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

 

 

Though you drown in good intentions, you will never quench the fire. You'll give in to your desire, when the stranger comes along.

Break-ups can be foundationally shattering. The end of a long-term relationship can be shocking to the core. There is the grief that comes from severing a deep, meaningful connection, of lamenting what has been lost, but there is also a sudden shift in daily routines that now feel hollow and future plans that will never come to fruition.

The day after Rango came to get his stuff from the house, I struggled just to maintain. I woke early, fed the cats, and cried for a while before falling back asleep. At noon, I realized I needed to get up and do my normal Sunday chores. The boys would be home from their dad’s that evening, and they would be expecting clean laundry and food for the week.

Walking through the grocery store, I felt raw. I felt like everyone who passed me in the aisles could see the sadness dripping from my every pore. I was certain that my hard-fought composure would come undone if anyone spoke kindly or smiled at me.

It’s not just that the sadness is a part of the grieving process. The sadness fulfills a purpose.

When I realized the futility of the relationship, I started looking for a new therapist. Therapy had been incredibly helpful through the demise of my marriage to DH. I was fortunate to have found an incredible therapeutic partner to help guide me through a couple of years of divorce and dating and loss. But my insecurities undoubtedly played a role in the tensions and break-up with Rango, and I knew I never want to feel those things again. I never again want to feel so easily broken by another person, especially when my head knows it shouldn’t be possible.

As I did some research online, I came across the Internal Family Systems therapeutic model developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It seemed to be especially effective in treating anxious attachers and rejection sensitivity. The idea is that we are each a Self, which is the true, whole, spiritual center of us. But we also have these discrete subpersonalities with their own intentions and needs and quirks and purpose. Each part has a specific viewpoint, developed from its interpretations of life experiences. Each has its own memories and interprets them according to its unique perspective:

• Managers handle the way we interact with the external world. They try to protect us from hurt, whether from others or from our own memories.
• Exiles are the parts that feel the worst emotions—pain, hurt, shame, fear—usually resulting from childhood trauma. Managers and Firefighters try to exile these parts to prevent their emotions from coming to the surface.
• Firefighters show up when Exiles break free and demand attention. They try to distract us from the pain, often encouraging unhealthy behaviors as coping mechanisms.

The goal of IFS is to allow the Self to access and connect to each subpart, healing them one by one. Thus, the Self leads the other parts in harmony and health. We become a whole, heathy person, rather than an amalgam of these smaller bits that exhaust themselves fighting to maintain a losing battle.

I have long believed that we each are made up of various persona, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone….

In an online interview reposted through the band’s Facebook page, Alex Wheeler said the title, Persona Non Grata, referred to all of the unacceptable and unwelcomed parts of everyone—the lurid, the shadowy, the hidden, the broken.

“Each of us has a persona, all the time,” he said. “I’m one persona with the band, someone a little different with my fans, someone else entirely with my wife and daughter. Sometimes that persona is ‘good’ and sometimes it’s ‘bad’. I spent a lot of time exploring the bad sides of normal, everyday people, you know? Not serial killers or rapists or anything. I wanted to look at the things regular people like to hide from the people they know and, most especially, from themselves.”

                                                                                                                                Persona Non Grata (2012)

I have, at times, named some of my subpersonalities, though I wasn’t thinking of them within the context of IFS.

• Cissie is the sweet, blond girl who never seemed to be pleasing to her parents, no matter how hard she tried. She never felt like she was enough. She was also molested for years, and she spent a lot of her time agitated and afraid. She is an Exile.
• Quinn is the rebellious teen who learned to trade sex and secrets for affection, often in an attempt to protect Cissie. She has her own anger and hurt, but she will bear it all to protect that little girl. She is a Firefighter.
• Stephie is a loud ball of angry. She will erupt and tantrum and demand her way when she feels she is being ignored. She is potentially a special subpersonality called a Tormentor. (She secretly wears that like a badge of honor.)
• Sassafras Bombalurina O’Malley is the one who reminds me to be shiny and sparkly and to tell the world to go fuck itself if it doesn’t like it. She is an eccentric, outrageous Manager who knows how to call on the Firefighters to back her up.
• Wonder Woman is the Amazonian princess who does it all, because she has to. She handles the day-to-day business of life, and she is remarkable. She is strong and capable, smart and intuitive, and she can predict everyone else’s needs and desires before they can. She is a Manager.
• Stephanie Quinn Jackson is the writer who sees it all, who arranges it and espouses the shared perspective of the others, who bears witness to it all and gives them a voice when it seems that no one else will listen. She is a Manager.

There are others, nameless but all with some variation of my face. Each has its own role and purpose in getting Stephanie through her life. Not to be confused with Dissociative Identity Disorder, I am not claiming to have multiple, distinct personalities. These are simply facets of my personality, and each strives in its own way to help me be secure and healthy and safe—even when its influence result in dysfunction.

