Holding a Place No Longer

The new blog is up and running thanks to the handsome and sexy Jonathan Worent. Come find me at gabrielle.worent.com.

Old Hurts

I happened to mention to my chiropractor the other day that my knee was hurting. What followed was no fun at all, an exploratory rotation and feel, that nod you never want to see and then a quick twist and shove. He’s helped so much with chronically sore places in my back that I trusted all this twisting implicitly. I walked away assuming everything was all good now. A mere flight of stairs disabused me of this opinion. Nope, nope, nope- I still hurt only now it aaaaaached even when I wasn’t running. Or walking. Or doing anything other than sitting or, perhaps, lying in bed trying to fall asleep.

I’m not very medical so I was very proud of myself when I came up with a reason for why I was hurting. When I first hurt my knee due to a very simple tweak during an evening of bowling, I babied it, doing rehab at the gym instead of powering through the pain. Lots of slow paces on the elliptical and knee strengthening exercises. Only I never had anyone make sure I was strengthening the knee back into alignment. I thought that since I was taking care of the hurt knee at all I would be fine.

Only now it’s not fine and not only is it not fine, but now there is a whole heap of muscle I so carefully built up that holds my knee in the wrong place. I can function just fine, live a nice painless life until I put stress on that knee. A minute of running and I can feel every out-of-line ligament and bit of cartilage. I healed it, but I healed it wrong.

There have been tumultuous times of my life, times that tweaked my soul out of alignment. If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you might already know the sorts of times I’m talking about. These times hurt me deep, in places I never identified. I either healed those hurts up or ignored them but either way I healed them wrong. And I go along just fine until some stress comes along and then I feel every single out-of-line emotion and memory.

I’ve been seeing a counselor for the past six months or so, trying to put back some of the things that healed wrong. He says I make counseling easy, that I already have the framework of insight, self-awareness and introspection ready for him to build on. That makes me feel like the A+ student of the crazy ward. And it doesn’t help when everything hurts, when we work together to wrench my out-of-joint soul back into alignment. There are just so many muscles built up to keep it in place.

It has been an amazing six months or so, times of healing. I told him this week that I can run my fingers down the walls of my mind and only catch them on one or two issues. There used to be sharp edges everywhere. There is so much progress happening it seems petty to whine about some pain that’s happening along the way. But my knee really hurts, even while I try to build up new muscles to hold it in its rightful place.

I’ve had to learn how to do rehab on my soul. Some of this involved a job that gave me mind-space to do that rehab. Other exercises involve learning what self-care looks like for me. I’ll give you a hint- it’s not a spa day or a shopping spree or a hot bath or anything that I expected self-care to look like. For me it’s a book that makes me think, a movie that makes me want to create something, media that births thoughts in my mind and then the space and time to cultivate those thoughts. There is little that makes me happier or feel more fulfilled than having a mind full of thoughts.

So I’m sitting at Leaves N Beans on Main, my foot up on a chair to ease the ache in my knee, telling the world about my counseling to ease the ache in my soul. I’m in the midst of the healing process so everything hurts, but I can see the end in sight. I will run again someday. I will be whole again someday.

Now is the time to do the work.

Thinking Again

Since leaving Midstate I’ve been finding that I once again have enough brain space to think.

Y’know, that was going to be the opening line for a bog post about what I’ve been thinking about. I’m sure that post would have been fantastic, it having been written by me after all, but let’s take a moment and celebrate the fact that there are once again thoughts in my head.

 The books I’m reading have enough space in my head to bounce around a bit, ramming into other thoughts and sticking loosely, like a ball of Silly Putty bouncing around a room. Connections are formed, this thought creating associations with that until there’s a web of connections, some reaching backwards in time to thoughts I’d forgotten about. I consider ramifications, turn the thoughts over and over, trying to see how they fit into the larger construct I’ve been working on for decades I like to call “How Gabrielle Sees the World”.

