Defense

Calling my mother is like playing Plinko on the Price Is Right.  A contestant places a wooden disk at the top of the board and watches it fall in a random pattern, bouncing haphazardly between the Love/Support and Batshit Crazy slots.  There is a whole manner of additional available prizes, but they generally fall in between those two categories.  The player’s heart leaps when the piece looks to be headed toward Maternal Warmth only to sink in dismay when it makes a last second detour to Sicilian Guilt.  The outcome waits to reveal itself even to the final moments, as she answers the phone the same way, no matter her mood.

Mother’s Day was no exception.

“HELLO?!” she accused into the phone, leaving me to guess at the direction our chat would take.   To judge by her tone, anyone would think that she couldn’t possibly be more annoyed, that even correcting the grammatical errors of the entire population of Facebook would be preferable to taking my call.  That’s not really the case…it’s just how she rolls.

Knowing her tone is no indication of her mood, I chirped a cheerful Happy Mother’s Day  (!!) into the receiver and was rewarded with a couple of cold responses.  Under normal circumstances (and to save my own sanity) I will beat feet to the end of the conversation when I see it headed in this direction.  If I don’t, screaming matches occur; it’s better to live to fight another day than engage, logic has no place when her voice takes on a certain edge.  But, it WAS Mother’s Day, and as such (I felt), required a bit of extra effort on my part.

After some prying and coaxing (“Seriously, what’s the matter? Why do you sound so hateful today?”) I was rewarded with a solid dose of the truth.

Now, here I pause to tell you something else about my mother.  I’ve shared some shitty things about her on this blog.  Told a couple of horror stories.  Mostly because this seems to be where I work some crap out.  But, beyond those stories, it should also be known that she’s a woman dealing with her own shit.  A really smart fucking woman, dealing with her own shit.  I forget sometimes that she’s spent a considerably longer amount of time trying to figure herself out and get back to even than I have, and as such, has the benefit of experience.  Every once in a while, she pops out with something that sounds completely ridiculous, but turns out to be exactly what I needed to hear at that particular moment.  It’s those times that I know I’m just as Batshit as she is and that there will never be anyone out there who understands quite like she does.  This fact absolutely has TNT written all over it, but sometimes when it manifests, it’s the only thing in the world that helps me know I’m not alone.

This was one of those times.

“I’m not a goddamned business, Jennifer.”

Now, the layperson will read that line and wonder:  “What the fuck does that even mean?!”  But I’m no novice when it comes to my Mom.  I knew exactly what she was talking about.  I’d just spent the previous five-or-so minutes in a state of calm detachment, trying to figure out why she was upset.  My voice had been soft and clear, friendly even, but there was no warmth behind it.  I’d been giving her the fake customer service treatment, and she called me out.  I was instantly fighting back tears.  She knew, goddamn it.  She knew and saw right through.

I use my call center voice when I’m in danger of feeling something.  I use it when I’m perilously close to submitting to weakness.  When I’m so lonely for the touch of the person I’m speaking to that going another moment without it might drive me to desperation; the emptier my soul, the more cordial my voice.  Without that failsafe, that tone modulation, the outside world is in danger of falling victim to the dam breaking.  I’d just been using it on her and she failed to play along, instead, forcing me to recognize something about myself that had (has) become my entire world lately.

There I was, face-to-face with the truth of my coping mechanisms.

These days, I am detachment embodied.  I have shut myself down to only the bare minimum.  Essential systems only.  Reserve power.  Low lighting.  Martial law.  I have declared a  moratorium on the expression of, well, anything.  I live so teeteringly close to a breakdown that I must maintain a state of hyper-vigilance lest this wound opens only to bleed and bleed and bleed.

I have become so careful about how I express myself that I don’t express myself at all.  My closest relationships have withered off of once healthy vines.  My need and drive to write has dried up because in its honesty, it would be admitting to the lies I’ve been telling those around me.  I have no shortage of hands reaching toward me, but I’m afraid they have no idea what they’re offering; that once I give in and let go, allow myself to be comforted by those hands, that they’ll realize the extremity of my need and retreat, sorry at once that they’d offered any contact at all.

