...October : The List...

Rain, rain, go away...and take September with you!

We're a few gorgeous days into October and thank goodness for that!

Delayed by rain...then illness...we're finally getting back in the game.

The month ahead is already filling up with 'big things' that must be done,

so, I'm all the more eager to find little pockets of fun and adventure.

Mid-month, we'll be heading out on the road for a long car trip to Ohio.  It's a trip fraught with emotion, even this far in advance.  A goodbye, and a hello, and a...'oh, I remember you' all wrapped up in one.  And it will be Henri's first long car trip...so, I've planning to do for sufficient breaks.

Homeschooling has been chewing up the majority of my time...if I'm not actively in teacher-mode, then I'm trying to create resources and recycle thrift finds into unit-themed activities.  Henri is flourishing in these early days and for as often as I may feel defeated by the things that went undone, I am buoyed right back up by his love for learning and challenge.

You'll note the final item...  So long overdue...

...tenuously tethered...

There is both shame and serenity in realizing how insignificant you are.

Both exist, in equal measure.

Shame: of self, of purpose, of effort, of...hope founded in the unfulfilled need of the inner child.  Shame in the wounds both caused and suffered, and the map of scars left behind.

Serenity: of...permission to detach, of finding the bottom and finding yourself still standing, of...hope unfettered.  Serenity in the familiarity of the scars that knit you together.

The understanding of how very little you matter,

sometimes even to those who matter to you,

can blaze up suddenly...

and make cinders of all the formalities...the constructs...the obligations...

The understanding of how very little you matter can reveal itself in the smallest of moments...

an unmasked glimpse...

a careless turn of phrase...

a single photograph...

Like both a gut punch and a full breath...somehow, caught in the same moment.

Despair and deliverance.

Shame and serenity, in equal measure.

A 'putting in place'.

A relinquishment of responsibility to reparation or relationship.

That moment, suddenly there, where before there was angst and hesitation...

That moment...as though someone has unlocked the door on the gilded cage..

saying "you are free to go"

saying you are free of the cage

but

also

saying you aren't special enough to want to cage...to enclose...to keep...

saying...

you aren't important enough to take care of.

It is the very essence of bittersweet.

Realizing...

as you move through the shame and the serenity...

that you need no longer make yourself available...

that you can leave the door open, without also standing in it as guardian and greeter...

The understanding of how very little you matter,

sometimes even to those who matter to you,

is a lesson well learned but hard earned.

It's recognizing that 'the ties that bind' don't...

it's realizing that roots once severed grow divergent from one another...

it's resolving to be in the now...

It's moving through the shame and into what waits beyond it...

It's finding serenity in the present when we stop trying to fix the past...

It's cutting yourself loose and plotting the course without being swung by the weight of responsibility.

...September : The List...

First days.

What a gift.

The hope that comes with turning another page.

September has seemingly snuck up...at least where I'm concerned.  August just passed me by with barely a nod in my direction, so overwhelmed was I by All The Things that needed my full attention.

These early autumnal days are sure to fill up quickly, as we move back into our homeschool schedule and focus on building and rebuilding. 

While school-aged families are bidding farewell to summer vacation, we're just getting started on enjoying the late summer pleasures of (hopeful) beachside days and evenings in the bay.

 

...accounting for re-counting and re-consideration...

August did NOT run according to plan...nor to direction.

In fact, August ran contrary to every hope I had naively imbued it with in the final hours of July.

There were so many, many unforeseen hiccups and hurdles...and so many, many emergent diversions from the track I thought I had set my feet to.

And such is life.

So here I am...closing out the book of August and sending the calendar pages to the rubbish bin, and realizing how very, very full our August really was.  I tore those pages out of my planner earlier today and glanced at all the messy scribblings and thought to myself, "Well done. Look at all you did." Lovely thought, which lasted the whole five minutes until I went to pull our August Mood Board and August Bucket List off the fridge...and saw the empty boxes.

We're so often forced to reframe our hopes and expectations in the face of unexpected upsets.

