Monday, November 30, 2015

Bittersweetness

You move across, innocence lost
All static and desire
You're blue in the face from navel gaze
You set yourself on fire

You strip down and lay yourself out
I know you can't fake it
But are you tired and naked?
Are you tired and naked?

Yeah, I'd sooner chew my leg off
Than be trapped in this
How easy you think of all of this as bittersweet me


R.E.M., Bittersweet Me (1996)





So this happened today, among other things. It's bittersweet. Bittersweet me. This is what I wanted, right? To sell the house and move on? Now that it's actually happening, it's tough. Damn tough. In the scheme of life, it's not all that awful. Relationships end. Houses sell. Possessions are divided. We move on. I'm not a Syrian refugee, or an Iranian refugee, or a Sudanese refugee, or a climate change refugee, or any one of the other people fleeing violence, tyranny, famine, extreme poverty, lack of natural resources.
I should recognize my privilege in the world and stop complaining. But that's not productive. One of the first rules of caretakers is that you must take care of yourself. When the plane is crashing, you put your oxygen mask on before your child's. Emergency responders treat their burns before they rush back into the fire. 
When your life is a meteor about to crash and explode into a thousand shards, causing mass environmental change, you don't stop to say, "Gee, someone else is in a worse position in life than me right now" and let it crash on you. You run. Or you freeze in a panic of terror, knowing unthinkable change is happening faster than you can plan your next move.
That's a long way of saying "Relationships are hard"... sometimes. Is there an effortless relationship? I think it's impossible but then I think of my Potatoface friend who, after almost a decade, consoles me with hope that it's possible for things to be simple - providing we acquaint ourselves with a complementary personality. Of course I know other people who get along swimmingly. They don't have the knock down fights where voices escalate above the din of a world gone mad. They don't reach into the depths of unutterable slurs, slinging curses from room to room. They don't re-write the history of how you got from there to here, and everything in between.  
But I have a difficult passion. I'd like to blame it on being an Aries. As much as I try to wrangle it into submission, the passion often overtakes sensibility. One minute, there's calm among chaos but faster than the tattoo needle scars your skin forever, my passion awakens. Sometimes this is great. At work, I love projects that I love. I will stand up for my municipalities and their leaders even when I'm doubtful. When that fiery email refuting a narrow perspective is sent two minutes too soon, it's not great. This passion makes relationships tricky. 
The same passion that instigated this life change is needling between utter sadness, hope for future change, and the acceptance that nothing - absolutely nothing - is permanent. When the fog of this bittersweet passion separates, a theater curtain pulled back for the opening act, I am hopeful I'll see the myriad lessons learned. I already sense myself correcting past mistakes as I move forward. Simultaneously, I recognize when I take us down a narrow rabbit hole of circular logic. I knew one of these days that the for sale sign would go up. The reality is quite different. How I handle this is how I learn from this.
So, what's the lesson learned? There's a for sale sign up in front of my house. It wasn't there when I left this morning. But there it stands, taunting me with my passion's failure. I know this is the right step to take; the caretaking I need to do is for myself. The suffering around the world is no less important, no less noble, but if I'm not taking care of myself, I'm no use to anyone else.
Still, it's bittersweet. The end to a dream we failed to realize together, accepting a plan not communicated, diminished hopes set in a bar too high to cross. One step forward in the direction towards "moving on". The potential that letting go of the house is letting go of our interconnected lives.
I'm tired. My emotions are naked, laid bare and stretched out in front of me. My foot has been in my mouth too many times. Chewing off my leg to spite my solar plexus - my energy source. And us? Both blue in the face. No one's happy. No one's an innocent anymore. Mud slung ceiling to wall to floor. This isn't easy for anyone. But here we are. Bittersweetness surrounds us, taking shape in the form of a for sale sign.  

Saturday, November 21, 2015

This Decay (a poem)

He said to me, "When did this decay start?" From recent conversations, it started at the beginning. A slowly crumbling decay. In September, I attended an open poetry workshop. I wrote this, based off the theme of "the elements".






My anger is red hot, burning from my Aries temper
Fueled by passion, jealousy, and immovable honesty.
Its flames light up my face
A radiating force field of one sided stubbornness
Finally admitting the slow decay of a relationship doomed.

Tears flow freely, the vital fluids that carry life forward,
Released.
Healing can start when the energy is spent.

Where is the oxygen I need
To sustain a beating heart?
The heavy air of our fights chokes me.

Ashes to ashes the fire from my depths meet the cool (eventual) end of life.
Returning each moment to the beginning,
A cycle of life and death, life and death.

Earth’s elements envelope me
Offering rejuvenating breath to free my soul,
Drowning my fear, suppressing the glowing embers of anger,
Baptizing me with newfound wisdom. 

We need decay to be reborn
Like the fire releasing the seed in an old growth forest.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Thanksgiving... or giving thanks without a turkey. Or thanks without thanks.

