Uncategorized

Friendship Without Common Ground?

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

I’ve been thinking, and reading, a lot about friendship lately.

One book is all about dealing with the loss of an important friendship. There is a lot about why friendships fail and one of the biggest reasons is that one or both of the women’s lives change, leaving them with less in common.

And is has me begging the question: Can we be friends with women who aren’t like us?

The answer is obviously yes, it can be done. But is it done that much? Ultimately, at the end of the day, do we have a lot of friends who are very different from us? Do those friendships last?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I try to make new friends. In my attempt to get to know more women in my area I invited all the mothers of kids in my daughter’s preschool room to a monthly dinner date. This spring most of the kids in her class turned four and suddenly we were going to birthday parties every other weekend. After two years “together,” I finally started getting to know the other parents and realized that I enjoyed their company. But it was hard to really get to know them at a chaotic birthday party, especially when I had to manage my own children, so I set up the dinner date hoping to befriend some of the moms that way.

The moms in my daughter’s class seemed like a great place to start making friends because we already have so much in common. Of course there is the obvious similarity–we have all have four-year-old children–but there are other correlations as well. Because my daughter’s school is open from 8am to 6pm, most of the families are dual earning and the moms work outside the home. I tend to find it easier to relate to other WOHM because we are dealing with analogous issues and have complementary schedules. Also, most of the families live relatively close to the school (or at least on the same side of town) which means they lead similar lifestyles (*cough* make about the what we do) and none of them are particularly hard to meet up with.

These are of course very basic parallels, but they feel important to me, and I can’t really imagine how I would meet women who didn’t share these basic experiences, let alone build a friendship with them.

I’ve even been noticing myself drifting away from women who are different from me in the blog world. When we were all dealing with infertility and/or loss, if seemed like we had so much in common and our shared struggles–and feelings of marginalization in mainstream society–allied us. Now that infertility is not the main focus of our lives, our differences are becoming more apparent. I’m realizing the these women lead very different lives, and sometimes have very different beliefs, and  I wonder if I have much to contribute to the conversation, or if my point of view will always be welcomed and valued.

It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with people who are different. I do, and I am. Life would be boring if we only spent time with those who share comparable experiences. I cherish friendships with women who come from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, with political and religious beliefs that don’t mirror my own. I am friends with women who aren’t mothers and never plan to be, who work in fields that diverge significantly from teaching, who make decidedly more money than I do (though very few who make considerably less…). Yes, not all my friends are exactly like me, and yet…

And yet as time marches on, I see and hear less from the people whose lives have diverged from my own, and I gravitate more toward the people whose lives are comparable to my own.

At the end of this month I’m spending the weekend with a friend from college who now lives on the opposite coast. We’ve seen each other annually since we graduated over ten years ago, but never for more than a dinner alone. I have to admit, I’m nervous to spend 48 uninterrupted hours with her. Our lives are so wholly different: she doesn’t have kids and doesn’t plan to, she works in a field I know little about, she enjoys a dual-earner-no-kids life with a significant disposable income and she travels around the world constantly. Our daily lives are so divergent I worry we will find no common ground. What will we talk about for all that time? What will we do?

I think the reality is, you have to have at least one big thing in common to be friends with them, preferably more. For a lot of mothers that one big thing is motherhood, but I suspect that as your kids get older, there need to be other commonalities for the friendship to flourish instead of falter.

Making new friends is hard. I find that if just one thing doesn’t match up it becomes almost impossible to build a friendship. One colleague at work lives too far away for us to get together (plus her daughter is already in 3rd grade, so her schedule more open than mine) while another doesn’t have kids and doesn’t plan to, and spends most of her free time with her husband. A third has a son my daughter’s age, and lives two blocks away, and even dealt with infertility (and she is awesome, I love her) but she’s an introvert and a homebody and she rarely wants to meet up. Through my daughter’s school I’ve met a few mothers that are potential friends, but one is stuck at home because her husband works long hours, another cancels a lot, so it’s hard to make plans. A third already has a ton of friends and is always busy and a fourth isn’t great at following up. There is even a woman who has two kids the same ages and sexes as my own, she lives close by, she is a teacher, and she is always game to hang out, but we just don’t seem to hit it off.

Everything has to line up just so, and even if it does, a friendship may not happen. It makes me want to throw in the towel and give up. And it makes me wonder if it’s worth investing in friendships with women whose lives are really different from mine. Can we engage in a constructive dialogue? Can we ever really be friends?

Do you have a lot of friends whose lives are significantly different? What brings/keeps you together? What eventually pulled you apart?

Connection/Identity/Life/Writing

The New Me

Posted on by noemikjames / 12 Comments

In the past three months I lost 25 lbs, got an IUD placed, bought (and was gifted) a whole new wardrobe (and even some new jewelry and shoes), tried in earnest to make some new friends, started a new blog (and shut down my old one), enrolled in a writing class and created a new nom de plum. I didn’t notice it at the time, because the decisions were made months ago and the time it took for them to manifest was considerable, but these were all related. It took months for the weight to come off, to make an appointment with my GYN, for me realize I liked how I looked enough to buy new clothes, to choose a URL and start a new blog, for my writing class to finally start, to decide on a new writing identity. None of these things happened quickly, there was careful deliberation involved, and a lot of work. So maybe it’s not so ridiculous that I didn’t see what was happening into recently, when it all became so glaringly obvious.

