Shame and Self Loathing

Large percentages
of my days are spent steeped in
self loathing. Coats of

Shame, comparison,
persistent embarrassment.
This torment I’ve bought.

Oh vanquish all signs
of vulnerability!
Hide and abide pain.

My mask transparent.
Miserable, I trick none.
Excepting the times
   
I’ve fooled me. “But you’re
gullible, no more can be
expected”. Those words

that imply certain
stupidity. I nod and
accept, I’m branded.

Turn inward and add
a fresh coat. The Shellac is 
sure to fill the cracks.

Dear Mrs. Morse - "you're never going to amount to anything"

Dear Mrs. Morse or any other god damned old school teacher,
God damn it, I hate you.  I hate what you represent, I hate what you spew out without a thought or a care.  I hate the voice you left in my head for 45 fucking years.  Oh but the grown me wants to be compassionate.  And look there's the child me who still just wants to crumple into a ball and hide. Good god, thanks a fucking lot.  I don't want to be compassionate or crumple.  I don't want to give a shit about you. I don't want to be compassionate about your frustration/disappointment in me as a student. I don't want to think one more second about your off handed remark that I'm sure you never ever gave a second thought!

The one gift that those words gave me is a candle to hold up and perhaps light the way for someone else --a child or another hurting person. I've spent years trying to blow out my own candle and the tiny shred of me that knows differently about myself. I don't suck, I have amounted to something and plan on amounting to more.  Throughout all of this I've guarded one small speck of love that keeps me getting up every day and shelters this candle from my very own breath.  That speck is one fucking strong speck to battle off the likes of you.  I've spent years cohabiting with your one short sentence. The thing about that little sentence is that it gave birth to a shit load of different negative ones.  I've a tome of vial ones in my head.  Diagram all those Mrs. English fucking Morse.  No wonder I have a knee jerk response to fellow teachers who behave in your vein.  The idea that to destroy someone with words is founded or justified makes me want to scream. Oh believe me, I know how tempting it is.  I've been an awesome tongue lasher.  I've done my best to try and tear down the one person I've committed myself to.  He used to jump on your fucking sneering band wagon and go for a ride dragging me along kicking and screaming.  But with him it was safe to scream.  What I needed to do was to find you and scream. Yet thanks to you I do not have it in me to spit some angry vial at the most obnoxious of kids that cross my threshold.  My patience is a thing of beauty, shiny steal like. I will not succumb to cruelty. I do not want my words to live in another child's head, tripping them up throughout their life's path.  God fucking damn it Mrs. Morse, the time has come for you to retire.  Your style of teaching is not the way things are done anymore.  Go rest, stay away from kids or better yet take a mindfulness workshop.  Good luck!
   

Swallowing a Pro-Biasha

"What if you were okay without a passion," Basha said patiently.  These words coming out of the most passionate person I know.  Basha lives to paint.  Her passion keeps her painting outside everyday throughout the winter, no matter the bitter temperatures. She paints like it's an ultra sport.  But being okay without a passion, it had never occurred to me.  How absurd?  Yet this news felt oddly comforting. 

"It's a very American thing --to have a passion," she continued.  Ugh, the curse of being American.  And yes likely true or else there wouldn't be books out there like Finding your Element. I spent last year working with a coach using that same book as a guide to unearth "my element" reveal my hidden passions to discover this?!? Honestly we did arrive at this together, my coach and I, but without giving it this label.  I am without a passion. "You know, not very many people have one" Basha added. A glimmer of hope filled my chest as I imagined a possible posse of passionless cohorts gathering together for comfort and support. I've been quietly and not so quietly beating myself up over my passion deficit forever.  So, here it is out there and out loud, a notion to be okay without one.  Yet it breaks my heart and so I write, sob and then feel better.

First official day of school 2013

It seems fitting that the sky is crying
when I can't
I shed my tears yesterday
cleansing
detoxing.
Judith Orloff says
it's the best medicine.
I must be cleansed
or in the moment.
I can do now.
Night time
Reading time
home.

642 things (not) to write about beginning with . . .

prompt: Write a stand-up comedy routine to address the United Nations

At 56 life is not funny. It’s ironic.  Don’t get me wrong, I have a sense of humor and love to laugh with the best of them.  In fact, I’ve been accused of not taking life seriously enough.  But, seriously folks . . . I thought I add that.  It’s a must in a comedy routine.

Here’s the deal, my life as a librarian on break is coming to an end.  Woo hoo ha ha ha ha.  I wish it were a joke.  Hey I just made myself laugh, how ironic. 

Now I’m wondering about the definition of ironic.  Hold on a sec, I can check that.  I’m a librarian and all.  Let me skip on over to my reference section.  I just made myself laugh again.   

From the New Oxford American Dictionary App:
ironic |īˈränik|
using or characterized by irony : his mouth curved into an ironic smile.
happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this.

There you have it, used perfectly.  I’m like that you know, words and me, we’re right on. Oh but I daren’t get very far away from my dictionary.  Articulating definitions make my brain freeze.  Yes, I just thank the good Lord for technology, everything can be at your fingertips. I love not having to move more than a fingertip while encouraging my ass to grow wider!  Insert laughter.  I’m sure my UN audience is in tears by now; mouths and lips strained from uproarious laughter.

