Muchness and Light

Scratchin' and survivin'.... Hangin' in and jivin'.

I wrote my last blog post four days before an unexpected first date.

That was eight months ago.

I have been crafting this post for weeks or longer, debating and processing what I wanted to say and what the implications were for me and others. I have thought about who would see this—those loyal readers who’ve been with me from the very beginning, the new friends I have picked up in the 10 years since I started writing again, the people who were removed from my life by their own accord or by mine, those who I know still lurk from time to time for whatever reasons.

Like so many others, I met him online. In the aftermath of my last breakup, I spent some time with some of my girls and debriefed, both before and after Achilles’ tendon surgery. I wanted to have some fun and see what the dating landscape might look like, for whenever I decided I was ready to spend time with another man. I needed to heal, both physically and emotionally. I was still working and raising two young men and in the middle of grad school.

But there was this smile, this tilt of the head that intrigued me. It was simply lovely. Candidly bashful but brazenly joyful and mischievous. Real, complicated emotion captured at just the right angle. Just the right moment.

We realized quickly we had mutual friends, people I’d gone to high school with in Alabama in the late 80s. Similar sense of humor. Incessant, funny, deep, honest conversation started immediately.

The day after I wrote my last blog post.

I was still in a splint and on a blue knee scooter with a basket, but we both wanted to meet. Soon.

That was eight months ago.

Neither of us could have foreseen this, though I suppose no one ever does. But our respective breakups happened almost simultaneously. There was no intention of becoming really involved with this man, and I know he had no intention of jumping into another relationship.

Woobiee. My manister. He’s warm and fuzzy and comfortable. He is strong and supportive. He is present and mindful and considerate. He has done his work—really, with a professional!—and he is wholly encouraging of my continuing my work. He is brilliant and funny and caring. He is gregarious and generous. He is complicated and open and honest even when it’s difficult for him or for me. He is respectful of my boundaries, and I am encouraged by his words and his actions to defend them when necessary, without fear of recrimination.

He did what I asked him to do—which is the same thing I asked of myself—to be open to the possibility, truly willing to accept the consequence of each other, good or bad.

That was eight months ago.

I could gush ad infinitum about his qualities, and I share those words with him regularly. That’s not what this is about.

Muchness and Light was born out of my need to understand myself and to change. Ten years ago, I was unhappy and unhealthy and restless. I didn’t understand that my midlife crisis was beginning. To look back from the position of my life now, it’s startling to see the changes. I don’t know how 2010 Stephanie would feel about 2020 Stephanie and if she would have made the same choices, if she’d known what changes were coming.

Whatever intention I had then, I have achieved only a modicum of success by those standards. I did some writing. I saw some bands. I did a lot of therapy. I have been in and out of a string of relationships that became increasingly nuanced in their unhealthiness.

Whatever I hoped or planned for in 2010 and in the subsequent few years didn’t materialize in the ways I’d intended.

What I got was even better.

I have gotten two sons almost to adulthood. I have a close-knit core of friends who love me, and whom I adore, even when we can’t be together. I am six hours away from finishing my third college degree. I work at a job that I love, and I intend to add part-time teaching to my schedule as soon as graduate school is finished. I am in a relationship that is healthier and more secure than I have ever experienced.

From the very beginning of this process, I have written about how it’s all about the journey and not the destination. I was always open to the possibility of having my path twisted and turned in unexpected directions. I often chose the road less traveled, just to have something new to see along the way.

Above all else, I wanted to live an adventure. It didn’t matter the details, so long as I could talk to my friends and hang with my kids and listen to music and eat some good food and spend time with a romantic partner who offered reciprocity in care and honesty. Nothing ever has to be grand; I thrive on small moments strung together like colorful, random beads.

That journey took me in an unimaginable direction. When I started Muchness and Light, I desperately needed to hear my own voice. It was never public validation that I needed. Accolades and encouragement from others is always nice, but what I needed most was to know that I existed and had value. For a while, I searched for proof that I had value to others.

What I was really always looking for was the value I had to myself.

Over the last 10 years, I have struggled through the demise of my marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of divorce, returning to college while working and raising two kids, health issues, and one unhealthy relationship after another. Sometimes I flailed and raged against the difficulty and the unfairness of it all, but I never stopped moving forward. Not once.

I still have days that I struggle. Life continues, and my journey is ongoing.

But I am content. Most days, I’m happy. Some days are darker than most. But I am generally content in my life. I am still defiant in being exactly who I am, but it’s no longer in reaction to other people or their bullshit. I am no longer screaming to hearing my own echo, just to know I exist.

Woobiee has admonished me from the beginning to be present, to avoid comparing the past to the present or looking too far outside the immediate moment. As I’ve discussed before, creating expectation spawns the possibility of disappointment, and I still believe that to be true. But expending significant energy on extensive emotional contingency plans is exhausting, and Woobiee makes it safe for me to relax and enjoy myself. He does not make me happy—that’s wholly on me—but he supports and encourages my happiness to the best of his ability, with as much effort as I expend in supporting and encouraging his.

Most days, I am centered and Self-led. I am integrated and whole, better able to handle stressors and insecurities. Not perfect, but better. Self-aware and Self-actualized and Self-controlled.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to handle Muchness and Light.

This blog has been a huge part of my journey, though admittedly decreasingly so over the past couple of years. As my work and school took a different direction, I turned to this outlet less and less. I am no less- Self-analytical—perhaps even more so—but I can hash out those deep explorations with an audience of one or two who know me intimately; I no longer need to hear myself to know I exist.

 I am a Real Girl.

