11.27.08
On a day of giving thanks, today I found myself doing just about everything but. To make what could be a long story that a public audience might not have much interest in hearing short, after about ten months of skipping my period, I got a prescription for hormones that would induce it and started taking them about eleven or twelve days ago. The period-inducing process takes a lot out of me. Well, it puts hormones into me that seem to cause a lot of intense and sometimes irrational emotions, exhaustion, physical changes in my body, and basically all of the other crap you go through during puberty. The ten days of hormones is followed by a regular menstrual cycle and when you haven’t experienced this in almost eleven months, it is really intense. At least it is for me.
So today I woke up particularly sensitive and irrational. I had kind of been dreading Thanksgiving here. My sister, Adi and I made plans but throughout the morning little things kept setting me off and I kept finding myself on the verge of tears. I felt tired and not very good in my body. I felt lonely and isolated, nostalgic for France and generally difficult, unresponsive, cranky, distant, disconnected and sad. My Thanksgiving plans involved going to two separate Thanksgiving meals. One was at a friend of Kt’s and the other was at a friend of Adi’s. Neither of these households are places were I feel especially at home or like I belong. I mean, I’ve never actually been to Kt’s friend’s house but in general both places just felt like places that I was tagging along to. As a youngest child I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like the tag-along who isn’t necessarily wanted or invited but who shows up anyway or who gets invited as an extension of another person.
As an adult I still find it hard to relax and to be myself in certain social situations and as today progressed, I felt more and more anxious and full of dread about going to be social with people I don’t really know on what traditionally is my favorite holiday because I spend it with people who I love and who I know and can feel care about me. I didn’t feel so much invited to these places and in some ways it felt like intruding on someone else’s holiday. And the worse I felt throughout the day, the more I felt like whether or not the intrusive feeling was in my head and stupid, my mood was such that I would not be fun, happy, talkative, social or enjoyable as company. The thought of showing up and having to make the excuse of not feeling well or having cramps was enough to make me periodically burst into tears. It’s one thing to make that excuse to people who know you, who really know you well and around whom you feel comfortable just being yourself. It’s another thing to make excuses and then sit in the corner quiet, feeling like a total alien, forcing a polite smile from time to time.
I cried harder this afternoon than I have in a while. I think that I may have cried that hard within my first week of moving here. Everything built up and suddenly I felt like I was ruining Thanksgiving, letting people down, hating myself for being upset, hating myself for not being able to have an easier time being social, and not living up to expectations. The part of today’s plan that involved going Adi’s friend was harder for me than the part that meant going to Kt’s friend’s. I have met Kt’s friend once or twice and had pleasant interactions with her. It felt really low stress and low key. It was with people I hadn’t met before and could easily never see again. There was no pressure, no real importance to going there specifically other than it was where Kt was going and since she’s the only family I have here, it was important for me to be with her on Thanksgiving.
Going with Adi to her friend’s house, on the other hand, felt a lot harder and more emotional for me. When she invited me, she made it clear that it was important to her that I go with her because it’s important for her to be able to share other parts of her life with me. I’ve spent time around her and this friend before and have not really clicked with the friend. Usually when we’re all together I feel left out or like it doesn’t matter if I am there or not at all. It’s like watching TV in a way because they have their dynamic that has been established and rather than being a part of that dynamic or what is going on, I am observing it from the side. They clearly get along well, share a certain sense of humor, care about each other and have fun. I haven’t felt like I’m a part of that. I take responsibility for the fact that I don’t always go out of my way to make a huge effort. Unfortunately this has happened a few times when I just have been low energy or not in a great mood to begin with anyway. I just can get really shy and quiet around new or different people and it’s not always easy for me to find a way in. And if my experience has been that I don’t think I’d be friends with this person in other circumstances, it makes it even harder. But at the same time I get that Adi wants to bring together two parts of her life that are important to her. So it leaves me feeling guilty for not trying harder, torn about not necessarily feeling like I have the energy to do it and sad because she actually has community, friends and a life here in a way that I don’t feel like I have.
