This time of year is my favorite time of year. I love the colors, the crispness, the pumpkins, the sweaters, the bonfires...
Besides that, it holds my wedding anniversary (which is not a coincidence, since I was bound and determined to have a Fall wedding). Twelve years, Scott Gibson Arthur. Tomorrow, on the 30th, we will have made it to A DOZEN (is the designated gift Eggs? Donuts?)!
And, starting nine years ago, it became a season of a different type of emotion. We celebrate the change of season, we celebrate our union as a couple, and...
We honor and remember our baby boy, Duncan, who passed away on October 26 2007.
We've done a variety of things over the years to make this day significant (this year, we spent it flying home from San Diego!!). But one thing I always do is reread the following entry from that time period. It's called "New Kind of Normal" and I still don't think there's any better description for what the weeks, months, and now years since Duncan's death have been like for me.
To read that entry, click
here
Our adventure started out with lots of big ole bumps and dips and I-want-to-go-backs. And has evolved into a place to chronicle it all: the sweet, the contemplative, the painful, and the please-say-I'm-not-alone...Welcome. And please say I'm not alone.
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Monday, October 24, 2016
If you have ADHD, read this,
It just plain super-sucks to live inside a being unoccupied by a functioning brain.
This is what it feels like:
The doorbell rings and you go into full-on panic about what appointment you forgot. By the time you get to the door you are cursing yourself AND your pits are sweating profusely. Thank GOD it's just an annoying walking political groupie. Then, while you are still getting your heart regulated and not listening to ALL THOSE WORDS, he freaking has the nerve to give you a pop quiz... Except you don't know it until he paused expectantly, waiting for an answer. You go with a safe bet: "The economy?"
You wake up every morning truly not knowing what to do with yourself... From the routine obvious (getting yourself and your kids ready to leave the house) to what to do with open, free down time (so many choices!!!). Inside my not-functioning brain: do I shower first, or brush my teeth first? Think. Think. Think. This didn't seem so hard before! What do I usually do? Wait. What am I going to do when the kids finish their morning show? I'll need to pounce into breakfast duty... But what if that interrupts me from deciding whether to shower or brush my teeth first? Then that question will HANG IN THE BALANCE... And, meanwhile, Campbell might wake up any minute so there goes personal hygiene altogether. What's that? You'd like fuckimg eggs for breakfast? A) I forgot eggs when I had them WRITTEN ON MY LIST at the grocery yesterday, b) I don't trust myself to cook anything that uses anything that needs turning off, and c) Campbell just woke up. You're on you're own.
You keep hearing a still small voice saying that you need rest, yes, rest, that's what you need. That's what will make your functioning brain return to inhabiting your body. So you commit to it like ITS YOUR JOB. You politely say no to things you'd normally say yes to, all the while not liking the way this comes off since you generally like socializing and don't want to be written off as inconsistently flighty... But you remember that not everyone needs to know about or hear your ADHD struggles so you commit to using words like, "Just in an overwhelmed place right now and pairing back temporarily" which is true. But really you JUST PLAIN FEEL LIKE A CRAZY, IRRESPONSBLE, INCOMPETENT, IDIOT who gets ovwhelmed by brushing her teeth or completing a sentence. That's what you really want to say. But you don't to the outer ring. To your husband and your inner ring, you start to share what you want to say, but you can't even get THAT out. But they know. Because this has happened before. And they know what you need: to be handled very tenderly while you feel so unsettled, confused, and moronic. So you now have said no enough to have the space to rest, so you can heal that "overwhelmed" place you're in. But GUESS WHAT? Since almost every single solitary thing there is to do in this life - including resting - involves your brain, it's hard to find respite in rest. You try going to the coffee shop - BUT ALL THOSE SENSES ARE OVERSTIMULATING. You try reading, but - seriously - the words don't make sense. Forget about even glancing at your phone or scrolling through Facebook: information, information, information. Where to file it? What to do with it? The best things, you find, are headphones with music, meditation, and napping. And even though you feel a bit like a mental patient fighting for her sanity (since nobody else seems to find READING stressful), you know you need it. You try to tell yourself it's temporary and the fog will lift and rest won't be a full time job.
