Y-Axis Crises

It's day two of NaBloPoMo...and I have a presentation to write for Friday.  It should have been an easy throw together sort of deal, except for the fact that that's not how things work out for me.  Instead, I've spent a really long time fixing what should have been done by someone else months ago and remembering how much I hate Excel.

So because I need to write this presentation, I had to waste 2.5 hours on data labels, phase lines, formulas, over-extended X-axes, behavior rates per minute versus percent of opportunity on the y-axis, and graphs with and without baseline data.  Looking for a fun way to spend your Wednesday night?  This, my friends, is it.

In the middle of the percent of opportunity vs. rates per minute crisis, I decided to take a break.  "You need to write something tonight," I told myself.  "You can't fail NaBloPoMo on day 2.  That's just totally lame."  So I opened up my documents folder to find something I had written that could pass for tonight.  It's totally legit to recycle old writing when you're having a crisis on at least 4 different Y axes, right?

Upon opening my documents, however, I pretty much gave up hope.  It's all organized into folders and nice and neat, just like I like it.  I had a choice of such fun options as: "Dissertation" and "Research" and "Psychopharmacology" and "Work."  Sometimes I write fun little notes about something that happened at work and they end up in my work folder, so I opened that up, realizing I was getting desperate.  In this folder are hand-outs on three-step guided compliance, time-out protocols, and a particularly fun document labeled "Private Parts Touching Rules" followed by "Private Time Story" and "Private Areas Social Story."  It's much more fun to write social stories about masturbation than it is to spend 2 hours on data labels, believe me. 

"I have nothing exciting to write about," I thought, closing the "Work" folder.  "The only things I write now are progress notes, initial evaluations and discharge summaries.  And masturbation social stories.  That's not exciting at all.  I have nothing exciting to write about.  Nothing ever happens.  My life is consumed by Y-axis crises."

That was when I remembered several important things:

1.       I work in a job where I say things such as, "No, the rose stays with Jesus.  Put rose on Jesus.  Buddy, we can't take things that don't belong to us, give the rose back to Jesus.  Put the rose on Jesus' feet like this.  Thanks for giving the rose back to Jesus, bud."  And things like: "my friend, we both know Tom Cruise isn't out in the hallway.  No, Tom Cruise does NOT want to talk to me. No bud, the Easter Bunny isn't here and he didn't give you that money. Now hand me the money that is in your sock."  And, "Listen kiddo, I'll give you a high five or tickles, but popping out your veins is not available."  And, "Time to work.  First work, then look like Cousin It."  This fact alone makes my life interesting.

2.       The past 3 days have been one continuous Sneaky Hate Spiral.  It makes writing difficult and data label crises nearly unbearable.

3.       I can't remember the third important thing I thought of and I need to get back to data label phase line y-axis hell.

One of these days, I'll write something interesting.  Once I get out of the sneaky hate spiral, and once the presentation is written and the graphs look semi-presentable.  Because right now, it looks like somebody vomited data points, data labels, and phase lines alllllllll over my graph with the incorrect Y-axis and the over-extended X-axis.  And the mislabeled/incorrectly idenified Y-axis with the wrong scale.  And the missing baseline data.

Frankly, "vomit" isn't a good look for a graph.

That was easy...

So apparently I was in a fantastic, ambitious, conquer-the-world sort of mood this weekend.  I was on top of things.  I had it all together.  Sunday, I was chilling out, basking in my momentary "having-it-all-togetherness," when I suddenly decided that I was going to act on my promise to "write more."

You know, when I work with my clients and they tell me about something they want to accomplish, I have them set very specific and concrete goals.  "You want to socialize more?  How about going out with a friend once this week."  "You want to exercise more?  This week, go to the gym twice instead of once."  We take it slow.  We make concrete plans and we stick to them.  Sometimes.  If we're lucky.

But when I decide I want to do something, "concrete" and "specific" disappears.  Hence the promise to "write more."  What "more" means I'm never sure and I am careful to never define.  I know better than to box myself in like that.  Because I don't define "more," I have left myself able to go through a several month period of not writing, then writing something once and saying "THAT WAS MORE!" because once is more than never.  Once I've written something, I can tell myself that I AM writing more for...oh...a good 3 weeks, because writing one time during THIS 3 week period was more than I wrote in the LAST 3 week period, and because I'm lazy avoidant good at fooling myself like that.   

The thing is, though,  I feel better when I am writing, and I know that.  Even if I write nothing but inane drivel that would bore an earthworm, I just feel better when I write.  Writing for me is like having a kid that looks just like me that follows me everywhere.  You know the kid that people look between kid and parent and say "there's no denying he/she's yours"?  That's how Writing and I are.  There's no denying we need to be together.  Right now, though, Writing is much less like a cute little kid that wants to be just like mom, and much more like the angsty teenager that stays in her bedroom blaring loud, angsty music, wearing black clothes and eyeliner and piercing her lip and her eyebrow and lord only knows what else while refusing to be seen in public with me because...well just because.  And honestly, that's fine, because if she's going to act like that, I don't much want to be seen in public with her either, even if she's mine and we belong together. 

