Turn off the voices

I had my first job interview yesterday. I felt confident about the job. I know I’m qualified and I figured I would do okay with the question and answer part of the interview.

The owner of the company told me I seemed too quiet and shy to do the job properly. “I need to you to go out and speak to the press and make phone calls and I just don’t see you doing that very well.”

I almost laughed when he said that. “I don’t know why you feel that way. I do those things all the time and I do them very well.”

It made me think about how people perceive me. I guess I do come across to strangers as a quiet, insecure person who doesn’t like to make a fuss about stuff. But those who know me realize that I don’t mind making a fuss if I need to.

I asked Robby, “Is that what people think about me?”

He laughed and said, “I definitely don’t think that. I’ve been looking for your off switch since you first opened your mouth.”

We laughed about it and he told me that the right job would come along and that I didn’t need to change to get a job.

I don’t know if my quiet nature is a sign of weakness or not. But I’m just not that in-your-face kind of person. I guess I could have walked into that job interview and pretended to be this loud, pushy force to be reckoned with, but I would have felt silly acting like that. It’s just not who I am.

I probably won’t get that job. But I’m not sure that I really want it. I can’t spend the next few years trying to convince people I am someone I am not.

It has taken me many years to figure out who I really am. I am secure in the fact that I can be forceful and aggressive when I need to be. After all, I’m that lady who cut down trees in the middle of the night to protect my children on the street. That example probably wouldn’t have gotten me the job though.

I don’t know what example I could have given at the interview to prove to him that I am not some shy mousy wall flower. I guess I didn’t feel the need to go out of my way to prove him wrong, because I’m tired of trying to explain myself to people these days.

I know I do the best I can and that I always try to do the right thing. I also know that some people will never see myself the way I see myself. They just see what they want to see or what they expect to see.

I try to be okay with that, but there will always be that part of me that wants to show people they are wrong about me.  There will always be that part of me that kind of believes what people say about me. There will always be that voice in my head that says, “you suck” and “you’re stupid.”

Hopefully I can continue to move forward and not dwell too much on the negative words that continue to come my way from job interviews and people in my personal life. Hopefully some of the those voices will just go away and give me some peace and quiet for once.

Dream job, where art thou?

Focus…focus…focus. I keep telling myself to just focus and get my work done, but my mind has been in a million different places lately.

Some of it is worry—I still have no job so I spend most of my free time scouring the internet for new job postings. I am running out of money. Luckily I’m thrifty, but someone has decided not to pay me the money he owes me so my small stash is almost on empty. Haven’t even started to think about how I will handle that situation—just add it to the list of things I have no control over.

Some of it is the fact that I have so much to do that I can’t decide what to do first and I waste time going from task to task instead of focusing on one task. My head seems to be in the clouds all day.

And some of it is because I’m focused on writing. Maybe this is what it is like to be a writer. I find myself daydreaming about how I should have written something different or what needs to be added or what needs to be cut. I guess it is better than writers block, but I know my children have got to be feeling a little left out these days.

So, then that adds guilt and now I am a complete overworked mom who feels like she is getting pulled in a million directions and I haven’t even mentioned my husband yet.

Robby is supportive as always, but I can tell he is starting to feel the pressure as well. Tread lightly seems to be his new catch phrase—kids, tread lightly, your mom has had another bad day.

Yes, I need to focus. But on what? Family, work, money, sleep, eating, cooking, cleaning, getting kids to do homework, feeding the dogs, finding work…

Sometimes I feel like I am my own worst enemy. I set myself up to be too busy. Yesterday, I wondered if I did it on purpose. Perhaps I did—maybe a little? I guess I was trying to distract myself from something that was lurking in the back of my mind.

When I decided to go back to school and get my masters, I promised myself that I would reach for the stars and that nothing would hold me back from my dream job. I thought my dream job was working for a magazine company in New York. I even pictured the apartment the children and I would live in and how we would need to live close to a park where we could walk the dogs. We would go to museums and shows and ride the subway. I wanted to give them an amazing life.

Last night I went to a job presentation by Conde Nast magazine corporation—they are the premier magazine publishers in New York and publish some of my favorite magazines like Wired, Vanity Fair, and The NewYorker.

