The Ends Of Things

This is the season of the ends of things.  This is the week of the ends of things and the night of the ends of things.  I have to turn in my dissertation revisions tomorrow but instead I'm writing a blog post.  I should be revising. I don't have internet at home right now and have to get to bed by 11 at the latest and that's after a shower.  I work in the morning. 
This is the end of my homeless wanderings.  I've spent the last 6 months wandering all around Oklahoma as my house was rented out while I finished my teaching contract in Ada.  The contract was not renewed and I ended up getting a teaching job in Oklahoma City. I got my house back on September 1.  It was a terrible mess and will cost me thousands of dollars to clean up.  My contractor is installing new kitchen countertops and replacing drywall in the pantry because of the heavy urine smell.  I bug bombed since the roaches were large and singularly unafraid.  One of them looked like "Ponyboy" from The Outsiders. I think he was carrying a straight razor so I backed out of the room and called in a nuclear attack. My cat is happy to be home at least.  The livingroom, hallway and one of the bedroom carpets has been steamcleaned four times and spot treated several times.  While stained badly, they won't be replaced since I just don't have the $1,700 to do it. Then there are the dead trees and landscaping in the back yard and the garbagea dn assorted junk tossed into the yard here and there.  It's going to take several pick up loads to get rid of it.  Now you know where the roaches came from.  All of this on only 6 months.  The meager deposit didn't even begin to cover the steam cleaning. I feel relatively safe tonight and the house is rather stink-free save for the pantry. The contractor will take care of it.  I put the ball in motion.  The end.  My very nice ex-boyfriend is babysitting my Big Dogg and he will come home soon too. My happy little family will be home and in the same place.

This is supposed to be the end of my dissertation. I'm a little blocked.  I don't want this to be over.  I'm teaching full time during the day and in the evenings I teach an online class.  On Tuesday nights I've got an in-person class.  I'm not sure that I'm spending enough time on revisions. I'm not sure what I'm afraid of. I'm not sure if it will pass. I'm not sure if it *should* pass.  I'm not sure what to do next. I've been a student for a long, long time. I don't want that to change. I don't want it to stop. Can't take it back now. I will finish this too and be done with it.

I am glad to be on the back side of summer and the end of the hottest season on record anywhere.  I thought I would die.  I didn't.  I complained a lot on Facebook and obsessed on the topic with my friends and family.  Wildfires raged and tempers flared. For four months I sweated and played ninja in my avoidance of the giant ball of gas in the sky.  I couldn't run more than 2 miles without getting heat stroke.  It went on and on forever until suddenly, like a puff of smoke, it was gone.  Today I turned on the heater in my car on the way to work.  It was all of 55 degrees.  I rejoiced. I reveled in it, rolling down the windows blasting the heater.  I love the descent into fall, bringing in the eaves and putting away the summer dresses.  I love putting the earth to bed, to sleep for a season of dormancy, of well deserved rest already after the long and winding dirt-road season under a burning sun.  And I feel an easing in my mind too, in my philosophy that things can wait and that there is time yet for me to think and to reflect and ponder some of life's greater mysteries. A season to compost my thoughts and plan and to dream.  To gather my wisdom about me like so much yarn to spin into the shawl of age.

I have had the end of a relationship too.  My brother is not speaking to me, nor I to him. I got pulled in to some stupid drama where I did not want to be. I am not a tactful woman and did not pull my punches when I perhaps should have.  We argued and fought and said things we cannot take back and he did something he cannot take back.  For now, for this season, I am done.  I'm not angry anymore but won't open my heart for someone who has caused that much grief for me, knowing the stress it would cause. I hate the ends of relationships and really, really dread conflict.  I do love being healthy and now perhaps we can both be healthy on our own. 

Finally, I am going to end my relationship with Blogspot.  People clicked on the ads.  I was supposedly making money from my blog.  Then I made too much money- over $300 that I never cashed in over the course of a year- and the blogspot people decided to suspend my adsense account.  So now you can read my work but I cannot make money from it.  This is work, keeping a blog and trying to put something thought-filled out there every week.  As soon as I get a suitable new home for my writing, I will let you know and we will go from there together. 

Drink the last of the summer wine. Enjoy the leftover pieces of watermelon in the refrigerator.  Pick the remaining tomatoes from shriveling vines and watch as the squash and pumpkins grow and grow. 
I leave you today with the following from William Butler Yeats:

The Folly Of Being Comforted

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
'Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.'
Heart cries, 'No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild Summer was in her gaze.'

Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.  

Enough Perfection!

I have a new obsession: Single Dad Laughing. I read a post by him about perfection. You can check it out here. He made me think about how imperfect I am, not that I need any reminders.

