Fear and The First Day

I have a few friends going through hard times, changes, transitions, some with major life over hauls, and I have noticed they have all been talking about needing to find courage. I, queen of constant change, have offered such platitudes like "it has been with you all along". I like to channel Glenda the Good-Witch or some other person who can say something more eloquently then myself. The words I use to try and comfort are carefully selected, but I know they are just words. I'm not going to write some dissertation on finding inner peace on someone's Facebook post. I have tried before and people usually don't read it but say thanks.
It is easy for me to look at someone else's struggle and judge how easy it would be for me. Because I have  an "S" on my chest, right? Having trouble getting over a man? Easy peasy. Living alone for the first time in almost 2 decades? Girl, being the queen of your castle is the best! Losing everything you have worked for? Done it a few times honey, life goes on and it will all work out.
I have been many places and have several shirts to prove it. The things that scare you probably wouldn't scare me. For as many times as I have done things where I should have wound up in a morgue, I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to be here for the time being and therefore, not really scared of dying. I have some emotional dysfunction where I really don't think I can allow myself to love (don't worry, I have a therapist who gets paid to listen to the crap in my brain) so not being in a partnership is ok for the time being. If someone leaves me, I have plenty of experience with that and can shut it off (most of the time to my own detriment). So I must have a corner market on this life problem situation, right? Well, I thought this for a while at least. Then I had to do what genuinely scares the living shit out of me.....

Give up control.

This is my greatest fear and I battle wits with life to keep the upper hand. I use strategies and look at all possible outcomes to make sure my fate never rests in another's hands. I preemptively strike and store away resources to make sure I can do it alone. I will not give up control.
There are many reasons why I behave like this. But the readers digest version is that I have trusted the wrong people to take care of me in the past and it never really worked out well. To quote Fiddy: "The only ginger I trust is me."
This has a lot to do with my personality disorder, and I work on it. Most of the time my control issues go unchallenged. I have created a good system. But then I started the process of putting my son back in school and I noticed I had anxiety for the first time in months. Not the situational anxiety that comes from a stressful situation, but a pervasive weight on my shoulders. Heart palpitations despite resting. Sense of impending doom and the urge to pack up and leave. Feeling like life was sand sifting through my fingers. Constant headaches. Nothing touches these bastards. This is typically accompanied by paralyzing fear. Suddenly I realised what I am afraid of.

Putting my son in school.

Giving up control over what happens to my son (who can not tell me what happens during his school day) is terrifying. I watch the news, I am informed. If someone hurts my kid I will do jail time. I already have it planned out, assault doesn't carry a long sentence for a first time offense. Anyway, giving up control is extremely hard for me. Like probably as hard as living alone may be for one of you. Or losing your job or partner.
Sending  my son to school may seem like a silly fear, but the root of this fear is deeper than leaving my son in a classroom. Yours probably has a deeper core than your current situation as well. We all fight different demons, but the courage still comes from the same place. Just like Glenda told Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz: you had the power all along. (Sometimes I think a magic glitter wand would help) I need to dig in and find my place of letting go. That is courage for me. Your courage may look different then mine, but it is terrifying regardless. Quick tip from the collector of been there done that t-shirts, what you are looking for IS inside you. Nothing else can provide the courage you need. No person, no bottle, no pill, no job, no food. I have tried all of them, and some were a lot of fun! But I never found what I needed. If you still need to figure that out I will love you regardless, and be here once you are done.
I am linking a TedTalk from a lady who speaks about coming out. She uses her situation to illustrate a problem that every person faces more then once in life, and she is much more eloquent and far funnier than I ever hope to be. Her message goes far beyond her specific situation and I have watched it numerous times to remind myself that I need to throw grenades. Hope you enjoy.

 http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=kSR4xuU07sc 

And here is a picture of me so I can post this to pintrest.

Remember that one time, at band camp.....