I have been trying to reinvent myself.

The problem is, I’m not sure who I want to become. And I’m floundering as I attempt to figure it out.

There was already a shift happening. What spurred all this change was organic, really, the obvious next steps as I moved away from a massively transformative time in my life to whatever comes next. The past six years have been all about building my family, but after my son was born we decided we were done having children. As I got to work reclaiming my body, I ceremoniously stripped my wardrobe of the maternity clothes I had worn (or held on to) for the past five years and got down the pre-pregnancy staples I used to love. Most of them were from before I had my daughter and were dated, both in the general sense and in the way I see myself; they just didn’t seem to fit with the person I’d become after so many years of family building and parenting.

It was a theme I started seeing everywhere.

A lot has happened in the last six years. We bought a house, had two kids, got married, and made professional commitments. We set ourselves on a certain track, made decisions about what our future will look like, and who we want to be moving forward. After my son was born I felt like I was setting out on path of the rest of my life, that the decisions I make now will determine my direction and ultimately, where I end up.

I enrolled in a creative non-fiction class because I wanted to focus on my writing. I started a new blog to attempt blogging with a new intention. I made plans with potential friends in the city to fill the gaping hole in my social life. I bought new clothes to present a more polished version of myself. I got an IUD to formally distance myself from family building. I did all of this with purpose, with the future in mind. In the absence of building my family, I set about building my new life. Without the wave of change that family building provides, I tried to paddle myself out of the doldrums.

Except all that paddling is exhausting. I am struggling. Considerably.

The friendship explosion didn’t help. That bomb went off right as the wave of the last six years crested. At a time when I was least sure of who I was and what the future might hold, someone close to me decided they didn’t want me in their life. That wave hit when I least expected it, knocked the wind out of me, dragged me under the churning water, and spit me back to the surface, gasping for air. I’ve spent the last few months determining my orientation, trying to figure out where the shore lies.

For all the intentional choices I made setting out, I now feel lost. Without my trusted agents to guide me, I am floundering. Right now, at this critical juncture, I’m totally and completely unsure how to proceed. I doubt myself, and my choices, at every opportunity. I have no idea if my efforts will eventually provide adequate returns. I consider going back to my old ways of coping, even when I know they don’t suit my situation. I long for the familiarity of my old life, the habits that felt comfortable, even as I recognize they are no longer relevant. I just want something to be easy.

Because writing here? It’s not easy. Keeping up with my writing class? Is really challenging. Making new friends? Is terrifying. Even laying out a nice outfit every night is starting to feel hard. None of it is familiar. None of it is comfortable. But I am committed to doing it all because I’m terrified of where I’ll end up in ten years. I’m scared shitless that all this paddling will just take me farther and farther out to sea, and I’ll look around one day and realize I haven’t seen land for years and years, that there is no hope anyone will ever find me.

Life/Parenting & Family

Is this what the future looks like?

Posted on by noemikjames / 9 Comments

Twice this week my daughter has asked for something and when I informed her that I didn’t know where that particular thing was, she told me it was fine.

The first was the baby elephant, whose mommy elephant was splashing in the bathtub.

“Hey Mom, the baby elephant isn’t in here.”

“Huh, I brought in all the safari animals, I’m not sure why it’s missing. I’ll take a look in the box.” A few minutes later, I had confirmed it was not in the box.

“I don’t see it,” I called back into the bathroom, bracing myself for the irritated command to locate it, at any cost.

But no such command was issued. “Oh, okay,” she replied mildly, as I stood in her room, dumbfounded by this completely unexpected response.

Two days later she was on the toilet and needed a book (yes, my four-year-old daughter requires reading material, just like her dad).

“How about Uuk y Gluk?” she suggested, when I asked her which one she wanted. (We are deep in the Dav Pilkey canon right now–I tell myself it’s okay because we’re reading them in Spanish.)

“Shit, I muttered under my breath. “Where the **** is Uuk y Gluk?”

“I don’t know,” my husband shrugged, relieved that it wasn’t his problem. “Maybe in her room on the floor?”

Except, of course, it wasn’t. “I don’t know where that one is my love,” I called back to her.

“Okay, then bring me another book,” her voice rang out, dripping with an exasperated air of “duuuuuh” that is becoming quite common.

I raised my eyebrows at my husband, who was similarly astounded. Did our four-year-old just tell me that it was okay I couldn’t find a book? Was I not being commanded to locate said book, and threatened with a major meltdown should I fail?

I grabbed some other Capitán Underpants books and handed them to her. “Oh! Capitán Calzoncillos! I love this guy!”

And that was that.

“Is this what the future looks like?” I asked my husband, incredulous, as I settled into the couch.