I feel like someone who digs out their old paints, the brushes awkward in hands that used to know every splinter and groove. The first few canvases might be ham-handed and overdrawn, colors badly mixed and lines out of whack, but they’re bright, colorful, full of the joy of rediscovery. The old skill will return in time.

Today I shall think about this return to joy. I will dwell on the feeling of happiness, like little bubbles, on the ricochet of thoughts that shakes other idea loose. Perhaps tomorrow I shall think about something else. 

Life Ambition #73

It was roughly three years when I took up running in an attempt to get in shape and lose weight (spoiler alert: it failed). I came up to a stop sign, all sweaty and out of breath, seriously wondering if this running this would ever be for me (the jury’s still out). A car pulled up next me, a vaguely thuggish looking guy leaning out the passenger side. He yelled something to me, something that startled me so much it wasn’t until after they drove away that I thought to react.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Keep up the good work!” Then he gave me a big smile and a thumbs up.

Someday, I want to do this for someone.

Getting It Done

I have never had much ambition. Any driving goal that you might be able to identify in my life is not so much something I was to accomplish, but a person I want to be. It’s solidified for me, recently, into a phrase my brother said about someone else. That person “got shit done” and so was invaluable to his organization. I turned the phrase over in my head and realized that, without being fully cognizant of the specifics, I have been striving to be someone who gets shit done. It’s a sort of “When I grow up…” idea.

It’s a great ambition, in my opinion, this capable dependability no matter the circumstances. It does make transitions rather difficult, though.

I have been at Samaritan for three weeks and I feel like the opposite of someone who gets shit done. I’m the newb, the beginner, the *shudder* trainee. I went from being the trainer to the trainee, making mistakes and plodding along. Since my feeling of worth is so intricately connected with my ability to get shit done I’ve felt like a failure, like a burden on the ministry and my coworkers. Yeah, it’s over-dramatic, but I asked a grocery store employee to dance the hulu today so over-dramatic is about par for me. In my defense, he was in a grass skirt and had a lei around his neck so it should have been expected.

The past three weeks have been difficult. On the one hand, I feel very privileged to work with the people I work with. They are lovely souls, full of grace even when I make mistakes. On the other hand, I have felt the sharp jolt of starting over, learning a new system and new skills. That jolt shook up my sense of self, never very firmly anchored, from its place and bounced it around my insides.

Thursday someone helped strap my sense of self back in. I was telling him about our Opening Ceremonies parties, on the Friday of my first week at a new job while we were giving a friend rides to and from her third-shift job and had spontaneously decided to kidnap my six nieces and nephews overnight. He laughed and, understanding everything else going on in my world, said that no matter what was happening at work, I was still, clearly, someone who got shit done.

And something eased in my soul, a breath that said, “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”

Of Dreams, Rage and Coffee Cake

I haven’t been sleeping well the past couple of days. I feel like I’m mostly just dozing which is when I have the worst dreams. I even did that thing I swore I’d never do, where Jonathan says something mean to me in my dream and I wake up holding it against him. This morning I had a dream that was disturbing and confusing and oddly satisfying.

It featured a friend of Jonathan’s named Dane (no, Jonathan does not have a friend named Dane, nor does he have a friend who looks or behaves anything like Dane. Dane is named Dane simply because I now spend all day looking at names and I thought Dane was kinda cool). Dane was staying with us because he was down on his luck, though our house didn’t look like our house and I’m not entirely sure that we didn’t move in with Jonathan’s parents halfway through the dream.

Welcome to dream logic. Just stick with me.

Anyway, we were helping him, we were trying to take care of him, to give him a place to stay while he pulled himself together and not only did he ‘accidentally’ walk in on me in the shower, but he ate my coffee cake! I have never, not once in my life, made coffee cake, but in my dream this was a violation of trust on the deepest level. I’d apparently been saving that coffee cake or was planning on taking it to an event or something. He tried to apologize, crumbs all over his mouth, but I was furious. I walked over to where he was sitting at the table, Jonathan trying to explain that his behavior was unacceptable, and I flipped the table over.

