This Feels ...

How to describe the feeling of blind rage mixed with hopelessness that covers me like a ton of bricks tonight.

I am so angry I could tear this house apart. 
For the first time in my life, I am unable to shake this feeling.  I can't get out of my head, I can't stop being mad. 
How do people adjust to disappointment, to loss and heartache?  True heartache, not the kind that comes with losing a high school boyfriend.  True biting heartache.  Where do people turn to recalibrate their minds and come to terms with a reality that doesn't come tied up with a pretty bow? 

The true heartache is not even mine, and I find myself unable to come to terms with it.   The blows that life throws at you can be too much.   How are we meant to cope when the unfair life takes aim at us?  How do we avoid becoming angry souls, or drowning ourselves in alcohol, or sinking into depression? 

Many will say religion.  But that feels wrong for me.  Like turning to a religion that I have pushed away my entire life would be a hypocrisy.  Like it would be the easy way to gloss over what may just be the way of this world.  To apply palatable answers to incomprehensible questions.  For some, for many, religion is the right answer.  For me, it feels like an answer I can't turn to.  So what is left?  A lifetime of waiting for the anger to turn to sadness and the sadness to dissipate into a dull ache that will last forever?  A lifetime resigned to wandering around believing in nothing and no one and waiting for the bottom to drop out of my life - unsure of how I will handle it and how I will stop myself from sinking into a pit of anger that can't be escaped?   A lifetime of focusing only on ensuring my own future survival, because I am so afraid of what will happen if any tiny thing goes wrong?

What kind of life is that?   At every turn, it seems I see a sign pointing me in the direction of a church that I have avoided for over 30 years.  I don't know if it's because something inside me is yearning for something more, or because I am desperate for some relief to the pain I am feeling and I believe that pouring myself into some sort of church will give me a false sense of security.   I want a third option - something that doesn't involve a church I don't believe in or a lifetime of rootless existence. 

I want a happy ending.  I want hope and a miracle and good news for the ones I love.   I want to believe in Heaven.  I want to believe that good things will happen to good people.

People We "Used" To Know?

So I'm listening to Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know, which I love.  This song just speaks to me.  But there's a reason that it speaks to me, presumably because it's about some unhappy relationship that has ended abruptly.    All of us have had one of those, it's not like I'm special in that regard. 

But then I got to thinking about it, and I'm trying to decide if I consider the two serious boyfriends I've had in my life as merely people I used to know.  As many angry feelings I harbor towards them and myself following our relationships, I do firmly believe I wouldn't be the person I am today without them.  So how can they be reduced to people I just used to know?  But to give them any more significance feels a bit traiterous to my current happy self, who had to endure years and years of mind fucking torture just to come out on the other side half put together and in need of serious therapy.
As I write this, the song is playing in the background.  And perhaps what is truest about the song is that although the words go on and on about the exes basically cutting each other off and not needing each other anymore, the emotions behind the words tell a different story.  There is pain and regret and longing.  And I think those are the truer feelings, masked by apathy and anger. 

I don't think relationships like that can be downplayed as just acquaintenances.  There is too much history and emotion and time put into them.  Entire years of lives go into trying to make them work.  Friendships are lost, professions are put to the side, lifelong dreams are stalled ... all in favor of trying to make some relationship work.  But that person - there was a reason why you let that happen.  There was a reason you allowed yourself to neglect one person over another.  There was a reason you thought it was okay to put more time into another person than yourself.   You loved that person.  If love can be reduced to just something you once had with someone you used to know, we are all just sort of shells aren't we? 

I don't have any particular desire to see either of these two men again, or talk to them, or be friends with them on Facebook.  Neither of them were very nice to me in the end and my pride prohibits me from publicly admitting that even a tiny part of me still has any sort of positive feelings toward either of them.   But that also has a lot to do with the fact that I acknowledge just how important they were to me once.  I could never honestly tell my husband that one of them was just somebody I used to know.    So it isn't that I don't care because they're just random people to me, it's that I don't want to care.  Because what I have going on now is so way better than what I ever had going on with them, that it's not worth it to me to re-open that window. 