You go to book club because you are having a somewhat clear afternoon leading up to it. You pride yourself in being authentic and real. And it feels somewhat shitty to have to weigh whether your cognitive faculties are in tact enough to go, when really you know you ought to be ok with yourself enough to go-and-be-stupid and everyone-else-can-just-deal. But part of ADHD is not being able to pluck the right words from the sea of them (did you ever contemplate HOW MANY there are???). You've got a bunch to express, and the modality to express it... And yet both your filter is not trustworthy (imagine turrets, except with ideas) AND your words are all wrong, going off on these paths you didn't want them to go on... So that, GUESS WHAT!!? Your attempts at being real and authentic only lead you to misrepresent yourself, which feels the opposite of real and authentic.
Your sense of humor... where'd it go? Turns out you need your brain to be funny too. And your sense of humor is something you love about yourself!! But when you try to be sarcastic or witty or cheeky during this period of time, it comes off at best as not funny and at worst at reaching and trying way too hard and likely both. Your timing is all off and your word choice is messed up and - furthermore - you can't figure out what IS funny. And besides that, funny tequires creative juices and when your using up every last drop of juiciness in you just to manage yourself at the basic level, there's no moisture left over for creative. Worst of all, you lose your ability to laugh at yourself - because nothing about how you feel inside is funny. It's scary. Scary takes the zing right out of funny. There's no room for it.
You've instilled in your children the importance of responsibility and harp on them to manage their belongings. And you're wandering around the house every moment that you are awake, hollering, "where is my fucking phone (but really- fill in the blank)?" Except, for the kids' sake, that's only what the inside voice says. The outside one is silent while you suffer with the shame of your hypocrisy as you discombobulatedly race around mindless and crazed when you could just use the "find my phone" feature on the iPad sitting right in front of you. And when you can't follow the basic guidelines you've set for your children over and over again, feeling like a child yourself, you wonder "how the hell am I equipped enough to parent these darlings?" And the insecurity of that gets to feeling REALLY REAL.
And time. A complete quandary. While you struggle with it even in clear times, when the ADHD fog is there, it is an entity that eludes you. You take turns obsessing over it, setting timers, back planning to consider it, making pick up and drop off and practice start times and end time as rigid and unforgiving as ever and ignoring it altogether, being sloppy with it and facing the consequences ashamedly. How to figure out just how important time is? How much respect to assign to it? You become the ultimate philosopher on all the things you-can't-figure-out, and setting your mind out to solve such unsolvable nonsense means it's even more absent for the things right in front of you you already feel ill-equipped to handle.
And since you can't size up which mistakes are the normal ones - the ones that everyone makes - and which ones are the ones that are annoyingly specific to you and your brain chemistry, you assume that everything you do wrong is uniquely your problem... and then you're on a little shame island.
And then you have a night here and there where you drink. Alcohol. And when you are feeling the affects, everything gets better. Not because alcohol makes you do better cognitively, but because you don't have to be so damn concerned with your state. You are probably behaving just as frazzled as your sober ADHD self, but you simply don't give a shit. And you think about the people who are mentally ill, some with ADHD perhaps, who are roaming the streets homeless or lost or in debt or running from the police all while abusing substances and you think I GET IT. You get why one would want to feel this medicated way more often, and here You are with a family who loves you, friends who care about you, money to pay the bills and more, and a life that is full and whole and wonderful. This doesn't make you feel guilty for being not-homeless. And it doesn't make you feel guilty for going through internal battles when so much goodness and so many blessings are right at your feet. Mostly, it makes you super-sucked into the intimate awareness of the hardness of life. If you feel like your problems are big and get scared by the wonderfulness of the aid of alcohol during these episodes, life for these folks must be un-freakin-bearable.
And then your husband (probably because he got freaked when you confessed the drinking thing) says, "why don't you try Ritalin again?" You tried it back when you went bat-shit-crazy after Campbell's birth and felt the benefits were inconsistent and, besides that, you were not liking having to be on TWO medications since lexipro was prescribed for the accompanying anxiety. So you didn't give it a fair shot, but you had a couple left over. Now, where were they? Oh yeah, still in the zippered side pocket of your purse. PHEW, good thing you kept this purse. And you take one. And you feel a difference. And then the next day you take another. And then the next. And then the next. And now you're a Ritalin junkie. Not because it means you're hooked on speed. You're hooked on feeling normal again.
Well, at least somewhat.
And like your brain decided to join the party that is YOU again.
And that's a lot less unsettling.
This is what it feels like:
The doorbell rings and you go into full-on panic about what appointment you forgot. By the time you get to the door you are cursing yourself AND your pits are sweating profusely. Thank GOD it's just an annoying walking political groupie. Then, while you are still getting your heart regulated and not listening to ALL THOSE WORDS, he freaking has the nerve to give you a pop quiz... Except you don't know it until he paused expectantly, waiting for an answer. You go with a safe bet: "The economy?"
