5.5 hours

In 6 hours I will be 44 years old.

I want to see this as just another day, and yet so much has changed.

In 44 years I have:

Driven across country 6 times.
Visited 12 countries.
Gotten married and divorced. (in the same year)
Had 5 dogs.
Had 6 cats.
Had 2 turtles.
Been to Red Sox games in 16 parks.
Have gone to 34 professional baseball fields.
Lived in 6 states.
Base jumped.
Been a teacher.
Been a student.
Loved.
Lost.
Been a white water raft guide.
Made and lost friends.
Learned what it means to be connected.
Matured (sorta)
Attended hockey games in 2 countries and 7 states.
Experienced love.
Experienced loss.
Peaked mountains in 4 countries.
Competed as a triathlete.
Gone to college.
Gone to a Michigan game.
Felt lost.
Found meaning and purpose.
Felt dismissed, abused, excused and forgotten.
Felt appreciated and loved.
Gotten to know myself.

I have lived. Have you?

A shout out to the 01562

            It is not that my childhood did not have good moments, great ones even. It is honestly that I cannot pinpoint an experience that impacted me enough to merit a narrative. Then suddenly last Thursday, it occurred to me that it was not a moment that changed me. It was a place.

The town I grew up in, with a population just shy of 10,000 was straight out of a Norman Rockwell drawing. We had a pond called Muzzy Meadow that we would ice skate on, half of us trying to be Dorothy Hamill while the other half shoveled out a hockey rink and picked teams in hopes of emulating Bobby Orr. A rope swing attached to a large old oak tree on Cranberry Lake kept us entertained for hours in the summer when we were not swimming at the town lake or Howe Park. Friday night football games at O’Gara Park were always full of teenagers connecting, flirting and cheering. Our classroom sizes were small, and we were divided in alphabetical order, ensuring that we made lasting friendships with the people closest to us in name. Downtown had a candy store, pizza places, a library and a town hall which always offered activities for the residents. There were also the famous haunted mansions, which we all played in and around to try to see the ghosts that had been written about in the book “Deliver Us From Evil: Spencer’s Hidden Secret”, we were all convinced that we encountered them, although I am not sure that is entirely true.

            My home, unlike most in Spencer, was an apartment.  The second story of a house at 75 Maple St., the rent was $40 dollars a week and we could barely manage that. Spencer was never really part of the plan after all, like most things that had happened over the years preceding our move. Upon divorcing my father when I was 6, my mother relocated us to this tiny town we had never heard of to be closer to her boyfriend, Rodman.  Rodman was nice enough, in a “chill out, why don’t we just play Frisbee and then sing songs while I play guitar” kind of way. He was nothing like my father, and this town was nothing that I was accustomed to.

            I always viewed myself as an outsider. It was hard not to in a town so small, with a community so tightly intertwined. The friends I made seemed mostly to come from the schoolyard across the street from my house, the kids from the streets surrounding mine. Giggy, Sharon and I played HORSE or we would all play kickball or baseball on the pavement that was our play space all through childhood. If we were not in the mood for sports involving balls, we would ride our bikes, reenacting the latest episode of “The Dukes of Hazzard”. No one was required to go home before the streetlights came on, and none of us wanted to.

            Over the years the playmates and the games changed but some things remained steady throughout. The friendships we made, the stories we shared, the situations experienced and the people we admired.

One of those people, for the entire town, was Brian Sweeney. Brian was a football player, an artist, but most importantly an all around nice guy who always had a smile on his face and a kind word for the people he encountered. After graduating from Boston University, Brian went on to become a pilot in the Navy fighting in the Gulf War and eventually became an instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School, all the while continuing to create friends and impact the people around him with his kind heart and ability to face life with passion.

On September 11^th, 2001, Brian lost his life while sitting in a plane that was hijacked by terrorists. The loss impacted more than his wife, his siblings, his hometown friends, his military brethren, and his parents. It impacted the entire country as we all listened in horror to the phone call he made and the recording he left on his wife Julie’s answering machine. A testimony to the man he was, even in his last moments his thoughts were with the people he loved and his wishes for their happiness.