Just grabbed it and flipped it.

Standing outside of myself, watching myself in my dream, I was shocked. Then I felt this conscious decision to just go with it, to stay mad and drive home the point. Amidst all the shocked feelings and disbelief that I was behaving like this there was a certain satisfaction. I was actually stepping up on my own behalf to someone who had made me feel vulnerable and who had been walking all over my kindness. I wasn’t just taking it anymore.

Someone at work suggested I run my dreams through a dream interpreter, but I hardly think that’s necessary in this case. I have no concept of what this means for the rest of my life, how it connects with turning the other cheek and all that. It feels like a momentous moment, even if it only happened in a dream.

Plus, now I want to make a coffee cake.

Worthy of Love

In my quest to read 24 new books this year I’ve had to get somewhat creative with finding new books to read. I do not have the strength of Ideation so coming up with new ideas for what to read is difficult for me. Browsing through my Kindle library to get spark some ideas I happened upon a book I’d preordered when it seemed like a good idea and then hadn’t read when it’d been released- Altar Ego by Craig Groeschel.

The premise of this book is that we govern our lives according to the many labels and names we carry. Some of them are valid but since many of them were given to us by our fellow man they are faulty, mere lies that we come to believe so deeply they affect who we think we are. The aim of the book was to identify the wrong labels and figure out who God says we are. His labels are perfection, a guidebook of who He made us to be and, as Craig said many times, if you know what something is called then you’ll know what it’s for.

I’m on a recent Brene Brown kick, watching her TED Talks about vulnerability and, soon I hope, reading her book Daring Greatly. Today I watched her first TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability”. In this talk Brene makes a couple of what may turn out to be life-changing assertions. She says, the only difference between the people she studied who were able to accept love and who had a feeling of worthiness and those who were always struggling for it was that the first set of people believed that they were inherently worthy of love and acceptance. It is truthfully as simple as that. And because of this inherent believe these people lived in a way that she called Wholehearted. They were able to be compassionate with others because they had learned to be compassionate with themselves. They were able to connect because they could let go of who they thought they should be and be who they truly were without the fear of being rejected. And since they weren’t constantly on the hunt of something to numb the feelings of inadequacy and shame, they were able to feel all the good emotions like joy and gratitude.

Okay, so follow me here- It seems like what we need to live as Wholehearted people is that inherent surety of our worth. The question remains, though, where does that surety come from? And, if we don’t have it, where do we get it from?

Well, who are you?

At your deepest, most fundamental core what is your name?

You dig down deep enough and you’ll find that your name and mine are the same. We are all of us made in the image and likeness of the most perfect and most holy God. He crafted us, decided on us when we could not decide on ourselves. No matter how disparate our experiences, you and I both share the fact that we did nothing to influence our conceptions. No matter what your parents tell you, that you were an accident or a mistake, you were decided upon by the truest embodiment of Father. You are, at your deepest level, worthy of love.

My hope is that if I keep telling myself this then I’ll be able to tell it to you at some point. Then you’ll tell it to someone else and they’ll pass it on and maybe we can actually come to a place where people can love each other, show compassion and connect in deep ways. We are a country of people living together alone and it is killing us. The data seems to say that in order to heal we must first be loved, believe that we are worthy of love.

We are worthy of love. It’s part of our DNA, part of our truest names. Now is the time to live like it, to live wholehearted lives in a broken-hearted world.

Being Vulnerable

I feel like the storm has passed. I’ve settled in, found some normal, feel slightly good at what I do again, and had coworkers respond with speed and grace to a blood sugar crash S.O.S. email. What more could you ask for in a job?

