of more extreme relationships that need healing. Writing my dad back hoping for something seems like a bad path for me, especially right now.

Also, I love not hoping anything, not waiting to see what his move following mine will be. It's like what I talked about yesterday with loss. By not hoping anything, I feel closure. My relationship with my dad is a loss that has never been framed for me as a loss, so I have to frame it as such for myself. I think it is healthy for me to not want him "back" in my life --particularly since he isn't specifically asking for me to actually take him into my life, or acknowledging the hurt he caused, or owning his mistakes.

I wish I could be tough and just not care. Ellen doesn't seem to care at all, and other people who have been hurt by their parents have repaired these relationships even though the issues with their parents still exist. I might just be more sensitive than other people. But I also know that if I sally forth with writing back to my dad, it will open up wounds that have no business being opened again. They are scars, not wounds. It's crazy. I'm too old, and he's too late with too little to offer.

Loss and Narrative

If someone has experienced loss, that typically means death, or other finalities such as divorce. Loss means a complete slice-off from one reality to another and there is no going back.

This is maybe some of the clear definition I talked about longing for in my last post. Here are some losses I have experienced, but for which I have been slow, reluctant, and unsupported in naming these as losses, in chronological order.

1. My dad moving away and ending participation with my life, vaguely, while he and my mother both pretended that he was still part of my life - age 8.
2. My mom ending marriage with her second husband, a stepdad I never loved per se but whom I had let into my life in a real way for the last five or so years - age 14.
3. My mom's stroke that did not end her life, but changed her forever. Her old life ended completely and then there was the re-acquainting with a new, very impaired but a lot nicer mom - age 19.
4. Andy's gradual, confusing, and co-dependent-with-me descent into complete dependence on other people, depression, and alcoholism - age 28-38.

It's hard to define something as a loss when no one else perceives it as a loss. But for me, these are clear losses. Is it important that I articulate this or carry these losses with me externally, they way someone would have to with a "real loss"? For me, I struggle with the inarticulation, though I'm not sure I should. I guess it gets back to my classic struggle with yearning for clarity and permanence while also believing clarity and permanence don't exist.

I feel guilty with thoughts I have indulged over the years about Andy or my mother dying. In a way, for me, death would finally clean up the narrative with these two individuals. It would help convey to everyone just how serious these situations were, which is a very selfish but honest feeling. The thing is, people understand death. People do not tend to understand brain problems because brain problems can vary so much. What does a stroke mean? What does depression mean? These can mean millions of things. If I talk about my mom's brain problems or Andy's brain problems, I have to start mapping out all these exhaustive details to help explain what these situations mean to me. 

I love the clarity of when I say statements like, "This is my son," or "She is a friend I've known for 20 years." Everyone knows what these things mean. People do not know what, "My mom had a stroke" and "My ex really struggles with depression" mean. 

This is part of why I'm doing this blog. I need to define my complexities. Shadowy nuances are not doing it for me any longer.

The Space Years Between Me and Everyone Else

My life doesn't present itself in the normal trajectory. The fact that I have an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old at 40 makes me feel like a grandmother around first time mom's who are around my same age. It's like there are 20 or so space years between me and everyone else.

All the people I know who are having babies now will be nearly 60 when their kids leave home. I'm jealous of their roadmap, because it's easy, predictable, and secure.

But I just want to slap myself across the face when I think this way! Those extra 20 space years are an opportunity so few people have. All those dreams of travel, doing amazing things, making a real impact on some specific corner of the world... they could happen for me; I'm looking through the screen door, ready. I am more powerful and more myself than ever before.

I'm trying not to work myself up about the looming age of 46 (the age when my mom had her stroke). It's not genetic, etc., etc., but it does scare me to remember how powerful she seemed to me at the time when she had her stroke.

We just get what we get with life. If I'm truly to have a couple of bonus decades after raising two wonderful boys, before my body sours into old age, I get to bask in that. And if I or anyone else I love is stricken with something like a stroke, we have to deal with that.

I think this is why I am jealous of the freshly marrieds and new parents in spite of being in the awesome place I am in life. They see life as a somewhat neatly paved ahead of them. I had that perception of my own life once, long ago, but the truth is that it doesn't exist for anyone. I'm jealous of the certainty other people carry in their lives.

Why did I start this blog?

Mostly this blog will be about my insecurities. It will also be about the truth, "my truth" in therapy-speak. These days I am busy raising teenage boys, working a very brainpower-intensive marketing job with long hours (from home! which makes me extra crazy - haha!), and cultivating a romantic, domestic relationship that I hope will prosper forever. I squeeze other things in sometime, in the cracks, but not much.

The part of me that focused on my creative voice when I was getting my MFA is still there, strangely, and not bored either. In some ways I feel guilty that I do not mourn the downgrade of this voice's place in my life. But life is about choices and focus, and right now my poetics, whatever that means, takes the back seat. I love that alien, impartial part of myself that watches everything and just gets it, and can articulate it back to me in a shape that just makes simple sense to me.

It's really this dialogue between myself and that voice that I want to explore in this blog. This is the thing that is missing among all the chaos.

By "chaos" I guess I just mean life re-definition. I mean, we all go through a continuous process of redefining ourselves throughout our lives. Some must do this more than others though, and I find myself yearning for a consistency and finality in life that seems almost mythical. I think others either perceive that they have created a consistent, well-defined life, or they are comfortable in chaos.

I actually prefer chaos, because I believe this is the most honest state. The challenge for me right now is that I am laser-focused on providing a consistent, stable, forthright home for my kids -- the antithesis of chaos. I'm in this weird middle ground, where I am softening about ideas of stability and finding them easier to provide than I would have ever thought, but at the same time I am so untrustworthy of stability, and to feel stable puts me on edge.

Let's review a few contributing factors as to why this might be:

• Being born with a teratoma that resulted in immediate and subsequent physical trauma that put me on high alert to to this world from the onset.
• Having self-absorbed, childish parents, who split when I was 7 for trivial reasons.
• Having a super insecure and emotionally stunted father who abandoned two daughters when they were under 10.
• Having repeated, chronologically consecutive and serious medical issues in high school with little parental involvement.
• Losing most of my mother, but not entirely all of my mother, to a stroke when I was 19. Having parental role in my mother's life ever since.
• Being party to my mom's four marriages, and more importantly, being asked to change my sense of family after she ended three of her marriages. (She is still married to her fourth husband, but not that happily.)
• Losing my kids' dad, someone I had been close to for nearly 20 years, to mental illness and substance abuse -- slowly, in really poorly defined terms, involving several instances where he was cruel and abusive to me and to the kids (not striking me as a "wife beater" but does that matter?). And not lost completely, as in the finality of death. He lingers around. He is a shell of an idea of a person.
• Losing the family I had married into, who became my extended and maybe more real fantasy family. They have never acknowledged the reality of their son's problems, and I became a troublemaker for breaking away from him. I know now that I don't need their "forgiveness." They should need my forgiveness but they are blind.

OK, great! Now that I think we are acquainted with all most of the key issues, we can proceed with the blog at large! BTW I'm hoping to infuse a lot of comedy and fun into this thing.

So, why a blog and not just a 40-something woman's journal by the bedside like it's 1990? This needs to go on the Web, that's why. Fuckers need to read this and comment and such. I need that, because it will help make everything else real too.  

So here we go. Enter the cave of my mind. Let's get weird.