            Last week, on the 13^th anniversary of the hijacking of the planes, I witnessed something that made me realize what my childhood and that town actually stood for. On September 10^th, Brian’s sister Anne changed her profile picture on Facebook. Suddenly instead of her dog, it was Brian in the cockpit of a fighter jet. Throughout the next 36 hours, one by one, hundreds of people followed suit. Although the pictures people chose varied, one thing was perfectly clear, we remembered. Silently, a group of people spanning the globe, but originally from Spencer, stood unified behind and with the family and close friends of our fallen hero.

            I cannot claim that the day a classmate did not pick me for Red Rover, making the varsity basketball squad as a freshman, being the only girl on my baseball team, going to parties or the thousands of other things that I experienced in Spencer and throughout my childhood did not impact me at all. All of my childhood is relevant, not primarily as individual strands of memories but rather as a woven finished product that made my town, and my childhood, complete.

a defining moment. Aren't they all?

Tonight I was asked to consider, and write about, a moment from my childhood that defined me as a person. Immediately my brain was in rapid-fire mode...moving to Spencer, meeting my friends, my parents divorce, my first drink, playing basketball, the smell of my great grandmother (a mixture of Chapstick and baby powder), the suicides in my high school, my work history, my mother meeting Rod, being in foster care. The litany of experiences I claim have defined me is endless. There is not just one.

Or is there?

Was there one moment, a single experience that made me BECOME the Sonja you know? One year, one day, one minute, one second...that changed my path, altered my perceptions, determined my destiny?

I want to get all cheesy...say it was meeting and knowing my mother. The woman who shaped my world view, taught me manners, helped me develop a conscious, loved me regardless of...well...everything. I also want to get sarcastic...say it was my moving from town to town as a child...cite that experience as the basis of my ability to "embrace stability", or credit it for my living in several countries and states in my 20's and 30's. 

Then I suddenly remember last night. Last night, I was challenged to face my past and simultaneously stand in my present. I was challenged to accept betrayal without becoming a victim. I was challenged to be the Sonja of today who is built upon the Sonja of yesterday. And my moment was chosen. 

This is about to get awkward, not for me but for you.

She said, loudly, in no uncertain terms: "stop being such a baby". 

The she in the story was my grandmother, Nana. My father's mother. She yelled the sentence from her bedroom on Woodlawn Drive in Pelham, NH. The year was 1978 or 1979. The situation was horrible.

That house had, until that moment, been a safe haven for me. I can still describe, in painstaking detail, the color of the paint on the exterior of the house, the shape of the pool, the sound of my grandmother's voice when she spoke, the coffee tables, the sight of my grandparents reading the newspapers on Sunday mornings, the slant of the roof, the brook running on the border of the property, the stairs from the living room to the bedrooms, the trash compactor, the poodles (Bijou and Chantee) that they had, the fireplace, the toys I played with, the Thanksgiving dinners I ate there, the sense of security that every experience I had there created. 

Until that night.

My great grandmother, "Little Nana" had recently passed. That changed the house for me, but not enough to stop me from going. She had a heart attack in the downstairs bathroom, and I skipped the funeral, unlike my younger cousins. Mostly because I could not handle it, did not want to face it. Still, I returned to the house that I had learned how to drive a tractor, pop a purple popper flower, and climb a ladder in. I felt comfortable. Protected.

Prior to that moment.

My father, who was probably closing in on 30 at the time, had moved back in to his mother's house, bringing with him his 18 year old girlfriend, Carol. Carol was suddenly sleeping in Little Nana's bedroom. My dad was staying in the bedroom across from my grandparents bedroom upstairs. They were known as "Big Nana" and "Grumpy". At least to me. All under one roof, my dad, my grandparents, and my dad's girlfriend. I should have been the safest kid in the world. After all, they all loved me...right?

But...my dad was drinking. 

This was not new. It was the reason I had never lived in a town for long, the reason I have no friends from first grade, the reason for "the divorce". My grandparents had taken him into their home. Again. A constant source of malcontent, fighting, discourse between my grandparents...my grandmothers NEED to protect her son. Her oldest. Kenny.