You wake up every morning truly not knowing what to do with yourself... From the routine obvious (getting yourself and your kids ready to leave the house) to what to do with open, free down time (so many choices!!!). Inside my not-functioning brain: do I shower first, or brush my teeth first? Think. Think. Think. This didn't seem so hard before! What do I usually do? Wait. What am I going to do when the kids finish their morning show? I'll need to pounce into breakfast duty... But what if that interrupts me from deciding whether to shower or brush my teeth first? Then that question will HANG IN THE BALANCE... And, meanwhile, Campbell might wake up any minute so there goes personal hygiene altogether. What's that? You'd like fuckimg eggs for breakfast? A) I forgot eggs when I had them WRITTEN ON MY LIST at the grocery yesterday, b) I don't trust myself to cook anything that uses anything that needs turning off, and c) Campbell just woke up. You're on you're own.
You keep hearing a still small voice saying that you need rest, yes, rest, that's what you need. That's what will make your functioning brain return to inhabiting your body. So you commit to it like ITS YOUR JOB. You politely say no to things you'd normally say yes to, all the while not liking the way this comes off since you generally like socializing and don't want to be written off as inconsistently flighty... But you remember that not everyone needs to know about or hear your ADHD struggles so you commit to using words like, "Just in an overwhelmed place right now and pairing back temporarily" which is true. But really you JUST PLAIN FEEL LIKE A CRAZY, IRRESPONSBLE, INCOMPETENT, IDIOT who gets ovwhelmed by brushing her teeth or completing a sentence. That's what you really want to say. But you don't to the outer ring. To your husband and your inner ring, you start to share what you want to say, but you can't even get THAT out. But they know. Because this has happened before. And they know what you need: to be handled very tenderly while you feel so unsettled, confused, and moronic. So you now have said no enough to have the space to rest, so you can heal that "overwhelmed" place you're in. But GUESS WHAT? Since almost every single solitary thing there is to do in this life - including resting - involves your brain, it's hard to find respite in rest. You try going to the coffee shop - BUT ALL THOSE SENSES ARE OVERSTIMULATING. You try reading, but - seriously - the words don't make sense. Forget about even glancing at your phone or scrolling through Facebook: information, information, information. Where to file it? What to do with it? The best things, you find, are headphones with music, meditation, and napping. And even though you feel a bit like a mental patient fighting for her sanity (since nobody else seems to find READING stressful), you know you need it. You try to tell yourself it's temporary and the fog will lift and rest won't be a full time job.
You go to book club because you are having a somewhat clear afternoon leading up to it. You pride yourself in being authentic and real. And it feels somewhat shitty to have to weigh whether your cognitive faculties are in tact enough to go, when really you know you ought to be ok with yourself enough to go-and-be-stupid and everyone-else-can-just-deal. But part of ADHD is not being able to pluck the right words from the sea of them (did you ever contemplate HOW MANY there are???). You've got a bunch to express, and the modality to express it... And yet both your filter is not trustworthy (imagine turrets, except with ideas) AND your words are all wrong, going off on these paths you didn't want them to go on... So that, GUESS WHAT!!? Your attempts at being real and authentic only lead you to misrepresent yourself, which feels the opposite of real and authentic.
Your sense of humor... where'd it go? Turns out you need your brain to be funny too. And your sense of humor is something you love about yourself!! But when you try to be sarcastic or witty or cheeky during this period of time, it comes off at best as not funny and at worst at reaching and trying way too hard and likely both. Your timing is all off and your word choice is messed up and - furthermore - you can't figure out what IS funny. And besides that, funny tequires creative juices and when your using up every last drop of juiciness in you just to manage yourself at the basic level, there's no moisture left over for creative. Worst of all, you lose your ability to laugh at yourself - because nothing about how you feel inside is funny. It's scary. Scary takes the zing right out of funny. There's no room for it.
You've instilled in your children the importance of responsibility and harp on them to manage their belongings. And you're wandering around the house every moment that you are awake, hollering, "where is my fucking phone (but really- fill in the blank)?" Except, for the kids' sake, that's only what the inside voice says. The outside one is silent while you suffer with the shame of your hypocrisy as you discombobulatedly race around mindless and crazed when you could just use the "find my phone" feature on the iPad sitting right in front of you. And when you can't follow the basic guidelines you've set for your children over and over again, feeling like a child yourself, you wonder "how the hell am I equipped enough to parent these darlings?" And the insecurity of that gets to feeling REALLY REAL.
