Fraudulent

I feel like a fraud today. My husband and kids, and bestest friends all think it's wonderful that I am going back to school and that I am maintaining a decent grade point average. 

I think it's a joke. I think I am a fraud. 

My classes are easy, except when they make no sense what so over.

My Medical Terminology class is fun, but the tests and quizzes are open book and I feel like there is no reason at all that anyone fully in possession of all of their faculties cannot maintain at least a 3.5 in that class. Show up, do the work, take the OPEN BOOK tests, get a good grade. That's it. 

My other class either makes no sense at all, or is clear as a bell. (Psych 100). It's like the book work and the lectures are 2 different classes. Ugh. I enjoy the lectures, but the book is made of butter: my eyes just slide right off the page. And all the tests are based on the book that I cannot read.

I feel like they all see me as doing this great and wonderful thing, and I feel like I am just... treading water, trying to keep my head up. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....

But I am drowning and no one can see me. I am drowning and they are cheering. I am suffocating and cannot breathe and screaming for help and I'm getting "Wow! Look at you go!"

I'm not going. I am letting the current take me where it will and I am terrified. 

And most of all I am terrified they will find out what a fraud I am. Thankfully, no one reads this blog. 

Tears for Fears

Can I just cry? Yell a little? Whine a lot? Be mad for a while and not have anyone either try to fix it or feel bad because they think it's their fault?

No?

:: sigh :: that's what I thought.

Between the kids being sick this weekend and today, my moon being particularly hateful right now, my husband being in pain and out of his RA meds, our not having any health insurance with which acquire more, our both currently being unemployed and therefore low on cash, my oldest child needing surgery-- and the drama surrounding getting that scheduled, my psychology midterm today.......

I am a raving bitch.

I hate the world today. I am really struggling to see the good. I know it's there, but part of my mental health issues is struggling to see the good through the haze of perception. Right now I do not have any rose tint to my glasses. Just filth.

In which I shall wear a dress

I have decided to set a few goals for myself for this summer.

I have long term goals:

Raise great kids so they contribute to the world being a better place.
Buy a home.
Plant a garden and eat fresh food from same garden.

I have shorter term goals:

Get accepted into the Medical Assistant program at the local community college. (An actual career, instead of customer service, in order to help meet a couple of the previously mentioned goals.)
Get health insurance again for hubby and me.

Today, however, I decided I needed to set some even shorter term goals. Not so short term as to be labeled a 'to do list' but maybe... Summer Goals.

So, here goes:

Take the family horseback riding.
Take the family camping.
Wear a sundress.

That last one kind of bugs me a bit. I used to wear dresses all the time. Sundresses  house dresses, tailored work type dresses. Broomstick skirts and peasant blouses. All the time. I only rarely wore jeans.

Now? Now I wear jeans all the time. I have come to realize that I hate my body and wear clothes to cover it up and be comfortable. I have decided to stop saying "I'll wear a sundress when I get down to size _____." Or "I don't wear shorts at this weight."

It's my body. It's the only one I've got. It's entirely possible it's the only one I'm going to ever have, and as such I need to treat it that way. It is a glorious body. 10 working fingers, 10 working toes. 2 brown eyes that crinkle up at the corners when I really smile. Breasts that nourished 3 children for a total of more than 2 years. Hips that are wide from carrying them for 9 months each (and a few other reasons, but none that are relevant!) Arms that are strong and give great hugs! Shoulders that are soft and warm to cry on or lean on as needed. Soft lips for kissing or being kissed. Sturdy legs that hold me up and get me where I need to go.

So what if my ankles are not matchsticks that would crumple under the weight of all of this awesomeness? So what if my belly is big? So what if I make someone else uncomfortable? I was uncomfortable first, and I am tired of it. I am tired of hating my body. I am tired of being uncomfortable with mirrors. I am tired of being uncomfortable in my own skin. I am tired of not wearing cute clothes because I am uncomfortable with exposing my flesh. My generous, one of a kind, lovely body deserves to be loved. And more than anything I can think of, I deserve to love my body.

Therefore: I shall wear a sundress!

Caffeine!