So back to this weekend.  I was bopping along with my happy self on Sunday when I decided that I was going to "write more" for real, and that I was going to hold myself accountable.  Yep yep.   I took my unusually motivated self over to the BlogHer website and signed up for May's NaBloPoMo, which means, for those unfamiliar, that I am going to write a blog post every day for the month of May.  So there is my "concrete and specific" plan (so much for taking it slow).  I will write 31 blog posts in 31 days.  My inner behavioral psychologist is happy with this plan.  My Writer just turns up the music in her iPod and practices her best blank "I don't give a crap" stare.  The rest of me thinks I must just be one taco short of the combination plate.

I'll be honest: I don't expect to be successful with this plan.  There is going to be a day or two (or nine or ten) when I don't post.  It's going to happen.  But I'm going to try anyway, because as it was, I wasn't moving anywhere, was feeling generally stuck, and this is motivation.  And I need to practice failing anyway.  It'll be good for me.  (It's okay, sometimes I laugh at the things I tell myself, too).

So if I fail...don't laugh.  If I write boring posts of no substance and have nothing to say...tell me I had a really winning title.  If I write posts that make no sense in which I'm clearly falling asleep, or posts in which I become Grumpy McGrumperson, or posts in which I do nothing but complain...know that someday I will have something interesting and insightful and funny and deep to say and check back after a couple months.  Or shoot me a prompt in the comments as an attempt to save your bleeding eyes.

You know, I've never done this before, but it would seem I'm on a roll.   After all, I wrote this today, which would indicate that I'm writing more.  And isn't that the goal? 

Mission accomplished...for at least another 24 hours.

The one with all the begging.

It isn't too often that I say things like this, but I'm pro-honesty here, and I'm desperate.  So I am going to write 4 words right here that are harder for me to write than you can imagine.  Are you ready?  Okay.

I. Need. Your. Help.

Yes.  You read that correctly.

I need your help.

I have a problem that I can't seem to find an antidote for, and I am looking for suggestions.  I've written about this problem before, but it's getting progressively worse, and it's irritating the hell out of me.

The problem is this: I can't write.  Like seriously, I can't write.  It's not just a little bit.  It's not that I just can't write for the blog.  It's that I can't write at all.  Writing this is like pulling teeth.  From a snake.  A poisonous snake.  With its jaw wired shut.

I've tried everything I can think of.  I've read books on writing.  I've read books not about writing.  I've tried writing prompts.  I've tried starting from something I wrote before.  I've tried handwriting with a pen, a pencil, and a magic marker.  I've tried just writing whatever words or thoughts come into my head with my eyes open and with my eyes closed.  If I thought standing on my head in the shower under cold water and writing with my toes would help, I swear to god I would try it, but I am giving up hope.  My internal writing mechanism is broken, I can't find or afford a repair shop, and it would take too long to get the replacement part anyway.  I'm about ready to just give up.

That would be fine.  Really.  If my writing days were done and I could say, "huh, don't want to write anymore, can't write anymore...guess I'm not a writer now," then I would move on and become somebody who makes sculptures out of dryer lint, or plays the kazoo really well.  If that was the case, I could just abandon the writer part of me as something that was good while it lasted.  But the thing is, I can't say that.  I can't say I don't want to write anymore because I do.  Desperately.  So.Very.Heartbreakingly.Desperately.  It's impossible to explain.  (Or rather, I could probably explain it if I could write, but I can't).

The typical ways of getting through writers block...all those great ideas tossed out there by well meaning published authors...are just pissing me off.  "Just write," they all say.  "Just put the pen on the paper and write.  It doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't have to be perfect, don't write for an audience, don't worry about spelling or grammar or punctuation.  Just get the words on the page."  That's great.  Seriously.  I'm really glad they made some money off of that advice.  But seriously?  If I could write, I'd be fucking doing it.  If I could get words...any words...on the paper, they would be on the paper.  When I say I can't write, I mean that I can't.  I just can't.  Not without panic levels of anxiety, or feeling nauseous, or physically shaking.  I'm not even trying to write about something serious...hell, I would write about Winnie-The-Pooh if I could keep the pen on the paper.  But I can't.  The only thing I have found that works to get rid of the panic, and the nausea, and the shaking, is to stop trying to write.  Typically, I make myself write one sentence (so I don't completely reinforce my avoidance), and then I go do something that doesn't attempt to drown me in a substance I can't even identify.

So I need help.  Please.  Am I the only one who has ever felt this way?  Or was there a time when you couldn't write?  Or play music?  Or sing or dance or move or make sculptures out of dryer lint, even though you wanted to?  What did you do?  What helped?  What didn't help?  Is it worth the struggle through hell to get back to that place of creating again? 

Was there a magic book or website or writing prompt or star you wished on that changed things for you?  Did you set up an altar to some Norwegian Writing Goddess that I haven't heard of or prayed to sufficiently?  Any words of wisdom out there?  Any words of understanding?  HELP ME!

Don't tell me to just write.  If you do, I swear to everything that is holy, I WILL lose my mind.  And it won't be pretty.

