Working through working through

Yes, I'm working through the process of working through my emotional issues as I work through my social work homework lol

Since it's rather obvious that I have crap boiling to the surface of my life, and need to get it out in the open where I can deal with it, I'm going to just keep this open and post my random thoughts as I finish reading my article.

"Subsequently, they often deny their own needs because of love and compassion for their parents and a fear of losing them." - It's creepy that I didn't do that so much with my dad, but I DO find myself doing this over and over again for so-called-friends, and for that same reason... I'm afraid they'll leave. "This poses a risk that over-responsibility and co-dependence may occur when the focus is on the needs of others." Hello! That is SO me. How is my picture not right there in the article? LOL



"Learning to step back from triggers of their childhood" - Yeah, I am so going to need to do this. Studying these things, along with the 30 hours of volunteer work required for this class, will be good practice for me.

"They are susceptible to anxiety when stressed and often present with somatic symptoms. They have a high potential for burnout... " - This explains SO MUCH. Reading this article really is making me feel more normal. I've found myself getting burnt out often from kids ministry, and just assumed I was a terrible person. I worry, often, about my ability to survive social work... will I get burnt out?

Well, today's reading was obviously not as fraught with drama and emotion as yesterdays... but now the article has officially been read, and all that's left is the paper to write! Wooo hooo!!!!

Finally...

I sold my wares at a craft bazaar at my aunt's church this weekend... didn't have much business, but sold a few earrings and ornaments. My mommy came by, and I ranted to her about the untimely demise of my Christmas ornaments, and my pathetic need for the mouse advent calendar. I went to her house later to pick up some things I'd left at my cousin Debby's house... and there was the calendar. I hugged it and cried for a deeply unreasonable period of time. I took it home, and the next day my hubby went out before work and stocked it up with candy and hung it up for me... prompting another good warm-fuzzy-cry. I ate today's candy, and cried a little more... and then ate chocolate from last week. *giggle*

The holiday depression has now broken, and I can face the holiday season... armed with a very huggable mousey happily living in his advent calendar. (And with it, memories of Christmases gone by, of love from my Mommy and a warm comfy home and my Dad still being alive.)

All is right in my world.

(P.S. There will be no gay marriage post tonight, I'm going to bed. )

Abandonment

Time and time again, as I allow myself to feel and examine my emotions, I come back to that word. Abandonment.

This seems to be a theme in my life. I think it really hit me when my parents split up at the age of 12. My dad had been my knight in shining armor as a child, vowing to vanquish anyone who hurt me or tried to take me away... but when Mom and I packed up our boxes to move, the only response from him was when I found a card in his trashcan... it read "Daddy, I love you." with cute little crayon drawings. That basically summed up our relationship from that point forward. We had occasional visits from him... usually him wanting to "say goodbye" before he commited suicide. *eye roll*

At the same time, my mom was working a lot of long hours... my grandparents had their own lives to deal with (Grandpa was going blind)...

And I felt so abandoned.

I see this being repeated in my mind even today. When I have serious discussions with James, I fear he'll leave me. When I make a mistake at work, I worry I'll be fired. When I don't hear from a friend in a while, I wonder what I did to make them leave me. I feel like I'm always waiting to do that one unforgiveable thing... the one that will make the other person walk away and never come back.

I see all this... but I have no idea how to overcome it. How do you shut off (or circumvent) something ingrained so deeply?

Kindergarten Memories

Inspired by Alison, I decided to have some fun reflecting on my childhood years.

Today, let's talk about kindergarten. Every day the bus would pick us up at two different bus stops for our half-day kindergarten. My teacher was Mrs Sowers, and she was really old. Here are some random events that happened during this ever-so-fun year:

I had my first boyfriend! I dated Albert, who always hung out at the gas station where his uncle worked. Our relationship ended when my friend Sunshine Fair (yes, her parents WERE hippies, how did you guess? lol) wanted to sit with us, and Albert didn't want her to.

We had a try-every-fruit day! Fun. Pineapple really stands out to me from that day. Maybe that's what I brought?