In truth, my inner world is a blustering chaos.  I don’t jest when I say that out loud.  It’s more than just a warning or humorous hyperbole.  As my skin screams out for contact, tenderness, soft words, I breathe those desires back inside.  Their ferocity isn’t to be meddled with, and I don’t trust the outstretched and open palms to know what they’re offering.  With certainty I know that once I open that door, that cut, there will be no stanching the flow.  And while I fully expect and understand that those offering aid will retract it once they see the truth in the outpouring, I also know that that abandonment is something I can never recover from.

So I keep to the inside and play my grand role.  With abiding grace, I am thankful for the kindness of the people that reach out.  I am quietly awed by their intentions and charity.  But I must, at all costs, maintain this distance; a break in the ranks could mean a break in my tanks, the reserves, what’s left of this crumbling edifice.  It’s not enough to know that she sees me, my Mother.  Not enough to just be revealed.  All I am at that point is revealed, uncovered.  There is no protection in the open, and in the end, just being found out is not the same as being understood.

33

A few weeks ago, I celebrated my 33^rd birthday…celebrated being a euphemism for what I ACTUALLY did, which was spend a significant portion of the day crying while getting royally drunk on red wine.

33 roared up on me, presenting itself in motorcycle leathers, demanding the goods for its payment at my birth.  It had given me enough time, it reasoned, gesticulating with a cigarette, to DO something, BE something, SHOW something, and it wanted proof—just the facts, man—that its loan had been put to use.

My lower lip trembled.

I hadn’t, in fact, done anything with the gift, and was standing there–With nothing as proof.

Instead, I look back at a long road, a tough one, and me, a terminally miserable, ever-dissatisfied wastrel; a mess in her quest toward the unnamed and ill-defined.

Standing in my place, in these shoes, this body, there was supposed to be a bohemian traveler.  A jaunty soul.  An accomplished….SOMETHING.  I was set to see the world, to take lovers, to fit my life into a backpack.  I was to lie on beaches, stroll museums and bazaars, to teach small children English As A Second Language, stopping each day by the box to send the postcards I now beg off of others.

Would have.  Should have.  Could have.

Youth is indeed wasted on the young.

Somewhere along the line, it became too late for those things.  Somehow, the small setbacks got the better of me.

The successes that I push myself toward are only illusions to fool the unwitting onlooker.  “But this!” they shout, “You’ve done this!  And this!  And THIS!!”  Smokescreen, I tell you.  Sleight of hand.  Shadows and mirrors.  For if they knew the image of myself that I hold in a secret pocket, the shock of the disparity would silence the room.

How do I reconcile this failure?  How do I make it okay that my end point is here, rather than THERE?

In truth, I cannot.  And that is the bottom of the well.

Down To Zero*

I might just go crazy this week, if I’m not careful.   School is out for spring break and I am homebound by injury.  Three weeks into this cavalcade of crutches and I’m pretty close to despair.  I can’t remember the last time that I went this long without stepping foot into a gym, and I’m slipping slowly into madness as I daily watch all my hard won successes go to seed.

As the days wear on, my ass sinks lower, and the definition in my arms is fading.  I’ve tried very hard to curb my eating, but going from 3200 calories a day to 1200 is no easy feat, and I just don’t have the motivation to keep my hands out of that pretzel sack.  I’m back to averting my eyes from the mirror when I stand before it naked after a shower, and my “thin girl jeans” have been placed back to the bottom of the drawer in exile.

This does not a happy yawp make.

Yesterday, I gimped down to the fitness facility in my complex.  My orthopedist had okayed work on the stationary bike, (with no resistance), so I thought to get some cardio.  No such luck as 10 minutes in, my leg started aching.  I cannot fathom how I’m going to make it another FIVE weeks.