I printed out my several copies of my resume, publishing lists, and writing samples. I grabbed a handful of business cards and put on a killer outfit. I made the decision to go for it. I knew Robby would never want to leave Savannah, but I had to find out if I could do this.

Everything went as planned until they began to play the promotional video about working for Conde Nast. I slowly began to realize that I have no interest in moving to New York. I have no interest in becoming one person in a sea of other writers and creative professionals. I have no interests in traffic, apartments, commuting, or uprooting my family.

For the first time in weeks, I became focused. I realized I don’t want to move. I want to make it big right here. I love this city, I love our home, I love my friends, and I love being a writer here. It may take a while to find that perfect job, but that’s okay.

I have a husband who adores me and probably would pack up and move to New York if that is what I wanted to do. For the first time in a long time, both of my children are really happy with their lives. And when 

I’m not distracted with my wants and wishes, I’m actually very happy with life here, too. And if I stopped moping around long enough, I realize I have the perfect life right now.

I got my focus back today. No telling what I will get accomplished now.

Getting so close...

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog. I've started some but erased them because they just weren't clicking.

I have 7 weeks of grad school to complete and then I’m done--hopefully forever—I hate homework.

In order to graduate, I have to write my thesis project. Our writing program is non-fiction based, so my thesis must be a non-fiction piece—it’s a story about my life.

I’ve spent weeks writing this thing and it is emotionally draining to say the least. I’ve been reading through old journals during the process in order to keep events fresh in my mind—that’s also emotionally draining.

It’s amazing what the brain chooses to forget. It’s also amazing to see how much I have changed in the past 4 years.

I guess I am most surprised by how easily I allowed myself to become a shell of who I really was. I wish I could turn back the clock and give my children the mother they deserved earlier in their lives and see how differently they would turn out—but there is no sense in putting those ideas in my head. I did the best I could at the time. I just had no idea that I had become that person.

I became a person who would fight battles for my children and my friends, but never fought for myself. I never made anyone treat me with respect. I’m sure a therapist would say it was because I didn't respect myself. But I don’t see it that way exactly.

Writing this thesis has opened my eyes to how broken I was before I even married to my exhusband. My life was a series of “getting so close to the prize” but always falling short because someone else put their needs ahead of mine—I put their needs ahead of mine.

As a mother, I feel like I should put my needs before my children. I think most mothers instinctively feel that way. But I put my happiness on the back burner for everyone else and it wasn't because they made me—it was because I felt comfortable with that arrangement.

I guess the biggest wish is to go back in time to find my child self and whisper in her ear—“You don’t have to feel guilty for being happy. It’s okay to get your way, too.” And while I know that I cannot do that either, I can just continue to whisper it to my adult self.

It’s not selfish to make yourself happy. As a mother, you should make your happiness the number one priority, because your children cannot be happy when you are sad—I know that first-hand.

I’ve also realized that I needed all of those bad experiences in my life to get to where I am today. I finally have my hands on the prize—there is no more “getting so close” anymore. 

We are worthy of love

I’ve always been told that my children are a reflection of me. I like to think of that reflection in flattering terms. A few weeks ago, I was hit with the reality that my children are indeed a reflection of me—a reflection that embodies the good and the bad parts of me. And just like how I cannot change my appearance in the mirror by saying “I don’t have wrinkles on my forehead,” I cannot change my reflection in my children by saying “Don’t feel like you aren’t worthy of love.”

We are having a hard time with Veronica. Sure, it’s normal for an 11 year old girl to be emotional and dramatic, but she seems to carry more baggage than normal. She just started a new school and it’s an art school that can kick her out at any time if she can’t pull her weight with grades and her artwork. That’s a lot of pressure for a kid. She also has the added pressure of wearing leg braces and using a wheelchair. That’s tough for any middle school student trying to fit in.

But for the first time, I noticed something I had never noticed before—she has picked up on a habit that I have been trying to overcome for several years now. She feels she is not worthy of love. I think she probably doesn’t even love herself that much.

It’s frustrating because I have done everything I can to make sure she feels love. I am happy now and I have the love of a great man who adores the children. Being happy helps, but I cannot undo the damage that was done to her. Feeling like someone you love doesn’t love you back is one of the most painful experiences anyone can have. But when a parent makes you feel this way, it affects every relationship you have for the rest of your life. I experienced this as a child. I never felt lovable. My parents have apologized for making me feel this way and I am working on putting this behind me, but it’s obvious I have passed this onto my daughter.