That last bit is a challenge because that is totally up to me and I can’t get mad at her for that and I’m not mad at her for that, I just have a hard time when she tries to involve me in those things that I feel I am totally lacking here. The few times I try to put aside feeling anxious about being around new people, feeling super conscious of it being important to Adi and making a good impression, well, I’ve not really been able to put it aside. Today I kept thinking about how if I needed to spend the day in bed crying, she still had somewhere to go where there would be people who wanted her there, who invited her, who would welcome her and around whom she would feel comfortable and cared for. I, on the other hand, felt like my options were to stay home, to tag along with Kt or to tag along with Adi. And that’s not to say that I didn’t want to spend the holiday with them because I really did want to spend the holiday with both of them. It’s just to say that I feel limited here in a way that I am not used to feeling.
Anyway, emotions, hormones, nostalgia and life collided today and made it really hard for me to feel much in the way of gratitude. I did finally go to Kt’s friend’s house with Adi. It was nice and low key. There was lots of good food and we played cranium. Then Adi and I stopped by the other party. I spent the whole drive over telling myself that I would go in with a positive, open attitude because I strongly believe that you get what you give. I thought really hard about going in with a smile on and trying to make it genuine. I thought about trying to make conversation and to really get myself involved. I thought about how despite my feeling less than enthusiastic about being there and interacting, it was really important to Adi and therefore needs to also be important or taken seriously by me. Then we got there and I felt invisible. I’m sure I contributed to it and at one point I had to duck into another room to make a phone call home. I think what happened was that I tried to make conversation a little at first and it got interrupted or side-tracked or just died because I didn’t know what to say. After that I felt like I wasn’t even there or didn’t need to be there. Conversations picked up and I didn’t have anything to say, any way to relate or any way to get into what was happening. When I was on the phone in the other room I could hear everyone laughing and chatting away and I thought about how it didn’t matter if I was in there with them or on my own on my cell phone.
And as I write this it sounds really whiney, victimy and immature to me, but sometimes you just feel the way you feel. That’s how I felt. And in addition to feeling that way, I didn’t really realize how I was feeling or why I was feeling like that. I didn’t realize until I started writing this really. I just felt bad. I guess I felt like I wasn’t make enough effort or doing enough but I also felt so invisible and little that making an effort felt impossible or just like something really unappealing at the time.
Anyway today was just rough. One bright spot in an otherwise dark, rainy, snowy day was finding a missed call from Sue on my phone and having a message from her wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. I think she saw that I had written on my facebook that I was having a hard day because she said something about hoping that my day had gotten better. It was a nice reminder that there are people in this world who do care about me and know me and around whom I can just be me. There are people whom I might not see or talk to on a regular basis but who I could call if I needed to and who will reach out to me if they discover I’m in need of it. I might not feel as though I have much in the way of community here in Santa Fe, but I have a network of people all over and for that I am beyond thankful. Maybe tomorrow I will take some time alone and do some writing about what else I am actually thankful for as an exercise in gratitude and an attempt to reframe my attitude and to adjust my emotions.
11.20.08
For some reason tonight I decided to browse through old entries in here. I like to do it from time to time and generally I find it to be an interesting, gratifying exercise. It made me feel sad tonight. It also made me feel super grateful and almost surprised at who I was last year and the life I lived. I got to the entry that contains pictures from Amsterdam and thought, "wow, I really lived that? I got to experience that? That was me? I was there? Wow."
Wow.
11.19.08
It’s been a while, huh? It seems a bit daunting to try to catch up with myself, but tonight I got to thinking about this journal and how neglected it has been and decided that I should at least giving writing a shot.