Being fit was inextricably linked to my feelings of self-worth and sex appeal.  Working out was the thing I was good at.  It kept me going.  I ran on running, thrived on plyos, gave thanks for planks.  This girl who had spent the first quarter of her life in abhorrence of herself, who had finally found a measure of pride in the fruits of her efforts, has been forced back into that world of disgust and self-loathing.  Back to square one.

 

 

*The title of this post comes from THIS song.

Uphill, Both Ways (R11 #2)

Oh Issues!  Oh Guilt!  Where to start?!  What to reveal?  There is a part of me that feels that to write honestly on this prompt is a sort of betrayal; treachery to my family and the unspoken rule regarding Our Business.  My parents are not bad people.  An odd couple, for sure, and co-dependent in equal measure, each doing his/her part to allow the other indulgence in his/her respective vices, but not bad…certainly not vindictive or morally corrupt.  They’re just flawed human beings and as such, I have no shortage of things that I would approach differently.

You should know, Dear Reader (and many of you already do) that I am no fan of loin fruit.  My distaste gently mellows with age, and I’m certainly not as opposed to shooting a warm bag of Jell-O out of my vagina as I once was, but there’s a certain amount of commitment involved in child-rearing that I’m loathe to take on, especially considering the No Returns policy and the teenage years.  I used to like to say that kids annoyed me and that they were all snotty, bacteria-breeding parasites.  It was kind of my thing.  But as years wear on and I find myself smack in the middle of a demographic defined by Baby Fervor, I realize that I’m not so much a critic of the babes themselves as I am of BAD PARENTS.   I tell you that not to judge PARENTS (which I do freely and without apology, by the way) but to tell you THIS:

I’m scared that I would be a Bad Parent: That I don’t have what it takes to change in myself the one and most important thing I would have my Hypothetical Children (a boy and a girl, close in age, perhaps twins) experience differently than me.

That they get to BE children.  That I, their mother, am certainly, and firmly, able and equipped to do the job, and that nothing (NOTHING) has anything close to that capacity to stand in the way.  That my loves, my distractions, my jobs, my ISSUES are all a distant second to doing everything necessary to assure them to THEIR MARROW that they are CARED for.

I always had what I needed as a kid.  I wasn’t neglected or starved, but I did grow up identifying and knowingly compensating for each of my parents’ emotional inabilities.  My father, a kind, patient and supremely masochistic man met and fell in love with my beautiful, whip-smart and scathingly scarred mother almost 40 years ago.  His driving need to be loved and not abandoned gelled well with her need to feel superior and they forged a marriage on an unspoken agreement that he would love her and hold her above all else as long as she would never leave, and she would never leave as long as he was willing to remain suppliant to her every harangue.

I was raised, you see, feeling bad for the way my mother treated my father, and so, grinning and bearing her treatment of me and excusing his refusal to disallow her abuse.  From a very young age, my father was not my father, you see, but a peer, a partner in misery.  We worked together to maintain the delicate balance of my mother’s mercurial moods, and for him, I forgave her sins, knowingly only that some days, he had it worse.

Those relationships evolved as such things are wont to, and I became more and more a caretaker, praying for soft seas and only silently steaming against a woman who couldn’t seem to keep her hands off a vodka bottle or little pink pills or me.  For years, it was he and I against her, and only recently have I realized that it was never really my side he was on, but hers.  That each time he apologized for her or made an excuse or asked me to tough it out, he left a scar the same size of the ones she left with her words or metal spoons.

Their feelings and hurts and relationship were always more important than my emotional, and oftentimes physical, well-being.

And so my railing against screaming babies and outspoken toddlers has much less to do with annoyance.  That’s just the blanket I cover everything in.  Underneath it, I turn on my flashlight, and survey the scars dealt me by each parent. I’m painfully doubtful of my own abilities to overcome them, that my children, those dark-eyed twins, never have to run barefoot over them on tip-toe, careful of an unseen and treacherous balance.