The sadness is tied up with the hurt, and it’s not just from this break-up. This is hurt that hasn’t healed in 40 years. This is sadness that helps me to keep others at bay, or to curl up in bed and sleep when I should be doing productive things, so that I don’t have to feel the hurt. So I don’t have to delve back into every haunting memory and question again why I was both too little and too much. Why I wasn’t worth careful, healthy love.

None of these parts can or should ever be exorcised. Each is valuable and necessary, both as its own part and as a part of the larger whole. But the hurt can be healed enough so that it doesn’t make more hurt, create more sadness, because somewhere in there is joy and beauty. Somewhere in there is a sad and lost little girl who desperately wants to be loved.

I have to find her and help her.

We have to find her together.

 

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Muchness and Light - But if you'd known how that would sound to me, you would've taken it back and boxed it up and buried it in the ground.

Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

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Is that too much to ask? Well, maybe I'm an idiot.

About three months ago, Rango and I made the decision that he would move out. More than a year of tension and difficulty had spiraled us into a pretty deep pit of darkness, and neither of us could see a way out together. We decided pretty quickly that we still wanted to try to make things work. We continued dating. He still spent time at the house, still called it home, still saw the boys as regularly as their schedules would allow. For several weeks, we both thought we were on track for him to move back home.

But tensions surfaced again about a month ago. Old patterns emerged in both of us, and we find ourselves again in a depressing spiral. We love each other, but our respective needs and wants clash constantly. He feels pressured to give more than he’s able, stressing that I should just accept him the way he his—which he is not going to change for anyone. I think a caring partner makes the other a priority and tries to support their happiness, even and especially when it is inconvenient or difficult. By no means am I suggesting that one partner should kowtow to the other constantly. That’s not healthy at all. But sometimes we should do things that are best for the people we love, even when it requires uncomfortable effort on our part.

The last year has been exceedingly rife with difficulty. After my thyroid radiation, it took months before I started to feel physically and emotionally normal again, due to shifting hormone levels. By the first of the year, it became clear that my chronic neck pain had worsened, and I had a three-level discectomy and fusion in April. I was working full time and finally finishing my bachelor’s degree after twenty-seven years of on-again/off-again, half-hearted attempts. I hoped that alleviating most of those stressors would give us a fresh start toward reconciliation and growth.

I didn’t talk about it much. I tried to avoid it most of the time with the girls. The Castration Committee is amazing, and they will back me up no matter what. But bringing other people into the relationship, even tangentially, can profoundly influence perceptions—and not always for the better. Also, due to somewhat skewed perspectives, my family wasn’t always supportive and could be judgmental. Mostly I found it better to keep it to myself or between me and Rango. Mostly.

But as we’ve come again to a place of incredible conflict, I’m turning back to Muchness and Light. I haven’t written in months. I have barely written for the last two years. Much of that was due to school and work and health and child obligations. Much of it was due to my not feeling it was worth it.

DH told me years ago that I should stop writing, that blogging was nothing more than an echo-chamber. He was vitriolic in his assertion that only my friends cared about what I had to say. I know he was wrong, at least to an extent. But it also became apparent as time went on with Rango that he didn’t care to read what I had to say, although he would encourage me to write. He understood it was cathartic for me—effectively making it nothing more than a publicized diary—but that he had no interest in engaging my thoughts in this forum. This week, I’ve been told that I should just blog what’s bothering me and find a way to fix my messy head, but that he is uninterested in either climbing a wall of text intended for him or in talking about our problems.

At heart, he’s a good man. He is generally kind and generous. He loves me and loves my sons. But he often seems dramatically different than the man I met and fell in love with. Time has passed; we have changed. But where I thought we both wanted to grow and change together, he believes he hasn’t changed at all and that I shouldn’t expect him to.

When I did finally break down and really talk to Pandy, she said I deserve more. She is sweet and whole-heartedly believes I deserve to be in a healthy, committed relationship, receiving the same love I so freely give.

But she’s wrong.

I don’t deserve to be loved. No one deserves to be loved. As I said a few posts ago, the only thing anyone deserves is an eventual death. I used to believe that there was some cosmic force that somehow wanted good things for me, that maybe if I did good things then I would receive them in return. I believed in deep, abiding, passionate love that was reciprocal and maybe (just maybe!) destined. For a little while, I believed that I was worth enough to get happiness, not to be faced constantly with disappointment and hurt.

But I was wrong. There’s nothing up in the sky but air.

No matter how hard I try to be good, to be accommodating, to be considerate, I cannot make someone else do the same. I cannot make someone be or do what I think is ideal—or even what I think is a reasonable compromise. I can’t force them to hear me or try to see anything from my point of view. I can only accept them for who they are or not. I can live with their personality and eccentricities or move on.