“Possibly,” he mused. “Of course you still have to go in there and wipe her butt.”

Touche.

Uncategorized

Recognizing Depression

Posted on by noemikjames / 9 Comments

Medical science has created all manner of diagnostic tools over the years. There are blood tests that detect the slightest traces of hormones or other markers in the blood, and machines that provide images of our bones and internal organs. There are already so many tests doctors can preform to help make diagnoses, and they are developing more every day.

But there is no test for depression.

What they do instead is ask a bunch of questions and use the answers to point to it. They verify that the symptoms are present and then tell you that those symptoms are caused by a certain thing.

It is an inexact method with numerous flaws: the questions are subjective, the way doctors interpret the answers possibly more so. The questionnaire attempts to determine thoughts, feelings and behavior patterns that some people are better at recognizing. Each patient has a different baseline experience of “happy” and “sad,” their daily energy and attention level, how interested they are in doing things and how much joy they derive from what they do.

We understand that depression can be caused by–result in?–hormonal imbalances in the brain. Doctors prescribe medications that supposedly correct these imbalances, but there is no test to detect that they exist in the first place, or that the medication is correcting them. There are no CAT scans or MRIs that offer  physical proof of depression, a specific pattern one can point to and exclaim, “yes, there it is.”

This makes diagnosis–and treatment–difficult.

You’d think that after almost 20 years of living with depression (I consider myself living with it even when it’s in “remission”) I’d be an expert at recognizing it. And I am. I am quick to notice familiar patterns in my thoughts or moods, and “treat” them (when possible) with increased sleep and exercise, two things I know help ease my symptoms. So yes, I know how depression usually manifests in my life and I am quick to recognize it.

Except what if the symptoms I recognize as depression are just manifestations of who I am? I was diagnosed with clinical depression at 16 and I have been treated for it with a combination of therapy and medication for the majority of my adult life. I have never experience adult life without the specter of clinical depression lurking– I have no baseline “before” to compare the “after” to–and I’m starting to wonder if I even know what it really looks like anymore.

I have always wondered if my symptoms stem from depression, my nature or the stress of daily life (and my inability to cope with it). No human being is the same, we all sit at different places on the spectrum of “normal” (and one could write a book about how we determine “normal” and the damaging implications of that arbitrary categorization). Extreme cases of depression are easily recognized–I don’t wonder if someone with debilitating clinical depression is actually suffering from a disease–but for someone like me, who sits (with proper management) on the highly functioning side of the depression, it’s harder to determine what is the disease and what is just the person. Maybe, instead of falling on the highly functioning scale of depression, I actually fall on the lower functioning scale of “normal.”

One could argue that the two should not overlap, that suffering from–frequently or intermittently–the symptoms of depression and being clinically depressed are not the same. One is a serious mental illness, the other is… I’m not sure… some people’s natural disposition? The effect of an over-stressed life?

The distinction would matter less if the treatment were not the same. I have been taking medication for depression and ADD (another disorder that is diagnosed symptomatically) on and off since I was diagnosed in my teens. I can’t recall with real accuracy exactly how many of those years I was taking something, but I would be surprised if it were less than half. Was medication really necessary for all of that time? Is it necessary now?

There are times in my life that I can point to and say with absolute certainty that I NEEDED to be on medication. My freshman year of college I should have been on something and was not. My junior year in Spain I absolutely needed to be on something but the complication of living, and getting prescriptions filled, abroad made it impossible. My sophomore and senior years were much better, of course I was taking medication then.

There is no doubt in my mind that I had to take Zo.loft when I was pregnant with my daughter. I fought it and fought it but in the end my anxiety was crippling and I just couldn’t cope. I know now that I needed it, precisely because I fought going on it for so long.

Perhaps it is for the times when I can say with certainty that I needed to be taking medication that I question the times when I’m not as sure. Right now I am taking something, but do I need it? There is no doubt in my mind that this medication improves my quality of life, but is it necessary? My washing machine also improves my quality of life, and in this day and age–especially in this country–people would be appalled to learn that I do laundry by hand. There is an expectation that a washer and dryer will be available, if not in my home than at a laundromat. We simply do not live without that convenience anymore (but I have before, for a summer in Mexico where I washed most of my clothes in a concrete basin on the roof and hung them to dry).

Is my medication a metaphorical washing machine? Does it raise my quality of life to a level we expect, while remaining, strictly speaking, not necessary?

I will say that I do see my medication as a washing machine. It’s not, say, a dishwasher, which I have lived without for an entire decade. Sure I wished I had one, but I got by just fine without. It was mere inconvenience, its absence did not change the landscape of my days.

There have been times when I’ve been off my medication and functioning fine. The years I was trying to get pregnant I managed, despite the stress of trying to get pregnant and even secondary infertility. I was able to stay off medication for my second pregnancy and I was very grateful for that. There were a couple of years, in my mid-twenties when I didn’t take anything. So I know I can manage without medication, but I also know that I always end up back on it. And there were years when it wasn’t available and I suffered greatly for it.

