When I was a young adult I wanted to stand out, to be weird, to be different (but in a good way, of course). I thought it sounded romantic and interesting to be crazy. Not so crazy that I was institutionalized or suicidal or anything like that, but just crazy enough so that no one would mistake me for someone else. So that people would say, “Oh, that Alison, now she is a character!” And then they would shake their heads in wonder at my baffling complexity. But they would say it in a way that made it obvious they really admired my baffling complexity. I would thus wear my baffling complexity like a badge of honor: Oh my, I am so complex that people can’t even figure me out. But they like that they can’t figure me out! Yippee, I am a success!

Yeah. The older adult me has something to say to that younger adult me: Hahahahahahahahahahahaha! Woo-hoo you are a funny girl! Lolololololol. No, seriously, you wanted what again? Because now I want nothing more than to be just like everyone else (but in the best ways, of course). And while the young adult that’s still bouncing around in my brain thinks that sounds incredibly borrrrrinnnng, the older adult me (did I just call myself an “older adult”?!??!?!?) thinks it sounds absolutely delightful. What a relief it would be to know I am not alone in my feelings and in my utter confusion about what in the world I am really doing anyway!

And good news! I am relieved because I get to have exactly what I want! I am just like everyone else. YES! I laugh and cry and empathize and snarl and get it and scrunch up my face in bewilderment and mess up and resolve to do better and judge and feel guilty about it and long for connection and love and grasp for those things with flailing arms. I am beautiful in my sameness.

What I didn’t really understand when I was younger is the most obvious fact: I stand out because I exist. Period. We all do. Just like everyone else, I am my own special brand of human, and if that ain’t crazy, I don’t know what is!

I’ve been reading a lot lately about just showing up for our lives even when we’re afraid, not ready, don’t feel like it, and so on. I’ve been so inspired the past few days by Glennon Doyle Melton’s Sacred Scared series on Momastery.com. This series focused on people accomplishing great things in spite (maybe because of?) huge fears.
I don’t know about y’all, but sometimes it takes hearing something literally hundreds of times, if not even more, before it starts to sorta maybe kinda sink in, before I start to really get it. We don’t think we should work that way. We hear something that makes sense to us and we go, “okay, yeah, I can do that. I got that.” But then we don’t do it. I’m talking right now about perfectionism. I have known for years, my whole life perhaps, that it’s better to just do things imperfectly than not to do them because I’m afraid they won’t be perfect. But I am only just now starting to really GET it.
And so I write this, on my phone, a few minutes before I have to leave to pick up my daughter from preschool. I’m still just as much a mess as ever. I don’t have it together. I’m not ready to write great stuff. But I’ll probably never feel ready. I didn’t wait until I felt ready to have kids, because I knew I’d probably never feel ready. But I really wanted kids, so I just jumped in. And I’m far from a perfect parent, but I certainly don’t regret having kids. Likewise, I’m sure I’ll never regret just writing anyway. Just writing this post has made me want to do a little fist pump to all these fellow Starbucks drinkers. Oh yeah, Starbucks drinkers. I’m doing it anyway. I’m slopping it down, and I hope to throw more slop down again as soon as possible. I’ve never been good at cleaning anyway, why should my mental output be any different?

I have to share something that happened with my son this past weekend, since it so perfectly illustrates the meaning of the title of my blog.

Oliver, who is seven, was mad at me about . . . I don’t remember what, because that’s how bad my memory is, but it doesn’t really matter. So he was mad at me, and his revenge for whatever I had done was to try to trip me. I discovered this because I went to look for my shoes and found them about eighteen inches apart on the floor with one end of a string tied to each shoe and the string stretched as tightly as possible between them.

I chided him about the “trap,” telling him that purposely tripping someone could cause the person to get seriously hurt and have to go to the hospital. “But I knew you would see it!” he countered. Okay, fair enough, I thought. I was pretty sure he hadn’t really wanted me to get hurt; it was just that he didn’t know how else to express his anger. (I’m supposed to be teaching him that part, but, um, I think I need to use some new curriculum.) So I let it drop.

A few minutes later, I looked at the trap again and noticed something I hadn’t before. On the other side it, where I would likely have fallen had his plan worked, were three pillows, laid on the floor carefully, end to end. He wanted to trip me, but he wanted me to have a soft landing, to not be injured. (I don’t know why he didn’t point out the pillows when I scolded him about the trap.) He wanted to hurt me but he didn’t want to hurt me. Isn’t that how we humans are? We engineer falls onto pillows, and we scream in whispers.

I’m pissed off right now. Not at anyone or anything that I can recognize. I’m pissed off, I guess, because I want to write and yet I find it so maddeningly difficult. Because I have wanted to write my whole life and I’ve mostly found ways to put it off my whole life. Because I don’t understand why something I want to do so much and love so much can cause me such grief.