And time. A complete quandary. While you struggle with it even in clear times, when the ADHD fog is there, it is an entity that eludes you. You take turns obsessing over it, setting timers, back planning to consider it, making pick up and drop off and practice start times and end time as rigid and unforgiving as ever and ignoring it altogether, being sloppy with it and facing the consequences ashamedly. How to figure out just how important time is? How much respect to assign to it? You become the ultimate philosopher on all the things you-can't-figure-out, and setting your mind out to solve such unsolvable nonsense means it's even more absent for the things right in front of you you already feel ill-equipped to handle.
And since you can't size up which mistakes are the normal ones - the ones that everyone makes - and which ones are the ones that are annoyingly specific to you and your brain chemistry, you assume that everything you do wrong is uniquely your problem... and then you're on a little shame island.
And then you have a night here and there where you drink. Alcohol. And when you are feeling the affects, everything gets better. Not because alcohol makes you do better cognitively, but because you don't have to be so damn concerned with your state. You are probably behaving just as frazzled as your sober ADHD self, but you simply don't give a shit. And you think about the people who are mentally ill, some with ADHD perhaps, who are roaming the streets homeless or lost or in debt or running from the police all while abusing substances and you think I GET IT. You get why one would want to feel this medicated way more often, and here You are with a family who loves you, friends who care about you, money to pay the bills and more, and a life that is full and whole and wonderful. This doesn't make you feel guilty for being not-homeless. And it doesn't make you feel guilty for going through internal battles when so much goodness and so many blessings are right at your feet. Mostly, it makes you super-sucked into the intimate awareness of the hardness of life. If you feel like your problems are big and get scared by the wonderfulness of the aid of alcohol during these episodes, life for these folks must be un-freakin-bearable.
And then your husband (probably because he got freaked when you confessed the drinking thing) says, "why don't you try Ritalin again?" You tried it back when you went bat-shit-crazy after Campbell's birth and felt the benefits were inconsistent and, besides that, you were not liking having to be on TWO medications since lexipro was prescribed for the accompanying anxiety. So you didn't give it a fair shot, but you had a couple left over. Now, where were they? Oh yeah, still in the zippered side pocket of your purse. PHEW, good thing you kept this purse. And you take one. And you feel a difference. And then the next day you take another. And then the next. And then the next. And now you're a Ritalin junkie. Not because it means you're hooked on speed. You're hooked on feeling normal again.
Well, at least somewhat.
And like your brain decided to join the party that is YOU again.
And that's a lot less unsettling.
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Mixed messages
The other day one of my children (youalreadyknowwhoitis:Sullivan) wore his shirt backwards to school. It wasn't a generic t-shirt, mind you. It's important to clarify, because I want you to get the image right in your head. It was a bold-blue collared shirt. Imagine a stiff collar sticking upright in front of Sullivan's throat. He looked reverently priestlike and flamboyantly idiotic all at once. I don't care how clueless 2nd graders generally are... NObody could've missed this wardrobe malfunction.
Now, Sullivan is Sullivan: dreamy, marcher to the beat of a-drummer-nobody's-ever-heard-of, careless, uninterested in 99% of the details of life but obsessively rigid about the 1%. Shirt appropriation, clearly, falls in the 99%.
I am all about my kids doing their own thang with their clothes. Ain't nobody got time for outfit planning four kids. (Correction: Three kids...I do dress Campbell - BUT ONLY CUZ SHE'S ONE I'M CUTTING HER OFF NEXT YEAR - and she is dang cute **most** of the time).
I'm getting to my point.
Really.
I mentioned to Sullivan on the way to school that he had his shirt on backwards and...would he like to take a moment in the van before running out the door to school to switch it around?? I got the rushed, "No, no." Like I often do, which always sends the signal, "I got bigger junk going on in this here head... I can't be bothered with these ridiculously petty concerns."
Out into the world he went...
As is normal for me, I moved right on with my day. Didn't think a thing of it. And there he was at pick up, 6 hours later, looking the exact same way.
I slept great that night.
I happened to have a check-in meeting the following day with one of the teachers pulling him for special services. She.is.marvelous. The meeting was hugely informative and helpful. But I'm not writing about the meeting. I'm writing about society. And this teacher, let's call her Zelda, started out our time together, asking tenderly, "So... Did you know Sullivan was wearing his collared (there it is, again) shirt backwards yesterday?"
I answered that yes I did.