Anyway... he was drinking. Girlfriend downstairs. His mother (my grandmother) in the next room. His daughter (me) asleep in his room. In comes Kenny (dad). He gets in bed with me...and makes me feel...uncomfortable? Awkward? SCARED. So I scream...SSSSTTTOOOPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!

My grandmother from the next room, her bedroom, screams "stop being such a baby!!!!". To me.

In that situation, I as a child, had no recourse. I could not explain to her that her son was assaulting me. I could not ask for help, because my lamenting for help had already been denied. I could not do anything but freeze. And pray. 

My father passed out that night, thankfully. Never again was the incident spoken of. Never was there a request for an explanation of my cry for intervention. Never did my grandmother come back and apologize. Never did I explain my actions to her. Or anyone.

But what did happen, inarguably, is that I was that I changed. I stopped feeling that I was going to be protected. I stopped believing that I was safe. I stopped believing in the power of my voice, my rights, my childhood.

My grandmother did not say those words out of contempt for me. She did not want me to be unsafe, at least not in my opinion. She simply wanted to protect her son. That need could arguably be based in her experiences. That day I was a product of my lineage...I was exposed to the life choices of my grandparents grandparents. To the unspoken stories, the untold horrors, the childhoods of my forefathers. And yet, it defined me. 

I stopped trusting adults that day. I stopped listening to the inner voice that told me adults would keep me safe. I stopped asking for help.

There is more to me than my drive for self preservation. I am altruistic, intelligent, funny, resilient. A lot, if not all, of these characteristics are derived from my grandmother...but inarguably, my inability to trust people comes from her also.

I am not convinced that this is a moment that barring all other moments would have created me. Although I am sure that it is the moment that I can pinpoint that altered my view of people, of safety and of life. I am certain that it changed me...that is aided me in becoming the Sonja of today built upon the Sonja of yesterday. That is it has impacted my decisions, altered my relationships, and shaped my reality. 

That was the moment that made me the Sonja that is writing this, regardless of you knowing her, understanding her, or accepting her. That was the situation that defined, shaped and created her. That was the moment, above all moments, that made her...me...who I am. That is how I excuse me, justify me, explain me.

Except, I am kind. Loving. Forgiving. Accepting. GOOD.

So was it a bad moment?

No. It was just A moment. A blip in the time line that makes me...me.

I did not CHOOSE this...

I have heard people all week call suicide selfish...I used to think the same thing...but then:

Let's start with my owning something: I am fairly judgmental. I do not mean to be...but I am. I usually learn HOW I am when it is too late, and it is generally after I find myself in a situation similar to one I saw as so easily navigable before I was actually living it. Depression is one of those places...that I was sure I knew the way out of until I actually was in it.

Here are some unsolicited pieces of advice I have given and received:

Just act as if...
Fake it till you make it...
If you would just get out and DO something you would feel better...
This is a choice...
You just need to...(fill in the blank)
You are too smart to act like this...
Feelings aren't facts...
You just need to pray...
This too shall pass...
You need more exercise.
Try eating healthier foods.
God never gives you more than you can handle...
You're better than this...
Get dressed up...looking good will make you FEEL better...
If you would just ASK FOR HELP, this would get better...
You are only talking about wanting to die to get attention...

Quite frankly, when I was offering those little gems to people, I was offended when they did not heed to my brilliance and wake up singing the praises of unicorns and rainbows. My life was amazing after all. I was active in the prevention community, helping teens shape better lives for themselves. I was a teacher. I was active in a spiritual community. I was athletic, happy, healthy. I knew I had problems, but I was living in the solution. After all, everyone has bad days, and those concepts helped me walk through mine, so of course they would help them too. At that point, I can honestly say I did not "get" depression...until I was in one...and then:

I didn't want to be unemployable, but I didn't have the energy to hold a job
I didn't want to be isolated, but I felt less alone when I was by myself
I wanted help but I felt that I did not deserve it.
I wanted to be heard, but there were no words that adequately described what was happening inside me
When I did reach out, I did not feel supported. I felt misunderstood, judged, and embarrassed
People telling me what I "could", "should", and "needed" to do left me feeling like I was incapable, broken and stupid
I didn't want to die, I just felt like I could not keep living

When I wanted to not be alive, it was not because I didn't consider other people's feelings...it was because I couldn't stop considering other people's feelings. I thought I was a burden. Hopeless. Helpless. I was tired of asking for and needing help but not being able to change what I was experiencing. I was tired of hearing what I wasn't doing. I really thought everyone would be better off...that my depression would stop dragging other people down, stop hurting the people I love. I thought I would stop breaking their hearts. I knew that losing me would hurt people at first, but I believed, in my heart of hearts, that the pain of losing me quickly would be less than the pain of watching me die slowly. I just wanted to stop hurting people with my EXISTENCE.