So I have decided to put this on hold indefinitely. I will likely leave something up for a while, at least until I can get my files downloaded and park my domain names and figure out what I want to leave publicly available. For a while, I felt as if I were letting down 2010 Stephanie and 2013 Stephanie and any number of internal parts and iterations that have depended on this medium to be heard.

But I realized they don’t need that anymore, either. Muchness and Light was an invaluable tool, and it helped me to find the voice I lost over the years. It helped me learn to listen to myself and to advocate for myself, even and especially when there is no one else who will advocate for me. The support is always nice, but it’s ultimately Me who is responsible for Me, no matter when or where I am.

I wanted a life with no regrets. That’s impossible to achieve, really. To be wholly human is to be flawed; it is how we react to the consequences of our flaws that defines us.

But to be comfortable in my own skin is blessing. It is a merciful gift that I have given to myself. All I could tell my earlier Selfs is that it gets better, to just keep going.

I intend to still be going for a while, just not this direction.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and supported me and challenged me. You have been an integral part of my journey. Some of you always will be; some of you may never have a place in my life again, nor mine in yours.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you well. I wish you good health and peace and the exact amount of adventure that you need. I wish you contentment and love.

Just as importantly, I wish the same things for myself, and I intend to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I deserve no less.

- StephQJ 5/16/2020

 

 

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me.

About a year ago, I was taking a class on women’s religious memoirs. While the women and their journeys were very different, I kept noticing a sometimes-subtle, secondary theme of self-compassion in each text. Mentions of the female Buddha Tara, a sublime personification of compassion and wisdom in female form, led me down a path toward the White Tara, which can be one of seven of the 21 primary emanations of Tara, representing the enlightened activity of pacifying. Sometimes this can be pacifying limitations of the physical body and overcoming illness and avoiding an untimely death. Sometimes it can be pacifying fears to overcome obstacles in a path to success or enlightenment.

In my readings, application of the teachings of the White Tara included applying those concepts to the self, especially for women, who seem more likely than male adherents to turn to Tara. I started to look online for “‘White Tara’ +self-compassion” and eventually stumbled across a book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, by Tara Branch. (See how that path goes along?) Writing from her own intersectional experience as a Buddhist and a clinical psychologist, Branch offers Radical Acceptance as a spiritually-healthy alternative to the “trance of unworthiness” that we tend to fall into when faced with unhealthy or unreasonable expectations and demands of society, family, and ourselves. She analogizes Radical Acceptance as a bird, which can only fly with both of its wings--in this case, clear seeing (mindfulness) and compassion.

She also posits that the Adam and Eve story is at the heart of much of Western dissatisfaction. Even if it’s not part of your chosen religion or mythos, she asserts, the idea--of punishing the self to redeem your own sins (and thereby the Original Sin) in order to be returned into God’s paradisiacal garden--so deeply permeates Western culture that it’s almost impossible to escape its influence. People are assumed to be inherently flawed, to be in need of repair and redemption for sins that may not even have been theirs to begin with. By this measure, our suffering stems from the conflict between the ideal of paradise and the manifestations of our intrinsic unworthiness, and we are caught in a constant cycle of struggling to redeem ourselves.

Of course I started to think about this in terms of my own struggles. It’s no surprise that I have consistently gone back to emotionally- and logistically-unavailable men. Subconsciously, I am always hoping the next one will do what the others couldn’t--love me no matter what, thereby alleviating the deep-seated fear of emotional abandonment that stems from my childhood.

Not only do those unavailable men never fulfill my hope for redemption, that’s a wholly unfair amount of pressure and expectation for me to put on anyone else. So if they can’t make up for what was done to me in the past, and if the people who traumatized me to begin with can’t undo what they did and are unlikely to ever make any kind of real amends for their transgressions (see that sin thing happening again?), then how exactly am I supposed to get over my fears?

Where is redemption for me, for my inner child? What does redemption even mean for me?

Those things happened. I can’t escape the reality of having been sexually or physically or emotionally abused. While I have finally come to understand that they weren’t my fault, that I didn’t choose to be a sexualized object or to find the man I loved had moved his heart a million miles away from my own and blamed me for it, I do have culpability in how I responded to the trauma. Especially within the context of adult romantic relationships, I could be difficult and demanding, so desperate not to feel what I was feeling as a result of my insecurities coming into contact with theirs. I had moments of utter tantrum and a fatalistic view that if that relationship in that moment couldn’t be fixed in such a way that I felt secure, then I must be unlovable and undeserving of anything different or more.

But that’s just not true, either.

Yes, my insecurities are strong and numerous. So were theirs. That’s just a reality of lives experienced into established adulthood. Sometimes bad shit has happened, and we all have developed in response to those stimuli.

But the redemption comes not from meeting someone who can not do the stupid shit that undermines my tenuously-reintegrating psyche. It comes from my not making the same choices, not having the same limited emotional responses to similar stimuli.

I met Finn a few weeks ago and really liked him from the beginning. There’s a lot about him that’s truly wonderful, and it was exciting to see the possibility of something again. It was reassuring to find that I was attractive to someone else, both physically and psychologically.

But Finn’s schedule and my schedule don’t mesh. He works long hours on a schedule that’s very different than my own. Our time together had dwindled considerably. While I loved spending time with him, to date someone requires actual interpersonal engagement within a certain physical proximity. Logistical conflicts made seeing each other very difficult, and I made the decision to be open to other possibilities.

Reliability and consistency are very important for me. I am not comfortable with not knowing when I’ll see my romantic partner again. Rango accused me many times of wanting him “up [my] ass 24/7,” which was actually not the case at all. What I did want was to know that I was a priority--not the only priority--and that I would get concerted care and attention from him. I needed reliably consistent and consistently reliable. I needed to know that he would set aside time to show up and would actually show up when he said he was going to.