And I coulda stopped there, but I still seek approval and want to appear competent, so - for good measure - I added in cheerfully, "I asked the little guy if he wanted to switch it around before school and he was resistant!" (Can you hear me being cheerful?)
I smiled. And so she smiled. And then she stopped smiling, lowered her voice, and said, It's just that... I didn't want him to... You know...get made fun of."
Zelda is a rock star special Ed teacher, and I know that she totally loves my son. And she is totally tuned in to elementary school culture. And wanted to have Sullivan's back on this topic...
So know that Zelda and I are 100% cool.
But it got me all tripped up inside...
It just so happens that, additionally, I have had a couple mom friends share with me on recent ocassipns that they are worried their kids will get made fun of for this reason or that one. So, there it keeps coming round...this question of how and in what way we out to redirect our kids' choices or behaviors in order for them to be spared teasing.
And it seems to me we are looking at it all wrong.
Especially, ESPECIALLY, when we are simultaneously shoving messages about inner strength and individuality and approval-seeking only from within DOWN THEIR THROATS. At home (we love you exactly as you are), in books (to thine own self be true), on inspirational posters (be yourself, everyone else is taken), from the counselor at school (I don't know what the hell she tells them, but I imagine the previous three examples smushed together). We feed them this. And then we contradict it with subtleties, "You're going to wear that with that?" "Maybe it's time to look at how the other kiddos do their hair" "Have you noticed kids looking at you funny when you say ___ or ___?" "You gotta turn that shirt around, or else you might get teased." They pick up on these inconsistencies. They hear: Be yourself, but if that's too far different, reign that shit back in." Or at the very least, "Learn what it means to be same, learn what it means to be same. Learn what it means to be same. Then follow that. It's your (and everybody else's) due north"
The question in my mind isn't, HOW DO WE GET OUR KIDS AROUND being made fun of?? It's HOW DO WE PREPARE THEIR HEARTS for when it actually does happen?? Cuz, let's face it, when it comes to getting made fun of... Or, to take malicious intent out of it... When it comes to just benign unwanted attention... It's not a matter of IF it will happen in a child, adolescent, adult, or senior citizen's life, it's WHEN.
So, back to Sullivan's shirt. Sullivan being Sullivan, his wearing it backwards wasn't a statement of self-ness, knowing and understanding the convention of front-wearing shirt society and consciously choosing "other". It is very very very likely, just as he noticed for the first time the other day which door we are talking about when we say "front" door (vs. the back one), that Sullivan's ineptitude for detail combined with comprehension issues and a dreamy noggin left him fully unaware about how he had dressed.
Now that's different than indifferent.
The way I see it, there're three ways one arrives in the space of "different," the space of not comfortable:
We have:
-uninterested/indifferent
-unaware
-unable
The first is the most-awesome-feeling vehicle for finding oneself in the space of "different." NOT HARD to own being different when you were the driver who got yourself to that place. I just finished a weekend in New York City, where convention is nowhere to be found, or at least the worship of it is smaller, quieter...and people wear what they want, say what they want, sing that they want when they want to, and the hair. THE HAIR! So many colors, lengths, styles, smells... Backwards shirts here are tame. And the people wearing them, and anything else I perceived as CRAZY, just straight up don't care. Uninterested. In. Convention.
But then there's the other two: UNAWARE and UNABLE. These guys are trickier vehicles in which to arrive at the space "different", because most of the time an individual didn't really plan to arrive there. They just arrived, sorta without choice. And may not like that they did. That doesn't feel good. At least not the first few times. It takes mucho practice being good with where you are when you find yourself in a spot you didn't plan on going.
AND THATS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.
THAT'S THE LESSON I WANNA TEACH SULLIVAN AND MY OTHER OFFSPRING .
Not how to avoid arriving at different when you want to. Not how to avoid arriving at different when you DIDNT want to. How to be ok with different, even comfortable with it and familiar with it and mushed up against it, regardless of what got you there. Because it's GONNA FREAKING HAPPEN. And. IT WILL DRAW ATTENTION. That's how emerging homosapiens developing language decided on the definitions to those antonyms. SAME: other cavemen don't look at you. DIFFERENT: other cavemen look at you. Attention is an accompaniment to different. It just is.
UNAWARE is what Sullivan was with his shirt example. Unaware is what I was when, at my 8th grade graduation ceremony when I was called to the stage to speak and I was dressed to the nines in a brand new royal blue form fitting dress that made me feel me and beautiful and wearing my first pair of short little heels, it was called to my attention that I was dragging 4 to 25 squares of toilet paper behind me, lead square stuck to the base of the high heel of my right shoe. If I had had the choice between no toilet paper trail and toilet paper trail on that day, I DEF woulda gone with no. But I arrived at different via unaware. And it was practice. (PS. That's about all I can scrounge up about that memory but I am guessing an additional detail might have been a flushed face... But no teasing, no meanness...I moved through that experience unscathed...again, practice!)