Those were not thoughts of self-pity. I did not want attention. I did not want to be saved, fixed or changed. I did not want your views, opinions or suggestions imposed upon me.

Finally, I found people that understood what I was experiencing and they allowed me to be, to feel, to "own" my truth and that was what changed for me. The truth. As ugly and as horrible as I thought it was...finally not having to pretty it up, make it palatable, make excuses for it, or minimize it for other people's comfort...it was being able to claim MY reality that changed my reality. Thank God I found one person who did not try to change me, but accepted me...accepted my pain, me perspective, ME.

Because of my personal experience, my approach to depression has changed. I am no longer living in depression consistently, but I certainly flirt with it on occasion. Not because I choose to, but because it happens. These are my new techniques for relationships I have with people who live with depression...(I would appreciate if this is how you would treat me if I ever am back in a depression that incapacitates me):

I no longer offer advice, solicited or not. I ask questions, after I ask if it would be ok for me to do so. I communicate when I am afraid for someone's safety, and ask for confirmation of safety if they are able to give that. I do not push. I listen and occasionally ask for clarification, but try to steer clear of sentences that turn the conversation into one about me (I remember feeling that way...I have been there....when I felt that way I...). I let our friendship ebb and flow, and when I struggle with that, I talk to people unrelated to the situation. I do not share my fears or frustration with them, as they are struggling enough without the added guilt of what I am experiencing. I try to remember that they have a God...and that it is not me.

Being depressed is as much a personal choice as being a homosexual. I can remember someone asking me once (or several times) why I "chose to be gay"...my response was (sarcastic as usual)..."because I want to be judged, ridiculed, outcast, humiliated, questioned, threatened and feel apart from society as a whole". In other words...I did not CHOOSE to be gay. Nor do people CHOOSE to be depressed. They are not doing anything TO you, any more than a gay child is doing something TO their parents...and you do not have to get it, support it, or experience it...you just have to accept it

this line is currently disconnected...

As the train rolls into Ipswich this morning, I notice that I am becoming increasingly unsettled because I am unable to connect. To the Internet that is.

I am not sure when the transition happened. When being able to successfully be tethered to electronic devices became defined as “connectivity”. I do know that is exactly how I define it though.

When I was a kid (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) our phone was attached to the wall by this coiled cord that became longer as I stretched it to my room for privacy.  We had to write down phone numbers on pieces of paper, put them in our address books, go home or use cash to call people from payphones, and keep trying until they answered because there were no answering machines. Nor was there call waiting…there was a busy signal if they were otherwise engaged, allowing them, or you conversely, to focus on one conversation at a time, without cutting someone off because of something or someone “more important”.

This quickly gave way to the call waiting, cordless phone, and answering machine era, where you didn’t have to try AS hard to connect with people, but you still had to try. When you left home, you always made sure there was a dime or a quarter in your shoe (I wore Kangaroos which had a handy zipped pocket in them, so no coins in my socks) so that you could call someone in an emergency. And if there was an actual emergency, you could stop at a neighbor’s house (or a strangers) and ask to make a phone call…and they would let you.

I was in my mid twenties when phones not attached to the home happened. I remember car phones and those insanely large bag phones, but only police or wealthy people had those. Car phones were built in, had a cord attaching them to the car, and cost a LOT of money to use. Box phones looked like the military command centers from movies, with extractable antennae, and such lousy service that it would have been more effective to use two cans with a string instead.