So even though I still love the song, I see it as a sort of admission that these sort of people could never be someone you just knew once.  This song is the story of a person, or two people perhaps, who are desperately trying to convince themselves that they can minimize their relationships to the point where they never really mattered in the first place.

What Life Makes You

Too often, I go through life believing that the personalities and idiosyncracies of the people I meet are simply the way those people are and always have been.   I forget that we change and evolve into an ultimate person who emerges at the end of our life = the culmination of all the experiences we have endured, suffered, and enjoyed over the years. But this, of course, is what happens.

Life can be a great big pile of steaming dog shit - just sayin' - and thus begins the unfair and repeated beatdown we are all destined to endure throughout our lives.   We start out happy and naive, looking forward to a fair and equitable distribution of happiness and fortune that will befall us throughout the expanse of our reasonably long lives.  We expect that good things will happen to us as long as we are good.  We treat others as we would like to be treated.  We love our family and are faithful to our partners.  In short, we expect that if we work hard and act nice we will be favored.  But who will favor us?   There is no one there to save us.  It is only the individual ... the individual who is in control of nothing... as it turns out.

And so our lives take twists and turns that are unexpected and unseemly.  Great big gaping holes in the road present themselves as obstacles that we can't imagine clearing.  Life throws fire bombs and poison arrows at us.  Life is out to get us. 

Surely this is how we must all feel at points.  But we must remember to perservere.  For every bullshit block in the road, there are two rest stops with your name on them serving free hugs and happiness.   I have never been a particularly faithful person.  But I believe in life.  I believe in waiting for the good parts, and there are always good parts.  Within the shadow of a horrific nightmare, there is a sparkle that shines for you - and that sparkle, as long as you wait for it, will grow into a firework - a splendid display of all the good in your life, of all the good you have been waiting for.  Things really do get better.   It WILL get better.  It MUST get better. 

Allow your life to take the path it will.  Find out what your life will make of you.  And remember that you can't make a cake without the right ingredients - all that life will make of you is composed of parts you already have.  You will be, you already are ...  Strong.  Resilient.  Worthy. 

A Club I Can't Join

In grade school, I joined the Girl Scouts and that is how I made friends and met people.
In middle school, I joined the swim team and made friends.
In high school, I did field hockey and cheerleading.  And parties.
In college, I joined a sorority.
After college, I got a job and joined committees.

My entire life, I have been joining groups of people to be a part of something bigger.  Where there is a group of people who share a common interest, I want to be in it.  I want to meet people and forge bonds based on common interests, and this is what I have been doing all my life.  And yet there is one club I cannot join. 

All around me I am surrounded by women having babies and creating little groups of their own based on all the babies they are having and all the shared experiences this affords them.  And 99% of the time I am unbothered by this.  Because while they have their Mommy Club, I have my I Can Go Out And Party Whenever I Want Club, and my Shop All Day Saturday and Never Once Have to Change a Poopy Diaper Club.  And so most of the time I am not put out by the fact that I am not part of the Mommy Club because most of the time I don't want to be part of the Mommy Club. 

But then I go home and sit down with my mom and grandmother and two sisters in law and they are, of course, all Mommies.  And so they talk about Mommy things.  And this, also, is okay with me.  Of course they should.  And some of it is interesting, like when they are talking about my niece or nephew or a cousin's child or something that is not inherently beyond my realm of understanding like diaper rash or something.  Of course some of it is not interesting, and you know - this is okay too.  I'm sure they don't find my incessant chatter about work interesting all the time either.  That's what families and friends do for each other. 