Now I'm gonna give you an UNABLE example. I was having a conversation with my father in law about his childhood experience of bullying. He has talked of it in general terms before, but I now was pulling out specifics... When I asked what his antagonizers did, he said they mainly threw his books out the window or tripped him in the hallway... No physical brauls or fights, per say. When I asked him what he can recall was the onset of his unfortunate position in middle school as "the kid who gets picked on," he didn't pause. He remembers in gym class in Jr. High the start. At that time and place, apparently, athleticism for a boy was a convention. It was "same." So, in gym class, the kids were tasked with cartwheels. and Ric couldn't pull out a single solitary cartwheel. The teasing began. Mastery of one's body - the ability to run, jump, catch, and be coordinated - for a boy in his era...well, it was everything. Ric's abilities in this area at this time were few, and so, well, he came to believe he was "few" in worth, too.
He WANTED to get those legs up. He WANTED to get the momentum to form that circular movement. He WANTED to land on his feet. He just couldn't. He was unable. He was unable to remain "same" and so he arrived at "different" kicking and screaming. Doesn't feel good for "unable" to drive you to "different." Just like the vehicle of unaware. It doesn't feel good, that is, until it feels familiar.
So I'm done with hearing adults talk about their fear of kids getting made fun of. KIDS WILL NOT GET MADE FUN OF (ongoingly) IF SAID KIDS GET PRACTICE WITH THE DISCOMFORT OF DIFFERENT. Mean kids (or rather, kids who are acting mean because their hearts are either overly hardened or overly fragile) leave COMFORT WITH DISCOMFORT alone. They leave that invincibility syrum alone. They don't touch COMFORT WITH DISCOMFORT with a ten foot freaking pole. CUZ, for teasers of our society (young and old and all that is in between), it's cryptonite to their ambitions: to inflict, then watch, discomfort with discomfort.
So, here's the response to uninterested (or indifferent) in convention . This one's easy:
"You don't like my ___ (hair, shoes, attitude, book, laugh, choice of snack, choice of shampoo, choice of tattoo).
Got it. I do."
Here the answer to unaware of convention :
"Holy shit! I just walked the length of that gym with a mile of toilet paper dragging behind me!" And then you hold up the strip like its a streamer and twirl it around 720 degree, but no more, because then you'd have to give your speech looking like a mummy.
Or
"Y'all, I SUCK at dressing. I don't even remember underwear much of the time. The fact that I even HAVE a shirt on is a gift to High plains elementary school. I'm just gonna leave it." Or replace that last statement with, "I am glad you let me know. I'll change it back at lunch."
Here's the answer to unable to meet convention :
"I'm just gonna say it. Cartwheels. Aren't. My. Thing. I could practice till I'm purple in the face and mine wouldn't look even close to your beauties. But you oughta see me in math class. I can work it there."
So that's what I'm gonna focus on in my parenting: Teaching my kids how to gracefully encounter and mush up next to the disomfort of different, NO MATTER HOW THEY EACH INEVITABLY ARRIVE THERE... Press right up against it and have so much practice with it until it doesn't feel uncomfortable anymore...so that it holds no power over them. I'm gonna redirect all my time and my breath from teaching them how to avoid the moving target of adolescent and teenage conventions to role playing and rehearsing and conversating about and grinding in this lesson of comfort with discomfort. SO that if/when they choose "same," it's because they truly want it, not because they are avoiding its opposite...
OR listening to their parent.
Now, Sullivan is Sullivan: dreamy, marcher to the beat of a-drummer-nobody's-ever-heard-of, careless, uninterested in 99% of the details of life but obsessively rigid about the 1%. Shirt appropriation, clearly, falls in the 99%.
I am all about my kids doing their own thang with their clothes. Ain't nobody got time for outfit planning four kids. (Correction: Three kids...I do dress Campbell - BUT ONLY CUZ SHE'S ONE I'M CUTTING HER OFF NEXT YEAR - and she is dang cute **most** of the time).
I'm getting to my point.
Really.
I mentioned to Sullivan on the way to school that he had his shirt on backwards and...would he like to take a moment in the van before running out the door to school to switch it around?? I got the rushed, "No, no." Like I often do, which always sends the signal, "I got bigger junk going on in this here head... I can't be bothered with these ridiculously petty concerns."