A week or so ago, I followed a series of links to Brene Brown’s TED Talk about vulnerability and shame. After many years researching shame, worthiness and courage she discovered that all of the numbers point to vulnerability being the beginning of all good things. That is a vast oversimplification, but Brene has a Ph.D and I do not so I’m okay with simplifying ideas.

Brene made the distinction between guilt and shame with guilt saying “I’ve done bad” and shame insisting “I am bad”. As someone who struggles with both guilt and shame I found this to be a helpful distinction. I started paying attention to my inner voices, who tend to treat me like crap, trying to determine if I tend to be full of guilt or full of shame. So far I’m leaning towards guilt, but it’s a particular shame-filled variety just to make life interesting.

But getting back to vulnerability. The big idea is that it matters and is a must for anyone who is trying to put any grace out into the world. I’ve seen both sides of this in the realm of talks and lectures I’ve seen. There are some talks that, no matter what the subject matter, work. I have watched lectures on topics I don’t care an iota about that were riveting. And I have suffered through lectures on topics I cared deeply about that, no matter how hard I tried to listen, didn’t work. The deciding factor was rarely how skilled the speaker was or the design of the set he had to work with, but how much of his soul we the audience were allowed to see. If a speaker walked onto the stage and bled for us I would happily sit and listen to him describe his lunch.

Jonathan has been trying to figure out what my blog is all about so he can build me a new one. I keep hemming and hawing through descriptions that make me look vaguely exhibitionist and self-involved. But when all the fluff comes off, the point of this space on the internet is to put some grace out into the world. I want to make beauty and words are all I know. But, and you’ll know this if you’ve followed me thus far, the only way this is going to work is if I get really vulnerable with whoever stumbles across these words.

Yesterday my blood sugar crashed at work. Two weeks earlier and I would have had a nice emergency stash ready to go but I hadn’t thought to build up a stash at Samaritan. So when I felt the shaking start and that odd ache through my gut I felt helpless. I tried this and tried that, but what I needed was milk and peanut butter and I didn’t have either. So, of course, I tried to ignore it. When that (shocker) didn’t work I managed to humble myself to go talk to someone. She was a safe person to talk to, someone I didn’t feel I needed to prove anything to. She suggested sending out an email to the entire office, even offering to send it for me. I balked. No, it wasn’t that bad, I would be fine.

I wasn’t fine and finally had to decide between being vulnerable with my new coworkers and possibly doing great harm to my entire system. I gotta tell you, I thought about it for far too long. Asking for help would look too weak, I hadn’t proven my worth yet, I was still making mistakes on the applications I entered. Finally I realized I might soon lose the ability to type an email so if I wanted some help I needed to jump on it. And what came back was a veritable inventory of what people, some I haven’t met yet, had in their desks. And all of it, every granola bar and bag of trail mix and jar of peanut butter, was mine for the asking. I even got emails after I responded that all was well apologizing for not seeing my email sooner. At least three people stopped by my desk to check on me not counting the guy who brought me his jar of peanut butter.

It’s a beautiful story, right? People, Christians in particular, working to take care of each other. I love these stories, love to tell them myself except, of course, when I was the one being helped, when I was the one exposed in all my weakness and vulnerability.

And yet, some grace was put out into the world, wasn’t it?

That I was the recipient doesn’t change a thing. If this is my goal, for this blog and in life, then it seems my marching orders are clear. It’s time to be vulnerable.

Does it count as being vulnerable if I tell you I have no idea what that means?

Whiplash

I struggle with whiplash. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter if the sudden move is from something bad to something good- the bad was known and we should’ve just left it be.

I hate this about myself.

This facet of me leaves me reeling in the good times, has me taking weeks of good things to relax enough into the new known to enjoy any part of it and just generally makes me feel like a major downer in the best and worst of times. I’ve worked at Samaritan, a job that promises to be a huge stress relief for me, for all of one week. Looking back on my week do I see the conversations with new coworkers as people sought me out to say welcome? The time set aside this morning for prayer? The void where the weight of responsibility and busyness used to live? Riding to work with my man instead of saying ‘goodbye’ to the back of his sleeping head?

