introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- mapping out a plan. in the morning - 2 march 2o15 "i woke up fat and almost unhappy but the bigger the laugh, the bigger the belly...and i bellow out and the whole bed it shakes and you smile at my laugh as it rocks you awake."~bonnie 'prince' billy everything around here has been so shaken up. it took a week for things to start to settle...like the snowflakes that never seem to stop falling. i'm stuck inside this snow globe forever, i figure. after a week of feeling like i'm drowning, like i have to decide right now what comes next, i needed to get to the woods. the child care riddle continues...how will i pay for this? rather, how can i avoid moving back to pittsburgh? i've been on a few phone calls where all i do is cry and that's pretty boring. truly, both avenues have their appeal when i'm not responding emotionally, viscerally. the idea of being close to my friends again feels warm and like home. it feels easy enough. i can imagine riding along those familiar trails alongside those familiar rivers on my bike with my kiddo strapped in a seat on the back. i can imagine taking him to up to erie to go to the beach rather than stealing him to the seaside. all the happiness that city held for me is still there, waiting. is it calling me home? maybe...i was living a happy city life when i wasn't dealing with a breakup, a disaster of a rebound relationship, and getting ready to move. there were sunday brunches and bloody mary bars. there was good music. there were game nights and dinner parties and i had a city garden. i left a lot of things that made me really happy behind along with my parents and my dearest friends. but i made it work here for almost a year, didn't i? there are so many things here i have yet to try, things i haven't even discovered yet. i have my job with a benefit lineup that would be hard to find again. i feel safe with our healthcare coverage...what if i leave and something terrible happens to either of us? that scares me a lot. i've put down some roots of my own in these woods that would hurt to pull up now. i've got a beeline shot to the shore, and recently, a handful of friends that have been engaging interesting terrific people. i just needed time to settle in and figure things out here. now, just when i'm starting to let go of the things that distracted me, the things that were hurting me...when i finally start to take hold of what's here, i might have to leave it behind. in addition to the news that my aunt will no longer help out with childcare, in the same week a letter from my landlord arrived to indicate that this is the last season of heating that he'll provide with the lease. the very reason i took this apartment--it's off grid heating source that promised that i'd have a warm place to be when the electric goes out--will be pulled out and replaced with something electric that will 'maintain the decor' but not really heat the place in an emergency. if you want that kind of thing, you've got to buy a house around here now...and i'm not sure that i want my roots to get quite that deep. the rent would go down but truly, the electric bill would go up, heating with baseboard heaters, a thermostat in every single room. this apartment is too small and while i'd been looking for a storage unit to store the things we don't use frequently somewhere else, the increased heating bill means that i should probably find something more affordable. i feel like i can make this work, like i can probably find a solution. i'm not giving up on maine just yet. the city will still be there if i decide to go back but i'm going to try to stay. so i've got about a month to figure it out. if i haven't made any real decisions by the end of march, i will dedicate april to making plans to go back and start over. i've requested the numbers from work to buy out my contract so i can properly weigh the financial implications of staying here or going home. my savings will pay for a few months of child care but if i'm only delaying the inevitable, my money could certainly be better spent. my aunt doesn't understand what kind of position she has put me in with this back and forth and i've spent a week getting used to that. i'm angry at her but what good is it if she doesn't understand why? i know that when she talked to my parents, she sees this is the ideal situation. if i can't afford to stay here, to her, my next best option in her mind is to go to syracuse and take care of her. this became even more clear to me on friday when she wrote to tell me that she'd had her dog put down. i'd told her for two months that the dog needed to see a vet. instead, she shared medicine made for humans and tried to take care of the dog's cough that only seemed to sound worse every day. in the end, the dog had congestive heart failure--like my uncle--so she found some great meaning in that. i'm frustrated with my aunt and while i know how devastatingly sad it is to lose a good dog, i'm having a hard time expressing a lot of empathy. it is hard to see past my own situation to nurture someone else, truly. i'm no good for conversation...so rather than call over the weekend like i might have given the circumstances, i kept to myself. i've been keeping to myself a lot, really. my parents and rachel are the only ones that really know what's going on and i think they understand why i don't want to call my aunt to chat. i know i'll call her tonight--and probably every night on my way out to pick up the baby--but it's starting to feel more like something i have to do instead of something i want to do...which i suspect is probably the feeling of her plans backfiring. i'm confused why she'd want me there anyway. she got upset when the baby made a little fuss and babies sometimes make a lot of fuss. in her head, i think she imagines i can collect all kinds of welfare and just sit with her while she watches qvc and lifetime movies and be told what i can and cannot do. i've reached the end of my rope with the yelling and the personal degradation that has become the way our conversations have gone most nights. i lived with my father for a lifetime before he became someone completely different. this feels like i've been picked up by some invisible claw and set back down to relive some of that again--and i am not going to do it. i refuse. "can't you just do the same thing down here in syracuse?" she asked, as if she hadn't asked me a hundred nights in a row. i grew impatient and laid it out for her frankly. "no. there is a center in rochester but i'm sure as hell not going to rochester. if i'm going anywhere, i'm going home to pittsburgh. i'd go home to be near my parents." the flip side of all of this