Caffeine and I go waaaaay back. My senior year of high school my favorite breakfast was a Watchamacalit candy bar and either a Jolt cola if I could get it, or a Mountain Dew, which was easier to come by. This morning I stopped at Dutch Brothers on my way home from dropping my 15 year old off at her zero hour class. Well. Not so much 'on the way home'. It really was a premeditated detour! I think they gave me a double shot, which is more coffee than I normally get, but the point is: I feel like I can do almost anything.

I could fly a jet plane with all the energy I have right now! Crap, I could fuel a jet plane with all the energy I have right now! And hubby won't get up, he wants to "sleep in". UGH. Soooooooooo....... here I am. I have taken my test, done my homework, gotten the kids up and out. I suppose I could cook breakfast.... or work on my quiz for my other class....

or I could go sit on his chest till he gets up! I like that one!!

Frustration

Once again I find myself in a position of giving someone else more than they are giving me. This is probably an over simplification or even a gross exaggeration of the reality, but this is how it feels at the moment. My wonderful husband decided today that when I was in a pissy mood that we did not get out the door on time this morning he would surprise us all with a short road trip. The downside to this surprise is that as much as I love him, sometimes he's a bit of an idiot. He did not recall that the location he wanted to take us to was not, in fact, a 45 minute drive from home, but a 2 hour drive each way. It was a lovely surprise. One I refuse to say anything negative about to him because I desperately desire him to be more spontaneous with this type of trip but at the same time---- we were not done with our homework for our shared Psych class. 

Now, we are home and working on the 2 page essays we needed to get written this weekend and I have so far devoted more time to helping him write and edit his than I have to writing my own. NOT that I don't think he's capable, but to the contrary: he asked me to edit and help him put his ideas and words on the screen / paper in an organized fashion. It's one of the things I am good at for other folks, but not so good at for myself---- and he desperately needs the help in this area. He is an amazingly intelligent man, but written word is his kryptonite. He struggles with the difference between 'realize' and 'relies'; 'loss' and 'lose'. When he reads out loud what he has typed, he puts in all the necessary filler words: 'the', 'and', etc, but they are missing from the text. 

Ugh. Off to try and finish my psych homework. Just had to word vomit my frustration somewhere that it wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. 

Perception

So a girlfriend texted me this morning and asked: Why do I always attract the wrong kind of guy? To which I had to reply: For starters, loaded question, and also: it's too early in the day for me to be drunk enough to have this conversation. Then I went on to give her my opinion that she tends to go for guys who are 'broken' that she thinks she can 'fix' because she needs desperately to be needed, and worshipped, and guys who are broken tend to lean heavily on her, which makes her feel needed.

If I may, I think I will expand on that idea, since I think it needs to be done, and this will be more than can be typed in a text. So here ya go, in no particular order of importance, here are the things I wish I could have texted her this morning:

When you are with someone who you see as a 'fixer upper', you are not being genuine in your feelings for them. You are enamoured with who you perceive they could become. Now I realize this is not a new concept, but it bears repeating since I see so many folks out there still doing it! One of the facets of my relationship with my spouse that actually works is that we are both aware that we each are damaged in some way, and are very keen to help the other become whole. This works for us, since we each put as much value  on the other's emotional growth as the other. Does that make sense? Let me try another phrasing: I put as much value on His emotional well being and growth as he does on Mine, so it is balanced, at least most of the time. In the case of my friend, she was putting all of her energies into helping someone who was putting significantly less energy into helping her. This is not balanced and is not healthy for either party.

Another point I'd like to have made is this: It is important to tend to your own garden. If Farmer John's neighbor gets injured and Farmer John then spends his time and energy taking care of his neighbors crops... come winter, Farmer John will be hungry. One of the things I've noticed with my friend, and let's be honest: I am guilty of this quite a bit. is that it's very easy to wrap ourselves up in someone elses issues. It's very very easy to let ourselves think that someone elses 'woes' are worse than ours, or more important than ours, and deserve our time and energy more than ours. "I'll take care of mine later" just really doesn't work. Eventually you get so worn down physically and emotionally that there is very little 'mine' left to take care of! Or weigh too much if you catch my bad pun. I am more than 100 pounds overweight right now. Closer to 150 if I were honest with myself. I have spent so long trying to make sure that every one elses needs were met that I have almost entirely neglected my own, including my health.