But I look around me and I see that almost everyone I know is infected with this disease of being perfect. We- collectively as Americans- need to be perfect. I think it stems from some skewed perception of capitalism wherein we have to go big or go home. Large houses with green lawns, big boats, fast cars, expensive clothes and hair and slim thighs and great skin and the right shoes...it's all part of the American dream.

Why do I sometimes feel ashamed and angry that I don't have all of those things? I'm an educator, for Pete's sake. What I do is important and it matters greatly, to offer other worlds and experiences to students and to take the opportunity to learn from them. I derive a great deal of self-esteem from teaching, from doing anonymous good works, and from looking for ways to be kind- especially to those who would be unkind to me. I live in a house and I have enough to eat. My car goes places. My dog and cat are always happy to see me, especially if they think I have something tasty. My friends are there for me when I need them most of the time and I am there for them, most of the time. So why do I so often compare myself to the appearances of others and feel as though I lack?

But I feel what I feel. Long ago I made a choice to be what and who I am and that means that the American dream with a white picket fence, a couple of kids and the ability to keep up with the Jones' is not in the cards. I could have chosen vet school; I was accepted in the top three of the hundreds of applications. Not that being a veterinarian is so glamorous- it's a lot of poop and blood if the truth were known, but it comes with a nifty white coat. I only applied because I wanted my husband to think I was good enough. When I just couldn't do it, I left behind the man and the life and the lifestyle and became a teacher.

Years later in a fit of anger, my ex husband said that I was his project and that he never really did think I was good enough. At the time it stung, and it made me look long and hard at my own actions. I realized that I am defined by my actions but not my family. More importantly, I am a human and like other humans, I deserve real love, unconditional love. It's a lesson I've never forgotten and try to practice; to try to understand rather than just change others into your image of them.

I cannot tell you my schedule without feeling exhausted. I am actually attempting to learn Italian amongst all other stuff I have to do in a week. I have downloaded language learning audio onto my iPod and listen and repeat in the mornings on my drive to work. I have no other real time during the week. I have this drive to do well in my classes, to teach well, to be a good colleague, daughter, granddaughter, aunt, sister and friend. Fact is, those things often slide. Or at least one or two slide since I do have to sleep sometimes.

It's not just our time and energy that's subject to perfectionism. Our bodies seem to be under the most scrutiny. Everywhere I go I am bombarded with advertisements for rejuvenating treatments "My wife looks ten years younger. I can't believe it!", liposuction "Get the beautiful legs, hips and thighs you've always wanted. You deserve it!", breast augmentation "Imagine how much more confident you will feel!", day spas, salons, gentlemen's clubs, gyms, diet pills and make up commercials just on the radio. I gave up television long ago but the images still haunt me.

Nothing makes me feel more insecure than women's magazines and snickering, whispering teenage girls. The fact is that I went to war with my body sometime in 1999. I could say it's because I was a big girl in high school, with petite and beautiful sisters. I could say it's because when I was 11 years old, my grandma-who was trying to be kind- said "Well, honey, you're not as pretty as your sisters, but you have nice child-bearing hips." I could blame my ex-husband for telling me the truth when I asked if my jeans make my butt look big. He said "I love you, but you've gained twenty pounds since we got married." I went to the gym that day. From that day to this, I cannot see what the scale at my doctor's office tells me. If I know that number, I will immediately go on a crash diet to lose ten pounds. And I'm not too picky about how I do it.

The fact remains though, that every day that I wake up, I make a conscious choice. I choose to just be myself. It's not natural. I want to be a reflection of what people want me to be. Especially since I'm single again. I want to be liked even though I have no fear of being alone. Actually, I prefer to be alone. It's way less complicated. My cat doesn't judge me for eating watermelon for dinner right over the kitchen sink so that I don't have to wash another dish. She just sits on my lap and purrs while I type. That's why I post pictures of me with bad breath, bags under my eyes, acne and no hair brushes... because I need to just be me for awhile. I need that to be enough. I need that to be enough for me.

Dan Pearce, from Single Dad Laughing, struggles with his weight and self-esteem. What we all struggle with is that feeling that we're somehow unlovable since we're imperfect. I'm glad to struggle with this rather than to delude myself that somehow the universe loves me above any others. My imperfections make me feel a part of the human race, rather than apart from it.

Please, please be imperfect. Those imperfections in the people I love are what make them human and therefore, accessible. It takes the pressure off of me too. Nothing is as real as me calling up a friend to say "Boy did I screw this up. Can you help me figure it out?", because I know that next week she's going to call me and say "Oh please help me dig out from under this mountain of laundry!" and together we'll heft the load.