I don’t expect perfection from anyone. I’m even learning not to expect it from myself. I have worked really hard to not overreact to emotions, to sit with them and understand their locus, to act appropriately in response to those emotions. But I can’t not respond to them.

So, there is sadness and grief, hurt and probably some anger. I’m sure more will come later. I’m sure it will abate eventually.

But I’m not berating myself that I deserve any of these feelings, either. So maybe I did change for the better, after all.

 

 

Baby, you cry too much. I'm tired of the sound. You're such a baby.

After a couple of days—weeks, months, I don’t know—of intense “discussion” (as my grandparents would say), Rango has finally said what so many before him have: I’m too much.

I suppose I should clarify that. Initially, it was that it’s not me, per se, who is too much, just my emotions. My overt expression of exactly what I’m feeling at any given time, especially when it’s not in line with how he would feel or express something, or how he thinks best suits me to feel or express it.

And when my expression manifests in ways he doesn’t like or understand, it makes him uncomfortable.

There is absolutely no expectation on his part that I behave in a set, specific way. He just doesn’t understand why I am often so stressed, why I hang on to issues and analyze them into unrecognizable minutiae, and why I am so prone to outbursts of tears when I’m overwhelmed by emotion.

For more than two years, I have done my best to find some full-time/part-time balance of student and employee, plus being a full-time mom. In all but one of the two-dozen classes I’ve taken in that time, I’ve worked for and gotten an A. (Algebra is still the bane of my existence.) My first real job in 15 years is for a prestigious state agency, and it challenges me and engages me constantly. My ex-husband has been out of state for most of that two years, barely in contact with our children and leaving me to care for them while cleaning up his emotional mess—all while berating me bitterly and randomly, usually about money.

I try to explain that I am still trying to learn to stand on my own two feet, and Rango counters that I don’t have to do it all on my own, that I have him.

Without question, he has been a huge support since we started dating. He has been the constant male figure in the boys’ lives, and he has been incredibly supportive of my schooling and work and time with GOAL. He understands fully when I need to take a little time to myself or with the Castration Committee, like I did last weekend.

He doesn’t understand why I berate myself about having gained some of this weight back, about not having time to work out even if I were cleared for weights after a lingering wrist injury from October. Another apparent blown disc is reminding me every day of how far down that slope I have slipped. Seeing pictures from four and five years ago compared to pictures from now is devastating to my ego. My head knows I was living in misery when the skinny girl pictures were taken, and that’s utterly dichotomous to the pictures of me with the Governor or addressing the Georgia Senate.

I should be easy on myself for holding all of this together as well as I have, and I should be nothing but proud of the accomplishments I’ve made. But somewhere in my fucked up head, I am often embarrassed to be me, to see how far I fell down a hole I never wanted to think of again, and to feel the snap! of one tenuous thread and to know how that can bring the whole damn thing crashing down around me.

Even now, while I’m writing, I’m crying. There is just so much that needs to come out.

I’m writing while he and the boys are asleep. I’ll wake them soon to go about our busy day of haircuts and errands and homework and cleaning and cooking and hopefully going out tonight to see a friend’s husband’s band because I was too damn drained last night to do it. I also know I am choosing this time to write because I don’t want him to see me cry. I don’t want him to tell me again that it’s too much.

I also know I choose this forum, because he doesn’t read what I write. Like so many before, he’s not a reader. If I send him something specific, he will read it, but he doesn’t seek out that side of me. Truthfully, that’s part of the reason I haven’t written much in the last year or more. If I couldn’t get the approval of the only person whose approval mattered to me, then why devote the energy there? There was already enough to deflect my attention away; it wasn’t efficient or productive to waste the time and effort.

Except it never was a waste, was it? DH hated that I wrote, and that I wrote away from and about him. Like Absolem and Bounder after, he would tell me I was a good writer, that I should do it, but that I shouldn’t write about things and in ways that made him uncomfortable. I should steer clear of truths that made him feel bad.

It was too much.

Fuck. That.

I feel what I feel. I pull it out and examine it and play with it. I may spin it all around like a Rubik’s cube and put it back in, or I may hang it on a shingle for the world to examine for itself.

But it is mine, and I have my reasons, and absolutely no one ever gets to tell me otherwise. Not if they want to stay.

I struggle, and maybe I’m struggling more and differently than when Rango and I met, over drinks on a holiday weekend when my kids were having rare visitation with their father. But there is a lot more at stake now—logistically and legally and emotionally—and I will never again be content to let anyone else be my sole support. It’s not that I’m unwilling to let anyone else be supportive; I simply will not put myself in any precarious position where I am unable to support myself.

I appreciate that he sees me as beautiful no matter what, that the size of my ass doesn’t tip the scales out of my favor. But if it is the weight of my tears that are too much, I can’t help that. All I can hope is that, in the end, both weigh less than Osiris’ feather.