Tommy Cotton hit me with an airplane! I cried.

I got in trouble for the first time. I had to spend my recess doing make-up work, which included a sheet where we had to color certain things red. I wanted to play, so I scribbled all over the paper and handed it back. Mrs. Sowers was NOT impressed!

Christy Beckley decided that we all needed to learn to lip-read. She went inside the post office (our bus stop) and mouthed words through the glass window, and we had to tell her what she was saying. I really hated that. I kinda sucked at lip-reading.

Elizabeth Sanders didn't know how to blow her nose, and I remember how disgusted Mrs Sowers looked as she had to teach her. How can you look disgusted at an adorably dirty 5-year old? Elizabeth also got into her mom's perfume one day before class, and almost caused Mrs Sowers to have an asthma attack or something. Her parents hadn't washed the perfume off of her, and Mrs Sowers was mad at Elizabeth, which still seems very sad to me. It wasn't Elizabeth's fault!!!! 20 years later, my inner child still crys for Elizabeth. She ended up being held back a year, and was in LD classes when we got into high school... but when i re-met her in 8th grade, she was still a cool person! I liked her in Kindergarten and in high school! (I don't remember seeing her in between, at all, which is wierd. I even remember wondering what happened to her.)

So, there you have it... Kindergarten with Jana.

What memories do YOU have of kindergarten?

The Case of the Quiche

To me, making and eating the perfect quiche is the ultimate victory.

Growing up, quiche was my father's favorite thing to make fun of my mother about. (Not tease, in a fun way... make fun of, in a humiliating way.) It was a symbol of the ultimate domestic failure to him.

I came home one day from 4-H... I was probably about 9, and had gotten a ride home from the meeting with my Sunday School teacher. I came home to the smell of food cooking... and my father ranting because his dinner was late. The ultimate crime.

My mom had been brave enough to try something new that night. When she told me today what she had made it of, I was seriously impressed. The recipe called for her to peel and grate potatos (I would have been out at that point, I hate peeling potatos), chop onions, and then go on with the normal quiche preparations. But I digress. For my mom to make anything new was a major act of courage... and this would be one of her last until her later divorce. My father was not a fan of anything new.

So, eventually the quiche did get done... and like my first quiche, it fell. (I'm not sure why hers fell, but mine fell because I didn't read the directions Suzie so awesomely gave me.) We bit into hers... and my dad spit his out, gagging, in a rage. The onions were not done. OH THE HORROR. My father taunted her about this failure for years... telling all of his friends, so they could laugh with him at her humiliation...

As an adult, I look back on that and it makes me sick. How much time did she spend on that stupid quiche?! HOW COULD HE DO THAT TO HER?? And then to make fun of it to his friends, watching her blush in humiliation and quietly take it? It physically makes me sick.

This Monday, after tasting the awesome goodness of Suzie's quiche, I decided to try another recipe I had found in the Taste of Home magazine, using this weeks IOTW (Ingredient of the Week) - Cottage cheese. I mixed it up, according to the directions...

And put it on to bake. It came out absolutely perfect this time (practice makes perfect), and my husband absolutely loved it.


I can't help feeling sad for my mom.... she was a much better wife than I am... she deserved her husband to praise her cooking and share it with his coworkers. She didn't deserve for it to be his means of humiliation for her.

Tonight my mom and I discussed the quiche... and the symbolism of it. Each time I make a quiche, I feel closer to healing. Each time I make a quiche, I feel like I'm saying a huge "up yours!" to every abusive man on the plannet...

And each time I make a quiche, I tell my father that I will NOT live my life in fear of humiliation and shame. I WILL BE FREE!

Bullying: Does It Ever End?

Yesterday I was reading a blog, where a mom talked about her children being left out at school. The Boy feels hurt because the other boys in his class leave him out. The Girl came home sobbing because all the other girls were invited to a birthday party, and she was not.

I almost cried as I sat at my desk reading the comments. One commenter, who didn't even have the balls courtesy to use her name, said this load of crap:

"Be comforted by the thought that parents really don't know the facts and what your kids relay is what they are feeling in the moment and not as a result of research and soul-searching pondering."

