C-r-a-z-y

Sometimes the case of the letter makes all the difference.  God or god.  An important personal I or a misplaced letter i.  Summer the girl or summer the season.  The uppercase letter delineates between importance and the ordinary.

Perfectionism is a haunt of mine.  It is a ghost that follows me and does not stop no matter what I'm doing.   It kills a day in a blink.  It turns anxiety inside/out.  It takes away my care for something good; even the smallest of outcomes.

Fuck it.

That is perfectionism in two simple words.  If I cannot do it right then I refuse to do it at all.  How dangerous is that?  Or rather... how stupid is that?

I see my world in black and white.  Absolutes.  You are either right or wrong.  Good or bad.  Smart or stupid.  I have a ridiculously logical brain.  Logic is the glue that holds the shards of me together.  Without this reason, I probably would have landed in the crazy house a long time ago.  Logic is my reality.  If I can reason it; it exists.  If I cannot; it must not be.

And there is the problem.  There is nothing logical about my past.  Although it seems that abusers have a handbook; the logic chapter is always found to be ripped out, shredded, and burned.   They left that part of it up to us to figure out; to understand their evil.  That is what makes us crazy in the first place.

So the harder I try to understand; the crazier I get.  Literally.  I cannot reason what was done to me and so sets in denial.  I can't understand it; I can't make it right.  So fuck it.

The abundance of fuck its has really slowed me down.  Nearly to a halt and I'm not just talking about my mental healing.  This is my real life too.  Housekeeping, taking care of myself, dieting, exercise, blah blah blah... you get the picture.  If I can't do it right and perfect; then I won't do it at all. 

All great thoughts to live by.

This thinking is not something easy to change.  It is a deep part of who I am.   It is also something that makes me feel normal.  Normal exactly long enough until I realize that normal people don't do math and physics problems for fun.  But I digress because my weirdness belongs in a whole other post. 

I have steps to take.  One at a time.  Crying just one time worked for me.  And then I did it again.  Getting up early once led to me getting up early again AND working out.  It doesn't have to be all or nothing and sometimes it's alright to be somewhere and in between.   I don't have to be completely healed or entirely wounded. 

I'm still crazy; even with the steps towards tears and feeling.  But I have progress now because I have downgraded letters; even if it is just one.  Now I'm just crazy.

crazy with a little "c"...

Tears

Dear Tears,

How very sorry I am for what you have lived with.  You and I have not spent much time together.  I avoid you because I despise crying.  You avoid me because we are not supposed to cry.

So other than objectives, we have not known much about one another.  Sure, I've squeezed out a few tears here and there; but a sob?  Not really.  And those times that I have needed to cry, you stood by and fought a deluge at much cost to yourself.

Over the past few days I have cried.  And when I say cry, I mean real and bitter tears.  Tears stockpiled over years of pain.  Tears we both did not believe to exist.  As this happened I watched you through my blurry eyes, shaking in a corner.  You were waiting for him and he did not come.  We were both surprised.

No one hit us until we stopped crying.  No one fucked us until there were no more tears to cry.  Not once was the blood running faster than the tears.  In fact, there was no blood at all. 

Each tear, it did hurt.  Like crying razor blades.  But it was a healing kind of hurt.  To borrow a thought... it hurts a lot less to rip a band-aid off quickly than slowly.  Or not at all.  So I sit in my car and cry while I peel the neglected, crusty bandages of abuse away.  I do this while I worry about keeping you safe.  It's a role reversal of sorts.

Watching you with intent, I see that you are small.  You are a skinny boy younger than my own daughter.  She's six.  And now I am not seeing you through the haze of my own pain.   Without the need to dodge his fists, I see that you have glasses and blonde hair.  Your glasses are broken and behind the cracks you have no eyes.  No eyes that cry no tears.

No wonder. 

I can cry your tears now.  And it's OK if you never shed one of your own; that is not your job.   It's mine now and you know, tears are not that bad.

And neither are you.  So go and rest.

Your friend,

Shattered

Party

What is a blog in December without a cheery holiday post from a Christmas past?

My blog.  Sorry.

I have spent the last several days attempting to conjure up even one sliver of a Christmas memory to smile and roll my eyes at. The bike I always wanted. The puppy in the bow-tied box. The impossible-to-find-toy found under our tree. The antics of out-laws and in-laws. Something. Anything. Nothing.