Out! Out! Damned Spot!! (R11#1)

One Word:  Encapsulate the year 2011 in one word.  Explain why you’re choosing that word.  Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2012 for you?

 

 

I came very close to blowing off this post.  Skipping it.  Or at least putting it off until tomorrow…without genuine intention to pick it up again.  There was a list, a bunch of “WHYs” and, at the top, the reality of my recent state of mind.  The spinning, whirling mess and the endless drop to the bottom.    I remembered last year’s journey and how my mostly one-sided musings circled the same two or three topics…30 days of endless loop, staring at each thing from all angles and shining the light of 360 degree surveillance on them in hopes of coming to some manner of clarity.  Some days I was rueful, others sardonic, but mostly I was optimistic: hopeful for brighter days ahead and certain that I’d taken something from those experiences to guide me forward.  It turns out those December days were postcards from the edge.

Looking down at the things circling the bowl labeled 2011, I wondered seriously if they were the types of things I should be sharing out loud.  I imagined the pity party and the well-intentioned “We’re All In This Togethers”.  Imagined post after post of maudlin mental vomit and then the subsequent nose-dive of friends and followers; people fleeing the scene of the crash to keep out from under the swirling black cloud that’s been plaguing me.

But the stark reality hit not long into The Making-Of-Excuses and I jolted to and began typing:  My bread is buttered one way only, and that is with a blunt knife.  My niche, you see, is the truth.  The Self Truth. The uncensored description of the crazy that I keep in my closet.    Why on earth would I start keeping secrets now?   I’m not published, or accomplished or professional.  I don’t have a book, or an idea for a book or a million followers.  What I do have, what I’m not lacking, is my truth and the lantern I shine on it, and I fancy that’s what keeps the few readers coming back. In the end, I may not know what’s going to come out of my mouth next, but I do know that it’s going to be as close as I can get it to The Big T.

So FUCK IT!, I say.  Fuck it, and let’s see what comes out in the wash.  In for the penny, in for the pound, and kids, Mama’s got some shit to get off her chest.

So with that, you should know that my word for 2011 is MELANCHOLY.  I had some amazing experiences and saw some extraordinary things.  I laughed out loud and fought even louder.  I took leaps and made efforts and conquered smoking (Adieu, Parliament Lights!)  But over it all, clouding the lens, peeing in my cereal, was my old friend Depression.  She’s camped out even now in the deep recesses: over a table and under a bare fluorescent bulb, wearing green fatigues and smoking those Parliaments…planning her next guerrilla attack.  Over the next 30 days, if last year is any indication, I’m going to be introducing her to you, so here’s your fair warning.  She walks around with a half-empty bottle of vodka and no makeup, and most of the time she forgets to shower.

Last year, I wanted Renaissance, but got instead, rain my parade.  I’ll be damned if I let that bitch squat where she is for another 365.  This year?  2012?  Light.  Let there be light.

Please.

If Only It Were That Simple….

 

Author Dan Andrews wrote a prompt for the Trust 30 challenge that I don’t find to be much of a prompt at all.  It was kind of a self help book boiled down to a couple of paragraphs.  Regardless, I signed on, and certainly don’t want to cop out.  As such, I took a portion of The Prompt and realized I already had something in the archives that I wanted to say about it.

 

In regards to the kind of person I want to be, I have the following to say:

I want quiet–quiet in my head;

a hush when I close my eyes.

I want to lay my head down and drop to sleep without the agony of the day’s playback on repeat.

I want to feel effortlessly kind, and less a fraud.

I want buoyancy in place of the lead weight in my chest which I think must be my heart.

I want to sigh in contentment at this day’s end, and, instead of rancid ennui, look to the next with optimism and genuine curiosity.

I want pleasing things to feel pleasing, and I want to look at my world with real and unclouded joy.