But cell phones…the magic of having a phone in your pocket, being able to reach anyone, from anywhere!! 300 MINUTES A MONTH for 50 dollars was my first plan, and I always went over. Plans changed, evolved, got “better”…as did the phones. Soon we were sending email, and eventually text messages rather than calling. Texts could only contain 60 characters, so we began abbreviating and misspelling words to match that criterion and unfortunately our verbal language and dictionaries now reflect texting.

The sheer magic of instant gratification had everyone in its grasp. Cell phones continued to infiltrate even the most private and intimate moments of our lives, like the gym and the bathroom.  I was bit by the bug, caught up in the connectivity revolution like everyone else. Using my “free nights and weekends” to call people I never would have called from a land line, I stopped remembering or even writing down phone numbers, and I stopped seeing people as having lives beyond my ability to contact them

No longer was privacy expected or respected. If the phone wasn’t answered then it was somehow a personal affront to the caller. I cannot count how many times I have gotten the question “WHERE WERE YOU??? I tried calling x times”, or conversely, how many times I have asked the question myself. My phone is now a book, a computer, a t.v., a camera, a game center, a radio, an address book…OH…and a phone. It is powerful. It is wonderful and awful.

I long for eye contact. I long for conversations where the conversation I am in is more important than the person texting you OR me. I long for day trips where enjoying the place I am and the person I am with are my focus. I long for privacy, both yours and mine. I long for the feeling that I am able to be…without your validation or judgment…which I open myself up to through social media. I long to feel secure in my life without a cell tower within my phones radius.

I guess that what I am saying is that I want to connect, because honestly my connectivity has left me feeling disconnected.

Cramping My Style

Someone asked me yesterday if they were "cramping my style"...which led me to the question: what is MY STYLE??

I am a 43 (almost 44) year old woman who:

Listens to rap, instrumental, rock, pop and classical music
Enjoys staying in bed all day as much as I enjoy climbing mountains
Both loves and hates being around kids
Prefers a job that I can wear a baseball hat
Enjoys chick flicks and watching things blow up
Fancies myself fiercely independent and dependent
Am both smothered and fueled by being "needed"
Wants to feel emotions but am constantly overwhelmed when I do
Thinks dogs are better company than people
Wears jeans and t shirts every day, and have since I was 3
Wants to fit in everywhere but often feel like I belong no where
Doesn't ever seem to be attracted to any specific gender, but bases those decisions on...personality

Oh, the list could go on and on, but why? In my last post I tried to be as honest as I could about who I am, and now I am venturing into how I live. The object of these exercises is not to get others to see my diversity or accept me, it is for ME to see my diversity and accept me.

I was telling someone last week after being asked why I was doing something that they had not expected, that I am trying to learn to live based on WHO I AM and not on HOW YOU SEE ME. I do not always know or understand what that means, or what the breadth of the implications of that choice are for myself. I do know that 20 years ago, I could not...publicly...do anything that would challenge others version of who I was. And I was quite compartmentalized about those decisions. Work, recovery, social life, family. Not always in that order.

It was in 2001 that I decided to try to figure out who I am without your opinions shaping me. Since that time, I have made egregious errors in judgement, lost friends, disappointed family, made friends, made excellent decisions, had my family so proud of me that there were not words for them to use. I have lost jobs, gotten jobs, been at the top of my game, and hit bottom. I have faltered. I have fallen in and out of love, grieved over the loss of my two and four legged best friends, made new friends,  moved, setlled down, gotten married and divorced. I have explored my values, questioned and felt confident in my sense of God, ebbed and flowed, waxed and waned. I have been confused and undaunted, I have walked through paralyzing depression and overwhelming joy.

I have come to realize that life is much "neater" when I live by other peoples expectations, regulations, rules and descriptions for me. Unfortunately, it is also uncomfortable, restricting and limited. I make no excuses for the choices I have made.

Instead,  I offer only one explanation...it's my style.

I should come with a warning...

I am difficult.

I can be: stubborn, jealous, petty, judgmental, pessimistic, afraid, reactive, clingy, distant, challenging, condescending, elitist, manipulative, closed minded, and paranoid. I occasionally catch myself being racist, sexist, agist, homophobic, and heterophobic. I can disguise my negative thoughts with good intentions, my negative actions with positive motives, procrastinate to the point of failure, and use my tongue as a weapon. I can be lazy, sloppy, and make the people around me bristle with discomfort.