Of course not.

I think of the mistakes I made as I learn a new system, how last week I knew the systems I worked with like the back of my hand. I think of how I suddenly went from being the conservative Christian in the room to feeling like a, *gasp*, liberal. I think about being new and the constant feeling of having missed a step.

It won’t always be this way. I know this. The plan is working. Already I can feel the stress evaporating off my skin and my eye hasn’t twitched in a day or more. I know I work with quality people and I look forward to getting more comfortable with everything so I can support the work as a quality person. It will come and won’t take very long to get here. I know this.

There will just be a few weeks of whiplash to sit through.

Something Has Ended...

I was sad today. It seemed the only healthy thing to do. I was leaving, something was ending. For all that I am excited to be going somewhere else, the fact of leaving demanded to be acknowledged. So I had lunch with a friend at work and I felt sad.

I outlined my plan to someone from Midstate who, like most, asked if I was excited. I told him all about my emotional scheduling, how I am scheduled to be sad today and excited tomorrow. He said that he had never even considered this concept of emotional scheduling before and, I’ll admit, after I explained it it did sound a little odd. I wonder, though, how much healthier we all would be if we consciously took the time to be sad, to acknowledge and recognize change. Even good change still means something has ended. That hurts.

There was a day several months ago when “Spend time with disappointment” made it onto my to-do list. A possibility had resolved and not how I’d hoped. I was sad, but since it had just been a possibility there wasn’t anything concrete to mourn. I knew, though, that if I didn’t mourn I wouldn’t be able to move on. So I put it on my to-do list, in between “Mop” and “Laundry”, and I sat down with my journal and, by gum, I was sad. I was disappointed up to the hilt for about twenty minutes. Then I closed my journal, dried my tears and went on with my day. On to “Laundry”, I suppose.

So today I am sad. I have left a place that I have worked for the past 15 months. Since I am so ridiculously bad at compartmentalizing my world into neat pockets of existence, this workplace became part of my mission, part of my passion and what I researched and thought about. I worked closely with some lovely souls and, I’m told, was of huge help to them. That part of my world is no more that is something worth mourning.

Something has ended.

And that is sad.

To Be or Not To Be Diabetic

To whomever brought the flu to Winter Jam, may I say, Thanks a lot. Thankfully, work was cancelled yesterday and today due to weather so I could lay around the house and feel miserable guilt-free.

I did get some thinking done on this sick day home. None of it was at all interesting, more little snippets of thoughts on romance, Valentine’s Day, how much I see myself in Veronica Mars and why the cat is so determined to sit on me when I’m running a fever. Some of that is worth pursuing at a more reasonable temperature. The main thought that I kept spiraling around to was how terrible diabetic I felt.

There have been a couple of moments when I realized I am ‘Diabetic’. A group of people were heading out to Washington shortly after the tornado ripped a hole through our community to do whatever they could to help out. I wanted to go with them, I really did, but the conditions were so bad and the travel was so difficult that I knew I wouldn’t be able to take care of myself if I started to get low. So I stayed home and felt incredibly diabetic. It was one of the first moments I hung that idea around my neck as a constant.

Having the stomach flu and all the decisions that come with it have made me feel doubly diabetic. Sipping on ginger ale made my stomach calm but sent me shaking with high blood sugar. I needed to take my medicine but would my stomach tolerate it? I need protein to keep at a good sugar level but the only thing I could hope to keep down was some toast. There were only bad and worse options.

As I lay on the couch, finishing up Season 3 of Veronica Mars and contemplating whether moving to the other side of the couch might possibly be more interesting, the word ‘diabetic’ floated around my head. I am coming to understand something that was but a shadow on that day in July when I came home with a diagnosis. Diabetes is not simply something I was diagnosed with; it is something that I am.