Recently I tried to bring cut my daily intake from three pills to two. I thought I was doing fine and then after two weeks the thoughts started invading. I recognize depression as an attitude, a way of thinking, that is defeatist and devoid of hope. Everything seems unmanageable and I don’t see any way to make it better. I stop wanting to do things that usually bring me joy–or at least improve my mood. I cry a lot, for seemingly no reason. I am easily hurt by others and I feel like no body cares.

In the beginning, I recognize these thoughts and feelings for the lies that they are. I see through their false facade and I use self talk and cognitive behavioral therapy to impede the progress. But if I can’t quell the onslaught, it becomes harder and harder to recognize what is going on. Eventually I am drowning in darkness.

There are definitely triggers–stressful situations that make my depression more likely to emerge–but there are times when it comes on without provocation, when I’m taken by surprise. Those are the most unsettling.

I’m just starting the book Coming of Age on Zoloft: How Antidepressants Cheered Us Up, Let Us Down and Changed Who We Are by Katherine Sharpe. The author is my creative non-fiction professor. I don’t really believe in signs, but I do make note of meaningful happenstance and I know I can make this strange coincidence-I’m taking a class by woman who wrote a book about something I’m currently very interested in–meaningful in some way. In the introduction she writes:

This is a book about what it’s like to grow up on antidepressants. It attempts a faithful description of an activity that has become remarkably common–using antidepressants as a teenager or young adult–but still engenders intense, complicated, and often conflicted feelings, both in the young people who do it and the adults who are involved in their care. … Rightly or wrongly, antidepressants command powerful emotions; they can lead people to examine their deepest assumptions about themselves and the world.

Well, she’s definitely right about that.

I am experiencing a considerable amount of trepidation in reading this book. I’m scared that I’ll walk away with a changed attitude and that my actions will then have to reflect that change. I worry that my life will be harder, and less happy, at the other side. But I need to ask these questions, even if I can’t answer them. This is my life, and some choices require very careful consideration.

 What is your experience with depression, anxiety or mood disorders?

What are you thoughts of the prevalence of anti-depressants in America?

Identity/Writing

Oasis

Posted on by noemikjames / 1 Comment

{This week’s focus was memoir and the assignment was to capture a memory from childhood, one that holds a strange fascination even today. This is what I wrote.}

Oasis

The sun bounces joyfully off the still surface, imposing flashes onto my vision that follow my gaze and dance before the curtain of my eyelids.

How is it here? How have I never been here before? The entirety of my childhood is rewritten, gaping holes where this place could have been–a palpable absence in every memory. No amount of coming here can make up for all the times I could have come before. The regret sits like a weight on my chest, already burdened by the oppressive heat of the day and the considerably exertion of the climb.

The air is thick and hot, a wet blanket draped over my shoulders and face, threatening to suffocate me. Beads of sweat defeat my body’s natural (and inadequate defenses), expertly invading my eyes.

My tennis shoes, dingy and worn, toe the smooth boulder below my feet. In front of me sits a perfect swimming hole, sparkling in the crevice of red and orange rocks. This oasis sits in a path of widely strewn rubble, scooped hands cupping perfectly clear, exquisitely cool water. I’m not sure if these rocks are the remnants of some long forgotten excavation or the product of natural erosion of some kind. I hardly care.

I stand there, mouth agape, pondering its beauty.

To find something like this, to just happen upon it, is unheard of. On this rock island of almost six million people nature exists almost exclusively in small, manicured, installments. There are no fields and very little grass. The opportunities to explore places overrun by nature are few and far between.

And yet here one exists, on the mountainside directly behind my apartment complex–a daunting vertical presence jutting dramatically beside my bedroom window. I’d never wondered what treasures it might hold. Its rocky expanse, swallowing my field of vision in all directions, suggested nothing but shrubs and crumbling earth.

I had only touched the side of the mountain a few times before, in the strange forbidden space at the back of my building, tucked at the end of a labyrinthine stretch of outdoor hallways between the middle towers of the complex.

If you managed to arrive there, at the room that wasn’t a room, you could trespass by pressing your body between the thick concrete slab of the building’s foundation and the sharp rocks of the mountain’s jagged façade. Why the management did not extend the building the mere inches required to wall off the space completely I would never know. I guess they underestimated the curiosity, determination and stupidity of their younger residents. Perhaps they didn’t care.

The room that wasn’t a room held a cavernous space, at least two stories tall, with ceilings that sent your voice ricocheting back to you. The floor was littered with towering mounds of concrete debris, the odd plastic bucket or cracked beer bottle thrown in to break the gray monotony. The space was simply a room that wasn’t, an emptiness carved by structures on three sides and the mountain towering along the fourth.

