The Redhead Mom

The hardest thing these days, now that I am saner than I was is figuring out what I can and can’t write about.  In my previous place I wrote if it was in my head it was out my fingers.  Which works, until you have a nervous breakdown for the entire Internet to read.  That isn’t so good.

I want to write about what is going well (a lot) and what isn’t (my job).  And while my marriage has been off limits for public consumption for a long time I am finding that some of me  is too.  And I think I am ok with it.  Just because I can share doesn’t mean I have to.  My psychologist agrees that writing is good for me and so I am doing so, just not all of it is public and of course the job is off limits because while I hate it, I want to keep it at the moment.

But at the same time…my crazy can be funny.  And while I feel panicky and ill when it happens sometimes, well it is just funny looking back on it.  And that is the story about my crazy i want to talk about.

I think many of you are aware I have incredible social anxiety.  Which is really unfortunate because I love being social.  But I continue to suffer from being awkward and socially inept and am aware of it.  So social situations that are new or I don’t understand the social rules will make me physically ill.   (Just ask about how I threw up over going to the Buddhist meditation center with Thomas because I wasn’t sure what I needed to do when we got there)  But the worst are the ones that are sprung  on me.

At least I can obsess endlessly about a social situation that is coming up and then cancel on it when I can’t seem to get my social courage up to go.  Tom has had to be the unfortunate audience to many a monologue where I talk about HOW.I.WILL.JUST.DIE if said situation arises.  I should add I often claim to be near death if forced to talk about a topic with my psychologist that I don’t want to.  Tom is a patient person, who is really good at ignoring me so it is probably less painful than it sounds.

Oh look, I diverted from topic again.  Awkward transition complete.  Several weeks ago we were shopping at SuperTarget which is also known as the place I can get fresh sushi, clothes and a Starbucks all at one place when I spied a man that looked shockingly like my psychologist.  My psychologist has a very psychologist look about him and is well unique enough in appearance that it was easy to spot him several rows away.  I rushed into the next row and my stomach sank.  For me to talk about all the stuff in therapy that I really would rather not divulge (seriously my crazy goes deep) it is important that my Dr. not exist in my real world.  Running into him at Target was simply not going to be something I could deal with.  So I peeked around the corner again at which point I didn’t see him only to look back up and notice he was at the end of the very row I was in.

I am a very smooth and subtle person so I grabbed some can off the aisle and walked past him (at this point I was blocked in on one end pretty much) pretending to not see him and staring intently at a can of some vegetable.  I get to the end, see Tom and he asks what was up.  Where I proceed to have the loud meltdown with tears and all.  At which point Tom says really, let me go introduce myself.

I look at him and start yelling through my tears and gasping about HOW.I.WILL.JUST.DIE if he walks over there.  And how he needs to stop walking right now.  I am absolutely certain at this point that my Dr. has seen my with my canned veg stare and heard me and the new thought hits my brain.  When I see him next we are going to have to talk about this.

We finish the little bit of grocery shopping we have and I check out while Tom takes the boy to check out video games.  I checked out with my eyes and brain on high alert should an encounter happen again.  Then I went and threw up and called Rose while I sat on a bench.  Rose is pretty good at talking me off the edge and gets when I am both stressing and amused at something.

And while I obsessed until my next appointment about what I would do if he asked me about it the truth is, it amuses me.  I want to get better at controlling reactions and acting like a normal human but I laughed and still do over it.  (and no, he didn’t mention it which means I still am alive)

I don’t know what it is like to be unafraid and brave.  I know what it is like to fake it.  To be scared like you can’t believe and to be unable to stop the oppressing thoughts and still put on a good face and do what you have to do.  Even now, with a great psychologist who is helping me figure out exactly how to avoid the landmines that lead to the meltdowns and medication.  Even now, with a husband who I think completely groks the thoughts in my head.  Even now, with a circle of friends who are aware and love me anyhow.  I do not know what it is like to be unafraid.  I can’t even step on an elevator without vivid and compulsive thoughts of it crashing.

I imagine that it was tiring for both of my parents to have such a fearful kid.  Especially because my brother just isn’t that.  He isn’t scared of the thoughts of other people and elevators crashing and ships sinking and everyone dying.  He doesn’t throw up every single day of his life simply because the day is too overwhelming to consider.  I know some of the things I am scared of go back to early childhood.  Some are easy to avoid, wax museums.  Some are embarrassing and not so easy, like the dark.  (I don’t even want to talk about the humiliation that occurred in Disneyland when I was a full grown adult with a 3 year old who started crying and refused to get on the Haunted Mansion ride).  I had never slept in a dark room until I went to college and I think part of my college meltdown (my first adult one!) was the fact that I shared a dorm room and suddenly was expected to sleep in the dark despite a crippling fear of it.  I managed to develop some coping techniques over the months but whenever I could I slept in a lit room.

