Little Places

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

Steam ~ shower ~ cold weather ~ space heater ~ closet

Submitted by: https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

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I used to hide in my closet.

When I was a kid, there was seriously no where safer in my dad's house--4 walls, a tiny space but big enough to lounge on pillows and read, and away from anyone who might spot me and try to hurt me. I spent hours in there reading book after book and pretending I was anywhere else but home. Home was shouting and hurt and pain and fear while books let me live in magical places with talking cats and weird siblings and cute girls. Holding a book in my safe spot, I knew I would never have clicked my heels 3 times a la Dorothy of Oz and gone back to the place that hurt me so many times.

Except I did. 

Teenage me, traumatized by my parents and boys and life, returned to that house maybe a year after my mom left it because she moved on quickly with a man who despised my existence as much as I did his, and they made things bad enough that I'd rather be hit than stay. I needed my closet.

It didn't last long, living there. But my preference for small spaces where I could hide from the world and sit in my emotions or hide from them too never left. I couldn't hide in my closet at my mom's and none of my apartments had any with much space, so the shower became my refuge.

I posted as a dark joke a status on Facebook recently about people not taking showers whether because of depression or chronic illness. Where the fuck do you cry then, I asked. Because fuck if I know. That's my place... it's the one place I get to be alone without even animals watching my shame and grief and it's still my one place to escape. I've spent a lot of hours with podcasts and audiobooks in showers thinking about anything but what was going on in my life. In cold weather I crank up my little space heater and the hot water and let the steam cleanse my soul. And in summers I turn the hot water all the way down so I can feel something besides the humid weight of the south's hellfires.

I plan out conversations in there, scrub my soul of all its roughness, and let the tears roll if I need to. I plan stories and learn about fascism and laugh with podcast hosts. There's something about being hidden away from everything that helps me let my guard down and it started with the safety I felt in my closet at home.

But...is that the best I can do?

As a queer woman I stopped living in the metaphorical gay closet at 15. I was still a baby. A traumatized, too old for her years baby but still very much a baby and I knew then I shouldn't hide who I am. So why do I still need the shower to feel ok? I don't think it's particularly healthy not to want to cry or let my guard down in front of anyone else. I don't think I should be embarrassed or afraid to let myself be vulnerable. But knowing and undoing are two very different things.

I was taught that crying is shameful and gets you nothing but hurt. "Shut that crying up or I'll really give you something to cry about" was shouted at me always. I wasn't allowed to have the feelings I did without mockery and abuse. I was taught crying is *b a d* and being upset isn't allowed. But I was taught a whole lot of other shit I've let go that didn't serve the person I wanted to be, too. And it's time for this to end.

The shower is the last stranglehold on a me that too often keeps herself behind a fortress of walls and moats filled with alligators, that keeps her pain and hurt locked away behind teeth and booby traps (ok a pun sue me). But I don't want to be that person who can't be held for fear she'll cry more, who can't let anyone see that softer side for fear it will be exploited. I want to be someone whose vulnerability matches the toughness, who knows how to let the right people in and close off the rest because not everyone deserves to be there...but some do.

I don't want to be resilient because I don't allow myself to feel all the things that make it harder to keep going in the moment and push them down and bury them until I have time for them later. Maybe we put too much emphasis on resiliency without realizing sometimes resilient, strong people are the ones who have struggled the most and need people the most and are too afraid to ask because that same resilency comes from repeatedly being let down...

I don't want to be resilient. I want to be supported as much as I am supportive.

We get once to do this life thing in my personal opinion. Just the once. And I don't want to be at the end of my once with regrets on what I could and should have done to be the best version of me not by societal standards but my own. So showers are going to have to be for washing hair and maybe still for listening to podcasts and feeling refreshed but not for tears. Gonna have to reserve some shoulders for that.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

The Crazy Mama Llama https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

First But Not the Greatest Love

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 9 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is: With Feb we think about love. Who was your first love? Do you know where they are now? Are you friends?

It was submitted by: https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

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I've talked about my first real love a time or two on this blog. It's not a sore subject. The relationship ended badly and our attempt at a redo ended even worse. But overall, I don't look back in anger. Oasis taught me not to anyway.

Let me back up a moment and focus on the qualifier "real" that I used here.