Perhaps the appropriate reframing is:

Here was NOT my August Bucket List.

~rather~

Here WAS my August WISH List.

With that little rewrite, I can let go of the failure-feeling that focused solely on the unchecked boxes, and instead delight in the boxes that were checked...as I remind myself of ALL THE THINGS we saw and did and accomplished and overcame that didn't show up in prophecy or print.

And as to those unchecked boxes?  Well, who's to say I can't just roll them over as ongoing goals?

After all, September is but a day away, and full of empty spaces to fill and flourish.

 

...August : The List...

But a month to go, as summer wanes...
Little has gone to plan this summer...and so many plans have been back-burnered in the moment.
It's funny how the day to day can get so in the way of the wishes and wants.

Here's to August arriving, and all of the thriving...Cheers to the days ahead!

...July : The List...

I'm not quite sure of the how or the when, but it seems June has run out...
...and left, in its wake, far too many unchecked boxes.

June did not want to stick with the plan, that's for sure!

I'm trying to 'rise above' the disappointment and the frustration of having those unchecked boxes by reminding myself that:

Plans are subject to change

There's been A LOT of change

~and~

These lists are just the 'first drafts' of what ends up writing itself across the blank calendar pages.

We've ended June...a bit bedraggled, and damp around the edges after too much stormy weather, and I'm counting on July to put the sun back in the sky!

Cheers to it finally feeling like summer!

...5 (in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:
17.August.2018

In the light of morning, and the comfort that the fresh start of a new day promises, I choose this:

“Brokenness is just like beauty; it's something we wear and carry, and if we let it define us, it will. But we are not our beauty or our brokenness, because souls are not made of beauty or brokenness. Souls are made of something permanent. Souls are made of truth.”

Your choices broke me...the fractures and missing pieces so visible when I look at the landscape of my life. You stole choice from me, violently and purposefully and sadistically, leaving me to navigate life as a series of reactions instead of decisions. I lost myself in the definition of your actions...in the endless stream of could have-would have-should have...

And it was nothing to you....not even a ripple. No memory keeping you awake in fear...no echo of words when you looked in the mirror.

Those hurts...those fears...those anguishes that you inflicted, I bore alone.

And that's fine...they purified me...they polished all my sharp edges and made me into someone who could roll with every punch.

But today, I choose something else. Your words last night cleared the pathway for me...all that rubble you left in your wake is suddenly nothing but dust. My self-worth was never tied up in you after all...your inability to see it didn't actually negate it.

And, ps- his success has NOTHING to do with you!

...3 (in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:
18.December.2020

TL;DR

Trigger warning...mental health, spousal abuse, suicidal ideation, child neglect

.

.

.

Emergency services are currently dispatched on another welfare check to my ex-husband. We expect a phone call confirming that he's being taken in for observation. If you are a prayer... go one further and pray he's determined unfit to be let back out. Pray that he be held. Pray that he be treated...long-term, in-patient.

He...spirals... quickly and dangerously and frequently. Earlier this month, he was communicative and self-aware...

read also:in the upward tick of manic mode.

During that time, he moved into another county, leaving behind the services others had worked so hard to set up for him, in a burst of 'outrunning his problems' energy.

Ill-advised doesn't even begin to cover it. Outraged that his previous landlord was asking for help with basic household chores (in return for exceptionally discounted room and board), he burned that situation to the ground and moved his dilapidated rv onto the property of a former friend he'd reconnected with. As of last week, the household was Covid positive. By all accounts, he's been holed up in the RV ever since. He's off his meds, has missed every appointment for care management, and is effectively reliant on his alcoholic friend for everything: food, transportation, electricity, water, advice, etc...

This is a man who, by want of both his ego and his illness, has damaged everything and everyone he touches. A man who both actively and passively abuses every person in his life, whether through violence or neglect. A man who buries his guilt underneath personal attacks on those who try to help him get help. Who knows he's done horrific things but believes his 'superior intellect' releases him from any responsibility for those actions.