I didn’t take it as a personal affront with Finn. Whereas I might have previously seen his inability to spend time with me as a rejection of me outright, this wasn’t. His work schedule is hectic. He tried to make time for me, because he liked me and wanted to spend that time with me. He just wasn’t able to do it at times when I was also available.

I don’t feel abandoned by him. It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t make our schedules work. I really, really like him, and I was looking forward to exploring more with him. I miss him a little bit. I’ve had a few moments where I felt a little sad that I don’t have time with him to look forward to. But I was constantly looking forward to time that wasn’t coming, that he couldn’t provide because his job is different than mine--not because he didn’t like me enough to want that time.

So I made the decision to do what was healthy for me. Rather than drag it out for weeks or months longer, hoping beyond hope that it would magically fall into place, I gave myself the freedom not to be bound by the emotions and unhealthy responses to them that would come from fighting futility. I didn’t have a tantrum. I made a Self-led decision and executed it without blame or recrimination--aimed neither at him nor at myself.

When the pangs do come, I take a moment and let them sit. Sometimes I’ll feel something and one sub-part will immediately chime in with her interpretation of what that emotion is and means.

“Oh, that’s irritation. That’s the beginning of angry, because he didn’t make time to show up to see you, and that means he wasn’t ever going to be able to love you like you need, and your needs aren’t unreasonable, and he’s an asshole for not seeing how wonderful you are--”

Shush.

Breathe.

“But--”

Shhhhhhh.

Yes, it might be irritation. It might be at him, or it might be at me, or it might be at the email I just got, or it might be at the scratchy tag on the inside of my shirt. It’s just an emotion, and it will pass almost as quickly as it came. There’s no need to turn the faucet on just to watch the water swirl. But you’re sweet to be concerned. You’re sweet to defend me and to protect me, and I love you for wanting to.

I try to be mindful of the emotions, to clearly see what they are, and to treat them compassionately, letting them exist without the endless overanalysis that always seems to end in judgment and recrimination. They are neither good nor bad; they simply are, and to let them just be is the healthiest way I can deal with them.

The same goes for the men I meet, and it goes for me, too. Certainly there are not nice people in the world, but someone else’s bumping up against my insecurities doesn’t necessarily make them a bad person. My even having or admitting to my own insecurities doesn’t make me a bad person. While I twistedly pride myself on being able to pick out the Fragile Cats quickly in a crowd, I can’t usually know how their issues will play with mine until we are engaging. Rather than hope beyond hope that an extreme avoidant will love me so much that it changes his attachment style--thereby helping me to change mine--it’s far healthier for me to work on myself and to politely disentangle from any relationship that seems very likely to be unhealthy for me.

The redemption comes not through someone else’s choices in how they love me but rather in my own choices of how I love myself.

It’s all still new. It’s an ongoing process, of course, and I won’t really know how I’ll respond to emotional stimuli until I am adequately stimulated. For now, there’s no agitation or anxiety, no desperation to quell an internal storm of fear or dissatisfaction or loneliness.

Today, I’m just aware, and I’m not beating myself up over it.

 

 

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High as a pretty star, don't you break my faded heart.

If I believe in nothing else, I believe in serendipity. I believe in those unexpected moments in life that can lead you suddenly in a different direction, that can force you to see what you were too busy looking elsewhere to notice, that can turn you slightly until you notice a new path you hadn’t been privy to consider before.

Fate or fate.

Knowing I would eventually want to date again, to feel connected to something deeper and more poignant than myself, I reactivated my online dating profile. I immediately had to find three-year-old messages from Rango and delete them, to find his own reactivated profile and block it. I wasn’t willing to dwell on what was before. There were a few passing new interests, but mostly it seemed like more of the same again. Sometimes Harley found it a useful vehicle to remind me that I could get hurt again, ever.

But then…. But then.

Days of talk. Constant, funny, respectful talk. Flirt but no innuendo, no offers or requests for late night sexting. Just getting to know one another.

And then… a great first date. Really wonderful date.

And, thus, a serendipitous moment of possibility. Of opportunity.

Yes, possibility and opportunity with this man, but also possibility that I am, just maybe, worth time and effort. Opportunity to not be the same and do the same that I’ve done before, to slow my own roll and allow connection to unfold organically. To discover someone else but also to discover things about myself, to examine my own new ways of looking at the world, whether external or internal.

Consciously, mindfully, I have chosen not to throw myself headlong into someone else. I didn’t drop my baggage suddenly at his feet and dare him to step over it. I didn’t dig deeply into him, demanding to find his damage and steel myself for what might come.

Though I did caution him that a deep Google search for me would reveal this life, of Stephanie Quinn Jackson, the writer who bears witness to the cacophony. It’s a thing, for sure, to have so much of the last seven years laid out for the world to see. Love and joy and heartbreak and fear, the incessant and sometimes brutal self-analysis that is Muchness and Light. He replied that he would rather not search for me. He’d rather learn it all from me directly.

Even if this goes nowhere, even if it ends after a couple of great dates, I have been privy to the serendipity of possibility of future, of opportunity to not be bogged down by the past, sorting and resorting my own baggage over and over in simultaneous delight and dismay.

But I am also fucking terrified. At this moment, there is an unexpected someone with the ability to hurt and disappoint me. Sure, there are other people I care about who could theoretically do the same, but those are people I already love and trust. I made the choice to accept the opportunity to be vulnerable to hurt, believing so deeply that serendipitous moments should not be ignored or taken for granted. I chose to accept the possibility of hurt because it also comes with the possibility of not hurt.