But I realize how that feeling of being unworthy caused me to make the choices I made in the past. I continue to make mistakes and allow people to bully me and make me feel guilty in an effort to keep the peace and make the children happy.

I know I have to change these habits in order to reflect a different person on my children. I have to reflect exactly how I want them to be treated by other people and how I want them to treat other people, but more importantly, I have to reflect how I want them to treat themselves.

Veronica is lovable and I love her dearly. Every time I feel myself get weak and begin to give in to the bullying, I just picture her face. I tell myself, “We deserve better than this. We deserve to be loved wholeheartedly, not when it’s convenient.”

To hear my child say, “It’s okay, I’m used to it,” breaks my heart. No one should have to be used to being treated badly by someone they love. And yet, I have allowed it in order to keep the peace and to do what I think is best for everyone. But it’s not good enough and I was wrong. Perhaps if I stand up to the bullying, then one day she will too. Until then, I have to find a way to make her feel worthy of real love.

The journey is almost over...

Two years ago today, I began a journey to make my life better. I enrolled in the writing program at Savannah College of Art andDesign. Although I have a BA in English, I chose to enroll as an undergraduate. The thought of trying to get in as a graduate student overwhelmed me. I had to have a portfolio to submit and I assumed they wouldn’t want me and everyone would be better than me.

After a few weeks of undergrad classes, I realized I made the wrong choice. I quickly submitted my application for the graduate program and I got in with no problems. The feeling that everyone in the program is a better writer than me or that they get published more than me or that I’m too old to start a new career is a lingering insecurity that will probably always haunt me. Perhaps it is the reason I continue to work as I hard as I do.

Today, I began the final leg of that journey as my final quarter at SCAD began this morning. I honestly don’t know have I managed to juggle my life and my studies, but I have done it and I am completely exhausted. I am excited to see the nearing end of homework, projects, and research papers, but I’m also worried.

I thought a master’s degree would ensure my job security and I would go to a few job fairs and submit a few applications and then bam! I would get hired and start paying my school loans off and begin saving for my future.

After my divorce, I was left with no health insurance, no retirement, and no savings. That has not changed and my job prospects are not looking so hot right now.

Since February, I applied for over 20 jobs and I have not received one interview. I’m not panicking yet, but my stomach gets a tad queasy when I look at my bank statement and wonder how I will manage with no job andno school loans to fill in the blanks.

But when I started graduate school, I promised myself 2 things:

1.     I will not accept work from a company that I do not respect

2.     I will look for work outside of Savannah before I will take a dead end job just to pay the bills.

I don’t know what is going to happen in these next 10 weeks of my final days as a student. But I just cannot allow myself to believe that I have done all of this work for nothing. I know there is a job out there for me that will give me what I need. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong place

In with the good, out with the bad

Everyone knows that when something is full, you have to remove something to make room for something else. It’s harder to gauge these things when you can’t see them.

I realized this summer that my ability to “bite my tongue” grows weaker as I get older. I guess that it why older people tend to say what is really on their mind—your body gets tired of “holding it all in.” I’m tired of holding it all in.

"Happy" family--1979

When I was a little girl, things at home were a little rough. My parents suffered from extreme depression. They both worked from home, so it was hard to escape. But despite their mood swings and sometimes erratic behavior, I always knew they loved me.

We always had “party night” on Friday and we would make homemade pizzas with tortillas and spaghetti sauce. Mom had this enormous green Tupperware bowl that we would fill with hot popcorn and melted butter. We would sit on the floor (we had no furniture) and watch something on our little black-and-white 17 inch television and have ourselves a party. It was always fun—no drama, no depression, no screaming, and no crying.

Mom and Dad were always sure to tell us they loved us. They were always quick to say, “I know we have issues, but it doesn’t mean we don’t love you very much.” And it was true and I knew it was true.

But Mom and Dad were always hard to talk to. I didn’t have the luxury my daughter has to say, “That really hurts my feelings when you interrupt me when I’m talking.” If I had expressed my feelings several things might have happened—Dad would have lost his temper and yelled at me or Mom would have done something similar or she would have terrible guilt over hurting my feelings and then I would feel terrible for making her feel terrible. It was just easier to hold it all in.