I am easy.

I can be kind, generous, thoughtful, romantic, and sweet. I can make you feel like you are the only person that matters in the world, and that your very existence makes my experience on earth a better one. I am great with children, and almost every animal I have ever met likes me. A lot. I am intelligent, talented, capable, willing, honest, open minded, and inclusive. I bring people that normally would not mix together, I can converse with homeless people with the same ease that I converse with PhDs who are at the top of their game. I interview like no one you have ever seen. I can see the good in every person and situation if I choose to. I am painfully optimistic.

I am broken.

I have been hurt, abandoned, forgotten, judged, and excluded. I have experienced homophobia, ridicule and failure in front of people that matter to me. A lot. I have been abused, raped, beaten, and torn down from my highest places. I have been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder that makes it occasionally impossible for me to connect with the world around me regardless of the desperation to do so. I am afraid to love, afraid to trust, afraid to succeed, afraid to fail, afraid of you...but mostly afraid of me.

I am healing.

I challenge myself to see all of me, every day. I also challenge myself to see all of you. I have a therapist and friends with whom I am gut wrenchingly honest, always. Even when, no, ESPECIALLY when I do not want to be. I am a willing participant in a relationship with a higher power upon whom I give the credit for my success and draw strength from in my challenges, but never blame for my pain. I am more connected now to myself and the world around me than I have ever been, every day that I can be.

I should come with a warning...

and if I did it would read: Caution...human.

She swears that everywhere is perfect, 'cept the place she wants to leave

For most of my life, being somewhere or someone else has been my dominating thought. 

When I was a child I wanted to grow up. When I was at school I wanted to be outside playing. When I was outside playing I wanted to be camping. When I was camping I wanted to be at the beach. When I was at the beach I wanted to be at an amusement park. When I was good I wanted to be better. When I was bad, I wanted to be worse. When I was part of the crowd I wanted to stand out, and when I stood out I wanted to disappear.

As a young adult the thing I wanted to get away from was more intimate, it was me. I made a lot of attempts to get away. I tried alcohol, drugs, jobs, friends, cities, states, countries...but wherever I was and whatever I was doing, there was always one common denominator. I was there. The one thing I was trying to run from was the only thing I always took with me. 

I never would have told you that I was running. I never really knew. I always had sound reasons for where I went and what I did. Or so I thought. But as with most things, retrospect has served as an undeniable aid in seeing the truth. And the truth is, I am not really comfortable with disappointment...from myself or others...real or imagined.

The "real or imagined" disclaimer is paramount in this discussion. It is virtually impossible for me to have a conversation without using it lately. Mostly due to the fact that a lot of my discontentment IS based in my imagination. My therapist refers to it as "the stories I tell myself". An apt description. Not very different from a child hearing a fairy tale, I believe these stories, and they become the monsters under my bed or the happily ever after I am convinced is right around the corner.

Oddly enough, for the past three years, I have started to become more comfortable WHERE I am. I like my home, I like my job, I like my surroundings...although I do not know that I am any more confident in the person I am. The stories I tell are no longer about how changing circumstances will make everything better, they remain focused on how changing WHO I am is the magic solution.

That is not entirely untrue. Change can be good...the trick, for me, is not to get too hung up on changing who I am...but rather to just be the best version I can be of myself on any given day in any given situation. When I am the best version of myself, when I choose to see the good in people and in the situations I put myself in, suddenly going elsewhere seems unnecessary. And oddly enough, I become content.

Seeing the people around me

As the commuter rail pulled out of Chelsea and started toward North Station, a woman started pushing and shoving her way toward the door from inside the train car. A sea of people stood between her and the door, and people immediately began to glare, grumble, even block her path. She persisted and when she was within five feet of John (my favorite conductor) she burst into tears and choked out that her husband had just been in a bad accident and she needed to get back to Newburyport. John promptly contacted the train that had just pulled out of the bay and had them come back and wait for her...he even went so far as to escort her to the track where her ride home was waiting.