Dating me offers him the same. There is possibility that I will bolt, revolting against fear in reaction to my past. But where I have been plagued by ghosts so many times before, I have come to realize that my ghosts are my own fears, deep inside me, trying to protect me from future hurt. When I let the past fall away and listen carefully, it is variations of my own voice that I hear whispering, cautioning me that hurt is possible and to avoid whatever might feel like an imminent threat.

My insecurities are real, anchored in a very difficult past, and I am still learning how to calm those voices. He, or anyone who may come after him, certainly has his own insecurities. It doesn’t seem possible to be human and not have uncertainties about yourself that can derail you at times.

What I have come to understand is that my partners in previous relationships have blamed me when their insecurities flared. Sometimes in reaction to my shit, and sometimes in reaction to something I was never privy to, they relegated me to the role of villain, of fallen superhero, and made me the patsy for their own emotional shill. They would tell me I was wonderful and that they loved me, while they formulated an exit strategy. They compartmentalized me and rationalized losing what they said they wanted and loved most, rather than face themselves and deal with their own shit.

But what happened before is not what’s happening now. I get to choose what happens next. My future is not necessarily determined by my history. I am not doomed to repeat my past, because I am still, constantly, learning those lessons.

I didn’t stop trying. I didn’t shut down my heart completely and stubbornly refuse to embrace serendipity. I didn’t kowtow to my fears, and I won’t be blamed again for anyone else’s.

I am worth knowing. I am worth talking to and discovering and sharing. I am worth loving.

I’m worth the risk.

 

 

Don't believe that the world is empty, just too noisy to hear the sound.

Looking for something else, I realized this week that I haven't written a blog post in almost two months.

Two months? Really? How can that be??

Well, the last two months have been incomparably busy. I finished my internship and my last fifteen hours of classes to complete my Associate's degree. I started classes this week in my Bachelor's program. There have been several speaking engagements as a result of my GOAL award. Somewhere in there were four cats, two boys, and Rango.

And I'm still on the perpetual search for a job.

An employment recruiter asked me a few weeks ago, "What do you want to do?"

I immediately answered, "I don't know."

It's not that I don't have any idea of the direction I would like my career to go. I went to school to become a paralegal, and I have completed an excellent program of substantive training for the legal field.

But the list of what I don't want to do is much better defined. I don't want to do family law or bankruptcy law or real estate law. Those are necessary areas of the legal profession, and I have friends and family who are successful in each of those areas. They just don't seem to be the right fit for me.

This uncertainty is not the I-don't-know of my 20s, when I blew my chance at college the first time, when all I wanted was something easy and comfortable to drop into my lap and push me in a direction—while hopefully letting me veg out on the couch all day.

It's not the I-don't-know of my new-mom 30s, when "I don't know" really meant "no", when I was too polite to say what I wanted and to truly be myself, afraid of what I might lose by defying other people's expectations.

And it's not the I-don't-know of two years ago, when the daily mantra was a tear-streaked "I don't know! I don't know! I don't know!", when I was trying to find a way, any way, to survive.

Now, "I don't know" comes from exploration, from having so many options, from proof that I am good at something and worth far more than I was led to believe. Far more than I led myself to believe.

"I don't know" means I want to try everything and don't know where to start.

The other question that invariably comes during job interviews is, "Where do you want to be in five years?"

If the last five years have taught me nothing else, I know that whatever plans I make will almost assuredly be broken. Something is likely to come along and divert my path, alter my journey, and that I have to be willing and open to the possibility that can come when I expect nothing more than uncertainty.

Last night, in my first class with my new academic advisor, I was asked what my plan was for my major and for any graduate work I might want to do. Because I chose a Liberal Studies degree, I have some flexibility in the concentrations I'll pursue, based upon both what coursework I transferred in and what my plans may be going forward.

"Combined concentrations in Criminal Justice and Communications," I replied very pragmatically.

But then my advisor suggested that maybe there's something else, something that will better suit my intentions for myself as I continue to explore just what those intentions may be.

He asked me to be open to the possibility of me.

I still want and need direction right now. I feel rudderless, honestly, without definitive projects and contributions to make to a world outside my home.

Lately I've felt like I am drifting along my path right now, rather than actively traversing. I'm having to learn to stop my own panicked thrashing and just float, feeling the warm sun on my face and the water splashing across my cheeks as the river carries me where it needs me to be.

I don't know what's coming.

What I do know is that it will not be something I've done before. There is newness and opportunity close enough that I can feel it within reach as I approach it.

Now all I have to do is grab it and hold on. I'm almost where I'm supposed to be.

 

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You never know until you try.

For months now, I've been quiet. It hasn't been intentional, I assure you. I've lamented to Rango and the Castration Committee that I just haven't had time or energy to write. 

That's not entirely true.

I have been extremely busy with school. Between three classes and a very busy internship with the ACLU of Georgia, my time has been mostly filled with The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, various petitions for probate, and ongoing discussions with my professors and multiple legislators about the privacy concerns surrounding police use of body cameras.

 

Monday Morning Reflections on the Train #itsmarta #marta #train #Atlanta #manicmonday

A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on Mar 31, 2015 at 5:34am PDT

 

My regional GOAL interview seemed to go very well, though I won't know how well until next week. The state competition begins on April 22nd here in Atlanta. Finalists will be announced the first night, and they have to be prepared to compete again the next morning. While I had excellent feedback from my judging panel and others at Regionals, it could be that I'm not the right fit for the Technical College System of Georgia. Maybe I'm too opinionated or too loud or too brash. Then again, maybe I am the right fit.

Either way, I won't know for another week.

I've also been making the transition from single mom of two to attached mom of two. While Rango and I would've happily gotten married the weekend we met, we agreed that probably wasn't in the boys' best interest. After nine months of dating and entangling our lives, we sat down with the boys and asked them how they would feel if he moved in with us, making our home into OUR home.

