Springtime Brings New Rosies!

It has been a brutal first week back after vacation.

I am beat!

When my kids describe someone as 'beat' they mean ugly.  I feel ugly lately too.  Which isn't great for my sex drive.  Or self confidence.  Or my attitude toward anything, really.  My husband was quite 'handsy' this morning, and when he gets 'handsy' it gets him very ready to have sex, and I just could not take advantage of that magnificence.  He wanted me to climb up and ride it, and while I made excuses that we didn't have time (both had somewhere to be at 8fuckingthirty this SATURDAY morning) because I'd need a shower and didn't have time for a post-coital shower, and also I had to pee too much to fuck (both these excuses were absolutely true--I don't lie to Aaron), the reality was that the reason that was more pressing than time or bladder was the paralyzing self consciousness I was suffering this morning.  The thing is that I'd already told him of this too, but sometimes it seems like he thinks the cure for my poor body image is to devour my body--almost to prove that I am attractive and desirable and beautiful.  It is a nice sentiment, and often times helps me by bolstering my confidence in our chemistry and compatibility, today it only made me more self conscious.  Every spot his hands touched made me cringe inwardly--wishing that spot was...less of a spot, i guess.  slimmer, smoother, tighter, you name it. Oh, and bigger and fuller in the case of my breasts of course.

I think about last spring.  How sexy and alive I felt.  Of course these doubts lingered underneath, too, but... No.  Who am I kidding?  These doubts were rampant then too. I am (VERY) often relieved that I am married--meaning that I don't have to date, don't have to RISK, don't have to get naked in front of new people!

What was I supposed to be writing about though?  I certainly hadn't intended to get so detailed there about the recent insecurities, or the recent resurgence of the old insecurities...

Oh, the week back to work.  Rough.  On many levels.  I'm certainly physically exhausted.  Last night was friday, my night to stay up late, do whatever I wanted, enjoy myself, etc!   I ended i ended up in bed by 8:45.  LAME!

And it is one of the first weeks that's had me looking at where else I can apply to work.  Ugh.  Even as I type that I feel traitorous.  I really do like my school.  The colleagues have been incredibly supportive.  I feel a real affection for the kids, too (most of them), I rally do. 

But I wonder if I'm not cut out for it.  Obviously.  Have we met?  Of course. 

Did I tell you about my New Rosies?  One day after therapy I was telling Aaron what my therapist had been saying about my issues.  He was in the other room, though and the train of thought hadn't been exactly straight.  It was, as many of our conversations do, a meandering journey of free association and random interjections of things we'd been meaning to tell the other but kept forgetting...  Anyhow, I said something about my Neuroses (plural, not just one neurosis).  He asked me to repeat the phrase and I did, moving on quickly to the main point of what I had been saying.

He was quiet as he puzzled it out, finally exclaiming: "Oh!  Neuroses!" 

"Yeah, what'd you think I said?"

"It dounded like you said something about your 'new rosies', both times you said it, and I just couldn't figure out why you were talking about 'new rosies'.  Like, what happened to your 'old rosies', and why are we making roses sound so cutesy?"

Needless to say, "New Rosies" has stuck.

One of my New Rosies is to believe that I am not worthy of things.  Jobs, accolades, love, etc.  So naturally I feel like I'm not cut out for the job of 8th grade english teacher at this school which is under a microscope--an underachieving school that needs a wonder-team and a miracle to turn around and pull through before the state takes it over.

But here's the tricky thing about those damn rosies-- how do I figure out when it's a mental issue and when there's some truth to it?  If everything is my neurosis, how can I ever trust when something might be an ACTUAL problem.  Like, what if I really am not the right person for this incredibly important task?  I want to be the one who helps these kids.  But what if I can't?  What if I don't have it and it might be something I can't learn(or can't learn fast enough)?

I've gotta run--got a jazz concert to go see--my niece has a trumpet solo!

Anyway.  To summarize:  tired, tired of my self-image, tired of working for a living (get used to it, right?!), tired of feeling inadequate, tired of feeling ... ug... tired of FEEEEEEEELING! lol.

But loving the spring, loving the weather, loving many, many many things!  Wishing I had time to garden!  But loving the spring!

Once upon a time....

I'm a storyteller.

More than a writer.

I've evaluated, and I've decided that some people are writers.  They love to write.  They love to craft sentences just so--they take careful measure of each word, every comma, the syntax, the letters, the poetry of their prose.  They also tell stories, naturally, of course they do.  But the art and craft of writing is enjoyable to them. 
delicious, even.  Sumptuous.  They dig in with verve and ensconce themselves within the trenches of those letters, those paragraphs, those subjects and predicates and they make art out of each syllable.  Not a single word out of place, not a semicolon misplaced.  Artists of and with the written word.