Watching this situation unfold, I was reminded that we never know what people are experiencing. I often walk through my day so engulfed in my own thoughts, feelings and situations that I forget to open my eyes to what is going on around me. I really do not know what other people have going on with them.

When I forget that other people have their own experiences occurring, I become a perpetual victim..."he looked at me funny"..."she is making me late for work"...the list goes on and on. And how easy it for me to step into that role, like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes. 

When I blame, point fingers or take things personally, it is never a reflection of WHAT I am experiencing, but instead a reflection of HOW I am experiencing it. 

forgiving my father?

While trolling through Facebook two days ago, I saw that a friend from childhood had lost her mother. First it broke my heart, and then it pushed my buttons.

For the past 9 months I have been watching my father die slowly. Actually, I need to amend that. I have been watching my father die for the past 43 years. It feels good to finally say that out loud. It feels good to own where all of my mixed feelings have been based on for the past year.

My father is an alcoholic. There is nothing wrong with that per say, alcoholics are everywhere. And not all alcoholics are like my father. Or, more accurately, like my father was. My father did get sober when I was in my 20's, which is why I choose to not share stories about my childhood now. I am so protective against him being judged. Or I was. 

I am known for saying that my fathers alcoholism is his story, and if he wants to share it he can. That is noble and on some level correct, but it creates a small problem for me. I never get to acknowledge my story. My experiences. My truth. Until now. I have spent nine months trying to resolve my feelings, trying to rationalize, justify, deny them...but they are what they are. 

My father never meant to become an alcoholic. Nor, did he ever intend for his alcoholism to impact the world around him the way it did. Never mind that, he never intended for it to impact him the way it did. 

My father drank. To the point that when I was five, I took a piece of poster board and made a calendar, four full weeks, and on that calendar I created a schedule to wean him off of booze. I drew little bottles, starting with 30, and worked him down to 1. It failed. When I was ten, I tried to walk home from Billerica to Spencer so that I did not have to get in a car with him, after my step mother told me he would be fine to drive even though he could not walk to the car on his own. When I was thirteen I was no longer allowed to be alone with him. And when I was twenty-one my grandmother called me for help because he was drunk and belligerent, and I told him that if he bought the gun I would buy the bullets because I could no longer watch him die slowly. He went to detox that day...it was not his first or his last, but it was the one that changed something for him. On the outside. 

On the inside his body was waging war on the man that had abused it. He had developed cirrhosis, hepatitis, and COPD. These led to heart problems, diabetes, depression, and a plethora of other things. Those things are killing him now, which means, in effect, that his alcoholism is killing him now. And do not underestimate that sentence. He has been in a hospital or a nursing home for 7 of the past 9 months: in a coma twice, had two heart attacks, is in end stage liver disease, deemed inoperable for his 2/3 blocked aortic valve, has gone into congestive heart failure 3 times, has gone on insulin, has almost bled out internally, has had bands put in his esophagus, is 100% deaf in one ear, 90% deaf in the other ear, and has been on life support. 

Not once in this time, through this situation, have I known how I feel. I have vacillated between rage and relief, fear and faith, joy and sadness. I have tried to defend and protect his rights as a patient while simultaneously resenting his not letting go. I have battled the desire to make his sickness about me by trying to keep the focus on him. I have avoided questions about his well being, while asking for prayers for his recovery...because I want him to recover...and resent him for it. I am so angry that he put himself here, and so sad for the man that is withering before my very eyes. 

I am not sure that I am any closer to understanding myself in this situation. I do not know that there is a clean cut, black or white resolution to emotion. I do know that it is time to face the feelings so that they have an opportunity to heal and to become less powerful.  Or at least, that is my hope. 

An absolute balancing act

Last week, I was telling my therapist that I was getting ready to start another detox, and was met with silence. I know that it may seem funny that I use my time in therapy to discuss my eating habits, but what I have recently come to realize is that I am always looking for external solutions to my internal problems.

In other words, I remove and add things from my life to try to create internal comfort. And I do not do it in a way that resembles balance, or even sanity. At all.