They were agreeable. They were excited. They were ready.

There have been a few bumps here and there, but all in all it's going better than I was willing to allow myself to hope.

With most things, I tend to subscribe to the "Lowered Expectations" philosophy—expect nothing, and you'll never be disappointed. With regard to the GOAL competition, I'm living that mantra every single day. While I may be very well qualified to be the advocate for technical education in Georgia, there's only a 1 in 24 chance that I'm The One. So I don't get my hopes up. I don't plan about what color car I would pick out or which of our cars we would sell to pay the taxes on the new one.

 

But with Rango, I already have expectation. He has gently guided me to a place where it is okay to believe in someone else, to trust in someone else. And I do. I trust him to do what he tells me he's going to do. I believe that he will love me, actively, and be available for me, forever and always and no matter what.

And that's led me to have expectation for myself. Historically—at least over the last five years—I have hedged my bets. I always had a backup plan or the phone numbers of exes I stayed in contact with, just in case, even when those relationships were toxic for me. Even when those fragile cats would scratch and bite me, running away into the night, and then yowl loudly at my door a few nights later while I was still bleeding from their affront.

Now, there is no bet hedging. I blocked the numbers of my backup plans and made it difficult for them to reach me and vice versa. I took the remnants of old relationships—my wedding dress, the box of Bounder, the last bits of Absolem—and I burned them. I wanted to do something privately ceremonial, like burying the ashes in the backyard, but once the embers faded, I found there was no more energy to give to them. I was tired, and they didn't deserve my reserves.

That's all for Rango now.

He told me over the weekend that, for the first time in his life, he has no backup plan, either. We both always have friends and family we can turn to, but neither of us is propping open the door to possibility of failure. We're not stupid; we've each been divorced and know damn well what could happen.

But we also know now, after years of struggle and growth, what should happen.

We are open and honest, sometimes stupidly so. We are true to ourselves and to each other. We have forged a logistical and emotional partnership that is equal and based on mutual respect and care and love.

We argue sometimes. Sometimes when I'm especially bitchy, he'll just pointedly ask me if I'm going to be okay. He stays calm and lets my storm pass over him until it blows itself out.

At Regionals, the judging panel asked me where I thought I'd be in five years and how I intended to get there.

"I know you want a perfect answer," I replied, "but the honest truth is I don't know and I don't care. What I thought I'd be doing when I started my paralegal studies program is not at all what I'm actually doing a year later. Where I thought I'd be five years ago is nowhere close to where I actually am. So, yes, the answer is still that I don't know, but it's also that I'm excited to find out. I'm excited to explore opportunities and discover new talents and new challenges. I'll let you know where I am in five years."

Even if I don't move on to the next round or win another damn thing ever in my life, I am confident that I will continue to forge my path and make the best of whatever intersects with my journey. I have talent and skill and resourcefulness. I have two amazing sons and a spectacularly supportive life partner. I have loyal, wonderful friends and four warm, snuggly cats.

I don't need another thing.

 

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Last fall, I was nominated by one of my professors for the Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership.  According to the Technical College System of Georgia:

First launched in 1971, GOAL focuses on student excellence in technical education by focusing on academic excellence and personal achievement. A panel of judges selects one student, the state GOAL Winner, to serve as an ambassador of technical education in Georgia.

GOAL winners represent the “new image” of Georgia’s technical colleges. Students must recognize technical education’s critical impact on Georgia’s overall economic health, have a strong work ethic, a dedicated sense of loyalty, and a healthy enthusiasm for promoting technical education in Georgia.

GOAL winners are the best possible advertisement for technical education. They prove every day that the best technical education consists of more than manipulative skills. Technical education prepares us for the world of work. GOAL students are an indication of what technical education at its best can achieve and of the caliber of individuals who are choosing Georgia’s technical colleges.

The winning GOAL student serves as an ambassador for technical education in Georgia and makes many public appearances throughout the year including addresses to the Georgia General Assembly, Governor and TCSG’s Student Fall Leadership Conference to name a few.

34 of the 4,000 students at Georgia Piedmont Technical College were nominated for the 2015 GOAL award, which can most easily be described as Student of the Year.  I was honored, but I was also nominated with at least two of my classmates who I felt had a much better chance of winning this award. 

The process started with an early-morning interview before a panel of five faculty and staff members of GPTC.  I had three minutes to tell them—with no note cards or visual displays that weren't permanently attached to my body—who I was, why I had chosen technical education, and how it was impacting my life and my life goals.

Three minutes.

If you've ever spoken with me in person, you know that I talk a lot, I talk very quickly, and I tend to gesticulate wildly while speaking.  More than one boyfriend has been nailed in the jaw when they ventured too close to the Exotic Wild Glamazon while she was hyper-excited about the influence of Greek mythology on the DC comic book universe... or shoes.  So it took a practice session with my professors and others to help hone my speech for both content and style. 

Something stuck, though, because I made it to the second round of interviews, which meant I'd placed in the Top 10, along with my two classmates and seven other very talented, deserving students. 

The second interview was just after Thanksgiving, by which time I was sick with an upper respiratory thing that we later realized was likely Whooping Cough.  I appeared before the selection committee, a panel comprised of local business leaders and last year's GOAL winner for GPTC.  To make sure I didn't start coughing on anyone, I loaded up on cough medicine and my inhaler. 

Three more minutes.

During this three minutes, being so loaded on cold medicine, I think I told them who I was, why I had chosen technical education, how it was impacting my life and my life goals, a brief history of my children, what I'd had for breakfast, and as much as I could about the influence of Greek mythology on the DC comic universe. 

I might have discussed my shoes.