So I have a few posts that I am not confident in publishing. A piece I wrote last year (and have since deleted from this blog) stirred up some people. It is not hard to write from a personal perspective, but it is challenging to publish it. Normally I wouldn't mind stirring people up, but when you are writing about your feelings and experience it is always subjective and always leaves you open to attack.
I have thought about the goal or purpose of this writing. I write for myself often, and I have been content keeping it to my self. In the social networking culture we find ourselves in everyone has an important opinion and feels the need to voice it, regardless of how self centered or myopic it may be. I don't want to be the blogger mom that posts about how June Cleaver I am, or how Martha Stewart my Christmas tree looks, or how amazingly I have raised my child in the absence of hardship or struggle. I couldn't write like that even if I wanted to! 
The title of this blog is Evolution of Erica. It reflects my change in behavior, speech, views, coping strategies, etc after leaving a Christian cult. During the time I have been exploring this transformation it has become clear that my need to defer decision making to someone else began long before I met the family who brought me to that church.
Where does one begin when I am still uncomfortable recalling memories, let alone sharing them with the world at large? I think sharing our experience with others seems to be lost. We don't get together with friends to talk, we check our news feed. We have long conversations where facial expressions and body language is missed and emojis are a poor substitute. Some people don't even talk on the phone anymore. We miss out on the human contact and experience behind our keyboards and screens. We are able to keep up the facade of a happy little life with carefully selected photos, status updates, and threats of unfriending if you don't take the unflattering photo down. This is a manner of behaving that I had no trouble adjusting to once I left the cult. But to be honest I became good at that at a much earlier age. Being authentic is hard. Opening up is hard. Learning what to say and who to say it to is difficult. Like most other lessons I have learned, this came to me the hard way. While I am not publishing my deepest thoughts or closely held secrets, I still think sharing our stories and experience is a worthwhile and noble pursuit. Many people I talk to express a frustration with life that is common no matter what the background. Being human is a communal activity, it can be accomplished in a vacuum, but just like using the microwave cooking directions, it may not turn out the way the way you thought.
So here I am wasting a beautiful day in my hot kitchen trying to type out a post on a touchscreen keyboard. Auto correct is the bane of original thought, in my opinion. Why am I doing this? Because I believe if we share our experience we will see the world as a more friendly place. We will see more in common with our neighbors and coworkers than we did before. We can help others by lowering our walls and saying, "Me too!". We are not unique. I have not experienced one thing in my crazy life that has not happened to a single other person.
So this isn't a deep post with some altruistic message. This is my mission statement for this writing experiment. I want to share my experience because I can help someone feel, even just momentarily, that they are not alone in their experience of life. And that ties into my belief that our collective purpose as human beings is to lessen the suffering of others.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for my thoughts on courage.

Merry Christmas from our house to yours

It has been a while since I have written here and after reading some stories this morning about how poor people in America are coping with Christmas this year it prompted me to write about my own Christmas. For those of you who may not know, my son and I live on government assistance since his disability prevents him from being in daycare. We fall way below the poverty line, yet we have a very nice life. I do realize that we have a wonderful family who supports us and that many people are not as fortunate as I am. As with everything I write, I am only speaking for myself and make no presumptions that my situation is like any other persons nor will I assume that other people should do what I do. I just share because I believe that regardless of life circumstances there is a common thread that binds us together. 

This Christmas has really been unlike any other for me, as I am finding happens more often the older I get. My mother and her boyfriend have the flu and we were unable to spend Christmas eve or day with them as we normally do. So my sister, her husband, my son and I had dinner at my grandfathers and went to our respective homes last night. We had a wonderful dinner and had a great time. With my son wound up neither of us have slept so I sent him to 'bed', laid out his gifts (no stocking this year) and had him get back up! Make do with what you have has become my new motto and this morning was no different. 

As I laid out his gifts I first noticed how few were there. At my mothers house this is masked by gifts from her and my sister. I did not feel bad for not having that much, it just struck me as odd. Each item I purchased I knew would be appreciated by my son. The first gift he went to was a small cookie sheet filled with magnets that I found in a bag at goodwill. My son has a thing for magnets and I knew he would love them. Then after sorting the magnets and looking through them all he went for the Pez dispenser. I helped him open it and held open the dispenser and he put each candy in individually then watched as he ate them one by one. With all 3 packs of candy. Then there was the softball, baseball and snare drum I picked up at a thrift store. No big ticket items. No batteries required. But he is enjoying a quiet morning and I know he appreciates what he got. 

I was a lucky child and knew two of my great grandmothers before they passed. These women were born at the beginning of last century when just about everyone was poor. One of my great grandmothers didn't go to school past the 6th grade because girls didn't need at education at that time and another was raised by her grandmother after her mother passed away, graduated high school but wasn't able to go to nursing school like she wanted because her grandmother needed her to work to help support the household. Both of these women had different lives, but experienced poverty on a level I will hopefully never understand. They both had long full lives and raised children and families that stuck together through thick and thin. When times get hard I often think about these women and the stories they told me and I often wonder if poverty holds gifts. Over the last few years I have learned to appreciate what I have. I see the abundance more then I feel the sting of lack. Now I know that poverty increases stress, and I feel that often as well. But I cant help but feel grateful for what I have this morning, and recognize that what I am missing most of all this Christmas is my family. My gift this morning is the realization that my life is full. 