These dark, forbidden spaces, forged at the intersection of human achievement and the earth supporting it, were not difficult for us children to find. On the far side of the complex, if one were so inclined, it was possible to jump over the railing of the parking garage stairs and scamper along the gutter between the building’s outer foundation and the mountainside. Turning the corner there was a slim opening between two buttresses, just wide enough for narrow hipped children to slip through. The opening was so tight and so long that it inevitably engendered panic, but if you could push forward (despite the overwhelming urge to turn back) you would end up in the shallow crawl space between the parking garage and the ground below it. The ceiling was so low that crawling along on forearms and stomach was required. To the left, the ground sloped steeply and the smooth concrete of the foundation quickly gave way to dirt and gravel. The only light came through thick and tightly woven screens at the far side and it was impossible to see much, even after your eyes adjusted to the lack of light.

I hated that space, under the parking lot, even more than I hated the room that wasn’t a room. The juxtaposition of the true mountain and our man-made imposter inspired a haunting mixture of fear and dread.

Standing at the edge of the swimming hole I am struck by the beauty the mountain is now offering me. Every thing about this space sharply contrasts with my previous encounters: the bright sun, the spaciousness, the leaves rustling gently in the breeze. There are even birds here, singing sweetly as the flitter in and out of the shade.

I sit down on the sun-baked rock and the heat immediately penetrates the flimsy protection my shorts fail to provide. I jerk up, swearing under my breath, and brush at my backside as if to provide some relief. I bend down to unlace my tennis shoes, but something stops me.

 

Do I jump into the water? I want to say yes. I can’t imagine that the answer is no, and yet this memory is tinged with regret. I reach into the past and can’t determine what happens next. I see the water so clearly, but I don’t feel it kissing my skin. It’s more a promise, an idyllic vision bleached by the sun, tinged with anticipation, and strangely marked by remorse.

I will be back here again. I am sure of it. Standing at the edge of the water I want nothing more than to jump in, but something is stopping me. Surely not the lack of a swimming suit, maybe it’s someone who is with me. Maybe plunging in has been forbidden.

But I will be back again. I promise it to myself.

Except now, looking back, I know that I won’t. I never go back.

I can’t remember why.

Identity/Writing

Writing as a Hostile Act

Posted on by noemikjames / 6 Comments

This is the second paragraph of Joan Didion’s “Why I Write,” which was originally delivered as a speech at University of California, Berkeley and was later published in the New York Times Book Review (in December of 1976). I read it in Douglas Hunt’s The Dolphin Reader (6th Ed).

This piece wasn’t actually assigned but I love Joan Didion and so I read it anyway. Now I can’t stop considering it.

In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions–with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather that stating–but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.

I read this quote through the lens of the last few years of writing. I know there were times when my writing was aggressive, when I was a not-so-secret bully. There were times when publishing my words was a hostile act. I didn’t recognize my actions as such then, but I do now. So I know that Didion is right, some of the time. But is she always?

I think one of the reasons that I have a hard time making friends is I share too much, too quickly. I’m not sure if it’s the loneliness that lurks constantly, or a fear that eventually I’ll be found out so I might as well confess of my own volition, or if I’m just desperate to be really and truly accepted for who I am, but no matter the reason, I hoist unfair burdens on unsuspecting acquaintances all the time.

It’s something I’m desperate to stop doing. I’ve been somewhat successful in my attempts.

I struggle with authenticity and over-sharing. I want to be honest, but I need to be respectful. I refuse to share falsehoods or half-truths but I suspect that is what people ultimately want. How do I navigate the sometimes parallel, most times divergent paths of authenticity and social expectation?

This is especially hard in my writing.

I’m fascinated though, by the suggestion that it doesn’t really matter which path I choose, that no matter what I say, the simple acts of expressing myself on the page is, in some ways, aggressive. That just by writing, and therefore insinuating that I want others to read, I’m thrusting myself upon them. I can argue that others are free to choose, that they can read my words or leave them be, but maybe that freedom is not enough to negate the intention I establish by writing in the first place.

I am less fascinated by the idea that I return to participate in this act of possible aggression, that I’ve engaged in it tens of hundreds of times in the past five years. That seems fitting somehow–outlining the parts of the picture offered by interlocking pieces I didn’t even realize were missing. What fascinates me is that everyone else continues to participate. That people come here to engage in this possibly hostile exchange, that they listen as I ask them “listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.” I’m fascinated that I do the same on other people’s blog.

Perhaps that is what society is all about. We intrude upon each other, upon our sensibilities, simply to avoid being alone. We participate in this exchange, we allow ourselves to be imposed upon, because the alternative is solitude, and it scares us. To avoid being left alone we open ourselves up to invasion, by other peoples thoughts and opinions, by their words.

Sometime we will feel attacked. Sometimes we will feel vulnerable. But sometimes we will feel understood, validated and less alone. And for that reason we participate in the exchange. We return, again and again, despite the aggressiveness of the act.

What do you think of Didion’s suggestion? Do you believe writing “is an aggressive, even a hostile act”?

Identity/Writing

Identities that Define Me

Posted on by noemikjames / 6 Comments

{Our most recent writing assignment was about unpacking the different identities that we feel define us. This is what I wrote.}

Woman

First and foremost, I identify as a woman. Or maybe I’m aware that everyone else first recognizes me as a woman. Immediately upon seeing me, my gender is identified and assumptions are made, assumptions about what I should look like (attractive, put together), how I should act (polite, gracious, quiet), and what I should want (a man, children, a nice house). In many ways, I am defined by society by what’s between my legs.