 

 

 

Maybe I think too much but something's wrong.

Hi.

It's been a while.

This has happened before, where I've been quiet for a while—for far longer than I'd like or intended. This time, though, I haven't been quiet so much as I've just been biting my tongue.

It's been almost six months since I sat down to write for me. Oh, I've been writing, just not for myself. I've written for school—I'm now a senior pursuing a B.A. in Liberal Studies with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. I've written for work—I'm now a full-fledged, employed paralegal for a prestigious state agency. I've written various speeches for speaking engagements around the state—I have three more months to go as GOAL winner.

All of those have kept me very, very busy and feeling very rewarded. I work myself into a tizzy sometimes from the stress. I am striving to be the best possible student and employee and ambassador and mother and partner. It's naturally a lot of pressure, and absolutely no one is harder on me than I am on myself.

I tend to work at a frenetic pace that is exhausting. I am exacting and demanding of myself, sometimes pushing myself to a breaking point. One tiny slip-up, one slight mistake, and it feels like everything comes crashing down around me. For the last few months, Rango has found me more than once in a sobbing, fetal pile in the middle of the bed.

I've often thought out loud that I needed to take the time to come and write. Almost every day, I draft some blog post in my head but never quite get around to getting it onto the screen. There's always something to get in the way—school, work, errands, chores, kids, life.

In reality, it is me that has been getting in my own way.

With so much happening, with so very many demands on my time and energy, I've let some things slide. I finally had to recognize that the house won't be as clean as I would like. Sometimes popcorn and apples make a perfectly acceptable dinner.

There has also been less time to work out. There's been less energy to devote to working out. In taking care of the boys and the house and our world, there's been less effort to take care of me.

With that has come weight.

By no means have I regained all of the lost weight, but it has been slowly creeping up. Queen Frostine has told me for months that I needed to cut myself some slack.

"Look at everything you have going on," she admonished. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

"You're beautiful," Rango tells me every day. "You're not fat."

Before the divorce, before I went back to college and work, I had time to devote to it. I could walk for an hour or two every day before I hit the gym. I could carefully plan and prep meals for a week at a time. And I knew damn well that the weight wouldn't stay gone just because I wished it; I knew I would have to work at it for the rest of my life.

But I didn't, did I?

Tonight, I was trying on ill-fitting clothes, lamenting my spreading thighs. Rango found me crying in the bedroom, again. He told me, again, that I'm beautiful and not fat. He reminded me that I am so much more than my physicality.

In my head, I know he's right. In my head, I know that my worth—whether to other people or to myself—should not come from the size of my ass. But it is hard to make my heart believe that when I'm struggling with clothes that are ill-fitting because I haven't been doing what I should.

And there is shame. There is self-loathing and self-recrimination. Not so much because I'm not a size 8 but because I let this happen, again. Because I built so much of my story and my identity around the self-transformation that came about because of and during the weight loss, and now it feels hypocritical to let that have ever been a part of my story.

Looking for hangers in the closet, I saw a dress hanging and thought, "That's from when I was pretty."

And it doesn't seem fair that I have to choose between being pretty and being smart. It doesn't seem right that anyone, including myself, would put such pressure on me to be a great student and be a great paralegal and be a great ambassador and be a great mom and be a (sometimes) great partner and be as physically perfect as I can muster, given my inherent limitations.

I get it. No one but me is putting that pressure on me.

But that is how I validate my own existence. I strive to exceed expectations, even when it means exceeding every possible and anticipated expectation before I have any clue what they are. Because if I am not perfect, then I am a failure.

Yes, of course, I know how utterly ridiculous this self-imposed craziness is. In so many ways, I am my own albatross.

And so, I have avoided writing for months, sidestepping my fears and evading myself.

But there is catharsis in writing for me. This is the space in which I am most likely to be truly, sometimes brutally, honest with myself. This is how I have worked my head out when my life has felt like it was unraveling. This is where I have found the stones to lay my own path.

So I'm writing again. I'm crying again. But I'm writing.

This is not a passive-aggressive request for encouragement. This is not my wanting someone else to tell me how special I am.

This is Stephanie edging her way back to where she needs to be. This is me finding my voice again, because it is mine and it is valuable.

So I will try to do better, to be more consistent and to be more open, to make the time to take care of myself in the ways that are healthiest and most vital for me.

I've never been fearless. I've been headstrong and dogged but absolutely never fearless in my determination. But they are my fears, and I am determined to face them again.

It's time to reclaim my muchness.

 

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Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

I posted a picture to Facebook a couple of days ago, of a cyan-tinted, forlorn, Bitstrips version of Stephanie that said, "Stephanie is feeling a blue."