Out into the world he went...
As is normal for me, I moved right on with my day. Didn't think a thing of it. And there he was at pick up, 6 hours later, looking the exact same way.
I slept great that night.
I happened to have a check-in meeting the following day with one of the teachers pulling him for special services. She.is.marvelous. The meeting was hugely informative and helpful. But I'm not writing about the meeting. I'm writing about society. And this teacher, let's call her Zelda, started out our time together, asking tenderly, "So... Did you know Sullivan was wearing his collared (there it is, again) shirt backwards yesterday?"
I answered that yes I did.
And I coulda stopped there, but I still seek approval and want to appear competent, so - for good measure - I added in cheerfully, "I asked the little guy if he wanted to switch it around before school and he was resistant!" (Can you hear me being cheerful?)
I smiled. And so she smiled. And then she stopped smiling, lowered her voice, and said, It's just that... I didn't want him to... You know...get made fun of."
Zelda is a rock star special Ed teacher, and I know that she totally loves my son. And she is totally tuned in to elementary school culture. And wanted to have Sullivan's back on this topic...
So know that Zelda and I are 100% cool.
But it got me all tripped up inside...
It just so happens that, additionally, I have had a couple mom friends share with me on recent ocassipns that they are worried their kids will get made fun of for this reason or that one. So, there it keeps coming round...this question of how and in what way we out to redirect our kids' choices or behaviors in order for them to be spared teasing.
And it seems to me we are looking at it all wrong.
Especially, ESPECIALLY, when we are simultaneously shoving messages about inner strength and individuality and approval-seeking only from within DOWN THEIR THROATS. At home (we love you exactly as you are), in books (to thine own self be true), on inspirational posters (be yourself, everyone else is taken), from the counselor at school (I don't know what the hell she tells them, but I imagine the previous three examples smushed together). We feed them this. And then we contradict it with subtleties, "You're going to wear that with that?" "Maybe it's time to look at how the other kiddos do their hair" "Have you noticed kids looking at you funny when you say ___ or ___?" "You gotta turn that shirt around, or else you might get teased." They pick up on these inconsistencies. They hear: Be yourself, but if that's too far different, reign that shit back in." Or at the very least, "Learn what it means to be same, learn what it means to be same. Learn what it means to be same. Then follow that. It's your (and everybody else's) due north"
The question in my mind isn't, HOW DO WE GET OUR KIDS AROUND being made fun of?? It's HOW DO WE PREPARE THEIR HEARTS for when it actually does happen?? Cuz, let's face it, when it comes to getting made fun of... Or, to take malicious intent out of it... When it comes to just benign unwanted attention... It's not a matter of IF it will happen in a child, adolescent, adult, or senior citizen's life, it's WHEN.
So, back to Sullivan's shirt. Sullivan being Sullivan, his wearing it backwards wasn't a statement of self-ness, knowing and understanding the convention of front-wearing shirt society and consciously choosing "other". It is very very very likely, just as he noticed for the first time the other day which door we are talking about when we say "front" door (vs. the back one), that Sullivan's ineptitude for detail combined with comprehension issues and a dreamy noggin left him fully unaware about how he had dressed.
Now that's different than indifferent.
The way I see it, there're three ways one arrives in the space of "different," the space of not comfortable:
We have:
-uninterested/indifferent
-unaware
-unable
The first is the most-awesome-feeling vehicle for finding oneself in the space of "different." NOT HARD to own being different when you were the driver who got yourself to that place. I just finished a weekend in New York City, where convention is nowhere to be found, or at least the worship of it is smaller, quieter...and people wear what they want, say what they want, sing that they want when they want to, and the hair. THE HAIR! So many colors, lengths, styles, smells... Backwards shirts here are tame. And the people wearing them, and anything else I perceived as CRAZY, just straight up don't care. Uninterested. In. Convention.
But then there's the other two: UNAWARE and UNABLE. These guys are trickier vehicles in which to arrive at the space "different", because most of the time an individual didn't really plan to arrive there. They just arrived, sorta without choice. And may not like that they did. That doesn't feel good. At least not the first few times. It takes mucho practice being good with where you are when you find yourself in a spot you didn't plan on going.
AND THATS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.
THAT'S THE LESSON I WANNA TEACH SULLIVAN AND MY OTHER OFFSPRING .