So where have I been? Well, it seems like a lot and nothing at all has happened in the past two or so months. One of the biggest things that has happened is that I have started seeing someone. It began as friendship and intensified until neither one of us could continue ignoring what neither one of us knew how to address. And then one evening through a kiss on the cheek and a few simple words so much of what we had been holding back spilled into the open. I feel like I’ve become that couple-y person who I never thought I would be and whom I scorned a bit throughout my years of singledom – that person so wrapped up in the excitement of a new romance that the rest of the world seems to recede. But it’s also more than the newness, it’s the fact that I have found someone who I can trust, who I can be myself without reservation around, someone who I care about and who I know cares about me. It’s feeling safe and feeling important, it’s feeling excited to make another person smile, it’s knowing there is someone who will listen when you need to talk, who will buy you soup when you are sick for the third time in two months, it’s the look you get when you’ve put on something nice and done your make up a bit. It’s enjoying a night in watching a DVD and eating soycream as much as you enjoy going out for a nice dinner. It’s all of those things that sound so flat when written out like a laundry list, the same old laundry list that makes up what we deem as loving relationships. But while they may seem flat on paper and while I may not yet (or ever) have the right words to explain why this is anything but flat, I am feeling lucky to know that I am cared for and to know that I have found someone for whom I can care as well.
The other big change in my life these past months is that I have started a new job. After what felt like an eternity of searching for a job, I got an interview and was hired. On paper it seemed like a decent job for me – administrative assistant and family services coordinator for a Head Start pre-school. Sure, it wasn’t teaching, but it meant working in a school. Sure I’ve always said that pre-school is not the age group for me to work with en masse, but the job was not to be a teacher. My first week was miserable. I hated it and wanted nothing more than to quit. However quitting was not an option because, well, I needed a job. Since that first week it has gotten much better. There are days when I like it and feel good about it and days when I feel bored. There are days when I feel frustrated by basically everything, but at the end of the day I do realize that I am paid well, I work with good people and it is a fairly flexible, not too demanding job.
One of the interesting pieces of the job is that I am working on a Native American reservation. About half of the kids in our program are from the tribe. The other half of the student body is from Mexican families who live in a trailer park on the reservation. When interviewing for the position, one of the questions that at the time struck me as odd was about culture shock and adjusting to new cultures. I was told that working on the reservation means working with a distinctive culture and one of the goals of our program is to embrace, celebrate and teach the children about their culture. At the same time I was also cautioned upon beginning work that I’m not really supposed to ask too many questions about it. I was given the impression that the tribe is rather protective and perhaps even a bit closed about their tribe and cultural heritage. The non-tribal students in our program are not allowed to participate in the language program provided by the tribe to teach the children the tribal language. I use this as one example of why it seems that they are protective of what is theirs.
So far my experience has left me, well, a little confused. I am trying really hard to bear in mind that there is a difference between the tribal culture and the tribal administration. Perhaps what I mean is that there is the culture (language, music, ritual, ceremony, beliefs, story, etc.) that the tribe is working to preserve and pass on and then there is the current culture of the administration, the government and the day-to-day running of the pueblo itself. They are two different cultures, in my opinion, which rest upon one another and at times are hard to see clearly or understand. As an employee of the tribe, and especially one who works in the administration of their pre-school, my experience lies mostly with the tribes government and administration, which from where I sit at my desk at times feels unorganized, frustrating and slightly chaotic (and coming from France where needless bureaucracy, red tape and disgruntled government employees are part of the joy of day to day life, I am at least used to, if not at this point fairly immune, to dealing with this type of irritation).
In terms of the cultural heritage, as I mentioned, it’s often hard to suss out what tribal culture actually means to the tribe. For me as an individual, that lack of understanding comes from my hesitancy to ask questions. I have tried unsuccessfully to research it a bit on my own, but there seems to be almost a complete lack of written records about the tribe. There are little hints here and there – the language classes, some instruments and music in the classrooms, costumes that we worked on making, etc., but I don’t quite have a grasp on what it means to be a member of this tribe to the members of the tribe. Today I had the opportunity to hang out with the three-year-olds and two of the language teachers because the Head Start teachers were sick. I was really impressed and enthralled listening to one of the teachers read the story “No, David!” Her animation, improvisation and interaction with the students kept them all engaged and involved.