Several friends immediately commented to inquire about what was wrong. Thankfully no one told me to cheer up. The girls reminded me to moving forward. A couple of people who've had their own sadness in recent months offered sympathetic well wishes.

One friend commented, "Just looking from the outside your future looks very bright."

He's right, of course, but that's exactly what has me in such a damn funk: the future.

I am finishing my last six weeks of my last semester at Georgia Piedmont Technical College. I am finishing my last two weeks as an (unpaid) intern with the ACLU of Georgia. I won this huge award and am trying to schedule the visit to pick up my new car, and I'm appearing fairly regularly as an ambassador for GPTC and for the Technical College System of Georgia.

Under all of that, there is a boatload of fear. I've explored the topic of fear—specifically why it's just stupid to let it hold you down—and I know this is one of those times when fear is not healthy. It's not a warning sign that something is about to eat me or that some berry will poison me. There's no imminent danger that demands I fight or flight.

But there is more uncertainty, more unknown. There is the choice to be made in the next few days of which bachelor's program I'll transition into (the private program that's close to home but only requires 42 hours to complete, or the public college that's an hour away and requires 67 hours to complete but at a third of the cost of the private school). There are the looming issues surrounding the still-jointly-held mortgage that has to be refinanced and the post-divorce credit score that's lower than the number we spend on groceries in a month. Credit takes time to rebuild, even without constant additional damage. There is the question of what will happen to my meager health insurance at the end of the year, tied up with political and financial issues that have embroiled Medicaid and the Obamacare that I still wouldn't be able to afford if I had to pay for it.

And all of that is directly impacted by my now two-month-long job search.

I was told by a hiring-type person (though it was an informational meeting, not an interview) that my qualifications are impressive.

"Until there's a job, my qualifications are worth the spare change in my sons' laundry," I retorted.

On paper, it does look impressive. Even I know that. I'm graduating with a 3.95 GPA from one of the only ABA-approved Paralegal Studies programs in Georgia. I'm a member of three honor societies, and I was named the 2015 Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership recipient by the Technical College System of Georgia, making me the top technical education student of 144,000 in the state. I interned with the ACLU of Georgia, having worked on substantive research issues for litigation and having extensively lobbied the Georgia General Assembly. I've had articles published on DivorcedMoms.com, MariaShriver.com, and The Huffington Post.

But there is no job.

Yes, I have applied for them. Yes, I have reached out to my extensive network of contacts to politely ask them to keep me in mind if they hear of possible positions. Yes, I have reached outside my own box, my own comfort zone, and looked beyond what I think I want to do, willing to consider positions that may be only mildly related if they may ultimately open the door to where I want to be.

But consistently, because I don't have my Bachelor's degree and because I don't have 3-5 years' experience as a paralegal, I am shut out of positions. My skills and talents don't matter, my hard work doesn't matter—it's that one piece of paper that holds me back. And because hiring processes are very often automated now, my application is very often automatically kicked out of employment systems for not quite meeting criteria that I know really doesn't impact what I know or how I perform.

So this starts the cycle of self-recrimination:

This is what you get for fucking it up and blowing your scholarship at 18.

But I wasn't ready. I didn't know how to be ready.

If I'd finished then I wouldn't have gotten married and have these boys now.

You promised these boys you'd be home with them in the afternoons.

I was at home with them for twelve years.

They misbehave, because you're not here like you should be to help them.

I'm doing the best I can. I'm showing them how to be adults and step up to their responsibilities, how not to run to the bottom of a bottle just to escape what is hard.

You're fucking up. You fucked up.

This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't fucked up your marriage.

You're a fuck up.

The constant anxiety has reached a frenzied peak, the likes of which I only saw during the worst of my divorce.

And isn't your divorce at the heart of this?

You fucked it all up.

On and on this cycle goes. My head is relentless sometimes. I get agitated and cranky. I do my best to power through and keep working—homework, household chores, job search, more homework—just to have a reprieve from the constantly animosity.

Lately I've not been very pleasant to be around. It's most likely the boys, or especially Rango, who takes the brunt of that.

I'm sorry.

You're just a fuck up.

You don't deserve him.

This is why DH left, because you're such a fuck up.

I'm sorry. I don't know what I did wrong this time, but I'm sorry.

Right now, it feels like every single nerve ending in me is exposed, peeking beneath the flay that still shimmers with fresh glitter.

 I do know that this will pass, in part because I'm writing about it and dealing with it in the most cathartic way I know how. I know that decisions will be made in a matter of days, which will bring some of the uncertainty to an end. I know that this specific cycle will end. After the last five years, I'm pretty sure there will be another one in the not-too-distant future. If there ever comes a time when everything is easy and I'm skating on rainbows, I have to assume it means I'm dead.