is that my son would get to know his grandparents who love him so much. i put that in the 'pro' side of things and give it all the weight to balance out a lot the 'cons'. it's passive aggressive of me and i know it. i know it bothers her when i display a preference for my own parents over her. she is impossibly jealous and it makes my stomach knot up so that it takes days to calm down. she says terrible things about my parents every night that are even more difficult to stomach without wanting to lash out. instead, i politely correct her. yes, my mother breastfed us. yes, my parents tried to have me for over a year so please don't try to insinuate that they didn't want me. no, i don't want to hear again that my grandmother should have aborted my father. she infuses my already long days with poison and i arrive home angry and i hate it. i'm determined to put a stop to this in a kind way. if she cannot be kind, i cannot call...because i have no desire to keep doing this night after night. i've got enough on my plate. if it sounds like a lot of complaining on my part, you'd be right. it is. it sounds like i'm not thankful and that isn't the case...i keep reminding the people in whom i confide that she has done so much for me and that i'm thankful for it. what i am not thankful for is having that help held over me to dictate my life. when i asked her if she thinks i'm stupid, she said no and immediately followed it up with a 'but...'. that was when i knew i needed a break. so friday night, when i hung up the phone, i knew i wasn't going to call her this weekend. instead, i put out feelers for a roommate. i have a bunch of people sending me lists of places for rent a little bit out of town where the rent is more affordable. little houses that are more what i pictured when i was looking last spring. if i can get my rent down to something more cost-effective, i can probably pull off staying. i have a possible roommate in mind and we're trying to figure it out. we work opposite shifts which will give us both alone time without worrying about a baby waking the other when the other is trying to sleep. it could work beautifully. i was up so late on friday night trying to wind down, trying to get it all out before i went to sleep. i wanted to start my weekend without all of this fear and anger and worry. i don't want that kind of energy around my kiddo if i can avoid it. so i waited it out. i focused on the things i can do rather than those things that i can't. i can't make her change her mind, i can't make her get help for her depression. i can only manage how often and for how long i subject myself to that kind of conversation. i can find some options. i can make good choices. i've got enough time to formulate a plan. the last time we spoke, he'd mentioned wanting a 'more vibrant city life' than where he is now...that resonated with me because i ache for that very thing so frequently. going home has a certain appeal, definitely. but i spent saturday night in the countryside having dinner with my landlord and his wife and driving back under all those stars was a reminder. i got up super early on sunday morning, gently nudging the baby awake and telling him it was a morning to go and meet nick for a woods-walk. his morning smiles get me through entire days. it was 5 degrees and we were bundled up warmly. being in those woods helps...i haven't gone there once where i didn't leave feeling better. i went in feeling wound up and sick from the stress of the previous week. i left feeling more peaceful and ready to take this one apart in chunks, one thing at a time. in the woods, i'd mentioned the canoe race and wanting to go see it this year...maybe the last hurrah before i have to go home. "i have a canoe. want to do it?" nick asked. "yes!" and like that, i was invited to steer a canoe in the kenduskeag stream canoe race in april. the snow melt will be insane as we finally get some thaw around here and i think it would be a heck of an adventure. in a way, that canoe race has represented everything i wanted to find when i came here...an exciting adventure, pushing myself beyond my threshold, trying something new, being brave. the person i am now is not the person i was when i left. i feel a million times more brave than i felt last year and rightly so. i've stepped outside my comfort zone in so many ways and i'm proud of that. from my job to the handful of dates i've been on, to a more-scary birth plan that i'd hoped for, to my day to day survival in this arctic winter. everything is a challenge and i always enjoy the rewarding feeling of stepping up and taking it on. maine has made me unbreakable. i'm just not ready to leave it behind yet...especially not now as i find my people here and am just starting to finally fit in and make a life. i just needed the time for it all to settle. i just needed time to think. i keep an eye to the sky to watch for what might fall from it next because it is when i stop looking, when i get comfortable and feel like things are going well that the next thing drops. i remind myself that the good things drop out of the sky, too...and all that looking i think i was doing wasn't getting me anywhere. when i am grounded in myself, i'll find someone with whom i'll share a life. for now, all my love is aimed at my kiddo and my people and i draw close to the warmth offered by others. winter reminds you to stay close to the ones you love so well. i'll come up with a plan to make it work and if i don't, i'll be graceful and make the best of what comes next. i have to believe there is a reason i'll end up on the path i take...i'm just trying to stay open and flexible to accepting plan b or plan c when the time comes. maine isn't going anywhere even if i do have to go home for awhile. i'm going to find something happy wherever i land because that's what i do now. be where you are, make the best of it...i learned that lesson a long time ago and this is just another place to practice the application, i suppose. i'm done being angry and i'm moving on to figure out what i should have started figuring out months ago: how to do it on my own. there has to be a way. this weekend, i remembered the most important thing of all when i stopped to think. i was researching the maps for the canoe race and was reading the rules and it hit me. it's always there, the truth of it...sometimes i just need some reminding: nothing you want is upstream. i'm indestructible, i'm a leaf on the surface of the water. throw what you want at me. there is nothing that is going to pull me under...at least not for long. xo, warmth and deep breaths, jones ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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