I had what I called, at the time, relationships in both middle and high school, but these were extremely superficial. I mean what else can they be in middle school? I had a longer relationship in high school, and I really was infatuated with the person at the time, but I can't reflect back on it and say I was in love or loved them. It was something to do really, and I didn't even cry when it was over. I was relieved. I wasn't in the right place to meet my high school sweetheart, fall in love, and marry at 18. That wasn't who I could be nor was it who I wanted to be. I was still exploring my sexuality, still not processing having been assaulted, still with so much resentfulness over the shitty childhood I had and how fucking awful living with my father was and then my stepfather after that. It wasn't an easy time and having been assaulted at such a young age, I wasn't every going to be able to have an intense romance. My innocence was long dead along with the child I never got to be.

I was so very angry.

It was the year after I graduated that I started this first real, serious relationship with one of my good friends all throughout school who had expressed having feelings for me but at the time I hadn't been ready to date. Anyone. It wasn't personal. I just couldn't do it. It took awhile for me to get to a point where I thought I was emotionally ready for it and to recognize the feelings as genuine and not some silly crush or feeling obligated because he had those feelings. Even then I recognized we're so often taught as young women to prioritize boys' feelings and shit over our own. Realizing the genuineness of my feelings did very little at first though. It was some kind of heartache for awhile when I first figured things out. I thought I had ruined my chance by never wanting to take it further when he did.

It all worked out eventually, and we moved in together when we were just 19. I really think that was our downfall. It was too much responsibility too fast. He had been really sheltered and never had to do much for himself. We both had issues, dysfunctional families... I had unresolved trauma. I HAD to get out of my mom and stepdad's home. It was all too much too soon, but we kept at it for a year and a half. Trying to manage an apartment and college and jobs and still make time for each other and our friends really made enjoying our new found freedom pretty difficult. It didn't help that my past with other dudes and me being queer made him insecure. And it certainly didn't help that I had like zero self esteem. We were an absolute mess.

To be clear, I don't think if we had gotten together under better circumstances that we might still be together. I'm so vastly different than I once was, and he's more or less an adult version of the same guy. A few more wrinkles, a little less hair, some life lessons, and even more responsibilities now than when we failed, but essentially he's the very same person I once knew. I had to go through literal hell to address my traumas and be reborn as something mostly whole. Kintsugi for the proverbial soul isn't exactly easy. And the older I've grown the more my humor has changed, the more I've addressed my innate biases, the more I've become intersectional, a feminist, and a far leftist. I would hardly recognize the girl I was when he met me, when we were together, or even the girl he left behind. Ive fixed so many cracks, she's virtually unrecognizable.

Life happens, as they say. And I'm okay with the direction life took for me. It hasn't been easy, sure, but I'm okay. I'm at peace with WHO I've become even when life isn't easy, and I think coming from where I did that's really the best I can hope for. It's better than a lot of folks who walked a similar path.

We aren't friends. I don't think we're allowed to be because new partners get insecure about friendships with old ones. At least that's how it usually works around here. (On his end not mine. I don't go for that shit in my personal life ever.) I do miss the friendship, but if I'm really truthful I know it wouldn't be much of one even without insecure significant others. We're too different. My values and humor are too different. And I draw a hard line on people who use vulnerable populations as a punchline. I stopped even being Facebook friends with all the people we hung out with at the time especially since one of those is a trump supporter who literally grabbed me by the crotch one night WHILE we were dating and they all still make excuses for it. Go figure.

We did talk a few times over the years expressing our responsibilities in why things went bad without reminiscing, apologizing without it being awkward. I don't duck or run when I see him in public which is rare now that I'm housebound. So it wasn't awful even though it really was my biggest heartbreak to date. And it wasn't something I held onto resentment over. But it's never going to go down in history books as a great romance or in my own history as the one that got away. But I did love him, and I'm thankful for everything I learned about myself and relationships along the way.

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Here are the rest of the participants!

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

A 'lil HooHaa https://hoohaa.com/

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

Sparkly Poetic Weirdo https://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/

Medicated Musings https://mymedicatedmusings.blogspot.com

Looking Back

feel free to roll your eyes at a typical end of the year post. i even rolled them at myself. 

The end of the year is oftentimes a period of reflection for many of us. What did we accomplish this year? How has life changed? How have we changed? And many of us it seems end up thinking that next year will be our year…that things will suddenly be better next year, that the world will finally bestow upon us the year we think we’re entitled to have…

Every annual turn of the Earth around the Sun is really what we make of it. The world doesn’t bestow anything upon us; luck is bullshit. I’m not going to feed you those same tired lines that if we just work hard enough, we’ll be successful and get all the material possessions that corporate America wants us to have… I don’t buy that insanity for a single minute. This system isn’t designed to reward hard work. It’s designed to reward being born into money and making the right connections which isn’t exactly based on luck, per say, either. Regardless, material wealth is only one definition of success, and it’s not synonymous with my own definition.