My vagina is also a prerequisite for most of the roles I identify with. One cannot be a mother, wife or daughter without checking the “female” box on overly detailed forms. My womanhood is the foundation upon which everything else is built.

Mother

Is there a role that has been more exhaustively showcased, discussed and debated in our culture than that of “mother”? Do we hold any other person to such impossible standards, require such elaborate selflessness and demand such unattainable perfection? Do we ask anyone else to shoulder such a heavy burden as the raising of well-adjusted, content, productive people? The very future of our society rests in the hands of mothers (at least that is what the headlines would have you believe).

I am acutely aware of all that we expect of mothers because I fail at most of the responsibilities. I don’t often offer my children fresh, organic, well-balanced meals, partly because I know they wouldn’t eat them and partly because I don’t want to make them. I don’t maintain an immaculately clean house, in fact most of the time it’s a chaotic mess. I read to my kids regularly and expose them to academic language every day, plus I provide appropriate emotional support, but most of the time I feel like I’m failing at motherhood in all the ways society deems most important.

Wife

There are repeating themes woven into the roles women inhabit and the most common is that of caretaker. Mothers care for their children and wives care for their husbands. I’ve already admitted to the myriad ways I fail to care for my children (healthy meals, clean house) and I suppose I’m failing as a wife in those arenas as well. That said, my marriage is a happy and fulfilling one. My husband and I have worked through some considerable challenges and grown stronger for them (cliché, but true). And while I don’t cook or clean much for my husband, I provide ample support, give him the alone time he needs (an impressive feat these days) and recognize all his efforts with our children and around the house. The fact that things are good between us, despite the constant challenges posed by two young children and two full time jobs, convinces me that I’m doing pretty well in the wife department.

Daughter

My mom makes it pretty easy to be a good daughter, because she is an almost perfect mom. My mother excels in precisely the ways I fail at motherhood. She has been cooking fresh, well-balanced meals since we were kids and she still brings me delicious, home cooked leftovers for lunch on occasion. She cleans my house about once a month and still buys me things that I want but can’t really afford (ahem, Dyson cordless vacuum charging in the next room). She provides free childcare and manages to make me feel like I’m the one doing her a favor for bringing over my kids. In return, all I have to do is be her friend. The relationship is so ridiculously lopsided in my favor that it’s embarrassing and I wonder constantly if I’ll ever be half the mother to my kids as my mother was, and is, to me.

Teacher

I’ve been teaching for ten years and that part of identity has become more prominent and important than I ever expected. Teaching is a hard profession but in many ways I have it really easy. I teach Spanish at a middle school in an upper middle class suburb with dedicated, involved parents and well funded Ed Foundation. As an elective teacher I can fly under the radar of standardize test stress (my subject is not tested by the state) and I can avoid conflicts with other staff because I don’t have to collaborate much with others (which is a shame because that is one of my strengths). Over the last ten years I have created a truly dynamic, comprehensive and effective curriculum that I’m quite proud of, and I’m increasingly aware of how much I value my professional identity.

 

I observe the national debate about teachers with great interest, but I rarely make my own voice heard. I am acutely aware of how poorly teachers are regarded, how we are often not seen as professionals and how our extended breaks seem to delegitimize the hard work that we do and the long hours we put in. I’ve noticed that people tend to believe they are as well versed in educational philosophy and practice as teachers who spent many years studying in post-graduate institutions. It is frustrating to feel devalued on a professional level and it plays into a theme in my life of suspecting that I’m not getting the credit I’m due, which floats precariously above a deeper, more upsetting suspicion that my station in life–an upper-class, white woman in the wealthiest nation on the planet–renders null and void anything I ever accomplish.

Friend

In the wake of a recent friendship implosion I can’t quite unpack this one. This part of me is “under construction;” I hope to be unveiling my new “great friend 2.0” identity soon. In the meantime, I’ll just say that I take friendship very seriously, and I want desperately to be a good friend, though I seem to be struggling with it.

Depression, Anxiety and ADD

How to title this section? I wasn’t sure. I thought about it for a long time. Am I sufferer of these ailments? It honestly doesn’t feel that way anymore. I am them, and they are me. I am never sure where I end and they begin. I’m not even sure where one of them ends and another begins. My anxiety interacts intimately with my depression; they are partners in a sad, frenetic dance and it’s hard to tell who is leading. My ADD is the shoes on their feet, distracting everything with its incessant tapping. I’m not even sure what the medicine I take is treating, as it’s prescribed to me off-label for ADD but mostly it treats depression. Is life less overwhelming when I take it because my ADD symptoms are managed, which keeps my depression at bay? Or is my depression lessened so my ADD symptoms don’t grate as much? All I know is that after almost two decades of therapy and medication I have come to understand that I cannot manage my life alone. I have not yet determined if medication and exercise are crutches on which I hobble through life, or tools that grant me a mobility I couldn’t enjoy otherwise.