While I am enjoying some coffee, my son is sitting at his desk enjoying some hot cocoa and singing while playing with his magnets and kinect pieces in a way that only makes sense to him. I am missing my family, but I am thankful for a little boy who enjoys simple things like magnets on a cookie sheet. 

You Never Know What Can Happen In A Year

One month from today will be my 32nd birthday. And for the first time since I turned 26, I am looking forward to that day. Not because I want life to go by faster. For today, I do not wish my life away. One, two, possibly as far back as five years ago I couldn't say that. But today I can, and that is progress. THIS is my evolution.

Without going into the details of why my birthday holds such bad memories for me, every year as the date approached dread would fill my heart. One more years alone. One more year without a family to call my own. Tick off another year where my deepest hopes laid unfulfilled. It is actually kind of hard to write this. For the feelings I felt were valid. However something has changed during my 31st trip around the sun. I have accepted my lot as it is. And I realize this lot is temporary. 

Can it be true? 
Can I be absolutely satisfied without my hopes and dreams being realized?
Weirdly enough it seems the answer is yes.

Somehow throughout the year the way my mind processes things has changed. And I have happiness where I thought I never could. Not much in my life has changed. While I do have a much larger circle of friends, and I am not physically ill, nor do I have immediate crisis' on my plate, the things that I really believed I needed to be happy have still eluded me. Yet here I am with a smile on my face.

Many times I have pondered what changed inside me. What is this key that brought me out of my darkest days? You see, during this year I have come to realize that all of my adult life I have been looking for a secret, some piece of advice that would show me where I have gone wrong in my life and what I could do to turn it around. I am not sure I could have found a more simple answer. Gratitude was the key.

(who wouldn't be greatful with friends like these?)

You see, in many of the darkest pits I found myself in I pleaded with whomever would listen: "All I want is to be content". I didn't wish to be happy anymore. That was far too much to hope for. All I wanted was for the pain to stop. To be content with my life. And I found gratitude to be my key.

(Morgan and Aunt Jessi)

When I was sick last year I had a lot of time to think. I contemplated what content people did that I did not. The only thing I could figure was that content people were grateful. You can be grateful without being content. But you can not be content without being grateful. So I started being grateful for the little things. It wasn't an overnight fix. There were still many times I wanted to give up. There were times I was so upset at people or life I screamed and threw things. But I kept coming back to gratitude. The more I practiced it the easier it became. The easier it became the more good I could see in my life and in the world around me. Now here I sit very pleased with my life. 

Not a lot has changed in my physical world.

But my mind, oh.... that is a different story altogether.

 (Reading some Romantic Poetry)

Some of the great things in my life are BECAUSE I am single. My son is becoming an incredible human being! Morgan has needed more attention and more help than any typical kid due to autism. Being single has allowed me to devote myself to him and his upbringing. I am never challenged by my parenting methods and for the most part he has my undivided attention. Also, because I have chose to live on welfare and stay at home with him I have got the chance to know my child in a completely different way. I can see him the way I couldn't before because I was so busy. 

These things that I cursed, being the bane of my existence, could actually be construed as blessings...

While gratitude is a part of the process of climbing out of a deep depression, it was the foundation. Nothing else would have helped until I mastered that.

 (and being able to laugh at yourself helps)

I write these things because I never wish anyone to go through the things I have been through. Seriously, if you can't love yourself, or love your life, you really need to make some changes. Your life does not need to be falling apart. You can make one small step today. Be grateful for the internet connection to read this. Be grateful for the food you eat. For the bed you sleep in. Watch Angela's Ashes and be grateful that you didn't have a poor Irish Catholic upbringing. Look around, there is really a lot of good in your life and in the world. 

Now I am going to spend some time with that remarkable young man.       

Sublime Dreams of Sixteen

Image from flickr by doug88888

     Will you take a trip with me? Lets go back in time and explore the young girl I was at sixteen, as I remember her anyway. Oh I was so full of dreams and aspirations for the future. On the cusp of adulthood and finally being able to be to control my life! I was going to cast off the shackles of parental control and finally be in charge of my destiny. I dreamed of becoming the Upton Sinclair of my generation. I wanted to expose evil plots and cruelty at the highest levels. I wanted to make people aware of injustice and rouse people to action. I wanted to revolutionize Special Education and give special needs children a different experience then the kids I went to school with. I wanted to help foster a society where everyone is welcomed and included. I thought that acceptance and inclusion of people with disabilities as the next civil rights movement. (Obviously I did not understand what civil rights were, but I hope you can feel the passion I had for this) I was going to make a difference, and in that process make the world a better place. I was going to make my mark and people were going to know my name. And when I died the world was going to be a better place because I was in it. 