I can't remember a Christmas in my past; I just know that I have never enjoyed the holidays. The closest I come is in remembering a school party, candy canes, and trashy gifts.

I hate getting notes sent home from the teacher. Whatever is detailed, asked for, or is changing; those things will be ignored. My face red with shame, I will stand and explain to my teacher why the note was not followed and why I am unsigned, empty handed, or out of new guidelines. My parents are too busy to care or too unimpressed with me to help a kid be a productive member of a second grade class.

I am sitting in the carpool line and pinned to my shirt is a note on green paper asking for my contribution to the class Christmas party. Filled in the blank with curly teacher writing are the words candy canes. I like to eat paper and I would have been better off eating this note. I would be less hungry and my mother would have one less item to concern her hatred with.

Walking to the car, I pulled the note off the pin and crammed it in my uniform jumper pocket. I waited for the seemingly right time to ask... after my sister had presented her own classroom party request and had it approved. What better time?

I ran to my room to rescue that green note from a certain death in the washing machine. I took it to my mother and showed her my own request. Quickly she glanced and returned the note to its original creases. I received a conditional "yes".

Behave, keep your room clean, have good manners, don't talk back... these were the conditions pressed upon my behavior in order to receive my candy cane contribution.

The night before the party came and went. That morning, I asked my mother where my Christmas party requirements were and informed me that they were in my bag. Once at school, I opened my bag to find a smaller bag. Inside was one, single peppermint.

One fucking mint to share with my class.

Humiliated, I am sitting at my desk when I hear the morning announcements. The younger kids are having their parties first. There is my one chance. I twist and fret until the younger parties are finished. I ask to go to the restroom and slip into the other wing of the school. Happy kids are leaving hand in hand with their hurried parents. The classrooms are black as I step into each one to forage for my treats.

Digging through cold cups of hot chocolate, sticky red frosting, and squeezed small juice boxes, I find my treasures. Discarded candy canes. I carefully wipe each one off and will the broken ones whole again. I carefully stuff them in my pockets and repeat this process until I have twenty precious canes to share with my friends.

I race back to my own classroom but not before I peer into my sister's room. And there she is. My mother. Smiling, laughing, and enjoying my sister's Christmas party. I hate her at this specific moment.

I return to my seat only to linger a few minutes behind when the recess bell rings. With everyone gone, I retrieve the rescued candies from my pockets and place them on the table with all the other green notes fulfilled.

She didn't come to my party. She never said a word to me. I never said a word to her.

Beauty

There are times where beauty surrounds us.  And there are more times where there is little beauty to be found.  I grew up in a cold, dark, and ugly museum.  Those who know me and know even a snippet of my past seem surprised that I grew up in a wealthy family.  For some reason, abuse is often perceived as a lower class problem.  Child Protective Services visited my family on a few occasions and they were met with a facade of beauty. 

Abuse could not be happening here... not in such a beautiful home... not with such a beautiful family.

Bullshit.  It was happening and I believe that our money made it worse.  There was a perception of beauty; a deceitful view.  Beauty really is skin deep.

There is false beauty and there is true beauty.  True beauty is hard fought.  It is foraged from ruins; from devastation.  When beauty does not surround you, you become creative.  You are forced to.  Some of the most gifted and creative people came from despaired lives.  They were forced to become creative; a compensation to survive.

I have a hidden talent.  I am creative.  People are always surprised when they find this out.  See, I am logical and analytical.  So much so that I solve math problems for fun.  Yeah, I know.  But I have a whole other side to me; a side that draws, sews, quilts, crochets, etc.

I discovered my love for quilting a few years ago.  There is something fascinating and soothing in taking fabric, cutting it into pieces, piecing a quilt top, quilting it, and then making something useful out of previously cut apart fabric.  I create my own beauty.  I have had to do this my entire life; previously out of necessity and now because I love it. 

Much like a quilt, I have been cut to pieces.  I will never be the original fabric I was created to be.  But now I have the chance to piece my life into something beautiful and useful.  It is an amazing opportunity.  Quilting is a painful process; needle pricks, calluses, and punching through multiple layers make the process hard.  It takes patience.  And love.  The thread pulls and holds everything together and what else could that be other than love?  My thread is those in my life who love me, contribute, stabilize, encourage, inspire, and create a beautiful and intricate quilting design. 

I could not do this without my thread.