It got me to wondering if she knew stories that had been passed down in the oral tradition from her ancestors. It also got me to wondering what stories she herself had about her own life – did she grow up on the pueblo? What was it like when she was young? What traditions did her family have? Were there tribal traditions, ceremonies, rituals that she participated in? Are they the same today? I wanted to ask her but found myself keeping quiet, I guess for fear of asking something that I wasn’t supposed to ask. I doubt that it would have been offensive, but I didn’t want to risk it I guess. It seems silly though because in my experience most people like to talk and to tell stories about themselves, and when given the time, the space and the attention I think that most of us can come up with a few anecdotes that we would be a little happy to share with someone else.
My grandmother is a good example. Growing up she and my great aunt and grandfather were our babysitters. My father is an only child and his parents and aunt lived in our town and we were lucky to have them around as we grew up to take care of us on the few occasions that my parents went out or had a meeting or whatever. Going to their house meant running around outside on their big lawn, climbing trees, playing ping pong in the basement, baking cookies, playing hide and seek, playing dress up, drawing, drinking “tea” which was really just hot milk with a ton of sugar and a tea bag dropped in the cup for .2 seconds. It also meant stories. There were pictures to prompt stories but most often we would just say, “Grandma, tell us about when you were a little.” I remember her chuckling a bit and telling us that we’d heard all of her stories. We would insist that we didn’t mind and she’d say, “let’s see” and pull out one of her stories about growing up in rural England during WWII. There were stories about her being forced to swim at school in cold weather, stories about the big tree on the main road, and watching boats pass by on the Thames. There were also stories of food rations and black out curtains. She carries with her still the fear and anxiety of living through a war, never knowing how close it would actually come to her country home and her family. I can hear her voice now talking about how awful it was, “absolutely awful!” Awful being the hardest, most bitter word she could summon to talk about the war. I think about the arsenal of words that I have, much more caustic, shocking, violent and angry than her simple “awful” and as I hear her voice and her modifiers “absolutely” or maybe just repeating the word twice “awful, awful,” I wonder if those words spoken with that tone and that experience are more powerful that whatever with which artillery I could arm my speech.
These days the same old stories are not quite as exciting to me as they were when I was young. In fact, there are times when it seems frustrating that she is so stuck in the past, so fixated on what is long gone, and I find it impossible to relate to someone who seems so out of touch with today. Then there are times when it seems sad to me that she has not been able to let go of those stories and that she has not found new stories from the intervening years to replace, or at least to accompany, those same stories that I grew up hearing. As an adult, some of the details seem suspect – a little romanticized, a little exaggerated, not the same as they were when I was younger. But part of story telling is knowing how to emphasize, de-emphasize, embellish, exaggerate and appeal to your audience. Stories that rely upon memory will inevitable mix up some of the facts and details and be subject to the interpretation of the person who is putting the pieces back together and their intention in doing so.
And so there is also a part of me that will always cherish those stories and hold them close. They are a piece of my own personal history and my childhood. However accurate or inaccurate the stories may be, they are the stories of my family and I will pass them along to my kids one day as well. I had the opportunity to visit my grandmother’s home village in England last year. I went with a dear friend of mine and as Sue and I walked up and down the main street, delighted in the quaint old houses, sat on the bench where the old giant tree used to grow, and scoured the cemetery for any name that might be a part of my family, my grandmother’s stories hummed gently in the background of my thoughts. I have already passed some of those stories along to my host family in France and to friends who are patient enough to listen as I talk through the ancient history that has lead up to who I am today, laying here on my futon bed in Santa Fe, NM typing this and thinking about the power of story.
Maybe the elders of the tribe do tell their stories to their children and maybe those children will pass the stories to their children and grandchildren. What we have to say is important. What we remember has significance and sharing memories, experiences, emotions, interpretations, ideas and stories brings people together and is exciting. Maybe I can work on trying to get some of the elders to come tell stories to the children as part of my job.