I briefly considered shoving “Cohabitator” in front that list above but it’s not actually a word and I wasn’t sure if I should create it with an “-or” or an “-er” because spelling doesn’t come naturally to me and I don’t feel well equipped to mold the rules to my own purposes. I’m not sure the sentiment is correct either, though that word seems the closest fit. I live with these things; they are a part of my life. Their threads help design and color every aspect of my life’s tapestry–it is impossible to tease them apart without the whole thing unraveling–so I mention them here (as a footnote? an aside?) because to omit them would be disingenuous, and I refuse to be that.

Which identities define you?

Connection/Life

The Beacon

Posted on by noemikjames / 5 Comments

{I’m struggling lately with how to determine if my thoughts and feelings are valid, if they have any basis in reality or if they are simply constructs of a tired and overworked mind. Most of the time I just push them down and hope that if I ignore them for long enough they’ll go away. Sometimes I write about them. This is one of those times.}

My phone is a beacon. This is true both literally and figuratively.

In the mornings my phone actually lights the way through the pre-dawn darkness. I try to have all my clothes sitting neatly by the bathroom door before I go to bed but I inevitably need to sneak back into my bedroom and fumble around for my glasses or some other necessity. The light on my phone gets my safely through the halls and down the stairs, it helps me find my shoes, and it allows me to open the garage door without impaling myself (we really need to get a new garage door). At school it sees me through the dark parking lot and across the pitch black expanse of concrete between the campus and our “trailer park” of modular classrooms. So much of my morning routine happens under cover of darkness and I’m always thankful for the light on my phone.

My phone is also my lifeline to others. It is my primary portal to the outside world. Some days I exchange more words with my husband via my phone than I do in person. On the rides to and from work I listen to music or audiobooks so I don’t feel so alone. At home I take pictures of my kids so I can share them with my friends because they are all so far away. Through my phone I get glimpses of other people’s lives via FB or blogs. Sometimes I even leave comments, which gives the impression that I’m interacting socially. Loneliness is a constant companion these days, but without my phone it would be absolutely unbearable.

I literally don’t know what I’d do without this small, dense rectangle of circuits and glass. It keeps my life in order. It’s where I keep track of everything: my commitments, my to-do lists, what I need to get at five or six different stores, my spending, my exercise. It’s where I jot down tracking and confirmation numbers, contact information, reminders. It’s where I access my email, heck, it’s even where I access my financial institutions. I frequently shop using apps on my phone.

I can’t decide if this is a pathetic admission, that I am so completely dependent upon a piece of technology, that without my phone I’d be wholly unproductive and feel very much alone. It’s the truth, though, so I guess, on some level, it doesn’t matter how embarrassing it might be.

Life is crazy these days. I’m living at a frenetic pace, rushing from one obligation to another. I’m trying to carve out time for myself, and in many ways I’m succeeding, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. I never manage to fill my cup. It’s like I’m stopping to get gas but I’m only filling my tank to the quarter-full line and then driving around, watching the gauge, aware that I can’t get too far if I don’t stop again soon. I never have the time or money to fill it all the way to the top, so I keep putting in just enough to get the next few things done and then the whole cycle starts over.

But none of it would work, it would all fall apart, without my phone. And I’m not sure what that means.

What does your phone mean to you?

Uncategorized

Vignettes

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

I pull up to the house and put the car in park. I open the gate, then the front door and immediately hear my children bustling upstairs with their grandparents. “Hey guys! I’m home!” I call to them, but before they answer I’m thrusting up the garage door and rolling the garbage cans from the street. I expertly pull the car in, not too far to the right, not too far to the left, not too far forward. Just right.

I step heavily up the stairs, checking my watch as I open the gate. 5:30pm. I left the house exactly 12 hours ago.

*   *  *  *  *

My daughter wiggles in my lap, whining that she wants to watch a movie. “What are we going to do right now?” I remind her. She rests her head on my hand and sulkily recites our plan: homework, then one, maybe two episodes of Daniel Tiger. “We may eat dinner between the episodes.” This possibility incites yet another meltdown and I hug her lean, sinewy body closer to mine, smoothing her hair out as I whisper in her ear.

My son, not yet one, sees our embrace from across the room and makes plain his desire for similar attention. I wave him over and he smiles, crawling full steam ahead. In a moment he’s pulled himself up at my knees.

“Family snuggle time!” I cheer. My daughter begrudgingly obliges, and I hoist her brother, balancing him behind her on my knees. He is thrilled to be included but he is inadvertently pulling her hair and she cries out in pain and frustration. Her wails set him off and suddenly they are both crying. I struggle to keep him on my knees and his hands out of his sister’s hair. How will I manage until their father gets home? Managing two kids can be so, so hard.

*  *  *  *  *

“I’m going to leave him in here, to watch Daniel Tiger,” I tell my husband, but it’s more a question than a statement. Is it okay? He’s not even one.

He nods in agreement.

