Small Town Wren

So about that Mono…I’m starting to feel a lot better. I’m still having my sicker-than-anything moments, but I feel okay more often than I don’t. I finally have enough energy to do more than sit on my sofa in a sad, sick, stupor watching Law & Order reruns.

Which is nice, because it’s just in time for my first spring break! One of the perks of being in a teacher-education program and working in a public school is that I get two spring breaks. I’m out of classes this week, and at the end of March I’m out of work for a week, and most of my classes that week have been cancelled. It’s nice to have professors who work in the same sector.

This whole mono thing started several weeks ago when my sister threw her birthday party at Delilah’s that she didn’t attend due to having mono. We still had the party though, and I went, and had my last huzzah before I got mono. Well, since we’re both feeling up to being people again, we went into the city for a makeup party at Tavern. This was the first time out I’ve ever had to buy a drink for myself. I guess one out of four is still okay, but not what I’m used to. For record: at the first party, I paid exactly $0 and got 2 glasses of wine, 4 shots, and a gin & tonic. I don’t really drink a lot, but when I do, I drink whatever is bought.

Also for the record: the drinks at Tavern are awful and overpriced. Regardless, we had a good time. Lots of friends showed up, a game of impromptu charades was played, and there was lots of random fake-dancing. I also got to show off the arrows I’ve been drawing on my fingers of late at work to help redirect my buddy’s focus.  They were definitely used in the night to point out random things to a bunch of drunk 20-somethings. I’m just glad I didn’t get groped by the bros who weren’t in our group. Random gropings from bros is probably the biggest reason why I don’t go out very often.

I’ve had to deal with an astonishing amount of unprofessionalism today. I can’t even wrap my brain around all of it. Nothing like someone breaching your confidence, but then not evening getting that breach right. Nothing like having your ass over the fire due to something you never even said.

Between my server going down and a ridiculous amount of work that had to get done yesterday, I didn’t get a chance to post. Much apologies for the interrupted service.

Let’s see, what have I missed? Well, there was the earthquake that happened yesterday morning. You know, the 3.8 magnitude earthquake with the epicenter about 12 miles from my domicile that woke pretty much everyone up at exactly 4:00am. I had the added pleasure of having a puppy launch herself onto my body in a fit of panic.

Another thing that happened yesterday was a touch embarrassing. I was taken out by a first grader. And I don’t mean on a date. I was pretty much bowled over by an autistic seven-year-old. Sweet kid and, to some extent, my fault. If I’d been watching my buddy a little closer I could have stopped him from waving and thus prompting a bit of a freak out on the other child’s account. Gosh darn my kid being so friendly! Luckily, it turned out okay and I managed to get my buddy out of the way so I was the one who got run into and not him.

As for today: today was a special day. Today was 100 Day! Our kids had their 100th day of school today (thought it’s only my 97th; shhh). So I got to wear my educational tshirt on a non-friday and was given an awesome sticker. And boy did we count to 100 a ridiculous amount of times. Out entire day was filled with math activities involving counting to 100 and kids brought in collections of 100 things and it was awesome and silly.

1. I will write everyday.
2. I will make the world a better place.
3. I will not forget myself.

These are the three promises I have made to myself. They are part of my goal to be a functioning, independent human being. It’s not that I’m not these things already–I am–but I sometimes forget this. I often forget myself, and I often put myself last. This has made me an incredibly vulnerable person at times. I’m tired of being a person prone to falling apart, teetering on the edge of despair.

So I’m giving myself a head-space make over. And writing is a key component. The seven years and nearly half-million dollars invested in my education as a writer is important to me and has shaped me as a person. Writing is something I have always done, since the days when I first became verbal. I’ve come to learn that when I don’t write, I start to wilt, and that withering causes me to not write. It’s a vicious cycle that I refuse to feed any longer. So I will write. Every day, Wren. Every day.

Committing to make the world a better place might seem like a vague and tall order, but it really doesn’t have to be. It can be as simple as saying “thank you” and holding the door, or it can be far more. Either way, being mindful to stewardship and being kind is a moral and ethical obligation to me as a human being.