But, again, something stuck.  I was named to the Top 4 finalists.  I was the only student from Paralegal Studies to make it that far, and I was thrilled to be able to represent my department.  Now I had to wait over a month to find out who actually won GOAL for 2015, but I was offered a table for 8 at the awards luncheon on January 22nd.

I know I'm smart.  I know Queen Frostine was right in pointing me toward being a paralegal.  It is an excellent fit for my skillset, and I am thus far very good at what I do.  That's really very difficult for me to say, as I discussed prior to the GOAL competition.  It feels strange to me to openly discuss my accomplishments, as if I should be far more modest about what I've done. 

But even with everything I've worked so hard to do over the last year and more, I honestly didn't believe I had any real chance to win this competition.  The school GOAL winner goes on to compete at regionals in March, and the top placers at regionals compete at a state level in April.  The state winner spends a year traveling Georgia and speaking as an advocate for technical education, which includes appearances at the 25 technical colleges in the system and addresses to the Georgia General Assembly, the Governor, and the Technical College System of Georgia Leadership Conference.  (To help facilitate this, the state winner also gets a new car.)  So the winner effectively acts as an advocate for technical education.

They have to be able to tell people their story and exactly how and why technical education is working for them, how and why it can and should work for others. 

I have very well-developed thoughts about technical education, with a ton of data to back it up, but I will save that for a future post.  I don't want to give away Glamazon trade secrets, and I need to protect my work product as I move forward into the next round of competition, because I won.

No one was more surprised than I was.  According to my mom and stepdad and dad who'd all driven over from Alabama for the luncheon, plus Rango and the boys who were there, and my classmates and my professors, no one but me was surprised I won. 

Mom hates that she didn't have her camera trained on my face when they announced my name.  My mouth and eyes flew open.  I had even whispered to Rango just seconds before that I thought the winner was a finalist from the Criminal Justice department. 

I was wrong.  Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong  <insert wild, accidental whacking of my son>

The GOAL coordinator had told the finalists to prepare a short speech of acceptance.  I'd made a mental note of who to thank if it happened, but I didn't expect to win.  I had to wing it, but apparently I did okay.  People were nodding and clapping.  I didn't throw up or fall down. 

Lots of hand-shaking, lots of nodding and thanking people whose names I hope I don't forget, and lots of smiling until my face hurt.  But I won.  I worked my ass off for this, and I continue to do so every day, with a 15-hour class load this semester including my internship at the ACLU of Georgia, which puts me at the state Capitol at least one day a week to speak with legislators directly about proposed legislation and how it would directly impact me and other Georgians.

Me.  I get to do that.  I get to make a difference in my world and someone else's.

Selfie with Button Gwinnett at the Georgia State Capitol

 

I've worked so hard.  So very, very hard.  I have faltered at times, and I have wanted to quit, so sure that I just couldn't scale the daunting mountain of work that was before me.  It can be exhausting, and it often keeps me from the boys and Rango when I want nothing more than to curl up on the couch with them and binge watch Netflix. 

Now I'm six months away from finishing my associate's degree, and I should graduate with honors.  I won a $26,500 scholarship to finish my bachelor's degree.   

So, for once, I'm going to say something I rarely do: I did good. 

I'm taking a moment to congratulate myself and recognize that I am doing a good job, no matter how hard it is sometimes.  It may or may not ever get any easier, but there is more reward than just knowing I worked hard.  There is knowing that I worked right, that I worked well, that I am worth this reward. 

 

 

She's super-freaky, yow.

I am deviant. 

I don't mean in the connoted sense of criminal or sexually degenerate—though there's certainly a story or two about that.  What I mean is, I violate social norms. 

What is "normal" is determined by every society, big and small, for that culture in that time.  I am generally law-abiding and productive, but my personality—the persona of Stephanie—is often camped firmly in the fringe of normal. 

Pretty much everything falls onto a bell curve.  If you classify virtually anything and rank and sort it, then graph it in that mathematical way that has eluded me for years, it makes a pretty, curvy shape, in which the majority of "stuff" is in the high center and the extremes are on the low sides. 

I'm almost always on one of those tapered ends.   

Doing my neverending homework this week, I was reading about social deviance.  My textbook was talking about different sociological viewpoints of deviance.  Emile Durkheim's structural-functional analysis says that deviance is a necessary function of society.  What is unnormal is defined by what is normal and vice versa—there can be no evil without good.  How a society responds to deviance clarifies its moral boundaries and brings people together in the process, sometimes encouraging social change. 

Robert Merton goes on to purport his strain theory, which basically says that some deviance may be necessary for society to function but that too much, especially when caused by a lack of means to help members of a society achieve cultural goals, places a strain on that society.  Conforming to cultural goals through approved means can become difficult, if not impossible, when there are no opportunities to do so.  This points to why street crime is so prevalent in poor neighborhoods, where people don't have the educational and socioeconomic means to provide for themselves or further lives outside of the poverty and circumstance they've been socialized in. 

Eventually, deviant subcultures can form: criminal, conflict, or retreatist. 

Walter B. Miller adds that subcultures have certain characteristics, no matter their underlying cause:

• trouble – frequent conflicts with authority figures
• toughness – especially value of physical size, strength, and agility
• smartness – ability to outthink others
• need for excitement
• belief in fate
• desire for freedom

I am a deviant subculture unto myself.

I've always been at odds with authority figures.  I've never been inclined to listen to someone just because they were in charge or I was supposed to do so; if they could give me a reason to respect them, I would.  If not, I would question it and fight back.  I am certainly taller and bigger and larger, both physically and mentally, than most people.  All that testing when I was a kid proved I was smarter than even the above-average bear.  I'm easily bored and constantly shifting gears to the next adventure.  I have a strong belief in both fate and Fate.  And I want nothing more than to be free to live my life as I see is best for me. 