This is the difference between living somewhere and calling it home. It’s the difference between reading a comic book now and again and embracing the word ‘geek’ as a badge of honor. People have many things that they do, but a shorter list of ideas that they *are*. More and more I am realizing that I don’t simple do diabetes as a dietary lifestyle, but that I *am* diabetic.

There is a level of comfort in this idea. I have been many things in my life and while transition to being something else can be difficult there are always blessings to be had and kindnesses to share. Being diabetic can be a boat anchor I struggle with or it could be just another one of my distinctives. I am a wife, a youngest child, an author, a nerd, a diabetic and so on. Already my experience with changing my diet has made my home a place that at least one gluten-free friend can eat without fear and I’m certain that is only one good thing that God will bring about. I wouldn’t have chosen diabetes to have been wrapped up under the tree for me, but it’s all about being creative with what He’s given.

Writing a Second Draft

I am finding writing the second draft of Plain Jane to be quite a different experience from the first draft. My goal used to be one thousand words whenever I sat down to write. I wanted to write it as fast as possible, which wasn’t very fast, to get it all out without thinking about it too hard. It was a process of discovery, huge backhoes excavating the story from where it lay deep underground.

I had similar expectations for my second draft. One thousand words at a pop. But then I sat down to write for the second or third time and watched myself slow way down. Each word is considered because there’s only one or two more passes coming. This word has to build the story, the reader’s understanding of Jane, her supporting cast, their issues and hang ups. It has to connect with the next word in such a way that no detail gets lost in the space in between. Each word is suddenly imbued with tremendous worth.

This morning I got Jane from her car into the house of her first client. Actually, she was already on the doorstep when I showed up today. I got her from waiting for him to make his slow way to the door to inside. And on the way I learned quite a bit about roses.

Rosa ‘Eden’, from the family Rosaceae: climbing roses with intricately woven petals of the fairest pink. They climb 8-16 feet which, I figured, would let them eventually reach the top of two-story pillars, are hardy in zones 5-9, which is perfect because apparently Jane and all her people live in Zone 5A, and bloom in July – September which would leave a couple hardy blooms still clinging to the vine in early October.

Three hundred thirty-nine words. That’s all I wrote today. And I am tremendously okay with this because they all felt like the right words. And since I was going slower, I discovered Mr. Charles Harris has climbing roses on his pillars, planted there years ago by him and his wife who used to say the roses transformed their front door into the second gate of Eden. She’s in a nursing home now after a stroke. She had to leave Eden. It’s quite sad, really.

I’m finding that writing a second draft is still an act of discovery only the tools are different. All the backhoe work has been done. If I try to keep using it I’ll just damage things. Now it’s time for the shovel and perhaps even those little brushes and chisels. I’m still moving forward, but at a walk now, not a run. I don’t mind the speed. If I go rushing by I might miss something, like roses climbing the house, and for this story I would hate to miss anything.

Quitting

It felt like a break-up, me all nerves and sweaty palms. It’s not you, it’s me; I’ve met someone else; we’re just growing apart as people. Then I wrote it in a letter for HR’s files. Two weeks, I said, And then I’m gone. But we can still be friends, right?

It’s amazing how quickly my eyebrow stopped twitching after that. 

Markers

I bought markers yesterday. Bright, colorful, “Preferred by Teachers” Crayola markers. I’d outdistanced Jonathan in the store so I was just pulling my selection off the shelf when he came up. He was, understandably, confused. “Why are you buying markers?”  And I was, still understandably, kind of embarrassed.

I’m buying markers because, while my eyelid has stopped twitching, except for that split second when I was drinking caffeine, I am still stressed. Nothing I’ve done so far has been sufficient so now I’m trying markers.

I’ve got my thousandth cup of tea at my elbow, my soul feels full from this morning spent with God and His people, and when this post is written, posted and linked I am going to color.