But then photos get taken and stories get told and re-told, and I wonder how many photos are out there being shared among the Mommies that I never even get to see because I am just not part of the club.  And this goes for all my Mommy Friends too.  And how many stories I don't here because I'm not a Mommy and so by default I don't have the weekly phone calls about morning sickness and doctors appointments and nursery colors.  What baby showers am I not even invited to because not only am I a hundred states away but I am also not a parent? 

Of course, it's just like a non-parent to get all selfish about this and take it personally and make it about herself.  I get that.  If I were capable of putting myself out of the equation to see what's really important about the wonders of procreation, I probably would have had a child by now.  That's probably what plenty of parents would think if they read this.    But I'm like a billion miles away and I see my niece like twice a year and I miss her.  And I miss my brothers and my sisters in law and my parents and I'm jealous - I really am - that my two sisters in law are at this very moment having pregnancy moments together all over the place and adding these adorable little munchkins to the family that my parents can swoon all over and  I'm just this selfish DINK in Texas who doesn't have anything to contribute to the conversation other than what I did this weekend and how work is going.      And I know they don't feel this way at all - of course they don't.  But I do.  And I don't want to have a baby really, or at least I don't think I do, but this family is growing away from me with every day that passes and I can't do anything about it.    Because there is no club that I can join here that will get me any closer to them.  Not even the Mommy Club.

Do You Know This Feeling

There is a branch of my family tree that has always entranced me, like they have some special secret or grip on a fascinating piece of history that no one else has.  But they do not.  I can't pinpoint what it is about this family, but they - to me - are like the Kennedys.  They are a mystical group of people who had, over the years, gained some sort of celebrity status in my mind.    

And yet, I ran into some of them this weekend and found, not surprisingly, that they are just like any of the rest of us. Their story is no more or less fascinating than any of ours.   They are happy and sad and joyful and hopeful and heartbroken, just as I am and just like you, reader, are. 
 
So, I'm not sure what intirgued me so about this particular family all those years ago.  They stood out like a blonde woman in a room full of brunettes.  Despite being maybe only 5 or 10 at any one time, it always seemed like there were hundreds of them.  They took over a room. Perhaps because they seemed to move so fluidly and consistently as one group, it was hard to separate them from their larger unit and, therefore, hard to see them as fallible creatures with weaknesses just like everyone else. 

Now I see in them the same sort of steadfast loyalty that my own family has for each other and I am grateful for it.  Grateful that they have it, because no matter how mysterious this family is to me - they are family and I want for them the best.  Grateful that I have it, that my parents and brothers and aunts and their families have it. 

Perhaps that is what makes any family seem larger than life - because in the end the one unit you create is actually larger than all the lives that make it.  And within that safe haven, you can truly be yourself and be accepted and safe and open.  And that is what makes family so very very special. 

Pop Pop

My grandfather's name was John but everyone called him Jack.  So much so that all these years later, I couldn't be sure whether his given name was John or Jack, and I sometimes would address one letter to John and then another later a few months later to Jack.  A granddaughter should know her Pop Pop's first name without question, but more importantly, a granddaughter should know her Pop Pop.  And even if I couldn't be sure of the name on his birth certificate, because he was so familiar to us that it never occurred to wonder, I could be sure of something else.  He was a good man.  A loving and kind man.  The funniest man I have ever known. 

Raised in a house where discipline and order were of the utmost importance, my grandfather harbored a work ethic that masked an intense love for art.  While he chose to join the Marine Corps and later become a brick layer to provide for his family, he never let go of his creativity and allowed it to flourish both in and outside his career.  His talent was so great that he could seamlessly weave it into any project he was working on - whether it was incorporating a cross and an ornate walkway in the house he built with his own two hands, or creating a mural of a firefighter holding a child out of bricks in a local fire station. 

Art was his passion, but his family was his life.   John and Alice Kyle were fiercely committed to one another through good times and bad.  They raised three beautiful daughters who would one day grow into loving and successful adults who cared so much for their parents that they would sacrifice so much just to ensure their comfort and dignity at the end of their lives. 