This reminds me of long car rides with my Grandma... her telling me "if you just ignore the meaner kids, they will go away!" As if it was MY fault, that kids tormented me?

Every day, I got onto a bus for a one hour ride to school with children who hated me. I got to school, and went to a class with kids who hated me. No one wanted to sit with me, work with me, or even be remotely near me. I was not invited to my first birthday party until I was about 11. I was made fun of in classes (whenever the teacher turned her back), at recess, at lunch (assigned seating... bleck)... and worst of all... the bus ride home.

3:20-4:20 - The bus ride home. One hour of HELL. The kids made it their personal project to make my friend Bridgette and i cry each and every bus ride home. what did they say? I was ugly, stupid, crazy, wierd, gay, gay with Bridgette, dirty, smelly (okay, in their defense, those last two were true... personal hygene was NOT my parent's strong point at the time.),... and so on and so forth. The kids would literally torment us until we cracked, either into tears (me) or anger (Bridgette). And what did the bus driver do? Yell at us for crying and making a scene.

When I was in kindergarten, I came home in tears after being made fun of on the bus. I told my dad, looking for comfort... instead he called me a "baby @$$" and laughed at me. And just to help "toughen me up", he made sure to make fun of me at home whenever possible too.

HOW WAS THIS MY FAULT?! I was made fun of at EVERY corner of my life. I was made fun of at home, at school, at church, at clubs... by adults, teens, and especially by kids.. about my apperance, my intelligence, my sexuality (before I even knew what sex was lol... at about age 5, they asked me "Are you gay?" repeatedly. I was FIVE! I didn't even know what the word meant! And when I asked my mom, she told me it meant "happy"!! *sigh*), my personality, my sanity... pretty much everything.

My point? I really don't have one. But if a child tells you others are making fun of them, or beg not to be sent to school or on a bus... Listen. It'll save you a ton on therapy bills for them later in life.

TAGGED!!!!!!

Tammy tagged me today! (I get this awesome rush of love when someone tags me... how pathetic is that?)

The tag? " write 5 things no one knows about you and then tag 5 other people."

Let me think about this for a while... Amy, some of these you may know, but I'm trying to even surprise you...

1. When I was a child, I showed major signs of OCD... Had to step the exact same number of times on each square of the sidewalk, had to take all my steps in multiples of three, etc. Now the only lingering effect is an occasional tendency to step the same number of times on sidewalk squares.

2. At the age of 19 or so, I moved from the "middle of stinkin' nowhere" to the north 'burbs of Chicago (Waukegan, Highland Park). Learned to drive in city traffic, tasted my first chimichunga, babysat a set of triplets on occasion, smelled chitlins cooking (A little girl tried to say it and pronounced it with a s at the beginning instead of a c... that pretty much sums up the smell!!!!), ate my first cornbread dressing (OMW talk about GOOD!) and my first bite of okra (that is DEFINATELY an abomination!!) and met my first panhandlers. Definately eye-opening, and very fun!

3. While in Chicago, I went to a black church with an attendance of like 400 or so... less than 20 of which were not black. It was... educational!

4. My first time driving a car was at age 10, with my Daddy, in a field of hay-making stuff after the harvest. He always laughs about how scared I was to go in between the bales of hay... and they were like 40 feet apart. Hey, I was TEN, what'd he expect? LOL

5. While in college, I went to a church with all their services in Spanish! I learned to speak the language, and cook yummy foods like flautas, homemade tortillas (Sonoran style), and cherizo con huevos! While helping in the nursery there, I learned things like "SILENCIO" ( BE QUIET!), "Sientete. Sientete! SIENTETE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (Sit down. Sit down! SIT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!") and how to clean toddler vomit out of my jacket. Oh, and I also learned how to say "I live in a van by the river" in Spanish. I'm not really sure why.

I tag.... Jami, Eliza, Jen, Nikki, and Leti

Categories: Childhood, Memes, Life