And who, every time without fail, scorches the earth as he comes out of his manic phase... which makes it nigh on impossible to get him into care. Lashes out every time and then threatens suicide as the depression takes hold.

Fast forward: between last night and this morning he sent out his 'customary' novella of text messages full of vitriol, baseless accusations, and finally, farewells.

I'm...tired. This roller-coaster is exhausting. My eldest son and step-children deserve so much more... so much better. I hate this for them. I hate this for me. This man was my monster in the dark for years... and his brokenness does not erase the terror or the damage.

Words fail.

Untreated mental illness contaminates everyone in the circle...causes immeasurable stress and distress to every caregiver, no matter the distance. And burns out the very sympathy and empathy so needed by the one who is ill.

I fear for the day when he sinks a hook into my eldest.

I fear for the day that he goes beyond threatening.

...2 (in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:
25.October.2018

The house is quiet.

Warm, and quiet.

Quiet enough that the infernal hum of the refrigerator sounds like a drill inside my skull.

He's home today, downed by a fever and head-cold symptoms. We slept in, miraculously, and I feel wholly refreshed. Sitting across from me here at the table, he has the dark circles and flushed cheeks of his fever and the furrowed brow of his concentration as he works on his engineering homework.

(Yup...That Mom, too. Home sick? Homework. Unless you're comatose!)

We took the morning "off"...sleeping in led to the laziest of breakfasts, still in pjs. Copious amounts of coffee and tea extended our table-sit while we chatted our way round how he was feeling, what was going on in school, etc...

I sat there, engaging in the conversation with most of my brain, while a small portion of it pecked away at the dissonance of what continues to unfold re:my stepchildren.

It's hard. Difficult. Impossible even, to wrap my head around the reality of their experience with their father...and remember how very close we came to being permanently scarred in those same ways.

He is light. Seated across from me. Looking up every few moments to reassure himself of my presence...of my attention. He is light and carefree in the stability-the solidity-the expected. But his half-siblings know nothing of those feelings.

In my head, I liken them to feral cats. All the potential, but none of the rearing...the raising. Acting solely on self-serving instinct, consequences be damned. It is, to me, horrifying to hear each piece, each drip drop drip of information that seeps out of the crumbling walls their father tried to erect around them. It is, to me, horrifying that this man is the primary caregiver-so ill-equipped for the job. So ill-equipped for his own life.

I always say how lucky I am that he is mine. That this glorious, brilliant, challenging young man is mine to raise and be raised up by. Mine to be the plus-one for. Mine to observe and record and be amazed by. But in that part of my brain that's worrying on that dissonance, I know it's not luck at all. He's become what he was meant to be because I did what was needed, no matter the cost...no matter the struggle...no matter the naysayers.

I wonder, often, if it's already too late for those two. If the path has already been set in concrete for them. Or if, perhaps, all the moves we players on the periphery are making....all the barriers and walls we are erecting and pushing in all around them will be enough to spin them off that axis and give them their best chance as well.

He's had the best chance or, at the very least, the best chance I could provide. And he's done wonders with it. Creating from these small pieces a world in which he creates...dominates...advocates...leads...inspires change. I am never not awestruck at where this life has taken us.

But I wonder, day in and day out, if it's too little-too late for those two. And I wonder what that will mean for him. Will he be dragged down by their dysfunction when they are all older? Will he inherit my 'need to rescue-need to help-need to fix' and find himself breaking himself into pieces trying to fill the holes in them?

Will he, as he's doing now, try to line up all the angles and make the picture symmetrical? Will he pour himself out into them?

Oh, I worry.

I worry about him. Of course I do. I worry for him...for who he will have to be when I am gone. For how he will move on from being part of a team of two to being just one.

I worry for them, these children I have chosen to love from afar. I worry for their chances and their outcomes and their day right now.

I worry for their father and his instability...worry that his emotional dysfunction will win out and he will lose himself, his life.