My grandfather was funny.  Ask anyone who knew him and the resounding memory of him would undoubtedly be that he was funny.   He would put on Flip Wilson records for us to listen and laugh at.  He would tell jokes and dance and wear goofy costumes.   No visitor at Jack's house could feel anything but jovial.     Until his last days, you couldn't visit him without being told some joke.  His wit was so quick that you could visit a hundred times and not hear the same wise cracks, because he could pull them out of the thin area right in front of him without even having to think.  He never relied on the easy jokes, or the tried and true jokes.  He could take any conversation and make it funny.  It was his gift - to make any person comfortable and happy without having to even leave his chair.   Despite being a notorious home-body, I have always envied him his ability to put those around him at ease and be the life of the party, no matter what.

Yes, the life of the party.  That was my grandfather, and my grandmother really.  They were the sort of couple that you just want to be around.  They had fun - an immense amount of fun.  Every occasion felt special, if just because it was always a good time around them.  Everything felt like a party. 

I remember chips and dip on the table, grapefruits for breakfast, candy canes hanging from every branch of the Christmas tree.  I remember Vermouth in glasses and a porch that seemed always to be full of people.  A closet full of Barbie dolls on one side of the house, and priceless antique china just steps away.  A cupboard of board games, and a drawer overflowing with playing cards.  I remember beds made of blankets on the floor for the kids, and playing bocce ball in the backyard.  A classic car in the garage, and a game of handball in the driveway.  A pool under the shade tree and trivia in the living room.  A foundtain in the backyard, in front of which I often dreamt of getting married.  A house so full of memories that it's hard to focus when you're there sometimes, for all the gazing around. 

Oh my dear Pop Pop and Grammy - you had three daughters and five grandchildren and six great grandchildren.  Your daughters love you with a fierce loyalty and your grandkids admire the honorable and spirited way you lived your lives.  You created a world that was safe and sturdy and just, and encircled your loved ones in the goodness of your spirit.  You will never be forgotten.  For every time we see each other, we will see the house that you built standing firm and strong - a family that has withstood loss and heartache with devotion and loyalty and most importantly, the legacy of your love.

Skeptical....

Alright so here goes.  This is not going to be a popular opinion and I am all for that.  But I am getting so fed up with everyone running about touting energy efficiency, like just because some overzealous builder claims that a certain amount of reduction has been achieved it means it really happened.  Where is the proof?    Many taxpayers pay an exorbitant amount of money that eventually goes toward constructing public buildings that are allegedly energy efficient.  I have earned the LEED AP in Building Design and Construction credential, therefore I know a little bit about the subject of energy efficiency, though it certainly doesn't make me an expert.  Not by a long shot.  But I learned some things.  The most important, so far, being that anyone can run around saying that energy reduction is going to be X percent.  Until you force them to prove it, how will you know if it ever really happened?  What abotu plug loads?  What about human behavior ?    Damn, now my backsapce key is brken again.  Dm Damn Damn.

Anyway, I"m just tired of seeing all these new, supplsedly energy efficient buildigns being built, while the old skeletons of their former selves sit abaondoned on overwgrown and dneglected lots.  Owners are not held accountalbe for what happens to their former homes and towns become overrun with empty boxes.  So you reduced energy use by maybe 20%$, if you're lucky, but now you have towns being taken over by cinder block gardens that will never be anyhthing but places for skaters to hang out.  It's sickening.  And we're all paying for it out the nose.    If we're going to foxcus so much on building new and gbetter prerforming buildings, we should make corporations and cities and states and everyone find a way to responsibily address their current land leases and owenerships and suhch before moving on.  I really can't setand to see all these vaacant building popping up everywhere, bparticularly in downtaown areas that could be so vibrant if giventh the chance. 

Sorry for all the typos.  Not only am I worked up but my backspace key is again askew.