As ridiculous as it sounds to say I rebelled and formed my own subculture, that's kind of exactly what happened over the last four years.  I was unhappy—fat, in a crumbling marriage, unfulfilled in most aspects of my life, seeing no way out—and I fought back.  I had everything everyone says they want, and I was miserable.  I bucked the norm and started to live as Stephanie, more than Wife and Mom and Daughter. 

I am finding more opportunity now, because I am making more opportunity for myself.  Working three part-time jobs and being in school full time, plus being a full-time mom, is hard as hell, but it was my choice.  More than a couple of people have suggested I should find another husband to support me and pay for my life.  Fuck that.  If I can't rely on my own talents and worth, no one else should be able to, either.  (Conflict subculture.)

There are days I want to run away and leave it all behind.  (Retreatist subculture.)  I often talk about living on Glamazon Island, where men aren't allowed to live—unless they're a Hooha and only then until they grow up.  (Hoohas are the general name for children of inhabitants of Glamazon Island, 'cause that's where they came from.)  Eventually Glamazon Island will just be me and my girls, having tea parties and craft time on the beach every afternoon, before our daily walk. 

(There are all kinds of secondary plans, involving whose daughter is in charge of defenses and ninja skills to protect us from the ousted Hooha forces that invade on giant, flying Death Chickens.)  (This is also why someone recently told me that my mind is like a playground for adults.) 

Look: I am as batshit as they come.  And it's not that I strive to be substantially different from everyone else.  I am not like other girls because I'm just made that way.  I don't live in the middle of the bell curve because I'm not happy in the medium.  My place of comfort is pretty far removed from most other people's.

And I am happy that way.  It can make for some pretty extravagant turmoil sometimes.  It can be hard, being able to understand emotional extremes so readily because I have lived them.  But I can't imagine being normal.  Maybe if I were, I wouldn't really know the difference.  What I do know is that my pretending to be normal did no damn good for anyone.   

So I embrace my differences and live them as fully as I can.  As Queen Frostine joked yesterday, "The standard deviation is not enough for a kinky statistician." 

But that gives me hope that somewhere there's a 6'4, 240-pound, dark-haired, blue-eyed, Irish statistician who might be able to keep up with me.

 

Your story sad to tell, a teenage ne'er do well--most mixed up non-delinquent on the block!

After twenty years, I'm back in college.

In 1990, I started college on a substantial scholarship.  My life choices got in the way of studying, and I blew my scholarship within a year.  I tried, off and on, to finish what was originally a Communications degree, but I never quite got it together.  There was a lot of wasted time and money before I finally gave up, choosing to live my life with DH.  With the divorce came the realization that I would have to take care of myself long past the point of alimony or child support.

So as of last month, I'm back in school full time, enrolled at a local technical college to pursue a degree in Paralegal Studies.  Queen Frostine has said for years that I'd make a great attorney.  Given my attention to detail and my dogged curiosity, she thinks I'd be especially well-suited for the mechanics of the law life.  In my old life in financial planning, I spent a lot of time reviewing complicated estate and human resources documents, and I thoroughly enjoyed that process.  Writing Persona Non Grata brought entertainment law into my realm, and I ultimately finalized my divorce pro se (without an attorney). 

Being a paralegal seems like the natural and logical next step. 

But being back in school is weird.  When I was a college student in my late teens and early twenties, work/life balance was about little more than fitting classes in around a boyfriend or getting wasted.  Now at 41, I have not only my schedule of on-campus and online classes, homework, and real work, but also my sons' school and social activities to contend with.  And now DH has moved 300 miles away, which means I have the boys for the vast majority of their time.  Plus somewhere in there I have to take some time for me, to relax and socialize with my own peers and get recentered so that I can take on the constant demands of this life I am trying to rebuild.

The schoolwork thus far isn't terribly hard, though math is kicking my ass harder than it did when I was 18.  The courseload for this first semester includes some pretty interesting (and sometimes infuriating) introductions to sociology, humanities, and the law.  All too often I am fascinated by some random thought in a discussion group or textbook and find myself off on a tangent, researching the fundamentals of space law or Goffman's dramaturigcal perspective. 

And now with a brilliantly gifted 8^th grader who is naturally inclined to the same slacking I was in middle school, I am paranoid about his life choices.  I've always said I didn't care what my children did for a living, as long as they were happy.  While I know that my prior choices led me to the place and time of having my sons when I did, I am also painfully aware that we are in a financial bind in part as consequence of those choices. 

Had I applied myself and finished my degree when that was supposed to be my main priority, my life would be very different.  I might be better prepared to handle the financial fallout of divorce in my 40s, but I also might not have had these children.  I probably would've gone on to have kids, but Max and Tricky could only be who they are because they were conceived and born at their respective moments in history. 

I can't get caught up in what might have been or should have been; I live in the here and now, both as a result of and in defiance of my past.  All I can do now is work my ass off to provide better opportunities for my kids but also for myself.  This is part of learning to take care of myself in a whole new way. 

When it feels overwhelming, I have to remind myself that this won't last forever.  In the same way that the boys will age and grow—bringing an end to child support and the necessity of complete financial self-sufficiency—I will age and grow, getting through this process and reaping the rewards that I can on the other side. 

 

What a beautiful mess.

I've been caught in a loop in my head for the last few days.  There's nothing new about that, honestly, but my heart has been especially unrelenting.

There's a lot going on right now.  Some days there are so many balls in the air that even a well-practiced juggler would have trouble keeping track of them all.  And if the actual logistics of my life weren't difficult enough, there is still my shredded heart to contend with.