The house is quiet as we both sit here, he at his homework and I at this emptying out of the words in my head. It is quiet and calm and warm and peaceful and I am torn between the tranquility of our life and the chaos of theirs.

...1 (in days gone by)...

 Every once in a while, 'memories' pop up on one social media platform or another and I think to myself, I ought to copy that over to here.  I think it...and make a mental note...and then promptly forget again.

 Such was the case, once again, yesterday...when I first logged onto Facebook in the early hours and took a little detour from prep work , to traipse down memory lane.

So, this one's for me: a (hopefully fully manifested) series of 'past posts', come home to roost.

In Days Gone By:
18.June.2019

I slept through the alarm this morning.

Okay...not really.

More like...I dozed off after waking up just long enough to turn it off.

"Came to" some ten minutes later, with the heart-racing adrenaline rush when your brain knows you have s*** to do but your body is trying to pretend it's still nighttime.

The achy breaky stumble through morning routine commenced. Coffee? Check. Breakfast? Check. Clothes laid out? Check. Check. Check.

He hopped into the shower. I slumped over the kitchen table in between "2 minute warnings"...the coffee mug just out of reach.

Gurgle in the pipes as the shower stopped. Reminder to hurry again... Then...out...in a flurry of towel and drippy hair and shower thoughts about Transformers. (Of course!) He's off to get dressed. I'm off to make the beds-wash the breakfast dishes-download my workload-stumble over the cat once-twice-three times the charm!

It's Finals Week. Everything is off kilter.

No lunch prep needed. But snack and drink, and tea for the bus stop-wait. Check the bookbag. The rescue remedy refill reminder clearly didn't work-empty pill fob. Run through my checklist as I count out 9 pastilles-cram and twist to close. Chromebook? Check. Sharpened pencils? Check. With erasers? Err....crap...nope....where's the damn box? Check. Drawing pad? Check. Earbuds? Check. Glasses? Check. Check. Check.

Hazard a quick glance at the clock...woah, running late! My yell to "hurry up" answered by his "I can't" whimper as out he finally comes...shirt-tails flapping, hair still dripping.

"Mami? I wanted to wear this one, but..."

He's replaced the shirt I laid out with yet another blue and turquoise, plaid, short sleeve button-down. Yes...full title needed. Under no circumstances can we simply say shirt or blue shirt or even blue plaid shirt. Full. Title. Needed. "Precision of Language!"

So here he stands, in the middle of the kitchen, blue and turquoise, plaid, short sleeve button-down half on, offering up to me The Problem. "I wanted to wear this one, but look...." The buttonhole is torn. No doubt from his new(ish) stim of tugging on his hems...shirts, shorts, even socks...everything gets tugged.

"How about..." I start to say, but cut the half-formed thought off. Yeah, no. There's no how or why or rhyme or reason. It's Finals Week and everything needs to be just-so...calm, cool and collected, so that brain of his can churn away and spit back all the facts it's been crammed full of all year. There's no room for distraction or discomfort. No room for entertaining alternates. There is just this shirt-the first and only choice-and two minutes before our bus alarm goes off.

"Okay, I've got this" I say, as I wrestle him out of it...his arms, still damp, sticking to the sleeves. Off he goes to grab his robe...he does NOT do shirtless. Off I go to retrieve my sewing box. Precious time wasted as I try once-twice-seventeen million times, to thread the needle. Finally my brain processes the thread width vs. the needle eye size. New needle? Oh, yes, in the tin. The tin that WON'T OPEN! Argh! Yank, twist...sweating now. Glance at that clock again...Double Argh!

There goes the alarm.

POP! Well, the tin's open. And sewing needles are all over the sofa...and...

Yup. Ouch...that one's point down in my thigh. Waaaaah!

Let's fast forward...no real damage done.

New needle. All good. Thread zipping in and out. Tie it off. Snip!

Robe off. Shirt on. Good as new.

Grab the bag. Grab the tea. Grab the boy.

Off into the rain.

The rain?

The RAIN!

Welp! Back in, grab the umbrella.

