Springtime in my mind...

This winter has been a tough one for me and, although Punxsytawney Phil didn't see his shadow, I'm still heading outside in a few minutes to defrost and scrape ice off of my station wagon.

It's been a winter filled with self-revelation - my seasonal affective disorder can get worse than I ever thought it could. I've gained and lost and gained 10# again and I'm officially back up to my starting weight (which is the heaviest I've been since having my daughter eleven years ago). Some days, when I look in the mirror, I don't  recognize or much like the person looking back at me.

I just finished a fiction book on bullying and school shooting. After an entire education career being shoved into lockers, spit on and called names, one of the main protagonists walks into school and kills 10 kids. I've spent a lot of time recently worrying about my daughter going to middle school where bullying is more prevalent. Will she get picked on? Will she be the one picking on other kids? How did I survive?

It occurred to me some time after that bullying never really quits. Although I wasn't picked on much (in fact, I can't remember an instance of bullying - unless we're referring to myself as the bully), now that I'm older the bullying is all internal. I look in the mirror some mornings and pick myself apart. "Look how fat your face is." "Look at that stray hair where it doesn't belong." "How could you let yourself get this out of control?"

I don't know if I've ever learned to except anything less than perfection. My mother loved my sister and I very much, but I was definitely pushed to be the best version of myself. I know I disappointed her when I married and had my daughter young but, looking back, that is the same way I would feel if it were Caitlin in those same shoes.

I can't accept less than perfection from myself and I'm so tired of all the stress and disappointment that comes with that.

I just want it to be spring.

Growing up

There are some days I feel like I'm really bad at this whole "growing up" thing. I always thought, or was told, that having a baby when I did made me grow up quicker than I was supposed to. While I don't disagree with this statement as a general fact, with me I'm not sure it's entirely true.

When I got married at 18, I thought I was grown up. I had been out of the house for a year, living in a dorm at NIU. My ex-husband asked me to marry him and my mother's first reaction was shock. She told me under no circumstances should I be getting married, that I was throwing my life away, etc. As a teenager, I heard blah blah blah "no" blah blah so I immediately got married. Looking back on it, it was more a simple act of rebellion than really being in love and my mother was, at least partly, right.

However, I live my life with no regrets. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have Caitlin. And, although I spent a lot of her childhood also trying to finish out my own, she really has changed my outlook on things. Being just 20 years apart, I feel like I can understand her better when she actually lets me in. It's a relationship that means so much to me.

Most days, though, I feel like that grown up thing is juuuuust out of my reach. I would really like to buy a house, but the truth is I'm not entirely sure I know where I want to settle down at or that I'm necessarily ready to make that big of a commitment. Honestly, it feels weird to even think about buying a house. No house could possibly be the house I grew up in, no neighborhood could have the feeling of my old neighborhood (even though kids don't even really go outside anymore!). It feels like failing before I even get started.

This year, a lot of the stupid debt I got myself into in college will finally roll off my credit report. My car will be paid for. I'll be married. I'm transitioning, at 31 years old, into adulthood... but I don't even know where to begin. I have a job that I truly love and look forward to going to every morning, but the idea of working in one place for the rest of my life still terrifies me. Am I doing what I should be doing? Is this my life? Is it my turn to sit back and watch my daughter grow up and cross "being a kid" off my life list? It's all new and scary.

E.E. Cummings once said "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." Maybe my problem is that, through all my brashness, I truly lack courage. But I guess until I've truly leaped without looking I won't know that I have that courage. Or maybe true courage is knowing where you're going to land without having to look.

SAD and shit...

I suffer, and some days that term is more literal than others, with seasonal affective disorder (aptly SAD in acronym form).

It's kind of an embarrassing thing to admit, like a failure in my chemical composition. The truth is, even with fairly massive amounts of vitamin D in my system, my mind in the winter is a barren wasteland of snow and land mines.

I can't imagine I am too easy to deal with. Usually, I come home from with (in the dark), flop down unceremoniously on the couch and proceed to move as little as possible until it's time for bed. Repeat cycle x 3 - 4 months.

This year, however, it seems to have hit me with a vengeance. I've been plowing through the vitamin D like candy, but it's not making a dent. It's affecting my love life, my work life, my personal life... I've gained weight and lost a lot of desire to do anything about it.

I say these things not to be "poor me'" that's not my style. I want to raise awareness for a very real health condition. There is nothing wrong with getting the winter blues and I, personally, spent far too much of my life feeling like there was.

It's a simple fact of life. That said, I'm still waiting impatiently for spring. Bring on the sunshine!

Past lives...

I often tell stories from my childhood, stories about running away from home, nearly scaring the babysitter to death by covering my little sister in ketchup... generally designed to make the listener laugh and shake their heads at the terror I was when I was younger.

Looking back, though, it often feels like telling a story about someone else. I often describe it as the feeling of past lives, all intersecting in one body. When I talk about being 16, I can't remember what it felt like to have that much anger and rebellion in my body. When I talk about having my daughter, I don't recall the pain or the feelings involved. It happened, it changed me... and it is in the past.