I’d like to say I’m going to ‘draw’- it sounds so much more mature, sophisticated, a worthwhile task for a full grown adult.  But I’ve tried ‘drawing’ and I’m terrible at it. My brain looks around blankly and then starts babbling about how much fun words are while my hand meanders around the page like a drunken toddler. All my lines wobble until I want them to and I end up with yet another page full of geometric shapes. So, ‘drawing’, the mature sophisticated activity, is right out.

Coloring on the other hand, I haven’t tried in years.

Color for the sake of color, lines that go nowhere suddenly changing from red to purple to green just for the sake of making the page brighter. There doesn’t have to be a greater purpose when one is coloring. We’ve relegated it to a child’s activity and so, like a child, I’m hoping to enjoy the moment without thinking about it so hard.

It’s part of my flailing, my experiment to find what soothes these frazzled nerves. Maybe it will be successful or maybe I’ll have to try something else. Either way I’m still moving forward which, for now, is enough.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some coloring to see to.

A Place In This... TV Show?

I finished watching Leverage. It was splendid and amazing and the ending was everything I wanted it to be. After a few false starts I picked up Bones which Jonathan thought I would like. He was right, of course, and, because I’m me, I started putting the shows next to each other, sizing them up.

Not  comparing the shows. No, that would be silly. One is a heist show and the other’s about criminal anthropology. Other than the fact that they both feature a crime of the week, have a tacit understanding of the concept of family of choice, are made up of characters who are ridiculously good at what they do and star two actors who were also in Angel, they are two separate genres and deserve to be treated as such. No, what I was determining was where I might fit in the character maps.

I wrote about wanting to fit into Leverage some years ago. I would dig the post up, but that blog is currently down for the foreseeable future (hence the move to here) so I will simply recap. I said I wished I could be a member of the Leverage team and Seth said I wouldn’t fit because they were all too broken and sad. He asserted I am too happy and whole to belong with the likes of Nate Ford and the rest. Believe it or not, I found this upsetting because, really, who wouldn’t want to fit in with the ridiculously skilled family-of-choice who go after bad guys?

I eventually got over my upset and understood the compliment he was trying to pay. And now I’m contemplating Bones and, for all the I enjoyed Leverage so much more, on this particular scale Bones might be winning out because, in the midst of their team of ridiculous smart and capable, there stands Angela Montenegro.

Sure, she’s an artist who can recreate a person’s face from a clean skull, but that’s not the point. The point is that, in the midst of a bunch of nerdy scientists who lack some of the most fundamental people skills, she stands as a compassionate soul who understands her fellow man. She is caring, often less able to distance herself from the victim of the week, a true lover of beauty who is often hurt by the ugliness she sees around her. And the show treats her with respect for it. This caring is not a weakness. No, if anything she becomes the lab’s liaison with the outside world, facilitating some of the more delicate and tender interactions with people who have been hurt, traumatized or are confused.

She sat across a café table from the wife of a serial killer and I thought, “That would be me.” No, I don’t actually want that seat and, like I said, she is a genius with facial reconstruction, but the team had a place for the compassionate quasi-normal.

As someone who often feels aggressively average it’s just nice to know a TV show might have a place for me. 

Diagnosis- Stress

I’m not doing awesome and I can’t figure out why.

There. That’s seems like a good, solid, ‘cry for help’ sort of opening line to what I imagine will be one big whiny post about why my amazing life isn’t everything I want. Let’s start with symptoms, shall we.

1. My right eyelid/eyebrow has been twitching off and on since Friday. That gives us at least three solid days of twitching which are about three solid days too many.
2. I have been sleeping like crazy and I still feel stretched too thin. I wake up happy and then by the time I’m sitting down with my blender of breakfast smoothie I’m already feeling the strain of too many items on my to-do list.
3. My to-do list for today consisted of writing my aunt and relaxing.
4. I gained about ten pounds over Christmas. This seems extreme. I ate anything I wanted and lots of it, but still, ten pounds?
5. I’ve lost six of those pounds and still don’t feel much better.