Aladdin’s Cave

Trust 30 Prompt: Write down one thing you’ve always wanted to do and how you will achieve that goal. Don’t be afraid to be very specific in how you’ll achieve it: once you start achieving, your goals will get bigger and your capability to meet them will grow.  Author:  Colin Wright

 

I’m coming off of a pretty long stint of Not A Fucking Word, and so when I saw all this stuff about Trust 30, I was excited to dip my toe back in with some baby steps and canned prompts.  Even though I’m a dollar short and more than 15 days late, I went to the website and signed up without a second thought.  It wasn’t until after I’d confirmed my participation, that I read the first prompt.  I immediately began developing a mental bucket list, and continued that way for about ten minutes before I realized that I’d been staring blankly out of my window in a reverie of pipedreams, as my cursor flashed on a blank and mocking screen.

A list scrolled, like the opening of Star Wars.  Visit India and Spain.  Learn to throw a pot.  Ride a bullet train.  Stand on the Four Corners.  Get lots more tattoos.  Cultivate a real garden.  Go to “just-one-more” Paul Van Dyk show (mental note to write a memory about that) and dance all night.  Hike the 46 Adirondack peaks…..Blah.Blah.Blah.  I could write thousands of words on all the things I want to do and see and be.  My inner life, were I to lay it bare before you, would resemble a third-world market bazaar; foreign and thrilling, sensual and repulsive.  Beaded handicrafts glint under woven tapestries while toothless and sun-browned faces shout the day’s deals on freshly filleted pigeon and eel; where urchins dash between bodies, picking pockets.  I am constantly wandering the stalls, searching out little treasures, sampling the wares.  Darting between vendors and digging through woven straw bins.

The variety is astonishing.  There are no patterns.  My fancy is struck by whim.

I am, simply, a collector.  A collector of moments, of memories, of notches in bedposts.

I’m a sucker for road trips and hay rides and leaps of faith.

I am a cynical romantic (or a romantical cynic, depending on the day), convinced that the purgatory of everyday disappointment is somewhere adding up, that I am paying off in boredom and ennui the debt to my future happiness.  There can’t, (of course!), be joy or peaceful contentment without their equal opposites for comparison, so with each sad let down, I am dysfunctionally thrilled to see my Suffer-O-Meter spike–and I get “that-much” closer to an unfocused, unknown ideal.  Every moment, or collection of moments is the payment for another.  The Universe as an accountant.  Penance.  It’s the time your friends went to that AMAZING show, but you had taken an extra shift at the bar which pays for that tiny moment with the snow tickling down through the streetlights when you smiled and felt Okay.

Each experience has the opportunity to dazzle.  At any given moment, I could be transported…transfixed–rooted to a minute to which all future changes can be traced.  I scan the world for opportunities to feel that…each new thing a shiny yellow taxi, paid for by a mysterious doorman.  Destination and resulting feeling? Unknown.   So I jumped off that bridge, ran that race, kissed that boy.  I took that detour, ate those mushrooms, tried out for cheerleading.  Just once, a blind date, and twice, rather bad car crashes.    It’s the reason I say yes to the odd, the convoluted, the regional/local.  Hiding, LURKING somewhere amongst that mass of DOING potential, lies the corner I’ll turn, the switch I’ll switch, where I look back after a few more steps and realize:  “I’m Happy.  THIS is it.  I’m finally HERE.”

The universe keeps us honest, tempers those impish delights with If-Onlys and Almosts and Not-So-Fasts.  It throws in zingers to stun and stagger–cosmic checks and balances.  I believe in the miracles and so I endure the abrasions.  They’re merit badges.  Receipts for dues paid.  Scar tissue.