Of course it makes sense that the things we have to work hard for are the most satisfying. How could it be any other way? But I usually feel that it’s not just hard work to write but impossible work. It often seems impossible to get the ideas and words in my brain out onto paper or screen. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t really find impossible work all that satisfying. It makes me want to stomp on my head. So I just kind of shut down and I let those words stay right where they are.

I guess now, though, the impossibility of it is just starting to piss me off more than shut me down. At least more often anyway. My mind’s doing something like this these days: “Oh yeah, words? You think you’re impossible to organize? Well, I’ll show you, you a**holes! I will sit down and TYPE, and you can see how you feel then, making that arduous, confusing trip from brain to screen!”

But here comes the irony: I am happy to be pissed off right now. I am feeling lots of things! I am making myself do something hard! I am slogging through! Yeehaw! (I am picturing myself knee deep in mud, trudging along, with boppy music playing. I want to dance but am physically unable.)

So, to recap: Pissed off rather than totally shut down, and happy about that, and knee deep in mud but wanting to dance.

I declare it to be progress. Messy f’ing progress.

I start getting twitchy inside when I’ve gone awhile without posting something, but then the thought of having to organize my bouncing-off-the-wall thoughts into coherent sentences overwhelms me and I do something else instead. And, I feel like all I do lately is post about how hard it is for me to write, so I don’t want to write again the next time about how hard it is to write.

Sigh. But I guess I’ll keep doing that until it’s not so hard. Because I believe it will get easier if I just keep slogging through the muck of fear that keeps me stuck. Just by typing these words, it will get a teensy bit easier. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt (if I stop writing to verify, I’ll surely get sidetracked and never get back to post this!) that said we should all do one thing each day that scares us. And I don’t know about you, but when I think of things that scare me, what first comes to mind is something big like facing serious illness, loss, or death. The little things, though, can be really scary too. Posting this will be my scary thing for the day because, oh my gosh, I don’t think it’s GOOD! If it’s not GOOD, how can I put it out there in the world? It might not MEAN anything, it might not MOVE anyone. It might just be ho-hum–or even, horror of horrors, BAD!–drivel that causes immediate stagnation in the brains of everyone who reads it!

Well, increasingly what it comes down to, for me, is: SO WHAT? Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have everything I put out into the world be genius. But if posting ho-hum drivel gets me out of my muck eventually, then the muckless, or at least less mucked, me should be more likely to write some good stuff later.

Also, I seem to be growing up. A bit of a late bloomer, at forty years old, but I think I’m finally getting this thing called “just doing it.” As in, “I’m going to do this anyway even though people may not approve because, oh yeah, the most important thing is to do my thing.” I know there are lots of others who are late bloomers too, but I’ve realized that there are actually people who get this thing at an early age. My almost-ten-year-old seems to have gotten it. I am inspired by her, which is way cool.

So, I have nothing more to say about this right now. Except, onward I slog. And, thanks for mucking it up with me.

Part of Me: OK, time to write. Gotta get this stuff outta my head.
Another Part of Me: Oh no. You don’t have time for that. You gotta go to bed.
POM: I gotta make time. Creative expression is vital to my well-being.
APOM: So is sleep, you know.
POM: Yeah, yeah, I know, but I’ll just write for a few minutes and then go to bed.
APOM: But you can’t finish anything in a few minutes, so why bother?
POM: Well, I gotta start something at least. It’s better than nothing.
APOM: But you’re always starting things and not finishing them. Won’t it be depressing to start yet another piece of writing that you won’t finish?
POM: Won’t finish? I WILL finish them all, when I have time!
APOM: Okay, geez, I’m sorry, it’s just, you know, it’s just, uh . . .
POM: Alright, enough, you’re wasting my time.
APOM: I know! Why don’t you write about how you can’t seem to find the time to write?
POM: Great idea, APOM!
APOM: Thank you, thank you, I was quite fond of it myself.
POM: How many posts like that do you think I can get away with?
APOM: Just get going already, will you?
POM: Fine, fine. (Walks away grumbling and looking for the iPad.)

I’m supposed to be doing something productive and I’m not clear on whether posting a blog entry is productive. I mean, it’s certainly not necessary for the health and well-being of my family. It’s not helping me to secure the continuation of my bloodline in the world. But it might be necessary for my own well-being, my own continuation. But maybe that’s only true if the post really SAYS something. Because shouldn’t readers come away from my blog feeling like I’ve moved them, or convinced them of something, or taught them something? If not, shouldn’t I have just written it in my paper journal rather than posted it on the internet? If I’m posting relatively insignificant gibberish (as opposed to all the significant gibberish out there) just to post, is that really good for my well-being, much less the well-being of society?