The house where I grew up in Dublin, TX

Those habits formed early for me and stuck with me until a few years ago. Those habits forced me to hold it all in while I was married to my ex-husband. He also had a terrible temper and I felt it was best to hold it in rather than set him off. Of course, being secretly mad at someone doesn’t help an already flawed marriage.

The problem is that you can’t hold that stuff in forever—it has to go somewhere. When I started getting my life back on track after my ex-husband left,  I started replacing the bad in my life with good things. All that stuff that I had been holding in began to come out.

I would go for months and feel fine, and then I would have a day when I would just lie in bed and cry and cry and I didn’t understand why. I would think to myself, “My life is good now. Why I am so sad?” I finally realized it was my body’s way of finally dealing with all that hurt I had pushed down inside me for all those years.

After I met Robby and we began to fall in love, I began to have more of those days. My life was filling up with good and all that bad needed somewhere else to go. By the time Robby and I got engaged in December, I thought I was done with all that bad stuff. I thought it had finally been purged.

But then I had another episode this summer while I was in Texas visiting my parents.  We were sitting at the table at my aunt’s house eating breakfast when my mother began telling a story about a couple she had helped. It took everything inside me to not scream, “How can you help people who are total strangers, but not help me when I needed you?”

I tend to think these things in my head when I’m around my parents, but never has my inside voice been so strong. I had to leave the table and go to the bathroom to calm myself. I washed my face and looked at myself in the mirror and said, “You gotta get your shit together.”

I cried for days over the incident. I had nightmares for weeks. I finally realized it was time to come clean with my mom and dad. I realized the relationship I have with them is affecting all of my relationships—especially the relationship I have with my children.

My parents are in good places in their lives right now. They have spent the past 14 years talking to therapists and working on their issues. They are honest with us about their issues and they are regretful and reflective every day of their lives. They have always given me the freedom to tell them exactly how I feel or to yell at them about something that happened in my childhood. But I have never felt the need to do that, until now.

My family had issues, but atleast we weren't stacked up naked and forced
 to look happy that these poor children.

A few days ago, Mom called me. We were talking and then I felt we had reached a place in the conversation where I could let it all out. I didn’t scream at her or try to hurt her—I just talked. I talked and talked and cried and cried and she just sat there and listened.

And she gave me the best gift a mother can give her child—she validated my anger and she apologized.

She told me something profound. “The only perfect relationship we can have in this world is the relationship we have with God. But God put us together for a reason—you needed me as a mother to help you get to this place in your life. Perhaps without knowing such sadness and depression, you would have never had to fight so hard to get the happiness you have now. The fight is what brought you to where you are now.”

I know she is right. I know that God puts people in our lives to make us who we are. I just never believed He gave me the perfect parents—they aren’t perfect, but perfect for me. Yes, Mom and I have still have a lot of work to do, but we are moving in the right direction finally.

I need to fix this relationship in order to fully love myself. It’s just as important as building a healthy relationship with God. The relationship with my parents affects every relationship I have had or will have. I gotta get this right this time, so I can quit holding in the bad stuff and start holding on to the good.

Politics...schmolitics

So, it seems the political climate in our country is about to go from boiling hot to mother-of-god-that-burns. I hate election years and I really hate this part of the election year. Facebook is no help either…the sidebar to the right keeps telling me which of my friends is voting for Mitt or Obama or likes Chick-Fil-A or likes things made in America.

And sadly I find myself silently judging those around me for their “likes” and “dislikes.” I’m a reformed conservative who called herself Independent from day one because I refuse to make a choice and align myself with an entire political party—I’m the most judgmental of the political parties unless you count Libertarian (which I won’t since their votes never seem to really make a difference in the race for president).

I find myself agreeing with both sides. I make myself feel good about it by reminding myself that I must be so open-minded to see both sides. Yes, it’s crap, but it makes me feel good about myself and this country is all about making yourself feel good about yourself—especially when you are on Facebook looking at pictures of yourself while talking about yourself and seeing what other people think and say about yourself.