I love the mindset of that girl.  And I want to recapture her spirit. 

     An amazing young woman with dreams and aspirations to make the world a better place. Somewhere along the way I lost those dreams and replaced them with others. The original dreams became impractical. Inconvenient.  Some of the things I said were: Well this is going to take too long. I don't want to slam my head against that brick wall for 20 years. 

     You may think it will just be a postponement but I have met many older people who never realized their dreams. They may encourage their children or grandchildren to do what they never did. But it can haunt them. The good news is it doesn't matter if you are 20 or 70, you can still work toward your dreams if the fire burns inside you hot enough. 

     I am assured that your aspirations are not the same as mine, so if you are brave enough revisit a time when you were proud of yourself and had dreams of doing something incredible. It is ok if you cry. I did. Do not get lost in the 'where did I go wrong'. For a moment be that person again. Remember what it felt like to be in that skin. Feel again how alive and hopeful you were. Good news again, you are wiser now and can make steps to realize those dreams with a clearer head. Sometimes being older is an advantage. 

     So what do we do once we have captured the spirit of incredible strength? I really don't know for certain. For myself I am making time to write. I am registering for an online university to finish my teaching degree. We can dream all day, but if we don't take the time to do the practical steps we will be no further on our way then we are now. And who knows, maybe my dreams will be refined. While I love the spirit I had when I was young, I am a different person today. 

     “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”  ~ Vincent Van Gogh

It Just Takes Time

9 pm, child is in bed, cup of tea, this is a good time to write.

I have been writing on my typewriter lately and I have found that it is a good way to get your ideas out. You have to focus (there is no delete) and there are no distractions (facebook). But none of what I have been writing lately I want to share with the world at large! Not yet anyway. What I would like to talk about tonight is looking at the positive side of a situation. I have had a few chances recently to use as examples, and I want to share them.

Recently I had to review some photos from a year ago. They were on an old phone and I needed to clear it to loan to a friend. We have all looked at old photos and experienced the feelings that come with them. My first emotion was relief! Many of the photos were of the major remodel process that we did on the trailer. I am hoping that one day they will become part of a project called "Pimp My Trailer". The next emotion was "GAD!! I thought I was fat then!" These are pre whooping cough photos. And then the inevitable sadness from seeing that light in my eyes because I was seeing someone during part of that time. C'est La Vie....

Taken April/May of 2012 and 2013 respectively

I was really torn up about my weight since I just saw a bunch of photos of me where I feel I look part manatee. These old pictures look nothing like that even though I am approximately the same weight. This weighed on me for days. Unfortunately it doesn't take much for me to get down on myself. Luckily my forays into self loathing and despair are short lived these days, thanks to many wonderful people I have in my life.  After mulling these images over in my head I came to this realization: I may weigh a bit more today than I did a year ago, but as far as my mental health goes - oh baby! Look at how far I have come! One year ago I was still experiencing the acute grief of losing my father to cancer. Child Protective Services was investigating the schools claim that I was being negligent with my son (someday I will write about living in Lynden). My landlord wanted me out, and since he couldn't evict me he raised my rent to more than my monthly income. I was on a handful of psych meds and drinking way too much. Not to mention the 'little things' that were piling up. Things were not great and I wasn't handling life well.

Fast forward one year (isn't hindsight awesome!) and while I am still processing my grief and I am still wary of any 'official' people in Morgan's and my life, we are doing far better than anything I could have imagined back then. No, life is not perfect - not even close. However I have more peace today. I have an amazing and loving group of friends that I can call on at a moments notice. They not only accept my son, but they welcome him and try to include him. They have become the family I chose. I don't have a traditional family, but I love the family I have and I am grateful for each and everyone of them. (And if you are blood related - I love you too)

You know how one thought leads to another? Well as it just so happens the end of June and beginning of July mark several significant dates for me. June 29th will be 3 years since I left the 'Skirt Church'. June 30th would have been my 11th wedding anniversary. And July 2nd will mark my 8th year off of meth. I have had conflicting emotions about these dates in recent years, and last year was a full on bawl fest. I was in a really bad place. I remember last year all I could think of was, "Holy shit, all these years of doing the 'right' thing and my life is still a steaming pile of shit." There were other thoughts too but I am not going to entertain them today. So as a preemptive strike I have been trying to find the positive in these situations, where my life is not meeting the expectations I had for it so many years ago. And this is what I found:

