Engine Trouble.

Guess what... 10-hour train rides are not super fun.  We did it--The twins and I. It was just the three of us, and it wasn't so very bad, but it was kind of crazy. We happened to be on an Amtrak train that was having engine difficulties, leading to two unscheduled stops at locations not on the normal route to switch engines... The first engine switch really messed with Stella.  She didn't understand how we could be going in one direction than just apparently be going in the opposite direction and still be progressing towards our planned destination.  It didn't help that the next stop, after the engine switch, was Springfield, Massachusetts.  "We're going back to Springfield?!"

Yes, we were only a fraction of the way along our journey, and it felt like we had been on the train forever.  To travel backward on a stinky, boring, uncomfortable train, knowing the trip has only become longer...  For God's sake, that's the stuff that makes a little person crazy.  Going backward makes every kind of person crazy.

Yet, I have felt like I am moving in circles and isn't that almost like moving backward?  I keep going back to the beginning, don't I, even though the beginning point isn't so clear. Is it so crazy to kind of want to go in a direction which tells us exactly where we will be not so far into the future?  Once, I was riding through an MD neighborhood and there were three at-home-psychics within one block.  What am I talking about?  I don't remember.


Right... The not knowing is scary.  Train tracks always know where the train is going... it guides the train, back and forth, back and forth...  And, jumping off the tracks to frolic in the fields of flowers, like Tootles the Train, is against the rules.  Gosh, that was Michael's favorite book for years...  "Don't go off the tracks!"  But isn't moving backward is a whole different kind of destructive scary?

It is destructive.  No one should move backward.  There's a reason time only goes in one direction.

Who me?

Sometimes I feel awfully conflicted in my understanding of the purpose of human existence...  Nah, it's just my own role in this living business that has me confounded.  What is the purpose of... me?  I wonder that sometimes...

Like...  What the Hell am I supposed to be doing?  No, not just doing...  What am I supposed to be?  What am I allowed to be?  What if I'm not "being" anything, really, right now because I'm worried that anything that I choose might disappoint people... and that's something I do...  Hey, if it's what I do, then why am I letting that little thing stop me?  I know...  I don't want to disappoint anyone.

I'm not the first insecure, stressed-out, dumb-ass, self-centered person to think:  "I am such a disappointment... I am disappointing everyone around me."  It's a truth to me, at this point.  I'm not living up to my potential.  I do know what I've got.  No one needs to tell me all that I can be, because I've been it.  I applied for teaching jobs the summer I graduated from college, and I was asked to interview for everyone.  I only went to one interview and fell in love with the little school and accepted a job there immediately.  Looking back, I regret my decision to leave after two years.  The kids and the principal were definitely disappointed that I didn't stay.  I was getting married, you see, and Sam's job was in Springfield and it seemed like working closer to the town in which we were living made more sense.  The commute seemed so long, especially in the winter... I was offered the two jobs for which I interviewed. I chose one.  I did it well... and I kept moving along, making things happen and getting shit done.

But then I kind of stopped making things happen.  I got no shit done.  And that's what I'm all about these days.

Now I sometimes wonder if, I, in particular, am destined to disappoint people...  I mean, I feel like maybe that's what I am going to do forever: It's what I do!  I'm doing it ...And I don't see this all changing in the foreseeable future. I can't give everyone what they really want.  I can't tell everyone what they really want to hear.  I can't be exactly what everyone needs me to be.  I wish I could.  Wouldn't that be beautiful?

Maybe, far too often, I am the one disappointed in other people.  Maybe my expectations are too damn high.  Or maybe a whole lot of people have been disappointing in my recent life, and now I have a hard time seeing past that.  Maybe disappointing people are disappointed in others as a way of feeling better about themselves being such G.D. disappointments.  (I don't believe any of that.  None of what I just wrote is accurate).

Maybe I became disappointing and disappointed when I became careless...  Caring not.  I sometimes wonder if I'm too careless with my own life or with everything.  When I need to go to sleep, and I need to stop thinking, and stop feeling, and not remember, I will pop a couple of these things and some of those, and chug a little of that... Nothing illegal, of course.  Just NyQuil, Diphenhydramine, Klonopin, alcohol, or natural and non-habit forming Melatonin...*  Not that all that even works most of the time.  And they certainly don't work when I want to not think at all.  Ever.  That's just a careless notion anyway--apathy is disappointing.  But, not sleeping really sucks too.  And as I pound some NyQuil out of the bottle, I think, "Make me sleep, god damn you!  What else are you good for?"  Such a disappointment...

*I in no way endorse or encourage this type of behavior.  Using these products in certain combinations and amounts can be lethal.  I don't do that anymore.  I started writing this blog post in mid-September.  Gees, couldn't even get this crap done.  See?  Told ya...

One shade freed.

My psychiatrist used to describe the negative, depressed voice inside me telling me I’m a failure or should feel guilty as an 8-year-old girl. He asked me how I would talk to an 8-year-old child?  Would I speak to her that way?  What would I say to her?  I was always stumped by this because I didn't feel particularly like venturing into that territory--talking to another voice inside me--when I was already feeling loony-toon-crazy-depressed.

And let's be honest, my facial expressions speak volumes, and I know my face was saying, "Are you fucking with me right now?  Wait, are you really serious?  I feel a little uncomfortable... I'm smiling because I feel like this is a ridiculous question."

That was three years ago.  Since then Dr. A has figured me out.   It wasn't the kind of talk therapy this girl needed.  That shit wasn't going to work on me.  (Maybe for one session, when I was in PMDD Hell, it would be fun if he approached it like, "We're going to talk to your 8-year-old self for an hour, so let's get our crazy on."  Also if he had wine available.

The last time I talked to him, he just told me how I should be treating myself and how I should be "speaking" to myself.  Boom!  None of this, I will lead her to her own answer... a deep truth inside of her... a revelation... an awakening... if you will.  He slapped that 8-year-old girl across the face.

"Stop being so punitive in your judgments about yourself; guilt is useless; have fun; be flexible in how you think you should be and act and live, and if you aren't getting what you need to be happy--you need to find it.  You aren't crazy.  You can't hold your breath forever or at some point, you'll..."

He didn't fire all that at me in rapid succession; his advice flowed carefully around my own thoughts and descriptions, (most of which were pointing towards me thinking I should feel terribly guilty or be hospitalized for the crazies).  I walked out of his office feeling freed from something I didn't realize was binding me.  I felt like I could breathe...