What I also know is that I am not alone in my propensity to tear myself down from the inside. I'm not the only maladaptive girl who sometimes clings tightly to the familiar shards of broken glass, simply because that's a pain you know, which feels far more manageable than the overwhelming uncertainty.

I questioned whether I should even post this publicly. I am representing my college and the system for the next ten months, and this is their shiny champion swearing loudly about her problems. But I'm hardly the only single welfare mom who's gone back to college in her 40s to take care of her family. I'm not the only non-traditional student who has to choke down her fear and step into the classroom and just get it done. I'm not the only one who has to keep fighting while backed into a corner.

If you're there, your shoulders pressing against the jagged walls, use it. For just a moment, let the walls support you and take a breath. Breathe past the tears and the fears. One breath. And then another. And then use those walls for leverage and come out kicking if you have to.

It is your fight. No one else can do this for you.

And no one else can do it for me.

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Huffington Post Article #3

I'm not here for your entertainment.

Only a crazy little thing I read....

I was both pleased and shocked to have two pieces from DivorcedMoms.com make The Huffington Post last week.  The first one, "8 Lessons Every Newly Single Woman Should Learn", had gotten great feedback from both its original post on Divorced Moms and later when it was picked up by Maria Shriver.  And not just from people who knew me.

When Divorced Moms ran "An Open Letter To The Dudes Dating My Mom", again there was positive feedback.  But by the time it got to HuffingtonPost.com, all Hell broke loose. 

"Dear child of my girlfriend, Lose the attitude! Your father may be your father but guess what, he now has visitation. I will be the one taking care of your daily needs. I will feed you when your father doesn't pay his support. I will be the one who has to comfort your mother when you're being a spiteful teenager. I will make sure you get to school on time. I will be the one that makes sure your homework is finished. I will have all the responsibilities of being your father, without your love and devotion, and I will be happy to do it because I love your mother."

"Best. Comment. Ever! The article just reeked of typical teenage self-importance and egocentricity."

"Stay away from single moms I guess. Thanks, snotty girl. :)"

"Sweet Jesus what a petulant little brat."

"Child... balance #2 against #8. Your mother has a right to build a life with a companion who will be there with her as a partner until death. That is not going to be you. That would not have been you if your mother had stayed with your biological father, and it's not going to be you if she never gets married again. If your mother chooses a companion for the rest of her life, that relationship will come 'first' in her (and his) life. You are expected to leave your mother's home and build your own independent life, with or without a companion.

You, child, should take a step back and learn about healthy life companionships from your mother and her man. If they are putting their relationship first, and it's that which allows them to build a stable, safe home for any children involved, they are doing the best thing possible for the children. If what you are learning from your parents is that partners are temporary and expendable, I feel sorry for you. Your parents are messing up big time, and they are teaching you to pass it forward to your own children, who will expect to come 'first', while you treat your life partner with disdain and as something disposable."

When Divorced Moms originally ran the piece, I included a picture of a pre-teen boy.  I have two sons, with whom I had talked about these issues and the idea of what they would want someone to know.  What were their fears, at 13 and 9?

"Love this! I have two boys and it really hit the mark:). Well done."

When HuffPost ran it, they included a picture of a young teen girl.  Otherwise there were no differences in the article, which is entirely gender-neutral.  Intentionally. 

Maybe it's a difference in audience, though Divorced Moms works closely with HuffPost to share appropriate pieces for their Divorce section, so there's certainly some crossover in readership. 

I'd like to respond to a few things, though:

1)      A grown-ass woman wrote this piece, not a teenage anything.  I'm sure DM and HP would both be willing to run a cogent, well-written article by a teenager, but that's not terribly common.  And that's not what happened here, hence the author link in the article.

2)      It wasn't written with boys or girls in mind.  I was careful not to make it about my sons, even though I did choose a picture of a boy.  That's what's usually in my mind when I'm writing about parenting through divorce.  The gender bias that was inferred from this piece blew my damn mind. 

3)      If it has a tone of self-importance, that's because the voice of the piece is a kid.  Children are egocentric by their very nature.  Any empathy they've developed in childhood is comparatively limited, and a lot of it is thrown out the window in adolescence.  They are self-centered and moody and demanding.  It's part of the process of growing into their independent adulthood.  Even the best teens can be utter assholes when the time is right.

4)      This is an article about dating, not marriage.  Dating doesn't always mean going to dinner three times a week with the next person you'll marry.  I never, ever take a shot at step-parents or those who fill the spaces of a missing parent to the best of their ability.  That's a unique relationship, though, and will never replace the bond of a parent—no matter the reason for the absence.  Ask my step-dad.

5)      All I said was that Dad wasn't around as much as the kid would like for him to be.  The kid would like Dad to be living in the house again, generally.  The kid would like to be able to see both Mom and Dad all the time, on demand.  That's not how divorce works.  That doesn't mean Dad is a deadbeat or absentee father.  I know many non-custodial fathers who maintain great relationships with their kids.  And if Dad is deceased, no one will ever be able to fully fill that void.