Not how to avoid arriving at different when you want to. Not how to avoid arriving at different when you DIDNT want to. How to be ok with different, even comfortable with it and familiar with it and mushed up against it, regardless of what got you there. Because it's GONNA FREAKING HAPPEN. And. IT WILL DRAW ATTENTION. That's how emerging homosapiens developing language decided on the definitions to those antonyms. SAME: other cavemen don't look at you. DIFFERENT: other cavemen look at you. Attention is an accompaniment to different. It just is.
UNAWARE is what Sullivan was with his shirt example. Unaware is what I was when, at my 8th grade graduation ceremony when I was called to the stage to speak and I was dressed to the nines in a brand new royal blue form fitting dress that made me feel me and beautiful and wearing my first pair of short little heels, it was called to my attention that I was dragging 4 to 25 squares of toilet paper behind me, lead square stuck to the base of the high heel of my right shoe. If I had had the choice between no toilet paper trail and toilet paper trail on that day, I DEF woulda gone with no. But I arrived at different via unaware. And it was practice. (PS. That's about all I can scrounge up about that memory but I am guessing an additional detail might have been a flushed face... But no teasing, no meanness...I moved through that experience unscathed...again, practice!)
Now I'm gonna give you an UNABLE example. I was having a conversation with my father in law about his childhood experience of bullying. He has talked of it in general terms before, but I now was pulling out specifics... When I asked what his antagonizers did, he said they mainly threw his books out the window or tripped him in the hallway... No physical brauls or fights, per say. When I asked him what he can recall was the onset of his unfortunate position in middle school as "the kid who gets picked on," he didn't pause. He remembers in gym class in Jr. High the start. At that time and place, apparently, athleticism for a boy was a convention. It was "same." So, in gym class, the kids were tasked with cartwheels. and Ric couldn't pull out a single solitary cartwheel. The teasing began. Mastery of one's body - the ability to run, jump, catch, and be coordinated - for a boy in his era...well, it was everything. Ric's abilities in this area at this time were few, and so, well, he came to believe he was "few" in worth, too.
He WANTED to get those legs up. He WANTED to get the momentum to form that circular movement. He WANTED to land on his feet. He just couldn't. He was unable. He was unable to remain "same" and so he arrived at "different" kicking and screaming. Doesn't feel good for "unable" to drive you to "different." Just like the vehicle of unaware. It doesn't feel good, that is, until it feels familiar.
So I'm done with hearing adults talk about their fear of kids getting made fun of. KIDS WILL NOT GET MADE FUN OF (ongoingly) IF SAID KIDS GET PRACTICE WITH THE DISCOMFORT OF DIFFERENT. Mean kids (or rather, kids who are acting mean because their hearts are either overly hardened or overly fragile) leave COMFORT WITH DISCOMFORT alone. They leave that invincibility syrum alone. They don't touch COMFORT WITH DISCOMFORT with a ten foot freaking pole. CUZ, for teasers of our society (young and old and all that is in between), it's cryptonite to their ambitions: to inflict, then watch, discomfort with discomfort.
So, here's the response to uninterested (or indifferent) in convention . This one's easy:
"You don't like my ___ (hair, shoes, attitude, book, laugh, choice of snack, choice of shampoo, choice of tattoo).
Got it. I do."
Here the answer to unaware of convention :
"Holy shit! I just walked the length of that gym with a mile of toilet paper dragging behind me!" And then you hold up the strip like its a streamer and twirl it around 720 degree, but no more, because then you'd have to give your speech looking like a mummy.
Or
"Y'all, I SUCK at dressing. I don't even remember underwear much of the time. The fact that I even HAVE a shirt on is a gift to High plains elementary school. I'm just gonna leave it." Or replace that last statement with, "I am glad you let me know. I'll change it back at lunch."
Here's the answer to unable to meet convention :
"I'm just gonna say it. Cartwheels. Aren't. My. Thing. I could practice till I'm purple in the face and mine wouldn't look even close to your beauties. But you oughta see me in math class. I can work it there."
So that's what I'm gonna focus on in my parenting: Teaching my kids how to gracefully encounter and mush up next to the disomfort of different, NO MATTER HOW THEY EACH INEVITABLY ARRIVE THERE... Press right up against it and have so much practice with it until it doesn't feel uncomfortable anymore...so that it holds no power over them. I'm gonna redirect all my time and my breath from teaching them how to avoid the moving target of adolescent and teenage conventions to role playing and rehearsing and conversating about and grinding in this lesson of comfort with discomfort. SO that if/when they choose "same," it's because they truly want it, not because they are avoiding its opposite...
OR listening to their parent.
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