But I realized something today and it made me angry—we are arguing over politics but what we really should be arguing over is money. Of course no one likes to argue over money—except maybe Libertarians and that’s only because they get the luxury to look at an issue rationally since they get to try to prove two parties wrong instead of blaming everything on a liberal or a conservative like normal people do.

I think it is bad that we have politicized things that don’t need to be politicized—abortion, same-sex marriage, education, and healthcare. Why should it matter what political party you are if you think that abortion is always wrong? Does that mean that pro-choice people are also pro-abortion? Does that mean you have to be pro-life to be a Republican? When did they get to put their stamp on pro-life? And who isn’t pro-life? We are all pro-life, aren’t we? No one that I have ever met is pro-death—and I have even met women who were raped that got pregnant.

Why do you have to be liberal to say that Obama care is a good plan? What if you are a Republican and you can’t get health insurance for your disabled child because your job doesn’t offer health benefits and you can’t get a private plan to cover pre-existing conditions and you make too much money to qualify for Medicaid? Then you should say, “My kid can go without because I’m Republican and I refuse to agree with a healthcare plan that covers pre-existing conditions.” That’s stupid. Healthcare is not political, but it’s hard to see that when you are not faced with loss of benefits or disabled children with no health insurance. As a parent who lost my coverage and couldn’t take care of my daughter’s medical needs for a year, I can tell you that Obama Care sounds pretty damn good and it would be nice to hear a Republican agree with me.

And yes, there is same-sex marriage. You already know how I feel about that. Is Dick Cheney less of a dad because he chose to align himself with his political party over his gay daughter? My answer is yes. Politics doesn’t belong in adult love. You know, the kind of adult love that isn’t considered “forcible sex.” Perhaps the Republicans would find it interesting to know that gay sex is the only sex that never results in pregnancy so perhaps homosexuals have no need to be pro-choice because they have no choices to make? Maybe they are all just pro-life? But wait, they can’t be because that would make them conservatives and we all know that if you are gay, you have to be liberal because politics has somehow made its way into consenting adult relationships.

And now on to education—the platform everyone seems to embrace but no one wants to do anything about. I will gladly admit that I mad as hell at Obama for doing NOTHING for education since he has been in office. There was that one week when he addressed getting rid of No Child Left Behind, but then we never heard another thing about it. Why is education a political debate anyway? I’ll tell you why—it’s all about money. And our money is not being spent correctly and we can’t figure out who is more wasteful with the spending because it’s everybody—Democrats and Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for what they have done to this country.

About 10 years ago, I sat at a table with my dad and we talked about politics. I told him that I truly believed we would begin to see a strong 3^rd party emerge and all these democrats and republicans would have to change their tune. They would have to navigate to common ground or else the Independents would take over and win every election. I believed that notion—I thought I understood politics.

And now, here we are at 2012 and we are still a 2-party system with Democrats and Republicans tearing each other apart and polarizing our nation. I don’t like either one at this point. I can’t vote for Mitt because I don’t agree with his stance on social programs, same-sex marriage, abortion, or the economy. I don’t feel great about voting for Obama because he should have done something about education these past 4 years. I love his healthcare plan because it works for me (I understand it doesn’t work for everyone and I respect that), but he should have multi-tasked and done more. But then how could he do more with the Republicans blocking his every move. And they don’t block moves because they are right; they block them because they are polarized. The democrats did the same things to Bush.

So, I’m taking a break from politics for the next 3 months. I’m going to ignore your political signs and rallies and commercials. I’m going to just shake my head and nod and say, “I really don’t follow politics.”

Who am I kidding? I’m not going to do that. I’m going to keep getting mad and saying what I believe is true. We should all do that. We should all be mad at what politics and politicians have done to our country. And we should say what we believe is true whether or not our friends like it, because if we don’t say what we believe, then no one will ever know. Everyone will just continue to believe that hate abortion because you voted for Bush or that you hate gays because you ate a chicken wrap at Chik-Fil-A. They won’t understand that you like Chik-Fil-A because they offered you your first job when no one else would. They won’t understand that you lost a baby before it was born and that you can never agree with abortion. They won’t understand that you couldn’t provide health insurance for your child and so you like Obama Care. They won’t understand anything unless you explain it. Shout it from the rooftops if you have to. But just be honest—stop being political. And I will try to stop being so judgmental because I will understand that I asked you to just be honest with me.