And so, to answer the prompt:

I realized not so very long ago that all of these things, in themselves are unimportant.  Alone, they are just small stories.  Vignettes.  Some rather boring and banal, others mini-epics.    But in the context of my life?  Of my psychology?  Together, summed, they are IT.  There isn’t ONE particular thing that I wish to do before I die, there are SCADS.   And in trying to narrow the field to one goal, I’ve learned that there isn’t one.  The goal is roughly the total of my efforts.  Did I do enough?  Did I not slack off?  Did I revel in delight and share my whimsy?  At the final accounting, when I pull out my North Face and remove my filled journals, I want there to be enough of them to nod certainly over.  So I’ll say Yes.  And I’ll go.  And do.  And say.  And see.  I’ll reach out, and try out.  I will actively participate.  What will I do?  As much as I can pack in.

Alice? More like the Mad Hatter.

I’ve just returned from an interview at Kennewick City School District.  It was short and sweet and I’ve come away with a job as a substitute para-educator.  No twisted knickers please, I had to look that one up myself…it means Fill-In Heartbeat.  Extra Body.  Chaperone.

I am, Dear Reader, a hurricane of thought right now, and am truthfully having a helluva time sifting through it all.  It’s well-documented that, aside from tutoring, I am sans employment.  I’m also at an employment intersection where I can continue on straight or veer hard right into the barrio.  A super smart lady once told me:  “Jennifer, it’ll work, or it’ll work.”  I keep repeating that to myself as I face the polarity in my head.

1.  There’s a certain amount of self-loathing that goes along with being jobless.  What am I WORTH to anyone sitting around my apartment all day, blogging and working on my fitness?  To an outsider, that might sound like a little bit of heaven, but I’ve got news kids:  If I was going to be a kept women, there would have to be OODLES more jewels and private beachfront involved.  Trust.  I am contributing a big, fat goose egg to the world right now, and that looms large.  Towering, even.

2.  Stagnant Credits Column = Plummeting self-esteem.  Ima be real whichall for a second….I very much gauge my own success by salary and the increasing importance of the positions I’ve held.  My advancement since college has been textbook, an upsweeping curve of remuneration, responsibility and expertise.  I was proud of my last job.  Proud of its scope and its stress level.  I earned my salary there, and was salaried well.  Historically, it was very difficult to keep a position there for any period over a year.  Factor in my womanhood, and that period decreased to around 6 months.  I was really kind of awesome at it.

Taking this position means a lopping-off-at-the-knees of all of the above.  It’s requirements were a GED and a heartbeat.  (Although they DID request a college transcript)  I haven’t checked the mall lately, but I’m fairly certain that I could make as much folding a week’s worth of boatnecks at The Gap.  This job means quite a few leaps back toward BEGINNER and away from BIG GIRL.  It’s a blow to my ego, for sure.

3.  The Unknown = Unsettling Pit In My Stomach.  I like a sure thing.  A plan.  Contingencies.  I like knowing what to expect and to be prepared for it.  Stress goes notoriously hard on me, and I’ve learned, over and over, that an Adapted Jen’s Intestinal Tract functions much closer to normal than a Where-The-Fuck-Did-THAT-Just-Come-From Jen’s Intestinal Tract.  Operations is all I’ve known for the past 10 years.  See problem?  Solve problem.  It’s my jam.  Why do I want to go and mess with something I’m pretty damn good at in order to search for something I haven’t yet fully identified?

4.  Fulfilled = Zen Jen.  I hated it more than I loved it.  And I can’t say I ever really loved it.  It fed my ego, absolutely.  Being GOOD at something was like an E pill for my inner self.  A mellow roll for my soul.  It felt GOOD to make more than the Old Man.  Felt good to be more educated and better employed than most people in my private life.  I was silently superior.  I would never lord it over someone, but I was definitely privately glad to NOT be them.

Yuck, right?  Who wants to be THAT girl?  Always after thinking and feeling those things, I’d hate myself a little.  When a high point in your day is being able to tow someone’s car, it’s time to evict the Soul Sucker and move on.  I don’t know what happy is and I don’t know where to look for fulfillment.  But I’m certain THAT wasn’t IT.  Something is needling at me, and it’s being pretty insistent, a gentle and repetitive tug somewhere back there in the Deep Me.  I know there’s something there.  I know that it’s amazing and I know where NOT to look.  On some days, that’s more than enough. On others, that Unknown creeps right in and takes over.