Thanksgiving... a holiday favored by many. Me? I hate it. I've never liked turkey as far back as I remember. Even before I was a vegetarian, I didn't like turkey. My mom went through a phase where she made lasagna at Thanksgiving, which I appreciated. But turkey? Canned cranberries? Yams, candied or otherwise? Green bean casserole? Pumpkin pie? Hated them. Hated them all! Before I knew the joys of dousing myself in alcohol at family holidays, before I knew there was such a thing as homemade cranberry sauce, before I enjoyed a good and simply prepared green bean, before I understood how football or cooking work, I hated Thanksgiving.

There was something about overindulgence for the sheer purpose of overindulging in food while millions go hungry... something about the "traditional" foods we kid ourselves into thinking we need to make... something about overhyping a meal that never sat right with me. Of course as a kid I liked the cousins, the idea of feeling thankful, the ability to eat a lot of sweets and not a lot of the same old, same old. But as an older teen and adult, I didn't care much about Thanksgiving.

Until I joined the Peace Corps. My first year as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I spent Thanksgiving in my village. It was a regular day... any other day... and how do you really celebrate? Is it the actual day or is it the actual day in America that you recognize? The second year, I spent Thanksgiving - the Thursday in Fiji, Wednesday in America - with fellow Volunteers (and a Canadian) in town. We had a vegan celebration full of home-cooked food, largely cooked in a toaster oven, and sat around a cloth eating locally grown food we prepared ourselves, giving thanks for what we had survived (seriously, not an easy feat). My memories include laughter, fellowship, connection, comfort.

The next year, I was back in Wisconsin, celebrating Thanksgiving at a buffet at a restaurant. Granted, it was with my family. But... very different.

The following year, Thanksgiving became a holiday to celebrate. By then, I was in Vermont. Again, thousands of miles from "home", Thanksgiving was something to celebrate. There was laughter, fellowship, connection, comfort. We celebrated the next three Thanksgivings with friends who took me in to their family. I moved to Vermont to start a life with a boyfriend I thought was my end-all-be-all. His teachers-come-friends were mentors to me - the kind of "adults" I wanted to be, who raised their kids in the city with a quarter acre of garden, chickens, nature, imagination, public radio. The kind of parents who still knew how to have a good time and balance responsibilities of adulthood. The kind of parents who concert, vacation, and raise their kids to be conscientious participants of a world gone mad.

Celebrating Thanksgiving, or Sundays, or birthdays, or any day, really, with them was always an event. She plans the menu two months in advance. He acquiesces to spare a fight. We divvied up ingredients lists. We prepared kosher Thanksgivings full of seasonal foods and recipes that received the modern, artisanal, homemade treatment. So long, canned cranberries! Goodbye, canned green bean casserole! Sayonara, bland mashed potatoes! Hello everything seasonal, everything homemade. The old recipes with a new spin. The discovery that I liked sweet potatoes!

I had fun - hours of cooking, turkey prepared multiple ways, everyone contributing. Her parents and his parents were always there. The Dude and I there. Sometimes a brother and sister-in-law and a child I knew would be raised in the hippest of households. Occasionally the potential for a friend of an in-law's cousin's cousin to show up. Movies, football, course after course of delicious food, going round the table and saying "thank you" for something. Usually my thanks involved this family and their hospitality: a second family while so far from my own. Three boys is certainly different from the gaggle of girls I was raised among but kids are kids and youth is youth. And being thankful for our company and lot in life was enriched.

This year, there's none of that. I've been trying to avoid thinking of Thanksgiving completely. No advance plans. No parade. No knitting. No menus. No kiddos and board games. No root veggies. No Hunger Games movie. I shove aside the panic of not seeing Mockingjay Part 2 with the three people I've seen the first three movies with. I try in vain to ignore that I'll be alone this year. Instead, I push down the fear that I'm being replaced by the new me. My imagination says the Dude's new gal pal will take my place, giggling and happy and extroverted where I was shy, nervous, and too eager to pull my weight. I breathe out my sadness of not playing with the youngest boy, of not challenging the oldest to my limited football knowledge.

This year, Brett Favre is being honored. Outside of my family, this Vermont family is the only one I think will appreciate that moment. How do I find a bar? Do I make myself a special feast and scour internet pirate sites to find FOX? Do I get the dog a turkey bone and celebrate with her? Do I invite myself somewhere else, into someone else's family? Do I sit alone in the sadness that I've created for myself? How do I force myself out into the world to be adventurous, social, busy? Secretly, I have movies to watch (I'll even pay to rent Trainwreck), chores to do (paint the upstairs hallway? Hells yeah, drink in hand and music blaring), days of journaling to catch up on (and poems aplenty ready to make the page!) and the lazy motivation to tackle a hike with YannaDog (Belvidere Mountain at last!).

In reality, I know it'll be a combination of the above, mixed with the sad and guilt-inducing Skype call with my parents. Maybe I'll turn back a generous offer that I'll feel I've guilted the offerer into; relegate free Netflix flicks to the queue; and indulge Ben and Jerry's as my special meal.

Last week, I wished upon a falling star. As you can imagine, I made wishes. As you can imagine, wishes aren't happening and I'm still feeling stuck. I'm waiting for this year to be a distant memory. I'd like to think that I can give thanks this year for something. My health? The fortune that I'm not a Syrian refugee? The mounds of stuff accumulated in my house over four years? The health of my family? That I'm alive? What does one give thanks for when one's life feels perforated, spiraling out of control into an unrecognizable oblivion? That I can write a blog post where I reminisce about times when I've had too much food and fortune to appreciate?