Say cheese! Click...photo? Check.

Off into the downpour.

A noticeable groan from the boy who now, clutching his abdomen, says "I hate rain".

Yup. There's that. Weather-induced headaches and gastric issues.

It's Finals Week. And it's raining. And he's off his game.

Awesome. (Yeah, no.)

Down we trudge. Bus arrives. He winces, as ever, at the squeal of the brakes.

I stand, waving my arms about like the 'Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Guy' at the disappearing tail lights...

"I love you! Come home safe to me." Blow a kiss. My ritual.

Back up and in. Umbrella propped across the sofa to dry. (Small space living, m'i'right?) Tea kettle on. Laptop unplugged. Shoulder-mounted kitty.

Chime!

My phone screen lights up and I smile. Google Hangouts-from the bus.

"Thanks, Mami. Ps-why is everyone on the bus SO LOUD?!?!

Ps again-you look tired."

"Earbuds are in the left front pocket, kiddo. Put them in! I'm suuuuuuper tired...and old, and fading...but thanks for the reminder to shellac my face!

Good luck today...and DON'T TUG ON YOUR SHIRT, please?!?"

Chime!

"Okay. Ps-the button on my shorts is loose now, too."

...reclamation declaration...

Well, here we are...at the actual eleventh hour...
Tomorrow is my birthday.
And today has been...challenging.

Birthdays as an adoptee are...weird.

No other word will do.

It's part "Hey, let's annually remind you of the day your very existence was someone else's biggest problem or dirty little secret."
With a sprinkling of "Happy reminder of how your own mother didn't want you."
Mixed with a rehashing of the very trauma of adoption and being reared by people who, in order to get the happy-ever-after,2.5 kids-and-a-white-picket-fence that they think they are owed by life, contractually purchased a human being and then proceeded to erase its very identity in order to imprint themselves onto as empty a vessel as possible.

Birthdays as an adoptee are weird.

They aren't the invocation of oft rekindled memory...of how a family grew...of miraculous first breath...first coo...first cry.
They aren't founded on a mutual memory at all.
They are...in fact...the anniversary of 'what came before'.
What came before the bond was forever broken.
What came before the spirit was forever wounded.
What came before the child was forever traumatized.

Birthdays...my birthdays...

They are the mocking calendar notation that reminds me of how inconvenient and undesirable I have always been.
They are the remembrance of abandonment and the ever-present fear of being rejected.

Birthdays wake up the voice I've always known...that lives down deep inside and never misses an opportunity to tell me I am nothing but someone else's discarded trash.

Birthdays are rife with expectations of others.

The expected cheer.

The reminiscing.

The ghastly simpering over the false narrative of an existence that was artificially constructed on the ashes of who one was at birth.

Birthdays are supposed to be...happy. 

But what of those of us for whom a birthday is triggering?

What of us?

What should be done about those of us who inwardly cringe at the greetings or gifts?

I know the answer.

I've lived it all these years.

We're to tamp it all down and plaster smiles on our faces for the comfort of others.

We're to ooh and ah appropriately.

We're to fill our empty shells with the personification of a rooted, whole, fully realized child-come-adult and pretend that the family stories are ours to claim.

I'm supposed to feign happiness.

Fake it till I make it.

I'm not supposed to think of her.

That...creature...

That...problem...

I'm not supposed to pull on the thread of my very being that leads back to my maker.

I'm not supposed to acknowledge that there was ever a 'before'.

I'm supposed to only begin when I became theirs.

But here's this date...on the calendar.

A date that came from 'before'.

A date that holds...depth...weight...a figurative black hole of substantial 'before'.

A date that holds my very dna...my very construct.

A date that belongs:

 to the person 'before'...not to me, but to her...and to it.

To it.

The shame of my existence.

The shame of my conception.

The shame of reality.

To it.

She who shall not be named.

She who the meeting of, nearly broke me.

She who the manipulation by, did break me.

To it.

The dumpster fire.

Birthdays as an adoptee are weird.

~~~

So I'm not having any more of them

~~~

Tomorrow, I'm turning one.  