The one piece of advice that I gave my friend was this: Be Single. Embrace it. Make a commitment to it. Be With Yourself. Take a set amount of time, whatever feels right to her be it 6 months, a year and a day, whatever, and commit to being Single. Commit to being her own lover, her own best friend, her own best advocate. Re-learn her own likes and dislikes. Find a new hobby. Say No to dates. Tend your own garden for a while. Learn to love the skin you're in. Before I met my husband, I'd had a string of uninspiring romances, and a couple almost awful ones. Learned some painful, yet necessary, lessons from most of them. After one particularly hard break up, I swore off of men for a while. I did what I recommended my friend do: I committed to being with myself for a period of time. I was at an age (Right around my 20th birthday) where my perception of self was still pretty malleable, and I wanted to take some time and make sure that I was becoming who I wanted to become, not whoever someone else wanted me to be. I was clearly in the 'fixer upper' category, and wanted to do my own fixin. It worked for me: almost a year later I met my spouse. If I hadn't taken the time to get to know myself again, I might not have been open to the circumstances that led to meeting him---- and I might not have been a person he wanted in his life!

I think perception of self is also a concept that needs to be explored more, and I wish I knew how to express this to not just her, but to my kids and all my friends and loved onese as well. How we perceive ourselves is so so so important. If we see ourselves as lacking in some way, so will others. If we see ourselves as 'less than' or any other negative you like, so will others. That perception of self is energy we put out there into the world, and The Universe uses it to manifest what we think we deserve in our lives. The opportunities and choices we see presented by The Universe are really reflections of our own self image / self worth / self concept. There are limitless possibilities and opportunities out there in The Universe, waiting for us to reach out and grasp them with both hands, but --- and hear me on this--- we only see what we think we deserve.

And on that note, I am going to sleep.

Good night Internet.

Reflections are deceiving

So... the title of this blog was a bit more literal than my conscious self realized. My subconscious knew, but didn't tell me. Ah well, that seems to have happened quite a bit in my life: me not listening to my higher self.

Let me explain.... no, that would take too long. Let me sum up (to paraphrase a great movie!): I have not actually looked in the mirror and consistently seen "Myself" in.... a very many years. Sure, I've looked in the mirror. Daily even. Sometimes more than once a day. I look in the mirror to check and see if there are visible stains on my shirt; food in my teeth; errant face lotion that needs to be rubbed in better; to apply make up about 4 times a year; to check for defects of one variety or another. (Zits. Or, my fav: What the hell is that hair doing growing THERE!?!?! Did it not get the memo?? I am a GIRL! My personal welcome to Peri-Menopause. Yay.) In a dressing room to see just exactly how bad these jeans/outfit/swimsuit/insert-clothing-item-here makes me look.

But to look at my reflection for the purpose of looking at my reflection? Nah. Not often. When I do, I see other peoples idea's of me. Or--- what I think other people think when they look at me. Maybe not even based in reality.

My idea of what I look like is not based on what I look like but on my internal image of myself. You know that Star Wars movie poster of Princess Leia and Jabba the Hut? Well, sometimes, when I am feeling pretty good about myself, I think I look like the princess, only maybe 30-40 pounds heavier. Sometimes I think I look like Jabba the Hut. At the gym, taking a class for the first time, I looked around the room, spotted a few other ladies who were a bit heavier than the others, and I thought "Cool! This class has a broad sampling of the human form, including folks who look like me!"

And then I looked in the wall to wall mirror and actually SAW myself standing next to one of those 'heavier gals'. I was wrong. There were no women in that class that looked like me. I looked like Gilbert Grapes mother, and they looked like Sara Ramirez, or Sara Rue before weight watchers.

I am aware that I weigh about the same as a baby elephant 259 pounds. But what does that mean? Do I resemble the princess or the slug? I have no idea.

I do know this: I intend to figure it out. And either way, I will work to be ok with it. Not: Ok, let's change it. But: I am ok with my appearance. Regardless.