I try to silence the voices reminding me that his sister never saw a lighted TV until she was two years old and at eleven months he’s already watched entire 22 minute programs. He deserves a TV free infancy too! A snarky voice chides. Oh he’ll be fine, it’s only one episode! another pleads. She’s clearly the one who has to start the laundry.

Glancing back as I haul cloth diapers down the stairs I see my son transfixed, his cherub face bathed in the glow of the screen.

*  *  *  *  *

“How about five more bites and then we’ll read the new Capitán Calzoncillos,” I bargain. “I bet you can finish your whole hot dog,” my husband counters.

I flash to the article I recently read about what all preschoolers need. “The power to control how much they eat,” was the first thing on the list. Are we hurting her by requesting these bites? What happens if she wakes up hungry, asking for food in the middle of the night? It’s happened before and I’m not doing that again. I don’t even think she’s old enough to make the connection between not eating and waking up hungry. I’m not sure what we should do.

“That was three!” my daughter smiles triumphantly, mouth full of half-chewed hot dog.

*  *  *  *  *

“This is the last chapter and then I’m turning off the light.” My daughter shifts her body, clearly agitated by the impending end of our story. Slowly, she turns her face and spits at me.

I turn off the iPad and lay it next to me, surprised by my calm. I knew the meltdown was coming and I’m almost thankful I have this opportunity to hold my ground; at least it will feel like I’m accomplishing something.

She promptly melts down.

I stay with her. I tell her I love her and I’ll be here when she wants a hug. She writhes and howls and kicks her long, strong legs, but is careful not to hit me. (This is progress.) She wants to read it now. It will be so long until tomorrow after school. She’ll be waiting and waiting for me.

“I’ll pick you up early,” I assure her.

“No! Don’t pick me up!” she screams.

“When do you want me to get you? How about right after you’re done on the playground?”

She nods her head and whimpers. “And then we can finish the story?”

“Then we can finish the whole book,” I promise.

After much shushing me and telling me not to talk, she lets me lie next to her and hold her close. I push my nose into her cheek and tell her I love her. She sighs.

We pull up the covers and perform our bedtime rituals. I realize she hasn’t gone to the bathroom yet but she assures me she’ll call me when she’s ready, as she always does.

Ten minutes later, when I go to check on her, she is fast asleep. It’s only 8:35pm and she’s usually not down before 10pm. I worry that she didn’t pee before she fell asleep but I know there’s nothing I can do.

I close her door quietly behind me and trudge downstairs to deal with the laundry.

Would you share a vignette with me?

Writing

The Cost

Posted on by noemikjames / 1 Comment

I just turned in my second set of assignments for my writing class. I em enjoying it immensely.

It’s hard to get the work done, and there are days I wonder if it was a mistake committing myself to this effort, but most of the time I’m very happy I made the choice. Last week at therapy, I voiced my concerns about the class and overcommitment and my therapist told me that if it was really the only thing I could think to do for myself (I told her it was) then I needed to do it right, to take the time away–perhaps at a cafe on a Saturday–to make it about me and not about stress and deadlines. So I went home and told my husband that I intended to take the class and that it was going to be the thing I did for me, and would he support that? And he did, and so I’ve approached the class with that in mind, and it’s been freeing.

So far I’ve surprised myself by enjoying the reading more than the writing assignments. We’re reading selections from two anthologies and the first six selections have been very interesting. This week we read “The Faith” in The Dolphin Reader (Douglas Hunt, ed) in which David Bradley tells of a sermon he saw his father give. That particular night his father shared a personal story of fear and weakness (a truly uncharacteristic admission) that deeply moved the congregation and taught Bradley something surprising about writing:

Until that night I had not understood what it meant to write. I had known that a writer’s goal was to reveal truths in words manipulated so effectively as to cause a movement in the minds and hearts of those who read them. But I had not understood that it would cost anything. I had believed that I could do those things while remaining secure and safe in myself–I had even believed that writing fiction was a way to conceal my true feelings and weaknesses. That night I found out better. That night I realized that no matter how good I became in the manipulation of symbols, I could never hope to move anyone without allowing myself to be moved, that I could reveal only slight truths unless I was willing to reveal the truths about myself.

Truth is always something I strive for in my writing, but part of my coming here was redefining what that truth looks like. I do believe that good writing costs the writer, that the really meaningful stuff is hard to say and harder to let other people read.

There is something else though, something just as important as the cost to the writer. It’s not just how hard the words are to write, but your purpose in writing them. Why are you putting this hard truth out into the world? What do you hope to accomplish? Why is the high cost worth it?

I think our answers to those questions are deeply personal, and very important. We will find them at the very core of who we are. The reasons that we write, our purpose in telling our truth, is etched into our very foundation. If we’re not sure of ourselves we will never be sure of why we are writing.

My truth is that I’m still not sure: I don’t yet know who I am, what I want to say or why I want to say it, but I recognize that the answers are entwined in the forming of the questions. I created this space to map out my response, to determine my truth and the cost I’m willing to pay in saying it. I’m intrigued by what the answer might be.

Do you agree with Bradley about the cost of writing? Do you know why you write?