Tomorrow, I'm celebrating my first birthday.

Because...

I created myself.

I gave life to who I am and to what I have built.

I'm turning one because this is my year to heal.

This is me healing.

Choosing to start from where I start.

Choosing to claim myself.

Choosing to celebrate the person I reared myself into becoming.

Choosing to reclaim this date.

Choosing to dig deep and plant my roots...the ones I had to slice deep in order to propagate.

Tomorrow, I'm celebrating...for the first time.

It's my first.

My first to wake with anticipation.

My first to genuinely delight in the notifications and messages and calls.

My first to make a real wish and believe it can come true as I blow out the candle.

It's my first.

And it's moments away...a tick tock of the clock as the midnight hour chimes...

My first birthday.

I'm happy.

...June : The List...

 Time to turn the page...

Let's do away with May,
June has just begun,
We're ready for some fun!

Yup...jumping right on into June with as much excitement as possible...and an extra side of cheese! 

June is...historically...a month I try to avoid.  It's my birth month...and that alone has caused all kinds of grief in years passed.  But this year...this year?

I'm putting all my energy into rewriting the false narrative of trauma...

and...

Celebrating!

No iron-clad plans...as life is 'lifing' lately in an on-an-emergency-basis kind of way.

But that's okay.

There are seasons...and this one is, though challenging, manageable.

So here's to play and presence...cupcakes...and presents I'm finally willing to give to myself!

❒ Fulfill the long-term 'wishlists' and replace necessary household and wardrobe items

❒ Source books for the summer workshops and prototype each grade level's project

❒ Schedule and plan for the month's daytrips and set aside funds for each one

❒ Reset supplies and theme for Henri's lessons and therapy

❒ Dinner with Johannes

❒ Lunch with Henri

❒ A night out

❒ Prepare for and plan out a few 'family' reunions

❒ Move into the outdoors and use the gazebo as our livingroom

❒ Entertain...in one fell swoop, for all the celebrations

❒Reduce and reorganize the paperwork, schoolwork, artwork, etc..

❒ Set aside travel funds

❒ Explore moving options

❒ Eat dessert daily

❒ Splash!

...phone a friend...

 Clarity, these days, seems hard to come by.

Whether it's the sleep deprivation or the 'crisis management mode'...or just the gears rusting in this brain of mine...the ability to step back and observe the whole has been lacking lately.
Tracking the unpredictable but perpetual motion of too many balls in the air has caused me to get stuck in laser-focus mode, and I've found myself floundering when it comes to big-picture planning.
Despite lists and calendars and planners and organization...I've been (poorly) jumping from one action task to another, with no attention for the outcome.  It's plugging one hole in a sieve, while the rest pour out unstopped.

Until right now. This very moment.

(Okay, truthfully, not THIS very moment...but a few moments ago, before I thought to write it out here.)

There's an annual phone call I make, to an old...friend.  Weird, that. Not sure what the label is.  Former boyfriend.  Of eons ago.  Long-distance by phone alone...but somehow, connection...to a previous iteration of me, to a shared past, to parts of my experience that only he could understand.  
Ugh...I digress...

(As I do...)