5.  The Right Time = Now.  When the Old Man made the executive decision to move us here, I was comforted by three things.  The first was the fact I’d get to take an extended vacation at home and on the beach.  The second was the fact that I’d put a cap on it at 2 years FIRM and that was a duration I could endure.  The third was knowing that the Old Man would be making enough money so that I could take some time to find a job that lit my fire.  Well, I’m a year in, and this education thing is growing on me.  It’s time to figure it out.  This job may be low low low in the expertise column, but it will give me time in a classroom, with students.  It’s an opportunity for me to observe and absorb.  I can think of better places than here, but I can’t figure a better time than now.

So, of course, I’m taking it.  I’m going to ‘orientation’ (*sigh*) tomorrow and I’m told I can start working as soon as Thursday.  My hopes aren’t high–they can’t be when an interview is only 3.5 minutes long–but they are there.  This could be a dead end…or the door to the room where I finally come upon a sleeping Meant To Be.

Whew

It would appear, that despite all attempts at heart failure via anxiety, that Saturday’s excursion proved a success.

The pressure was on.  I half prayed on Friday night to wake up to torrential rain heavy enough as to provide legitimate excuse for cancellation.  I fiddled around with my back pack, packed up extra snacks, speculated as to the type of person our one signed up participant would be.

There were panicked moments.  Being only a threesome, she’d have to carpool with us.  That meant extra talking…performing.

There were tenth and eleventh thoughts…why had I chosen a hike so far away? What if it’s too long for her fitness level?  What if it’s too short and easy for her fitness level?

In the end, I did what I always do.  I ignored my misgivings and kept marching stalwartly on.  That’s what happens in my head, you see.  There are two warring factions:  One, a neurotic, shell-shocked harbinger of certain, thundering doom and the other, a pink-cheeked optimist believing unwaveringly in the possibility of beauty around each corner.  They’re both of equal size and brawn, and evenly matched in tenacity and conviction.  Predicting the winner in any given week or day or even second is a crap shoot, the odds stacked squarely at 50/50.

We saw our third the moment we pulled into the fresh market parking lot.  No turning back then, so I got out of the truck, shook her hand and invited her to drive with us.  No sense in stepping in one toe at a time right?  She piled her things into the back seat, gave a good-natured shrug to the idea that we had now heat and that our dog is a whiny mess (she takes after her mom….), and we were off.  On the road to adventure.

The rest of the car ride was well-deserving of my sigh of relief.  Conversation was easy and plentiful, and my liberal use of The Eff Word seemed not to offend.  Within a half an hour, I was able to begin congratulating myself on a smooth embarkation, and to allow for the slightest loosening of tension at the very edges of my nerves.  I breathed out slightly, and gave way to what the day wanted to be.  In skydiving, the hardest part is stepping out of the plane.  I find that to be mostly true of most other adventures I subject myself to as well.

There was a moment or two–when we were driving around, unable to find the trailhead–when I began to mourn as fleeting the success of the trip, but, thanks to some cow farmers going about their daily business, we were soon back on track and “a pied”, hiking toward Towell Falls.

The rest of the day passed pleasantly and in the best way I could have imagined it.  Everyone moved at a similar pace and the conversation wove in and out unprompted by foreign fertilizers.  At a mile in, my anxiety was at its lowest drone, and I reached my eyes around, taking in the day.

I fight endlessly and everyday against dark clouds and demons.  I feel, and deeply, the worst of each of my days.  But sometimes–and this is what keeps me from giving in to that neurotic dissenter–I manage to beat my own expectations, and prove the existence of ease and okay-ness.  This Too Shall Pass.  Sometimes, I repeat it enough that it’s true.