I’d be a horrible stand up.  A. I can’t remember a joke to save my life and B. I do not like standing up in front of an audience. C. I’m mostly unintentionally funny D. other/insert whatever the F you want. 

Holy crap this exercise is not to my liking. I wish the damn timer slash hypothetical hook would go off slash appear, ripping slash hypothetically pulling me from this electronic page slash hypothetical stage.  Save me timer! 

Honestly, how do people keep words coming out of their finger tips?

Beep, beep, beep. Stop.

Praise Jesus!

P.S.  This exercise is dedicated to Esther Anne.  Thanks for the Christmas present Ess Bess!

Anticipation hesitation

I like being the first one up.  It’s the peacefulness I’m after, but the cats are the first to prod me out of bed.  Dewey takes me on around 4, bumping my head with his own then kneading my pillow relentlessly making sleep impossible.  Lately an all out brawl begins between both cats begins well before dawn breaks.  It’s too early to rise so I fling them off. Ultimately, it’s the return of Dewy and his incessant purring that pushes me out of bed somewhere before six.

The thought of going through my morning routine with a school day looming has begun to haunt me.  It’s only March but, in the back of my mind I’m making mental calculations of the time it will take to fit my current relaxed morning routine into the slot allowed.  In my fantasy it fits.  Frothy coffee, the cats, Moose, two bunnies, the fire, yoga, shower, fashion decisions, news, email and the obligatory peer at Facebook all squnched in before 7:15. In truth, these thoughts curdle the coffee I sip.

In life necessity requires that priorities be made. This list will need to be cut. 

Visions of coffee getting gulped and bunnies being ignored surface.  I know now that I'll skip the news and shorten my yoga routine.  I wince vividly reliving the escalation of my morning frantic-ness.  I can hear the clattering that my shoes make as I charge up and down the stairs retrieving any number of miscellaneous items crucial to surviving a day at school.  The daily dread will not be a dream but, my reality.

I can do this. I can't do this, duke it out in my head.    


   

Getting off the dock

"What really matters to you?  What is the difference that you really want to make [in life], for whom and why"?  Apparently, answering these questions are the key to helping me down the pathway, my pathway.  At least so says, Eric Russell, my lifework coach and personal performance strategist extraordinaire.

Indeed . . . if they remain unanswered or, even worse if, I cannot answer them, I will not be able to get myself off "the dock".  You know, the dock of life, the same one I'm so comfortable hanging out on.  It's hard not to panic even as I transcribe these questions for this entry from the sheet of yellow lined paper used to hastily scribble my homework onto during our last session.  These questions feel weighty, too weighty.  Honestly, I've no idea how to begin to tackle them.

My what feels nebulous.  What really matters is not a precise what, for whom and a why but, simply a desire for making a difference any sort of difference at all. It's a feeling of wanting to be a Miss Rumphius of sorts and "make the world a more beautiful place".  To leave a noticeable mark, a positive stamp, or footprint that may be remembered, felt or carried on into the future.  It's not about fame.  There are no delusions there.  Just Google making a difference and you'll find tons of information on individuals that have made a difference who are not rich or famous.  The Christian Science Monitor has a whole section devoted to acknowledging this "unheralded community".  Those are the people I admire.  I'm interested in being one of those guys.  They've found something that they're passionate about.  That seems to be the key.

And, therein might be the problem.

For much of my life I have felt bereft of a passion.  Surrounded by multi-talented sisters and brothers who could sing, play musical instruments, be top athletes, write and draw had a crippling effect on.  I didn't compete and wouldn't compete. For me, the "competition" was over before it began.  I became an expert at giving up.  My best game was being loud, annoying and acting goofy.  Driving my family up the wall or cracking them grabbed their attention.  It made me stand out.  No one else in the family was doing that.

It wasn't until my thirties and motherhood that a fortuitous stumble into the world of picture books ignited a tiny flame.  To be fair, Isaac --my son, born ready to explore and curious beyond all imaginings, is entirely responsible.  Besides contributing to a blissful whiling away of the hours, books satisfied two essential needs.  1. respite for a weary mother and 2. "food" to placate an insatiable young brain.  Trips to the library could not be frequent enough. We regularly liberated the town library of large portions of their picture book collection.  No pile was too large for my Isaac.  He had the patience of Job and the attention span of a scholar when it came to sitting and listening to stories.  Needless to say Isaac is the sole reason I became a school librarian.  Getting paid to read picture books and have summers off to be with my kids was the best ruse I'd ever conceived.

Truthfully however, the trick is on me.  Those endless hours of reading to Isaac, then Mary Clare and the bundle of sweet students that followed, became the kindling beneath a growing pile of brush, the brush I'm so fond of gathering. My pile is high and it has been lit. 

So, I'd be a bold faced liar if I claimed to be passionless. When it comes to reading I'm like a Born Again Christian, saved by an almighty and a rabid enthusiast about spreading the word.

That's my seed for sowing, my passion to be channeled.  Which direction will it take, The Early Bird Cafe, Putney Central School's seasoned Librarian, America's next budding picture book author?

Just how far off the dock will I leap?