Tomorrow is October 17^th.  That doesn't mean much, except that I have tickets for a concert.  Hunter Hayes at the Fox Theatre. 

Oh hell.

I have historically loathed country music, but something with that shifted in the summer, directly because of my relationship with Bounder.  I fought the twang as hard and long as I could, but when the man sang (quite off-key, mind you) country songs and danced to said songs with me on my deck in the middle of the night, it was hard not to get caught up in the emotional sap.  A couple of songs in particular became stupidly poignant—Jake Owens' "Anywhere With You" and Hunter Hayes' "I Want Crazy"—and they always seemed to start playing at just the right moment.

When tickets went on sale for Hunter Hayes at the Fox, I bought the tickets and immediately texted Bounder:

October 17^th.  I have plans.

You have an invitation to join me.

You are a brat.

Apparently he was about to buy the tickets himself when the text came through.  They were intended to be for our collective birthdays, which were just days apart at the end of the summer. 

"I'll give you your ticket," I told him.  "Just in case."

"Just in case we break up again," he replied, laughing in the dark on the deck that weekend, in the middle of the summer solstice.  "We'll meet up—"

"—at the show—"

"—October seventeenth."

Oh hell.

So here we are, and I have no idea what to do.  From the night we met, and then at every turn, there was a strange sense of Fate shoving us together.  Typhoon Bounder collided with Hurricane Sassafras in weirdly tragic, romantic perfection.  And every time we think it's over, something else happens that forces us into each other's orbit.  (Fate, you really are a raging bitch.)

We seem constantly drawn back to this place of choice to make, of some junkture in our path.  Is this the place of Fate (divine intervention) or fate (because of choices we've made)?

There are four primary scenarios:

1. I go to the Fox, and he doesn't show.  (In which case I will leave, because I can't see it with anyone but him.)
2. He goes to the Fox, and I don't show up.  (Like doing your homework the night before a possible snow day.)
3. Neither of us shows up, and we never know if the other did.
4. We both show up, which creates a whole new branch of this flow chart of possibilities.

Queen Frostine feels strongly that I should skip it completely.  Her position is that I have come so far (so she says) in getting over this man, that to open myself up to even a moment of heartache again has the potential to set me back.  She says I'm better, that I've shown progress in moving on, but it's hard for me to see it.  A step or two forward, maybe, but mostly I feel like I've stumbled ahead and am still trying to get up from this path with a skinned knee. 

No matter what I do, it will hurt.  My heart will ache, and I will still miss him.  I don't know that I ever won't.  I can remember feeling that way about other men, and I did eventually find a way to move on, given enough time.  But if the time to heal (as best as possible) is proportionate to the depth of emotion felt for another, it will take a damn long time to get over this one completely. 

I loved Bounder.  Deeply.  Maybe more than I've ever loved anyone besides my children.  I still love him and likely always will.  He is never not there, whether in my heart or my thoughts or my dreams.  Most days are okay, but some are hard as hell, when there's a reminder at every damn turn and I can feel him so intensely.  And the nights can be brutal.

No matter how I feel, there are substantial issues with us.  The perfect storm is at times decimating in its cleansing of our worlds.  As beautiful as the lightning is, it sometimes strikes too close and sets the underbrush afire.  Maybe it's just destructive, and maybe it was needed to clear away the dead wood and allow for new growth.  Either way, neither of us will ever be the same again. 

The thought of standing in that darkened theater, listening to those love songs that seemed to mimic our hearts, is terrifyingly beautiful, whether it's with or without him.  Something ingrained in me can't help but love the tragic romance of it all.  But love is not a love song.  My heart will still be racing and aching when the three-minute swell is over.  I just don't know if it'll be dancing with him in the dark. 

Learn to cry like a baby, then the hurting won't come back.

After the boys went to bed last night, I started to cry.  Almost fourteen hours later, and I haven't stopped. 

I've been on the phone with the girls for most of the morning, trying to get to the bottom of it.  And there is a bottom—I can tell it's there—but I haven't found it yet.  I know the freefall won't stop until I do.

There's so much going on right now.  I'm worried about my sons and money and my neverending divorce.  I have to find a job, but the boys were promised that I would still be there for them when they got home from school in the afternoons, that the basic logistics of their lives wouldn't change, that they'd still be able to do all of the things they've become accustomed to doing.  With one of them having been sick for several days recently, I don't know what would've happened if I'd been working. 

I'm worried about what I'm writing now, that I won't have it finished before I go into pitches with agents in November.  No, I know I won't have it finished.  But I don't want to do some half-assed job that turns out to be the chick lit that I hate.  The story I have is good, and I can do it justice, but it's complex and intricate.  It will take time to get it right, and I'm afraid that I will miss or outright blow an opportunity that maybe I don't have the right to even fight for. 

Everything is in process.  There's nothing stable or secure right now, and that is—today at least—unbearably frightening.  With everything churning at once, it feels like I'm in a freefall, down some fucking rabbit hole that I didn't choose.  This isn't like adventures before, when I've jumped in feet first and excited about wherever I landed.  Nothing under me feels solid or safe.  I feel scared like maybe never before.  I feel strangely helpless in this moment, and I am not a helpless girl. 

Today is one of those days when I feel paralyzed by own fears and insecurities.  I don't feel hopeless; I know that what ebbs must flow.  I am uncomfortably anxious about when and how that will happen.  I understand the why, so at least I can remind myself of that, for whatever good it can bring.

There's nothing profound in this, nothing important in what I'm sharing.  Muchness and Light has always been my outlet for writing about my own journey and the growth I gain throughout it.  I try to share some insight with my readers, usually because I find the same insights through my writing. 

Today there's nothing insightful.  I just needed to get it out.