I’ve spent the entire day thinking it was Thursday. And I swear, I haven’t taken any of that prescription pain medication in almost a week! I think it may have re-wired the calendar in my brain though, because my days are messed up. But somewhere deep in the recesses of my gray matter, I must have realized it was Tuesday, because I spent some time this afternoon working on a black and white self portrait. Of course, I was planning on posting it next week, and this month’s theme hasn’t officially ended yet, but let’s cut an obviously brain damaged woman some slack here, okay people?

This month’s theme is black and white, which gives me the happy shivers all over because I absolutely love black and white photography. It has the potential for being so powerful, for commanding attention and focus. Without a bunch of different distracting colors, the subject matter can really stand out and make you pay attention. Another reason I love black and white? I am wearing zero make-up in this shot, and I somehow end up looking quite normal. If this were in color, I would look so pale and frightening you would think I just crawled out of some dark hole somewhere. Behold:

There was some editing involved. I cropped it, changed it to black and white using Microsoft Digital Image Suite and added a grainy “diffuse glow” to soften up the light. I really like how it turned out, so if you do think I look like I just crawled out of a dark hole, please keep yer dang mouth shut.

This month’s theme is black and white. See more here.

[Before you read this entry, if you haven’t already heard about what happened when Melissa from Suburban Bliss was on the Today show, check out the video, and read up on it here.]

A week or so ago we were putting Babs to bed and dealing with the required nightly whining. “But I’m not tired!” (Giant yawn.) “I’m the kind of girl that doesn’t need to sleep!” (Stumble YAWN stumble.) As always, we read her some books and gave her some kisses and tucked her into bed despite her sleepy protests. I had barely closed the door behind me when I heard her calling me back into her room. Opening the door again I saw that somehow, in the few seconds it took for me to leave her bedside and walk out into the hall, she had taken off all her clothes below the waist, stripped her bed of all covers, toys, and stuffed animals, and peed. Intentionally. When I asked her what the heck she was thinking, she told me, “I thought that if my bed was wet you would let me come sleep with you and Daddy!”

As a mother, you sometimes come across moments where you are at such a loss that you would pay any amount of money to have someone come and get your child through whatever incident transpired while you are somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away. Eating chocolate. A calculated, pre-meditated bed-wetting is unquestionably one of those moments. I do not like cleaning up pee. I do not want to figure out how to explain to her, in a voice that is gentle enough so that she’s not shamed but firm enough that she knows I’m serious, that she cannot control where she sleeps by deciding to pee in her bed. But I have to. I’m her mother. And if I mess it up, I’ll be dealing with repeated episodes of calculated peeing, not to mention the fact that she’ll probably grow up with some kind of peeing complex and cost us thousands of dollars in peeing therapy. (However unlikely that outcome may seem to you non-parents out there, all mothers will tell you that we are constantly overwrought by the thought of how much therapy our children are going to need because of us.)

My point here is that no matter how small, annoying, mundane, or unsavory a task presents itself with our children, not only do we not have a choice whether or not to deal with it, but we aren’t just dealing with it to get through the moment. We are actively parenting during that moment to ensure that our children learn from this experience and use it to grow into a good person. And that, Ms. Viera, is why being a mother is nothing like being a babysitter. How dare you imply that my parenting is worth as much as a fourteen year old’s part time job. Finslippy and Izzymom have both articulated this better than I ever could, both bringing up what I consider to be the core issue here: that mothers are held to an impossibly high standard without ever receiving the respect that should naturally follow from achieving that standard. Why? Because other women are jumping on every opportunity to pick their fellow mothers apart.

I do not drink. And even so, I have absolutely no problem with a mother having a glass of wine at a playgroup, just as I have no problem with a dad indulging in a can of beer as the kids scurry around his feet while he watches the game. I have many reasons for this opinion, but I honestly don’t think that drinking vs. not drinking is what has gotten the internet up in arms about this interview. The fact is, one well-spoken and responsible mother was judged and attacked on national television by two other mothers, just because they don’t agree with her. There were no alternatives offered by Meredith Viera or Dr. Taylor when they gave their opinion that mothers need to find “other ways” to relax and socialize. No solutions were given to something they obviously considered a problem. And I think that’s because the point was not to present a rounded, well-informed piece of news. The point was to judge.

No wonder mothers feel isolated, alone, and unsupported. To become friends with another mother is to risk being cut down by her. And to be honest? I’m not sure I really want the “village” raising my child if the village is full of women like that.

Ok, I can see now that looking through my high school journal last night was not the greatest idea. After going through a week and a half of life under a strange medicated haze, my days and nights have gotten all mixed up. So for the past two nights I have lain awake in bed, unable to sleep until the wee hours of the morning. We’re talking very wee here. As in, 4:30 in the morning wee. So I was maybe not in the most stable frame of mind when I decided to flip through the pages of my past.