While I, too, have a fondness for word-choice, a lust for the lexicon, a thing for the thesaurus, more often than not the art of my prose falls by the wayside in the interest of getting the STORY out.  I find grammar and editing a huge, irritating stumbling block, and frequently eschew the rules in favor of what feels right in the moment as the story pours out.

Not that the stories are necessarily of any quality, but that's the way it is with me.

I have often become disheartened whilst reading a quality writer's work.  Admiring the gorgeous creation before my eyes whilst simultaneously lamenting my own childish, amateurish abilities.  And I wonder 'why can't I write like THIS?'  I mean, storylines aside, soap opera versus oscar-winning story aside, why the fuck can't I compose like this? 

I ridicule myself for the shit that I've shat, the putresence that has flowed from this brain and these clumsy fingers, and I brood about it. 

Because a soap opera is a soap opera not because of the storylines.  It's the mediocre, hackneyed writing and the d-list quality of the performances (and the filming style etc..)

In another form those same plot lines and character archetypes are greek myth, are biblical, are classical literature, are fairytales, are opera, are award-winning, gripping, must-see academy award winning plotlines.  They are human truths, with themes that run deep, to the heart and core of who we are as a people, as a society, as a culture, as a species.  The scandalous, the broken moral codes, the things we'd like to keep secret about ourselves and can't get enough of exposing in others. The what and the why, the who and the where of the human experience.

But when Steinbeck writes it it is art.

When Nora Roberts writes it, it is kinda schlocky.

When I write it?

Have I mentioned that my therapist tells me I have unrealistic expectations about career and performance?  An unrealistic perception of myself and an unhealthy need for an unattainable perfection?

In anycase.  I'm a storyteller more than I am a writer.

The metaphorical blossoms in my garden.

My therapist tells me that spring is the worst season for the mental health industry--people think it's the holidays, christmas and such, but that it's actually now.  She says that when the world starts to come into bloom, come alive and flourish, and a depressive is still gray and wintery, the feeling of isolation intensifies and things get critical.

I'd like to say that I adore spring and I always have.  I love the verve and the new vigor!  This depressive is thrilled as hell to see pink blossoms on the cherry tree out back, and garish forsythia waving on every street corner!  I'm glad of the warmer (but not too warm) weather, and the urge for renewal.

And this is the first spring in many, many springs that my biological clock hasn't been ringing off the hook!  This spring I feel pretty comfortable in my decision that babies may just be a never in my life.  I'm enjoying the nieces and babies of friends very much.  I am excited for two more to join the ranks in the next couple of months.  People are announcing, and growing round, and planning nurseries and picking out names I'll doubtlessly disapprove of, and for once in my life I've realized that hey--I've been wanting children for ALL THE WRONG REASONS. 

I've been wanting to fill a void.  I've had all the most selfish, silly, inane, unbelievablyidiotic ideas about children and life and parenting, and thank god I didn't get myself knocked up younger. 

I will be perfectly content to die childless--so long as that's what Aaron and I finally resolve.

For now we're in a 'let's not think about it for now, and we'll revisit the topic in a few years...maybe...if we can see over the mountain of debt..." situation.

So, while I feel for my sisters out there who long for procreation at this fertile time of year, I have to sigh (with so much genuine relief I can't even tell you!), and relax, and enjoy the spring for what it is, and not for what it should be, or could, be, or would be if only...

Back to school tomorrow.  Bleck.

I AM ON MUTHAFUCKING VACATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow is another day

More than a week since my last post!  Scandal.

It is just so time consuming, being a grown up.

We're in april now.  We're in spring now.  We're in the home fucking stretch now. 

But also not so much.  I am looking down the barrell of, what, ten more years of teaching--at the least?

And I remembered something I vowed to myself in high school:  As god as my witness, I will never, ever, cross my heart and hope to die, ever become an English teacher.

Hah.  Life's fucking adorable, isn't it?  I also swore that by this age I'd have at least two and a half children.

I'm an English teacher with a fish that won't die and a couple of cat's we've potty trained.

And I'm most definitely in therapy.

On mood stabilizers and antidepressants.

Not because of the cats...I don't think...

Anyway.  On the path to something I never wanted.

But maybe I do want it now?  I can't tell.

But if I have to lie, cheat, beg, borrow or steal, as god is my witness, I'll never stop trying to figure it the fuck out.