Things To Avoid When You’re Socially Inept

Oh why??  Why did I do it?  What was I thinking?!  How could I have forgotten and ignored the basic traits in myself that will surely make this endeavor a total disaster?  What if the people suck?  Or are weird?  Or figure out that I’m strange?

Well, I’ve gone and done it.  I’ve dug myself a hole from which there’s no escape.  In my scramble to find ways to enjoy my time here in this Mexican bordertown, I inadvertently and heedlessly hurled myself into a puddle of stress, anxiety and self-doubt.

Upon moving here, I immediately checked MeetUp.com for groups involving things that I enjoy: Hiking, yoga, exercise, trail running, knitting, writing, reading, drinking.  There was NOTHING.  I looked again with different keywords: backpacking, pilates, fitness, jogging, crocheting, books.  Still nothing.

With the summer rapidly approaching, I kept going over and over and over the same lament: I wish I had friends here.  I wished for D to go hiking with.  I wished for Blondie to clean with.  I wished for M to have beers with.  I wished for K to people-watch with.  It started to form into a bona fide funk, and I needed to do something about it.

So I planned a hike.

But I didn’t stop there.  Oh no.  I kept going.

There have to be other hikers here right?  Out of the tens of thousands of people in these three “cities”, there has got to be one or two that are funny and sarcastic and awesome like D, right?  RIGHT?!

And so, on a whim, I paid $36 and started my own MeetUp group called Hiking For Dummies.  I described my goals for hiking this summer and posted the first trip to Palouse Falls that day.  (Which was, incidentally, Friday, the day before the hike itself….I wasn’t lying, I got a wild burr up my ass and three minutes later, I was the organizer and founding member of this group now open to anyone to join.)

I don’t really know why I did it.  I wanted a hiking buddy, for sure; the Old Man humors me and goes when he has no other choice, but deep down, he really doesn’t like it.  It’d be nice to have someone who likes it like I do.  I wanted to meet other people.  Find things to do here.  Discover ways of forming relationships that doesn’t include the bar–which, I fear, I’m rapidly outgrowing.

For a few hours, it felt good.  I was proactive.  The pipedreams of what COULD be kept playing on repeat.  My summer previewed and it was packed with trips and pictures and summits and waterfalls and fields of wildflowers.

And then came the sugar crash.

Mostly, if you met me, you’d never believe me if I told you that I’m generally uncomfortable in new situations and around new people.  But I’m a fake-it-till-you-make-it kinda girl.  I do my best with small talk and smiles and silently pray for a reprieve from someone else.  Until I get comfortable, I’m happiest standing in the back, checking shit out, letting someone else take the lead.  (After that, look out, I’ll charge to the front, but that’s a whole other post on a whole other personality!)

Expectedly, people started signing up.  I had actual MEMBERS who were excited that FINALLY there was a group like this.  I had the type of people that, on paper, were exactly the type of people I was looking for.  Varied hiking experience, varied ages, varied backgrounds.  And it was all of a sudden, REAL.

End honeymoon phase.

It wasn’t long before I realized that it was me who was the organizer of this group.  Me who was going to have to do all the greeting and introducing.  Me that was going to have to take the lead.  Me that was going to have to make the small talk until everyone started picking up on their own.  Me that was going to have to diffuse the awkward moments (the MOST scary because I am usually the CAUSE of the awkward pause…).

And here I sit.  ready for battle once again with my own, probably very mild, case of social anxiety.  Joining a group like this would mean that I could attend when I wanted and bow out if I didn’t.  I could choose who I talked to and who I pursued a relationship with.  As the organizer, it must be equal opportunity to all who join.  Because that’s the type of environment I want to foster.  On the one hand, I’ve taken steps to create a situation that I’ve been searching for.  On the other, I never meant to sign up for the responsibility that goes with it.

My next MeetUp is this Saturday.  I just posted it, and there’s already one person who’s RSVP’d.  Here’s hoping she’s not a serial killer or close talker…..