6)      The only unconditional love is that of a parent for child.  Period.  Mom will always love her child unconditionally, no matter how much she fucks it up.  If Mom is successful at her job, she will raise the kid to be a self-sufficient, healthy, productive member of society.  But that child will always be an integral part of her life, even well into adulthood.  That doesn't mean there's not room for anyone else, and sometimes other relationships take priority, but Mom will love her babies no matter what.  You, Mr. Dude, will have to work for that love, the same way Mom will have to work for yours.  That one's not guaranteed.  Ask my ex-husband.

After the feedback became a little snarky, Queen Frostine messaged me from Paris to say, "Yay!  You've been trolled!" 

The truth is, any readership is better than no readership.  I don't mind the comments, even when they seem so blatantly misconstrued.  I know from my own experience that for every person who takes the time to post a response, there are twenty others who just read it and keep going. 

A very special thanks goes out to WGST's Rich Sullivan for inviting me on "The Sully Show" this afternoon.  I'm scheduled to do an interview with WGN's "The Bill and Wendy Show" tomorrow. 

I'll keep talking, whether or not anyone is listening.

 

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DivorcedMoms.com | Article

An Open Letter To The Dudes Dating My Mom

You shout it out, but I can't hear a word you say.

When I started writing Muchness and Light in late 2010, DH was not happy.  I'd been toying with an old writing project, which later morphed into Persona Non Grata, and I'd been thinking for days about starting a blog.  I wanted a different outlet to hone skill and craft.  I was also in the beginnings of what would become this huge shift in how I saw myself and my place in my world. 

Initially, he was hurt and irritated that I hadn't consulted him about it.  It wasn't that I wanted to write, he argued, but that he could've helped me choose the blogging platform and the technology that would be best for my project.  I hadn't needed his help, though.  I was perfectly capable of researching these things and deciding what would work best for me. 

For a while, I didn't readily share my writing with him.  He would grumble when I did a new piece, seemingly irritated both at what I had to say and that I was saying it at all.  Yes, it diverted time and attention away from him and the children and whatever else I'd normally been doing for two hours on any given morning.  To delay the laundry or the dishes, to allow myself a little time to get inside my own head and see how it worked, was certainly giving my psyche a chance to flex muscles it hadn't used in about ten years. 

I was thinking for myself again.  I was doing for myself again.  I was still handling everything logistically in our world, but I was changing.

DH was not happy.

In hindsight, our marital problems were really amping up.  Of course I knew there were issues—that was part of the reason I was so unhappy.  It was very difficult to mend or even maintain our relationship, especially given the enormous change I was experiencing. 

Through all of the volatility, I wrote. 

As our marriage spiraled out of control, we would fight in the guise of trying to repair our damage.  Night after night of emotionally and verbally violent arguments, a constant battering of each other, trying our best to both attack each other and defend our positions.  Sometimes I would just sit and take it, letting him yell at me as punishment for the choices I'd made that had flown in the face of our marriage.  Sometimes I would yell back, vehemently reminding him of all the ways he had failed me and us, as well.  Sometimes when he was especially brutal, I would do my best to disengage and walk away until we were both calmer and more reasonable. 

DH never liked it when I disengaged.  It infuriated him that I would step out of his line of fire and walk away.  That was often when his words would become knives thrown straight at my heart. 

Late one night, when it was apparent that he'd worn me down to the point of just taking it, I realized there was no reasoning with him.  I was tired of being told I was wrong and said something about going inside to write for a while.

"Your writing is a joke!" he laughed derisively.  "No one gives a fuck about what you have to say!  Your blog is just your fucking diary about shit no one but you and your friends care about it.  You should shut the fuck up while you still have a shred of dignity!"

Make no mistake that it stung like hell.  After twenty years together, he knew how to cut me to the core.  I questioned my writing, my motivations, my talent, and my voice.  Since that incident over two years ago, I have heard those words in my head every single time I have been unsure of this path. 

I could tell myself that what I had to say mattered.  Sure, it matters to me.  It matters to my friends.  I have collected a small but loyal readership of people I've never met and never hear from, but I see the web traffic and get occasional messages from random people telling me that something I wrote touched them. 

I still questioned it all the time. 

Recently I started writing guest posts for DivorcedMoms.com.  Given what I know about being both divorced and being a mom, it seemed like a natural extension of what I do here.  Plus it would be an additional outlet to tackle some issues and say some things I might not want to constantly float on Muchness and Light.  (This is not a divorce blog, after all.)

I submitted my second piece, "8 Things Every Divorced Woman Should Do NOW!" a couple of weeks ago, as part of a suggested assignment on their contributor site.  I was thrilled when they not only ran the piece but also featured it that week in their newsletter and on their splash page.  I saw the link to the article tweeted and retweeted by the editors. 