Luckily, I have a fantastic therapist who is very forgiving of her gimpy patient. She called me ten minutes after my appointment was supposed to start, and when I saw her name on the caller ID my mind slugged through several difficult shifts. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what day it was, so the realization that I was late for my appointment was slow in coming. She suggested that we have a phone session today, so we talked for 45 minutes and I was able to process some of the feelings that arose from reading my old journal.

I told her that I feel like moving out of my parent’s house and starting my life as a wife and mother doesn’t play out in my mind as a normal passage of time. Instead it seems like those years at home, the ones written about in that journal, were lived by a very sad and scared girl. Then there was an end to that girl’s life, and across a great chasm of time another person’s life began, and that’s who I am today. It seems like another life, lived by another person. And because of that I don’t have the events that occurred during that time filed away with the rest of my memories. They are locked up in a dusty old box and shoved to the back of my brain. I’m unable to think back on that period of time in my life without feeling like that box has been opened and is overwhelming me by the sudden deluge of its contents. So in order to protect myself from such a painful onslaught, I just try not to think about it at all. I can remember the feelings and emotions of that period of time, but when I recall specific events (such as this one) it feels like I have thrown my body into an icy lake. The cold sucks my breath away and as my muscles begin to freeze and I sink down into the water, I start to panic because I know there is no way out. These memories have a way of paralyzing me. They launch me back across the chasm and remind me what it felt like to be that girl. And oh, how that hurts.

Kari’s response surprised me. She said that it seems like I have stopped feeling guilty for the things that have happened, and that the shame I associate with those memories is evolving into grief. And grief is such an amazing step. If I can grieve for that girl, for her pain and her losses, then I can heal. And then, praise God, I can finally move on. Seeing how far I have already come from the sad girl I once was gives me hope that someday I’ll be able to look back on her and feel nothing but pride that I made it through such a crappy adolescence and became a stronger, more compassionate woman because of it.

I closed the comments for last night’s post because it felt too raw for feedback. I didn’t want reassurance, I just wanted it out there. I have received a few amazing emails though, and to those of you who cared so much to send me those kind word I thank you with all of my heart. This is an ugly process, this growing and healing thing. It’s ugly and it’s frightening and it takes a really friggin long time. But it is so necessary, and I am grateful I have so many of you who are willing to help me along the way. Someday, I hope, I’ll be able to live like that quote on my sidebar. I’ll let go. I’ll jump in. And I’ll find beauty.

After reading Jessica’s post today, I got all hopped up on the idea of submitting one of my own high-school journal entries to the Cringe Book. So I dug out the old spiral notebook and started flipping through it, trying to find something extra juicy and cringy. I assumed I would laugh and roll my eyes at my young stupid self and my idiotic high-school shenanigans, but instead I just ended up feeling sad. I did not have a goofy adolescence filled with friends and boys and pop quizzes. Instead I was fighting to make it through every day. My journal is filled with pledges to myself that I’ll stop cutting and start smiling more and maybe then people will like me. It has smudges of blood when I broke down and had to cut. There are heartbreaking poems filled with pain and loneliness. There are snippets of conversations I had with my parents, immortalizing the hate-filled, scarring words that were exchanged.

The entry I wrote 6 days after my fifteenth birthday pretty much sums up my life at the time:

February 8
This is a pain beyond sorrow. A pain beyond pain. Infecting my heart, my soul, my body… Immeasurable; an ocean too deep, a mountain too high. This hurts to the extent that I can barely think or write or cut. Here I sit, drowning in it. Being suffocated by it. I am dying inside.

Those words could be amusing if held in the context of the life of a regular teenage girl. Maybe she was jilted by the “love of her life”. Maybe she failed a math test. Maybe her mom told her she couldn’t go to her friend’s party until she did the dishes. Coming from a normal teenage girl, endlessly dramatic and self-righteous, an entry like that could almost make you smile. You would shake your head and think about how much better it is to be grown up. So what happened to me that day that inspired me to write such a heart-wrenching entry?

I woke up.

I woke up and I was still me and life was still the same and I was still depressed. I woke up and looked at the day and wanted to die. I was a walking tragedy.

What the hell am I supposed to do with a past like that? There are pages and pages of entries where I poured out my soul, trying to figure out who I was and why life hurt so much. In between that tattered cover, held together by a filthy, ragged ribbon, is the worst part of my life. Every fear, every awful thing I ever thought or did, every desperate wish to escape from everything. It’s all there.

What am I supposed to do about that.

Although I love, love, loved my old design, I was itching for a change. I wanted something open and airy feeling, and I think this new design is perfect! I didn’t take the header photo (I wish I had, it’s so pretty!). It’s one of the many amazing photos offered free at the new Microsoft Clip Art website.

I still have a few things to tweak here and there before the new design is finished, especially for you FireFox users, but if you see something that looks amiss let me know.