Individual growth, resolving inner conflict, working on our flaws, becoming better people, altruistic acts, compassion, empathy, a solid sense of humor, continuous learning for the sake of learning…these are true qualities for measuring success. Money and material possessions might buy fleeting happiness that could seem like success if examined in a certain light, but at the end of the day (or at least once the newness of whatever earnings or possession wears off), you’re not left with much. The real measure of success should be in how far you come as a human being not what you own or are capable of owning. After all, we get one shot at this and if your only legacy is being a rich asshole, I don’t think you’re accomplishing all that much. That’s not to say that personal growth and material wealth are mutually exclusive, but if you have the wealth without the growth, you have nothing at all.

With that in mind, my reflection for the year is all about personal growth considering I never really have personal monetary or material wealth. (ha).

I learned a lot about friendship this year. I lost over several months one of my longest running current friendships. This friendship in particular helped me learn a lot about myself over the 7 years that it existed, and this year was no different. In the past, I learned a lot about who I was and what I wanted to be, but it was the opposite this year—I learned how much a person can change, how much I could deny what was in front of my face in the name of friendship, and what I was and wasn’t willing to put up with in my life. In the end, I learned that a friendship where one person is continuously not willing to give (all social relationships should be give and take), it’s no longer worth it no matter the circumstances of that relationship, no matter how positive it had been in the past. Everything changes, sometimes not for the best. This was one of those times. I’ve made my peace with it and actually think I’m better off for letting go of the negativity that I held onto out of some misguided loyalty to a person who no longer appreciated it. A weight has been lifted.

In return, I’ve gained more than enough friendships to make up for it. Some of those friendships have formed solely through online interaction and others through letters. Regardless, I’ve learned more about the kind of people I want to surround myself with and how important certain qualities are in the friendships that I keep. I’ve found people that I can’t imagine living without and wonder how I ever existed without them in the first place which is one of the most rewarding experiences—to meet someone who constantly pushes you and challenges you but who is also just there to be goofy with and laugh with.

I learned a lot about self-examination and acceptance this year. I’ve never had a lot of self confidence when it comes to the way I look (despite the myriad of selfies you’ll find on my various social media accounts…). I struggle with it all the time left over from a lot of criticism as a child from a parent and grandparents who were overly judgmental about my physical appearance coupled with the crippling self doubts that women often face when comparing themselves to media ideals. I have this nagging Negative Nancy voice that constantly plagues every interaction I have and every day of my life. But, I’ve learned to shut that voice up. Sometimes it takes a swift kick to her box which I admit may be a cheap shot, but whatever works, right? Instead of constantly doubting compliments and blaming myself for things I have no control over and that really have nothing to do with me, I’ve learned to be more rational and to stop the worrying and the self-flagellation when things aren’t easy. Sometimes shit happens. I’m learning that better than ever. This year has made major improvements on that.

I’ve also learned that yoga pants are awesome, and my ass looks great in them. And that it’s okay for me to admit when I have a nice attribute or do something well. The world won’t shatter into a million pieces if I attribute something good to myself.

I still haven’t learned, however, how to best manage my introversion and my child’s extroversion without becoming completely overstimulated and stressed and overwhelmed. One day maybe? It’s a work in progress especially with him being homeschooled and me getting no breaks, but in the end, we’ll figure out a system that works. For now, it’s trial and error, and I have to be okay with that. I love him. He loves me. We laugh together and hang out. It doesn’t make me a bad Mom even though I have that thought every now and then when I try to sleep at night. We’re okay. And that’s okay. Eventually we’ll get to a harmonious place where things are a little easier. Or maybe we won’t. As long as we continue to show each other love and smooth and both work on it, we can’t go wrong.

I’ve learned better time management. I’ve stopped procrastinating and work on things before they even need to be done. This is a first for me, and I have to say I’m so fucking proud of this one. I’m terrible about leaving things until just before they’re due, but I’m getting better with it, and it’s an improvement that really helps with stress levels except for the fact that I don’t apply that to paying bills. I either wait until the day of or a few days into the grace period. It’s stupid of me and usually means late fees which is something I plan on working on this coming year. Baby steps, right?

All in all, this year had some negatives and some losses, but it was a big year for personal growth and for making a difference in the lives of others. If you’re not learning, growing, and changing, then what’s the point of life, anyway? No matter what your religious belief, surely there must be some sort of lesson in living beyond an afterlife…. Being nonreligious myself, life is the lesson, and it’s years like this one that truly prove to me what living is all about. Here’s to another year of lessons in 2015…