Someone else was interested in what I had to say. 

Two days ago, I received an email from one of the DivorcedMoms.com editors. 

Hi Stephanie,

We are thrilled to tell you that your article is featured on mariashriver.com 

http://mariashriver.com/blog/2014/03/8-things-every-woman-should-do-for-herself-stephqj/

It a great article and we are so happy to see it profiled.  We love your writing, keep the posts coming:)

What?!?

And there it was.  Maria Shriver's site had picked up my article and reposted it.  There was a link back to DivorcedMoms and to my writer profile there.  She (or her social media person) had tweeted the link, which was retweeted repeatedly by strangers.  It was on her Facebook page, with comments from women I'd never known saying how much they enjoyed it, how it mattered to them. 

After the obligatory squealing and dancing and texting and calls to almost everyone I knew, I forwarded the email to my therapist. 

Someone else wanted to hear what I had to say. DH was wrong. I shouldn't have shut up and been quiet.

And I started to cry.  As I've admitted before, I sometimes cry when I write.  I'll hit some place of emotional truth, and the tears flow cathartically as the tension is released.  (Hell, I'm crying as I write this now.)

It wasn't so much confirmation that DH was wrong; it was verification that I wasn't.  My voice mattered to someone else, to someone other than me, and it had value even if only for a moment. 

I was right to write again.  I was right to question my life, then and now, and to work through my issues in the public forum I'd chosen all by myself.  I was right to believe that my words held strength and worth and truth outside my own busy, complicated head. 

I don't know what path I'd be on had I not chosen this one.  In the end it doesn't matter, because this is where I am.  It may not be right for anyone else.  It may not have been right for DH.  But it is exactly where I am supposed to be.

 

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. 

And then you call me, and it's not so bad.

This morning, about an hour before I was scheduled to sign copies of Persona Non Grata at the AJC Decatur Book Festival, I was in an utter panic.  The festival had been open about an hour, and not one copy of PNG had sold.  Everywhere I looked, I saw older women and hipster, urban couples with their jogging strollers—not my demographic. 

 

 Queen Frostine texted me just then:

Good luck today.  *hug*

I'm in a panic

No worries.  This will be brilliant.

No.  It'll be sad.  No one will buy it and I'll sit there for 10 minutes doing nothing.  That's how I expect it to go.

I don't want to do it.

She called me immediately.  I was on the verge of tears, pacing an alley behind the courthouse.  She reminded me that I could do this, that the worst thing that happened was no one came and I just sat there for ten minutes.  It wouldn't be the end of the world. 

Hot Pocket and Growler chimed in via Facebook Messenger. 

Me:        I just hung up with Frostine.  In utter panic about this and don't want to do it.  I will but am flaking out.

HP:        What, the signing?  Your book is awesome!  You can do this!

              You are glittery goodness and not a wallflower.

              Tell people about your book, like you would tell me. 

G:          Sass.  You will be fine.  I have made it through DAYS of book signings selling next to nothing and paying for my space.  You can do it for minutes.

              I panic, too.  All writers do.  You are not special.

I sucked it up, checked in at the Emerging Writers Pavilion, and then went and took my seat.  I was immediately joined by another writer.  She was tiny (at least compared to me), with short, dark hair that curled into a deep purple flame above her forehead.  Nose ring and skull-and-crossbones earrings.  Exactly the kind of woman I would like to hang out with under any circumstances. 

She introduced herself, and we started talking about what we write.  I must confess that I probably hogged way too much of the conversation.  But this writer, I. R. Harris, told me to remember what I had written and why, that my voice is able to reach women who often feel left out of contemporary fiction. 

"Besides, you wrote a book!  Lots of people say that want to do it and never do.  You did this!"

Then a friend from Facebook came up to the table.  I'd never met him (nor his lovely wife) face-to-face.  He was there to see me and get a signed copy. 

All of this was exactly what I needed today. 

There were a dozen little signs throughout the day that helped to cement some choices I had to make about the next couple of months.  It still means a lot of work is directly in front of me, but it also tells me that I know which path to forge and to trust in that. 

I received unexpected wisdom and encouragement from friends and strangers when I needed it most.  When there are impossibly difficult moments and I want to just crawl in bed and never come out, there is always something that is put in front of me, to remind me again of not only who I'm supposed to be but who I am.  Even when this life is at its hardest, I am thankful to have been given the strength and opportunity to live it as fully as I am willing and able.  I am fortunate and appreciative, even when I'm scared to death and so afraid that I will fail again or look like a fool. 

So for every little bit of goodness that was granted to me today, thank you.  I am humbled by the lessons I have learned and the serendipity that is a regular part of my crazy life.

I am a lucky, lucky girl.