Every year, the birthday calls.  Mine, outgoing, at the end of May. Returned a week or so later when it's my turn to celebrate.  Always a moment of startle in my mind when he picks up and the voice is both familiar and stranger.
Every year a rushed recap...a few laughs...perhaps some insight shared in one direction or the other.
A feeling of normalcy, because so much of what formed me...he was present for.

~~~

The call was a few days late this year.  Belated...my doing.  The birthday fell on a Saturday. I didn't want to interrupt.  And then it was a holiday weekend, and...  So I called today.  And had that moment of familiar but strange all over again.  Always marveling at who we carry along with us.  Forever navigating the momentary discomfiture of...is it muscle memory...or auditory memory that stirs up emotion long passed...

Our conversation the standard sort of catch-up.  His successes and health.  My children.

And in the middle of all that back and forth, there it was:

A reminder of what I already know...but daily forget.

An outside voice...outside perspective...

An acknowledgement by someone so very far out of my focus...that my feelings of alone...solitary...at a loss...are, in their own way, both valid and not.  An understanding of the different path....different timeline...my eldest is on.  And the gift of encouragement by way of his experiential knowledge and singular path to success.  

I'm over here marveling at the 'weirdness' of that.  Once upon a time, I was in love.  Once upon a time, I was deeply hurt.  And here, in the present, we're...friends...of the genuine sort...  And of all the people who could have set me back on my feet in 'this moment in time'...

Weird.  Just...weird.

Thank goodness for the weirdness.

I'd almost called him, months ago, when life took an unexpected turn and the past 'knocked on the door'.  I almost picked up the phone then.  Because he alone knew the players of this particular game...he alone knew how I'd been changed in meeting them.  

But I didn't.

It felt...unfair to unload that particular emotional baggage on a once-a-year phone-a-friend.

I wanted insight...or, guidance...a pointed 'yes...throw in' or 'no, back away slowly'.

What I wanted in those early moments was to pull from the past and have a friend beside me who knew how emotionally attached I was to the idea of birth family...to feeling a part of something... and who knew equally how it nearly broke me. 

There she is...the me of that part of the timeline.  Gosh, she was young and naive.

But that isn't fair, is it?

To dredge up the old.

To call on a shared moment in the past as reason for interrupting the present.

So, I didn't call.

But it came up today.  Unfiltered.  Stream of consciousness...much like I write here.

And in me...a perceptible shift...a sigh of relief to hear a familiar-to-the-original-experience voice remark on the present.  A flickering of 'not alone' in this, too.

~~~

I isolate.

Not news...certainly not new news.

I batten the hatches and shore up the barriers.

I lockdown and work at the problems in solitary confinement...coming up to breathe only once I've found resolution or solution.

No one would accuse me of having healthy coping mechanisms.

I've always had this sense of needing to handle things on my own.

Not be a burden.

A disruption.

An interruption.

Not to cause worry to anyone else over what I might be struggling with.

~~~

But...

This year...

I'm working on healing...

And today, that meant a phone call to an old friend...and opening up...at a comfortable distance of both miles and years...just enough to receive a sprinkling of clarity atop a tangled mess of crises.

...May : The List...

I wish...I want

I will...I won't

I might...I MAY!

What's on your bucket list for this month ahead?  I find, after an April that went sideways more often than not, that I'm both tightening the straps and loosening the reigns as we head into May.

It's far too easy to get caught up in the rigidity of routine and leaving the checking in for the checklists...  Which, as I found last month, left little room for surprises, and none at all for self-reflection.  So as the calendar page turns, I'm trying to outline the month ahead in a solid but sparse frame, and leave lots of space for pivoting...growing...and rewrites!

With a focus on Re-Assessing and Re-Addressing:

❒ Empty out all the storage and make the hard decisions on what to keep vs. what to donate

❒ Schedule and plan out the summer workshops

❒ Plan an overnight trip with the boys

❒ Set up theme weeks for Henri’s lessons and therapy

❒ dinner with Johannes

❒ lunch with Henri

❒ Sunday drives and dines

❒ sea, sun and sand

❒ signs and socializing

❒ ath-leisure, park-play and car picnics

❒ create our family ‘guide book’ of favorite places 

❒ go wild…at the zoo

❒ hit the trails

❒ ride the rails

...home-less...

It's no secret that I've yet to find my place. 

Or rather, it's no secret here...in my corner of the world where I write and you read, and the words pour out without restriction.

The argument could be made that I hide it well (though I'd disagree, knowing my limits and failures as I do) seemingly confident and self-assured.  I've mastered the enigmatic smile and learned to skirt the edges of the room.  But rest assured, I'm scrambling for footing on the inside, wondering why I still feel so home-less.