People often say that the past comes back to bite us when we least expect it. I find it odd that we are judged by our past failures and choices, as though people can never change or grow or adapt. I think that is an awfully grim assessment. I know that I, personally, have made mistakes. I've hurt people, I've hurt myself, I've refused to change even in the face of pain.

But that doesn't mean I'm that same person. My failures have taught me lessons, made me grow. If I met myself back when I made those choices, I wouldn't like myself much. I have no regrets, but I'm also not proud of those decisions either. 

So, my question to you is... do people truly change? Are we all just better, 2.0 versions of who we used to be and/or prototype versions of who we will be? Or do we remain stuck in the purgatory of our youth?

2012.

Thinking back on the past year, I believe it was incredibly apt that 2012 was supposed to be the year that the world ended. Although taken quite literally and out of context (but you better believe I was looking out my window for those zombies!), in a lot of ways the world as I knew it did end in 2012. I am very much entering 2013 a new person, leaving behind who I was in 2012 and before as a person I don't recognize much.

Entering into 2012, I was a woman who thought she knew who she was and what she wanted. I had the "right" girlfriend, the "right" job, the "right" outlook on life... and leaving 2012 I realize just how wrong I was.

I've cheated, I've lied, I've had all the wrong priorities... and, even worse, I thought that they were all the right ones.

Sitting here at the computer, eating one of my sister's amazing cheesecake brownies and drinking some chai tea (from the new Hawks mug Britt got me!) while the snow falls, I am so much more at peace than I ever have been. Sure, I still worry about money, being a good enough parent, etc., but I am happy knowing that my life is once again moving forward.

Instead of making resolutions, we made a bucket list of things we'd like to do, see, achieve and ways we'd like to grow in 2013. It's gonna be a great year, I can feel it...

Quick sand.

After a wonderful birthday last night, I got into my jammies and crawled into bed next to my beautiful girlfriend. We had done little last night but watch TV, enjoying the rare night off that we get just a few times a month.

I curled up next to her, forming my back against the curve of her front, and relaxed. As she covered the nape of my neck with tiny kisses, I started to cry.

"What's wrong," she asked me, her voice full of concern.

After a few minutes of trying to form my thoughts and emotions into words, it finally came out.

"I feel like a ghost, like I was alive one minute and just a muted, faded version of myself the next. I don't know where I went or what happens but it makes me really sad."

And there is was, all of a sudden. My humor aside, all defense mechanisms laid to rest, I turned 31 and silently lost my mind.

I want to feel like I'm really good at something, like I'm able to put 100% into it. My life is crazy, with so little downtime, that when I'm allowed to be alone and quiet with my thoughts they tend to come up in not so quiet fits of emotion.

What it really comes down to is feeling like a failure. I remember so clearly what I used to be like, really hanging onto and enjoying every minute, and I find myself all of a sudden in the system. I never have enough money, I'm still renting, I have debt and no degree to show for it, my house is a mess, I feel like I half ass my relationship with my girlfriend and my daughter and I feel like I'm not growing in derby because my brain is so discombobulated all the time.

It's a hard place to be in because none of those problems have an easy fix. I can't snap my fingers and feel like a better mom. I can't just suddenly become an "all star" derby player. My house isn't magically going to clean itself. I'm stuck in quick sand and the more I panic, the deeper I sink.

So I'm here, writing (which is another thing that has gotten left in the dust), trying to figure it all out on "paper" instead of letting it continue to lurk in my head. I have no solutions, no quick fixes. I'm just here, human and bare.

Phoenix.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about growth lately - the necessity of the beast, mainly, and how precisely one acknowledges and nurtures the growth within themselves.

Growth, you see, is difficult. It's not meant to be easy or for those faint of heart and conviction. It's meant to be faced down, met eye to eye in a back alley. It's supposed to be terrifying. A good friend once said to me, "If you're not scared, you're not learning anything." I laughed him off at the time, gave him one of my signature eye rolls and changed the subject, afraid that he really did know what he was talking about.

Turns out, he did.

I have had a lot of hurt in the past few years. I've gone through break ups, heart ache, made myself vulnerable and had things (romantic, professional and otherwise) end poorly. I've cried, I've beat myself up thinking about what I could have done differently and I've stayed in bed all day.

Then I got up. I moved forward.

Some people would have me believe that simply moving on, moving forward, is a slap in the face and means I've locked all those emotions in some deep, dark trunk in my brain. That just because I'm not thinking about all my decisions on a regular basis means I'm pretending it didn't happen, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

I've chosen to take those mistakes, those choices (for better and for worse), and use them as the soil that I've rebuilt my life on. No one comes into this world with an easy path, and some of us have it harder than others, but we all share one thing in common... we choose who we are and what we become. We can wallow in misery and focus on the negative or we can be the phoenix and raise ourselves up from the ashes.

I'm not sure I'll ever be 100% comfortable with who I am and where I am in my life. I'm a writer, a creator, and my natural mindset is to strive towards the unattainable. But what I can tell you is that I have never been more content with that struggle towards knowledge, never been more sure of who I have in my corner and who would try to trip me and hold me down. I've never felt more safe to be me in my life and I've never felt less afraid to give the middle finger to those people who can't be there for me the same way I have always been there for them.

In the end, really, it's their loss.

And I'm a goddamn phoenix rising.