Yes, a good portion of this post is tongue in cheek. But not all of it. I think it goes back to that stupid enemy of mine–time. How do I spend it? That’s always the question. I’d like a different question, please. But the answer to the perpetual one, for the moment, is: go to Trader Joe’s to get groceries instead of pontificating on the internet.

I just wanted to make sure everyone knows something very important that I have recently discovered: People can have more than one feeling AT THE SAME TIME! How shocking is that?

Your answer is likely, “Not very.” Most of you have probably been aware of this fact for much of your lives. And while I suppose I was conscious of this fact, I didn’t really get it. (Some of us are a little slow, so you’ll have to forgive us.)

Now, though, after many, many years of stuffing, ignoring, wadding up, stomping on, tossing back and forth, and generally doing anything I could to my feelings besides looking at them and letting them be, I am finally kinda sorta trying to be a little bit still and observe, even if it terrifies me sometimes. I may squirm in perceived agony as I sit, but I’m more still than I used to be.

And thus, ta da! Revelations! This morning I realized that I felt joyfully anxious. Or maybe it was anxiously joyful. Either way, there dancing together in front of me were joy and fear. How marvelous!

What? Anxiety, marvelous? Well, let me try to explain.

I certainly don’t like the anxiety at all. It has brought with it various symptoms at various times, and one of the primary symptoms I’ve had lately has been the feeling of being really uncomfortable in my own skin, like I don’t know if I can stand to inhabit my body and be a person who does and feels all the person-like things that I must do and feel. It sounds insane, I’m sure, but such is anxiety. That fear response is a crazy devil.

But. But, fear is, of course, part of being human, and something that must be confronted and tamed rather than ignored. When I sit with my fear and let it be, it fades, it melts away like the Wicked Witch of the West. Really feeling the fear allows me to be more compassionate, more grateful for the good stuff, and more able to recognize joy in all its incarnations. In short, the fear allows me to be more human. And, in the end, as much as I hate feeling the fear, that can only be a marvelous thing. And if some or all those feelings exist at the same time, then I must be very human indeed.

I drove back from taking my kids to school this morning with the gas light on. It was already on when I got in the car, so it was practically blinding me on the way home. But I couldn’t bring myself to stop for gas. It would’ve taken too much time, and I had only two-and-a-half hours to myself. Well, two, really, if you consider the time it takes me to get to Eve’s school and back. Two precious hours. (Those of you who read yesterday’s post, do you sense a theme here?) Like I’m gonna spend ten minutes of that time at the freakin’ gas station. (Never mind that I’ll have to get it on the way to pick up Eve from school.)

The mom of a little girl in Eve’s class told me when we saw each other at drop-off this morning that I looked like I was “always in a hurry.” I told her that I was always in a hurry, that I am perpetually late to everything. I loved her for saying that, because it was a reminder to me that my insides sometimes (often?) show on the outside. I forget so easily that if I’m feeling frantic in my head, it radiates outward and I’m walking around in this stupid-ass anxiety bubble, which is filled with question marks, exclamation points, and curse words all bouncing lightning-fast this way and that off of me and the bubble walls. We are quite a sight.

Being in a hurry is not the only reason for my anxiety, of course. But it’s got to be one of the oldest reasons for it. Somehow, in my forty years, I have not been able to grasp the fact that EVERYTHING takes time. Say I have to be somewhere at 3:00 and it takes twenty minutes to get there. My instinct is to tell myself that I need to leave at 2:40. I do not also take into account the time it takes to walk to the car, get in and put my seatbelt on, park the car, and walk from the parking lot to the building. And forget about leaving a few extra minutes in case the traffic is bad. I am increasingly aware of all this and am working on it, but I have to work hard on it, and it really doesn’t seem like it should be that hard. I mean, seriously, the concept I’m trying to grasp is this: time passes. All day long, every day. It takes time to move through the space that I live in, all day long, every day. C’mon, Alison, keep repeating it to yourself, “Time is always passing. Time is always passing. Time is ALWAYS passing.” (If I yell it to myself, will it help?)

So, you see, time is not my friend. I have no desire to travel through time. Forget about going back to the past or ahead to the future. I want to travel away from time. It wouldn’t even help to not have clocks, because we would still sense the passing of time with the rising and setting sun. Even the cave people couldn’t escape time. They must’ve been all, “Me have to stone this bear to death before that light in the sky goes out, or me gonna be food for other bears.” Talk about anxiety bubbles!

I have to stop ranting now. It is time to go get Eve. And I still have to get that damn gas.