It has taken me approximately 3 years to rebuild my life. When I left the skirt church, I left my life behind. In the 2.5 years that I was in there I had lost contact with just about everyone that wasn't family. All of my friends, all of my community, all of my 'belonging'. My best friend (in the cult) was praying for Morgan and my souls because surely I would miss the rapture since I wasn't repentant. Others just cut me off entirely. I have a few life long friends that were there for me, and I am more than grateful for them, but for a long time I had to rely too heavily on them. I did not have an amazing group of friends (which I know I need for mental and emotional health) to turn to when things went wrong. I had less than a handful and the sheer amount of chaos that happened during the next 2 years (and my increasing inability to deal with it all) was more than they should have had to deal with. However today I have a number of people to call on. It just takes time. As I reflect I see what happened during my time in the cult and how hard it was to regain a normal life afterwards. Five and a half years ago when I got into the cult my life was in turmoil and they offered answers to my questions. In all reality there were no answers for what was happening in life, it just needed to be accepted. But their answers appealed to my pride and fed on my pain. I was right and they were wrong and I could prove it with the bible. Plus I finally had the 'church family' I had always wanted. It feels so good to be so right. Pride is a huge stumbling block that most people will never realize they have. Again, I come back to the lesson that it all takes time. I am still dealing with the repercussions of aligning myself with them. I know I am not out of the woods yet. But my life is taking shape again. And it is a shape I can accept.

There was a lot of things that changed in the past year, 85% of which occurred between my ears, 10% occurred in my heart. The chief change is being grateful. Yes, there are things that I want in life that elude me still. My life took a different path almost 7 years ago. Very few people walk the path I have been given. And fewer walk it well. But even in the midst of the pain and anguish I knew that what I really wanted was to be content. I just wanted to be happy with what I had. This was not an easy task for me. After being sick for a month or three last year this idea popped in my head: You can not be content without gratitude. Maybe it is possible to have gratitude without being content, but a contented heart and mind must be grateful for what it has. And I have many blessings. Sure it took a long time to see them (only 5% of the change over the last year has been physical) but I am just grateful that I can see them now. I could list the things I am grateful for, but I would have to sit here all night. I prefer to express my gratitude in the moment anyway. If I haven't told you how much you mean to me, expect it soon.

To me it seems like there should be much more to say, but I feel I have expressed myself and completed the thoughts I wished to share. Translating thought processes is a difficult task, but I hope it will help. If you find yourself lamenting something, lacking some vital piece in life, please remember that it just takes time.

Hold my beer and watch this!!

Thank you all for being patient with me as I figure out what and how to write again. Finding a writing voice is difficult, as is determining what I want to share about my life with the world at large. I have had a rough few weeks in regards to my mental health. Recently I read a really good blog post 21 Tips to Keeping Your Shit Together. This post is about depression, but I think it would be quite enlightening for anyone who knows or loves someone with depression or other mental illness. 

One of the greatest things I have realized after reading this is that 1) I have amazing friends who have helped me do all of those things. 2) I am already doing what I need to do to help myself. Whew! What a relief! I thought I must have been slacking in the pulling up your big girl panties department. Really I did. What does all of this mean when applied to the really real world? I can trust myself.

So many times I question my judgment. My decision making skills. My ability to manage money. Being a mother. Being a friend. Rice or quinoa for dinner. Can I ever get anything right?? Surely I can take a survey of my life and see that I don't always make the right decisions (ie the title of this post). But if I was to stop everything for a moment and somehow look at myself with an all knowing lens, what would I see? Is it possible that I have avoided many many more tragedies? Would I see that I am actually hitting the mark with an +80/-20 accuracy rather then the +20/-80 I have been giving myself credit for? I don't know, maybe I am a bigger fuck up then I even give myself credit for, but somehow I don't think that is the case. I think I am strong and competent. Even if I was to look at my physical life, I have done pretty well with what I have been given. If I look within I see an amazing force to be reckoned with. And you cant put a price tag on keeping your shit together! Or not shanking a bitch. 

I have been enjoying some guided meditations lately on Radical Acceptance. This is one of the core philosophies of DBT, a therapy that I am going through. Key points of this is mindfulness, non judgement, and acceptance. And I will be the first to tell you that living "in the moment" can really suck if you are depressed. For me there was a point where the scene in my mind changed. I realize I am not the dinner I am making. I am not my floors that need to me mopped. I am not my child. I am not even this bag of bones I carry around (that is getting a little deeper then I want to go in this blog, but you see the general direction shift). I am more then what I do or what I don't do. My heart, my soul, is just the way it is suppose to be right now. And I can take comfort in that amidst the floors that need mopping at the college application I haven't sent in.