I was lucky when I married that my husband is an incredibly sound sleeper who seems completly ok with me sleeping with nightlights, actual lights, and tv.  And as an adult I can’t stand in a dark room or walk through an unlit house but if needed I can and will sleep in a dark room.

One of my earliest memories and my fondest one of my parents actually has to do with that fear of the dark.  As I said earlier, I imagine that it was incredibly tiring, parenting me through the minefields of everyday things that could send me into tears.  (ahem escalators)  One night when I was 3 or 4 I was awoken by my parents who had heard me talking in my sleeping (or crying, I am not really sure all these years later) and they brought me downstairs with them and let me lay on the floor in front of the couch while they watched tv.  Every few days after that I would then lay in that dark room trying desperately not to think of all the things I think of when it is dark (then, monsters, now, home invasions and fires) and when I thought I could get away with it I would pretend to be asleep and talk or cry until my parents would come and rescue me and let me lay on the floor in front of the tv.  At some point they cut me off and I am sure they thought I was trying to stay up late and watch tv but every time I thought I could manage it in the future I did it.  It seemed to  help me get control of the fear in a way.  I would lie in bed counting to help me figure out when I could be reasonably believed to be asleep and often fell asleep before I ever got to that point.  That became my coping mechanism that I sometimes use until this day (although it is rare that sleeping in the dark will cause my that much anxiety).

It took me 30 years to realize the rest of the world didn’t live this way.  With little tricks and memories and being scared of their own shadow (and people I mean that literally, if I think about it too much my shadow will actually freak me out) and the thing I desire most is to put back those peices of me and be whole and not broken in this way.  It is probably my biggest fear, the one I think about the most, that I will never be able to just live and breathe.

I recently returned for a 4 day visit with my brother and his family.  I marveled several times while I was there on our evolving relationship.  And I left with a heavy heart even while I looked forward to coming home and seeing my husband.  The most unfortunate part of having an only child is that he will miss out on that shared experience both Tom and I have had.  The shared experience isn’t always pleasant but we both have siblings that we have known our entire lives.

I remember idolizing my brother as a child.  He was definitely the leader in all our rabble rousing but I was his co-conspirator.  We both had active imaginations as children and spent hours together playing pretend games.  My brother was in my eyes everything I wanted to be.  Smart, funny, well liked.  For years I was willing and did fall on the sword for him simply because I wanted him to be happy.

His welfare is of my concern No burden is he to bear

We’ll get there

For I know
He would not encumber me

My favorite memory of my brother and I happened when we were young and lived in Memphis.  I was around 7 years old which puts Jay at 11.  It was summertime and hot.  We had been left to our own devices.  I am not exactly sure where he procured them from but Jay had a handful of bottle rockets.  And he decided we should set them off this his bedroom window.  And we did.  It was a lot of fun.  We were getting away with something!  (One of us might have been grounded to the house).  The fun continued until a bottle rocket fired backwards back into his bedroom setting the floor on fire.  One of us tossed an orange blanket on it which burned slightly.  There was a black mark on his floor we deftly covered with furniture and I am sure we explained the singed blanket somehow.  Many years later, after Jay had moved out and a combination of situations forced anxiety and depression (although at the time I didn’t know that is why I felt the way i did) to weigh down on me I would drag that blanket out and remember that time.  I wanted most in life to be there again.  Setting the house on fire, in it together, brother and sister.

If I’m laden at all
I’m laden with sadness
That everyone’s heart
Isn’t filled with the gladness
Of love for one another

Our tween/teen years were hard on our relationship.  I think they were a hard time on every relationship in our family.  I regret that we didn’t find the support in each other, but alas teenagers are self involved aren’t they?  But we occasionally reached out to each other.  In junior high I struggled with finding my place in this world.  We lived in a small town which just makes weirdness, well weirder.  During this time when our relationship was not the best Jay reached out and encouraged people to befriend me.  And he helped me find a little bit of me.  These days those little things outweigh any of the bad of that time.

It’s a long, long road
From which there is no return
While we’re on the way to there
Why not share

Adulthood presented its challenges as well and it took us years to find our place in each other’s lives. Parenthood provided that path for us to reconnect and learn from each other again.  I consider myself blessed to have him in my life.  He is one of a few who have known me from the very day I was born.  I find he often has the capacity to remind me of good I never knew or forgot.

I love him and his wife and his son.  And if we both end up raising our one boy each I hope they find in each other the love and support my brother and I took 30 years to get right.  Because it has been one of the best things in my life, knowing him as an adult and a parent.

And the load
Doesn’t weigh me down at all
He ain’t heavy he’s my brother

Happy 36th Birthday Jay!

(ps I bought you a pig!)

Thomas and I are leaving tonight to go back to my (sorta) hometown of South Bend, Indiana for 4 fabulous days and 4 fun filled nights.  Although technically we get in at 11 PM tonight so I am not sure whether we can really count tonight.  We are going to be spending time with my brother, sister in law and most importantly my absolutely adorable nephew who I never see enough because I suck and that makes me sad.