But that is unfair for anyone to do. Those who can should be thankful every day for the fortunes we have. I was born white, middle-class, Christian, in a white, middle-class, Christian suburb in central Wisconsin. It's an enviable position for many.

This year... I'm thankful to be alive and in good health. I'm thankful my family is in good health and cares so deeply for me. I'm thankful I have a house that I own that provides me shelter. I'm thankful I've developed a support system (largely named Jessie and Jackie and Lost Nation Brewery) in Vermont. I'm thankful I have friends who stick by me all over the mid- and far west, despite everything all these years. I'm thankful my body doesn't rebel on me. I'm thankful I have a counselor whose healing has calmed my emotional tsunamis. I'm thankful I have the ability to choose so many options for my life...

Yet I'm sad and lonely and scared and confused and wishing I was seeing Mockingjay Part 2 and getting tipsy off wine and taking secret trips to the basement and sharing clandestine moments with a bearded weirdo whilst roasting root vegetables and eating homemade pies and watching football with an 11-year old whose knowledge far surpasses mine and building towers with the cutest four year old boss I'll ever have the pleasure of knowing. I'm missing the purpose of Thanksgiving. I'm giving thanks without a turkey this year and without a turkey substitute. Giving thanks without giving thanks, really. I'm glad I won't have to go to work. But I really, really want structure to keep my brain from flailing. This year has taught me about patience and even though I wanteverythingrightnowgimmegimmegimmeeverythingI'mowedamanababyajobIloveundyingfriendshipsNOWNOWNOW..........

I get it. Thanks means realizing time is all that matters. I can give thanks for seeing through the forest, into the other side, and knowing this is all temporary. It will pass and I will be be on the other side and someday this will be a nasty dream and my head will rise from the ashes and one of these days, I will celebrate Thanksgiving however I want to, on my own terms, and I can have that family on that corner lot and I can love it all and I will be thankful. I'm just taking my own circuitous route to get there. Turkey not included.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

ICU, IUC


I’ve been on some form of hormonal birth control for twelve years. The Pill, the NuvaRing, the implant. Disposable packaging. Incremental solutions to an age-old issue. This fall, I decided to switch to a non-hormonal birth control, an intrauterine contraceptive, the IUC (formerly known as the intrauterine device, or IUD).

This post may be TMI but there shouldn’t be anything wrong with talking about birth control. The better prepared we all are, the more we all know, the fewer misconceptions there are about birth control, unintended pregnancies, and how women’s bodies work (see: Republican politicians).

So I decided to get an IUC, the non-hormonal kind. This was long overdue. The benefits of IUCs are many, including:
  •  Long lasting (they can stay in place for up to 12 years)
  • The lowest rate of pregnancy
  • Longer term, they may reduce cramping and lower menstrual flow

When I went on a hormonal BC, I did so because I felt I needed the regularity of my menses, smoother skin, safety of sex without pregnancy, reduced side effects of the dreaded PMS.

Three years ago, after many years of different birth control pills, I tried a longer-lasting method, the implant, a little device that is inserted into the tricep. Every month for 36 months, it released a little bit of estrogen. But it’s a weird concept. I never really felt it – it’s smaller than a tube of chapstick and it was in a place not commonly touched. I didn’t like the side effects I felt it gave me and when I stopped being sexually active with no plans in sight for getting pregnant, it was time for a different method.

So I decided to get an IUC. They've been making a comeback in the birth control world since a nasty recall in the 1970s tarnished its reputation. I wanted protection for the long term. I was sick of disposable packets and remembering to take a pill at the same time every day. I was sick of having my hormones manipulated.

Every woman’s experience with an IUC insertion is different. This is where my story takes shape. I didn’t read other stories until I was on the couch afterwards nursing my bruised ovary “researching” (read: Googling) others’ stories. The gamut was everything from near-death experiences to it being nothing more than a 30-minute inconvenience in an ordinary day.

I had a hard time. My experience was definitely on the side of painful. The T-shaped device gets inserted into the uterus. Doctors recommend taking ibuprofen; I didn’t take it an hour in advance but even so, the insertion was excruciating. There's two bad parts - first when your vaginal channel is measured to make sure the IUC can fit. Then, there's the actual insertion of the IUC. 

The pain in my left ovary was intense. I was nauseous, dizzy, lightheaded for two hours afterwards. Once they finally let me leave the clinic after an hour of rest and guided bathroom trips down the hall, I spent the afternoon on the couch, watching Maron, with ibuprofen and a hot water bottle on my abdomen vacillating between awake and asleep. The pain was worse than any menstrual cramps I’ve ever had, and then some.


I’ll be honest: I still get cramps. My menses is different – very different from regulated hormonal menses – and the flow is greater than I ever remember. But at least it’s my menses on my body’s schedule. And when I’m ready to try getting pregnant, it just needs to come out.

For a more detailed history of the IUC and a more detailed story of its insertion, check out this Jezebel article with links to other articles.