Last year alone, I quit smoking, started smoking, started boxing, stopped boxing, gave up sugar, picked up sugar, gave up flour, picked up flour...the list goes on and on. And I do not do these things with any sort of leeway. When I give something up, I GIVE IT UP...with a vengeance. Not that is any different when I start something...boxing is a perfect example of that. I went from never putting on wraps before to boxing 3 hours a day and sparring on weekends, and as quickly as I started boxing I stopped in favor of something that would make me feel EVEN BETTER.

I am not as concerned with what is happening on the outside as I am with why I am doing it and how harshly I treat and judge myself. I always seem to make these decisions when I am in some sort of emotional discontent, and rather than explore the source of my emotions, I change things on my exterior to try to make them disappear. Oddly enough, that is never a conscious thought, it is only in retrospect that I can see my own motives. This new discussion with my therapist was my attempt at making a change in the process.

The problem is, as I see it, that having balance is more work than living in absolutes. Black and white, Yin and Yen, good and bad, on and off...those are my comfort zones. Trying to have balance is WORK. It actually takes more than double the energy for me to not live in a "disciplined" way. By disciplined, I mean rigid. By rigid, I mean comfortable.

I was told once that you "have to experience the extremes to find the balance"...I wonder if I will even recognize it when it gets here...

The Maine problem...

I am not sure what it is about Maine that makes it the vacation destination for people from Massachusetts. 

As I child, we went to Hermit Island. I remember the feeling driving across the sandbar, scared to death that the ocean would suddenly rise and swallow us whole. Then sitting in the car in the stifling heat waiting for my dad to check us in at the ranger station. Looking at the map to find our campsite and trying to give directions...always mindful of how close we were to the showers and the arcade games while we drove. Then the first night...the crackling of the fire, picking a stick to roast hot dogs, burning marshmallows on purpose, lying in the tent jealous that the adults were still awake. The week was always a blur which ended on the last day with the lobster bake on the campfire. The ride home seemed to take forever...passed out in the back seat sun cooked and content.

As a teen, we went to Old Orchard Beach. My first vacations without my family were spent with high school friends. Packing more beer than food we forgot more memories than we remembered, but those were filled with laughter and will stay with my forever. 

As an adult, Maine has become the preferred destination for day trips to outlets, rambling up the coast to take photos and summer concerts in Freeport. Maybe an occasional weekend in Portland, but for the most part, my days in the vacation state were behind me. Or so I thought.

This weekend, for the first time in close to three decades, I packed my bags to head to a campground in the vacation state. Unlike my childhood or even teen years however, this time there will be no latern fueled by kerosene, no sleeping on the ground and no slimy shower floors with ice cold water. I have joined the middle age generation...sleeping in a bed, in a camper...with electricity, running water and a microwave at my disposal. 

There will be no hot dogs on sticks, no sweaty tent sleeping, and no sparklers...but there will be campfires, laughter and newly formed memories with good friends. 

I. Me. Sonja. Who?

I wonder who I am. Often, intensely, and longingly.

I wonder what I like. Who I like. What I want to do. What I want to be. What music is my style? What clothes do I want to wear? How do I want my hair to look? Where do I want to live? Who do I want to share myself with? Am I gay? Am I straight? Will I be successful? What do I want to succeed in? Do I believe in God? Did I want kids? Do I want to get married again? What kind of food do I want to eat?

I feel funny saying I do not know the answers to these questions, and yet it is true. Sometimes I feel like a chameleon, changing my self to blend in to my environment. At other times I feel like I am just walking on eggshells, trying to make my behavior match what I think other people want from me.

Here is an example...When I was 21 I was dating someone that told me that they did not like Bob Segar. For the next 12 years, any time Bob Segar came on the radio, I changed the station. Now, mind you, we had stopped dating 11 years before I realized that I wasn't the one I was changing the station for. I still do not know if I like his music, but I can listen if I choose to (right???).

At 43 years old, when I am busy comparing my inside thoughts to other people's outside appearances, I feel alone in my quest for self. I am sure that there are other people that feel the same way, but they all look so comfortable in their lives, in their choices, in their skin. I hope they are.

Someday I will wake up in the morning and worry more about what I want, what I feel, what I like, what I need and what I love than about how I am perceived by others. And when that day comes...I imagine Bob Segar will be playing on the radio in the background...