I’ve already touched a bit on not forgetting myself, but this is important. I really need to learn to put myself first. This has always been really difficult for me, for as long as I can remember. I’ve had altruism drilled so deep into my brain that it feels wrong to take care of myself. And it shouldn’t be that way.

And it won’t. I promise.

Out of curiosity, what with the turbulent economy of late, I poked through Craigslist to see what rooms were going for in San Francisco. Anyone who’s known me over the past year and a half has known that my longterm dream is to move to San Francisco. My sister took me on a long weekend there in July, 2008 and I fell immediately in love. It’s been the only place that has felt truly like home in a long time.

Anyway, I ran the numbers, and I could afford it. Today. It would be tight, but I could do it, even if I couldn’t find a job for a year; I could do it. Which is an incredibly comforting thought. I can actually get out of here after grad school, if I want.

That might seem odd, the girl who named her blog Small Town Wren (the girl being Wren herself) is fantasizing about leaving the Midwest forever for a big city? Yes, because being the small town has never been the ideal. But, having grown up in a small town and attending high school in an even smaller town has always been central to the construction of my identity. During my childhood, Batavia had less than 18,000 people. Even now the 2000 census puts us at 23,000 (and the trend growth suggests the 2010 census will put us at around 28,000). Back then, there were more cornfields than neighborhoods. And I spent my high school years living in a northern Michigan town of ~600.

Growing up and coming of age in the middle of nowhere isn’t something you can ignore in your worldview. And those who don’t know me might suggest that it makes me an ignorant fool. They’re entitled to their opinion and their ignorance. I’ve experienced more diversity than a number of my friends back in New York City have.

I’m a city girl and I loved New York City. But I missed the trees, and the sky and weather that didn’t make you feel filthy all the time. San Francisco has always been the balm to New York City’s problems. And I’m thrilled that it looks like I can make that dream a reality.

My mouth tastes like cigarettes. Almost certainly because over the past three days I’ve smoke almost an entire pack of Marlboro Lights. My New Years resolution was to quit smoking. Already that has been a fantastic failure.

I really don’t want to do this anymore, but I don’t know what else to do.

I just finished up my first week of the new semester. Three brand new grad classes.  I’m not especially thrilled about the amount of work the next 8 weeks are already promising. I can only hope that the 8 weeks after that will entail much less.

This semester looks like it’s going to shape up to being Hell on earth. Someone in one of my classes actually asked if the class textbook was a scholarly source. Seriously? No, seriously? If you have to ask that question, what are you doing in graduate school? The lecture on using a variety of sources and the textbook and blahblahblah that ensued from this question was a major waste of time. And I know that person was here last semester, so really there’s no excuse.

Also, I think my Teaching P.E. professor was my P.E. teacher when I was in, like, 3rd grade or so. Awkward much?

Almost three years in the making, I finally finished The Beauty Myth in the wee hours of the morning. It’s just a shame that the most dated part of the book is the last chapter. It is an artifact of a past that already seems like ancient history.

The Beauty Myth was originally published in 1991, when I was four. The vast majority of my life has been spent in a world where Naomi Wolf’s rallying cry had already been heard. I think I’m much better off for it, too. The way my mother approaches her body and the way I approach mine are in two completely different categories. The biggest feature of note is that my mother flat out refuses to leave the house without any makeup on; it’s an odd day when I leave the house with makeup on.

I never bought into it. I was always part of the rebellious crowd, but somehow the parts of the myth that latched on to my sister and my peers never found its way to me. I don’t know if it’s because I never wanted to feel like anyone but myself, or if it’s because I’ve spent half of my life with some form of overt baldness. It’s hard to feel shame for your looks when all of your shame and self-consciousness is rooted squarely in your hair.

Or maybe it is because I was blessed with a naturally slim figure and a rightly colored face. It was a running joke at my boarding school: I’d devour six plates of food at dinner and the health services ladies would still think I was anorexic. They weighed me constantly, and lectured me on how eating is good for you, thinness isn’t everything. They had no idea I held the candy arsenal in my dormitory or that I routinely won eating contests against the burliest of the burly men on campus.