So, Dr. House, here are the symptoms plus some other random thoughts. Your diagnosis?

I choose B) Stress.

Long term, built up stress that grew so imperceptibly that I didn’t notice until a friend asked if I wanted to get dinner and my chest went so tight I had to tell myself to breathe in, breathe out, and in again. Just remembering how I bolted from my desk and had to walk around the building a couple of times to keep from sobbing for no reason makes my eyelid start up again. I knew I don’t deal with stress very well, but I had no idea it was this bad.

My body is breaking in little ways and my spirit is shrinking and I don’t know what to do about it. I have some big ideas and I’ve given them a shove, but now the next step is out of my hands and I’m left trying to understand how to take care of myself. I’ve never been good at that.

So I sat on the couch and played video games with my man. It was a good start yet not enough. So I went to my special nook and I took Jane another step along the way. It was helpful, but there my eyelid went again, twitching away. So I baked and I read and I napped and I watched a movie and none of it has been enough. I’m at a loss, unskilled labor in the field of stress-release, trying to suture my wounds without a medical degree. Five different areas of my life are clamoring for me to take care of me and I’m at a total loss.

Being honest on this blog might be a good way to start. Putting the words down and out without having to consider the person I’m talking to, whether he might be bored, if she needs another cup of coffee. I’m a neophyte in an ancient art and so I’m trying and I’m flailing and we’ll have to see how I do.

Because I can’t stand still. No, I think my blood sugar and my spasming muscles and my shrunken soul would argue that point for me. I can’t stand still so I guess I should get to flailing.

My Writing Nook

I love my husband. When we got married I don’t feel like I understood how seriously he takes my dreams and creative needs. He asks about my main character as if she’s a person out in the world (“So, what’s Jane up to these days?”) and then listens when I talk about this neurotic person I created out of my tics and fears. He’s even starting to understand that when I start getting especially neurotic it might be time for me to go write something, just to get thoughts out of my head. This is huge because I am the person who needs permission to go be creative when I feel like there’s something else I should be doing. And, really, there’s always something that needs doing so there’s always good reasons I don’t have the time or thought space to be sitting in front of a computer, putting words out into the world.

I thought that maybe if I had a dedicated space I would feel the need to use it. So he helped me create a space.

Over the Christmas break, in the midst of hanging shelves and playing video games, we rearranged our basement. Partly because it wasn’t seeing a lot of use and partly to create a Writing Nook. A round table by a window, full of things that make me feel creative and inspired. I’ve got old notebooks cozied up against empty notebooks and a piece of the trunk of our quirky Christmas tree I want to turn into a set of bookends. My first draft sits next to a book on writing with a candle in a mug and lots of space for cups of coffee and a laptop. And then Jonathan even made sure I had the space heater down by my feet because it gets right cold down there in that basement.

I got up this morning, made myself some breakfast and headed down to my Writing Nook. I lit the candle, shoveled scrambled eggs into my mouth while I read what there is of my second draft, eager to get to the writing. Work goes slow as I stare out the window, sipping coffee, trying to find the exact right word and not its second cousin. And when I had run out of words, and coffee, I found I still had creativity left for this post.

There is something about the space that gives me permission to take this time to be creative. I mean, if this wasn’t a big part of my life, would we have a dedicated space to it? Of course not! Therefore… I know, it’s a mess of rationalizations, but sometimes you just need to psych yourself out to get to the place where you can create something that makes you feel happy and alive. Stephen King says that writing has made the rest of his life so much better because it made him happy and then he takes that happiness back into his marriage and his kids and his life. I understand that perfectly so if it takes a little trickery to get me around my guilt then I am all for it.

And thanks to my man, my feet will stay nice and toasty while I do it.