~~~

One of my earliest memories is of sitting in my childhood room, staring at the yellow gingham wallpaper, counting each little square while muttering over and over..."I don't belong here."

(How very, very right I was...even then.)

It was instinctual...a gut feeling of being, somehow, completely displaced and misplaced...

It was...a mistake...

Me. There.  In that room.  In that house. In that life.

I was a mistake.

I wasn't supposed to be there.

How very obvious.

My childhood 'displacement'...foster-child to adoptee...marked me as surely as a brand on my face.  I was here at someone else's behest...a purchase meant to ease the pain of infertility.  A shell into which to pour new life....with a history I had no biological claim to, and a responsibility to be a mirror of my adoptive parents' passions~values~interests~talents~etc...  I was, I sometimes felt, a faceless clone of some child they might have had...here, intact, with all the parts and function, but none of the story.

I wasn't supposed to be there.

~~~

An early marriage.

Youthful indiscretion?

Naivete?

Rebellion?

Rather, an overwhelming urgency to tie myself down...to someone and something and somewhere.

A tangling myself up in someone else's roots...claiming both name and history as mine.

A starting point on which to grow a family of my own.

A place...four walls and two arms to call home.

The roots I burrowed into were rotten, though.

The knots I grew entangled with, nearly choked the life out of me.

The family I was growing wasn't safe.

I wasn't supposed to be there.

~~~

Two decades later...almost...and I am still out of sync.

We've lived in this apartment for 15 years, and there's never been a day...a moment...where it felt like home...felt like mine...

Shared space...

our clutter and time intruding on one another...

all the more so when our family expanded to four...  

Every surface of multi-purpose.

Every quiet moment at risk of someone else's noise. 

This apartment was once a part of the main house.  A d.i.y. project of remnant floors and scrap cabinetry.  It lists and leans...sloping down from some central joist...creaking and groaning...

The lines have all gone soft.

No straight angles to be found.

"Quirky.", some might say. "Unbalanced."

(Some might say the same of me.)

I shim each piece of furniture we bring in, and regularly spackle new cracks and fissures in the corners.

Too hard of a footfall, and the dishes rattle on their sloped shelves.

Too rough of a door slam, and the knick-knacks shift to precipitous edges.

The apartment was a use of extra-space.  A money-maker.  A rent-collector.

It wasn't supposed to be permanent.

It wasn't supposed to be a four-person domicile.

We weren't supposed to still be here.

~~~

Motherhood.

Of two.

Or four...with stepchildren to consider.

Family.

And four walls we return to at the end of the day.

A place to 'call home'.

But...not...

They belong to me...these two boys.

I belong to them, perhaps more so.

My body to serve their needs: from early labor pain to the arms that comfort bruises physical and emotional, from soothing lullabies to vicious defense, from pre-dawn to past-midnight toil for their comforts and needs and pleasures.

Mine is theirs.  I am theirs.  Their mother...their person...their home.

They are my heart.

But we aren't home.

Not here.

Not yet.

This isn't home.

It isn't our soft place to land.

It's just the walls about...the roof above...

We shouldn't still be here.

~~~

We've roots now...little scraggly things digging into rocky soil.

We've built something, surely.

A handful of beautifully wrought connections to people and places.

But singular. Each of them. Singular and separate.  No ties that bind one to another...no convergent paths that end in community. Each a stand-alone.  Too far apart to bring round one large table.  No neighborhood of friends and family and friends who've become family.

Just individual bright spots...meeting places of one personality or other...one shared interest or other.

The temporary friendships of strangers on a train.  A shared journey of some miles, but divergent departures ahead.

Familiarity, but not a belonging.

We don't belong here.

~~~

Chapters ahead, unwritten.

Blank calendar pages, and maps to be pored over.

The journey to home still underway...though the travelling slows and stalls...

There's a place...somewhere...

Not here.

Not any of the theres.

But somewhere...

Where we all fit...

Where our sharp edges and quirks match the grooves already made...

Where our unstable balance will become steady underfoot...

Where we can finally unpack and set things just so and feel...

at home.