Thomas adores my nephew.  He believes that one of his purposes in life was to guide and love J.  These days a lot of that seems to be toddler wrestling.  I believe this should be encouraged because I do not take J home with me and I find it funny.  It is the benefit of being an Aunt who lives far away and is having no more children that can be corrupted by her brother.  It is a total benefit.  Plus, he is still getting payback for buying a 3 year old the SlimeCano!

We are leaving weather that is still shorts friendly most days of the week and going to a place that had me digging out long sleeves, jeans and wool coats.  I do not enjoy the idea of cold weather that does not include narrow boards that i am attached to via boots and flying downhill in what seems to be something tempting death considering the fact I walk into doors and trip over carpet on a daily basis.  But my brother and his family are there and Indiana is what I consider my home.  I always love going back a little and leave just a little depressed.

Indiana was not exactly a time in my life that was pleasant, but we all whitewash those things and instead remember the good parts. The parts that brought joy and laughter and friends and family together.  And those are the things I remember when I step off my plane.  Those are the things I whisper to my son at night when I come in occasionally to have a late night chat.  They are the parts that make me a Hoosier despite living in Memphis longer than i lived in Indiana and developing an accent.  Despite the fact that I pepper conversations, letters and email with liberal use of ya’ll I am still a girl from small town Indiana.

And I can assure you that my teenage self vowed she would never, ever utter these words, but these days with my Jay, Alicia and J there, with so much of my whitewashed memories of childhood there, of wanting Thomas to experience a colder, smaller bit of my life, I miss Indiana desperately.  I can’t wait to see it tonight as much as I can’t wait to see my brother at the smallest airport I had ever been in (until Quesnel!) and hug him.

I am just a girl from small town Indiana.

Thomas was in 2nd grade when he came home one day and announced he was Buddhist.  I, being of unknown religious beliefs, looked at him incredulously.  I always assumed one day he would question the non-religion but faith can be good sort of attitude we had at home, but like most Americans, especially the ones in Memphis, I always assumed it would be Christianity I would be discussing with him.  And the be fair Thomas is also interested in Christianity, but has had some philosophical difference from apparently the time he was 6.  I bought him some books, we started googling and that was where my really big support ended.  That isn’t for the record where Thomas’s beliefs ended.  He read, and read, and read and meditated.  He meditated before tests, he meditated at bedtime, he meditated during the moment of silence in the morning.

He announced to everyone he was Buddhist and then we began to experience fallout.  Some of it I dealt with by simply saying “It upsets person X when you bring it up.  I don’t want you to lie, but if you don’t need to talk about it, don’t”  Other times I simply pushed back on people.  Thomas goes to public school.  At no point in his life should he be subjected to being told he is going to hell (which happened last year, including one time as part of a school assignment).  I have encouraged him to be who he is.  I have told him that sometimes, especially family, has a hard time when we depart from the expected and yet also told him he shouldn’t need to be a secretly practicing Buddhist.

But I have to be honest, as well read as he was, as much as he understood, I always believed this was a phase.  I no longer believe that.  We bought a small statue of Buddha last year (which was really Budai, but hey I was a dumb Westerner).  And I knew he had pulled it out a few times to use to meditate.  However, this summer while we were in China we went to the Lingyin Temple and he had the chance to see a real Buddhist temple and pray and just have regular exposure to other Buddhists I knew, this was his faith he found on his own terms.

I took Thomas to the National Civil Rights Museum International Freedom Award ceremony today where His Holiness The Dalai Lama was honored.  While we were waiting I noticed that Thomas Dyer was there.  His is the first Army Chaplain who is a Buddhist.  I was particularly drawn to him because I knew it would be good to juxtapose the difficulties Mr. Dyer experiences in his practice and Thomas experiences in his practice.  I walked over and introduced myself and Thomas and we chatted for a few minutes.

One of the things that gets said about us a lot (even though I don’t put a ton of stock into it) is that we are incredibly good parents.  Mr. Dyer said this again today.  He said it to me because he asked if I was also a practicing Buddhist and I replied no.  I went on to explain that Tom and I think it is important to support Thomas in this.  There are, in my opinion, many paths to peace and this is Thomas’s.

I don’t know if Thomas will be a practicing Buddhist at 40.  But I do know that the state of his heart and his soul can’t be controlled by what I want.  While I must guide him, sometimes guiding Thomas means guiding him to the place he was already going.

I believe this practice has brought him more peace.  It has made him more compassionate.  It has enabled him to both be loved and love deeper and fuller than he could without it.  And maybe that is exactly what this Baptist world needed, since so many tell me that their faith in Christ has brought them the same thing.

But mostly, I know I won’t ever regret letting him discover his soul and doing so on his own terms.  I just ask that you understand he understand the needs of his soul better than your 9 year old would understand Thomas’s soul.  I will leave you to the same.