This isn’t to say weight hasn’t been a big part of my life. My mother had to defend herself when my elementary school thought I wasn’t being fed due to being so underweight. I ate ice cream every night and was part of that dreaded “Clean Plate Club” at dinner. When I shot up to 5′7″, girls began poking at my sides in the locker room and asking me how I did it. I didn’t know. I still don’t know.

A lot of it has to do with my mood. When I am happiest, I tend to weigh more. Depression makes me drop the pounds as if they were nothing. I started this past summer out at 145 pounds. Depression clubbed me over the head in September and by mid October I was hovering at 123. While the sadness has eased its grip again, the new medications I’m on are of the sort that make you lose weight. I’ve lost two more pounds in the past week. I haven’t seen 120 since I was 16.

It frightens me. I don’t like being this skinny. Once you are of a certain thinness, the pressure is on to keep it. People tend to leave you alone though if you’re even 5 pounds heavier than that thin. I’m not anymore, though. My skinny jeans are just straight legs now, and I have to belt them in so tight to keep them up. I eat, but the weight keeps falling.

Lately I’ve felt like a Mom-Away-from-Mom to my special buddy. He’s started vying for my attention in the ways I’ve seen him do with his mom. I’m not his mom, and that is not my role in any way, shape, or form. It’s hard because I do care about him and want him to succeed. And it is hard because I don’t have my own children, so I am having to learn in many ways how to be a parent…where to draw the line with helping, with enabling, with coddling. And it’s a hard thing because the impulse is always to comfort.

But comforting isn’t helping. Letting him get away with less than he can do isn’t helping. That’s not why I’m there. I’m there to help him grow, help him succeed.

And that means pushing him away. It means separating myself, because he and I are not a unit. In some ways we are, but this is his time to be in school and my time to work.

I walked away from him today. I’ve had to do it more often lately, and it’s never easy. It’s never easy to ignore a child who wants your attention desperately. Sometimes, however, it’s good for him.

He didn’t want to participate in P.E. today because getting attention from me is more fun. I had to walk away. It’s weird to walk away from the child you’re supposed to be working with: not everyone understands that, in the long run, it’s what is best.

I left him lying on the floor of the gym. And he pouted real hard when I walked away and sat down far, far away. He rolled around and stamped his feet. But after a few minutes, he began watching the class. And then he stood up. And then he walked around them and looked at them some more. And just before class ended, he walked over and joined.

The rest of the kids shouted his name and cheered. They begged the teacher to pick him to run under the parachute. They were so excited he was joining. He was, too.

I’m constantly trying to be a better person, to rise above the negativity in my life and move on. While in theory this sounds like an easy thing to do, in practice it is a very difficult battle that I fight every single day. I do it gladly, however, because I can see the person I want to be, and I’m willing to fight hard to become that woman.

One of my big problems is holding on to anger and resentment. I’ve made huge steps on this end over the past few months, but there’s still so much room for growth. I’m certainly a more patient person than I was, and a more open person, but it still isn’t enough. I’m still not where I want to be.

I’ve found something that has been helping, however. I’ve been writing love letters to all the people I have felt have wronged me. Instead of clinging to that rage and letting it eat me alive, I have been trying to find why these so-called betrayals are things I should be thankful for. I have forced myself to re-examine my life and find the positive instead of focusing on the negative.

It’s a very good exercise, but also a very surreal one. The other day, for instance, I wrote one to someone with the dubious title of “The Other Woman.”  Today I found myself writing to my rapist. It’s something I thought I would never do, but to find the positive in such horror has been so freeing.

To find the good in it all is life affirming. This exercise in love and forgiveness has really given me the chance to refocus my life. I refuse to be gripped by anger and negativity for any longer. I cannot remember the last time I was fully free from resentment. Pessimism is not the answer; it has proven to be a dead end. The opportunities to turn that hatred inward are too great, and I can see where I have been led down that path too many times.

I’m taking a stand. For the person I want to be and the person I know I can be. It is far easier to continue to live the fearful life, to stay where we are comfortable and with what we know. I reject this idea. I have not been happy, and there is no reason for this to continue. I am brave and I am ready to start walking forward.