Touch Me

Touch me
to prove that I'm not broken.
The fault lines across my thighs
shiver as the cracks in my soul give way
and crackle like an ancient statue life has forgotten.
It's clear that History has been unkind:
she left me only empty eyes, a gazeless stare
a bust without arms to touch the world.
Chipped paint, used,
and broken--almost.
This remnant is intriguing or perhaps
has the air of something that was beautiful (once)
or has that potential somewhere in its core
if only the light is right and
the kindling beneath your faith is lit.

As for Time, well, she does nothing to speed the healing.
Everything you heard of her
is lies: even she
was not meant to be trusted.
Two years or two thousand
History has a way of breaking into my flesh via nighttime,
the smell of a damp new springtime
when everything but me
is born anew.

Undaunted, though ignored as she has been,
Time marches steadily forward
leaving my Now ever in the past
like an earthquake, on this night,
she shakes me from the ground up
leaves me breathless, again,
and broken,
but not destroyed.
She is fickle, after all, even in devastation, so
she leaves the pieces and I
survey the wreckage around me
search for new ways of picking up the pieces.
I reach for them with limbless arms and soulful,
empty eyes that beg you to
touch me
and prove that I'm not broken.

Why I don't want to give my dog a haircut...

"Are you scared of dogs, or do you want to say hello?" I asked the little boy on the sidewalk.  He was frozen, turning his head to see me and Marshall out of his right eye.  He didn't answer, but continued to struggle in an attempt to see me and the dog.  He looked up at my face, which was clearly not in focus for him, and then down at the dog, his head turning back and forth, making the distance between us look much greater than it was.  I looked to his mother sitting on the porch, still unable to read Little Guy's body language.  "Is he scared of dogs?" I asked.

"Oh no," she said, "he's great with dogs.  We just taught him to stand still and never run around new dogs."

I turned back to Little Guy, still frozen in his tracks and knelt down to his level.  "You did just what mom taught you to do, didn't you?"  He nodded and his thick glasses slid down his nose.  "Good for you, you must be a really good learner."  He nodded again and his glasses slid down further.  He reached up awkwardly and smashed them to his face with a flat hand, leaving dirty streak marks across the already smudged lenses.  I looked from his Thomas the Train shoes, to his Thomas and Friends shirt, to the blue eye patch with train tracks covering his left eye.  "Hey, I love Thomas," I said.  "It looks like you like Thomas, too."

"Mmmhmmm," he said.  "And Percy." 

"Oh definitely Percy.  What about Gordon?"

"Yeah!" he said, excitedly.  "And James!"

"How could we forget about James!" I asked.  Marshall tugged at his leash, desperately wanting to kiss Little Guy all over his smudged glasses.  "Hey, do you want to say hi to Marshall?" I asked.  "He's very friendly."  Little Guy nodded and walked closer.  I made Marshall sit and put my hand on his back so he would remember not to jump up on Little Guy.  Little Guy turned his head and looked at Marshall before extending a flat palm for him to sniff, just as his mother had taught him.  Marshall licked his grimy fingers and Little Guy closed his eye and giggled.  "He gives lots of kisses," I said.

Little Guy took another step closer and patted Marshall's head.  Marshall attempted to lick his knees and Little Guy stepped to the side of him.  He closed his eye again and buried his fingers in Marshall's fur.  "He has long hair, doesn't he?" I asked.  Little Guy nodded and then dropped to his knees, rubbing his hands and arms up and down Marshall's sides and back.  "He REALLY needs a hair cut!"  I stated.

"Why?" asked Little Guy. 

"He is going to be too hot in this warm weather!" I said.  "Plus, his hair is getting too long and tangly."

Little Guy closed his eye again and wrapped his arms around Marshall, putting his cheek against his back.  "Don't cut it," he murmured.  "It makes him soft.  And cuddly.  It feels good and cuddly."  I was quiet for a moment and let Little Guy sit and hug my good and cuddly dog.  I know what the good and cuddly warmth can do, and Little Guy clearly didn't need my words or attention.

I hope Little Guy had a dog inside his house, and, I hope, his dog is soft and in need of a haircut. 

Have you seen her?

Missing: one writer.

I'm pretty sure my internal writer has gone missing.  Died, perhaps.  My muse is still around doing the wanting and infusing me with the desire to write.  She'll inspire me sometimes; throw me a little prompt, a little elbow to the ribs, make me trip over an awesome string of words that ignites the desire in me before swiftly burning out.  Before I can even get to the pen, before I can put fingers to the keyboard, the words are gone and all that's left is a black hole of unfulfilled potential.  It creates a hole in my world that can never be filled as the words that could have created hope, or wholeness, or even pain or uncertainty, vanish into nothingness as a piece of me that Could Have Been Something becomes Nothing At All.  It hurts in a place in my soul that I can't describe.   It's like an aching for something that never happened, like when you wake from a fantastic dream and realize that none of it was true and your world is still the same old world you fell asleep in. 

Perhaps this is what made my writer run off in the first place: she realized that there was so much potential in what could have been that now can never be.  In spite of myself, it feels there is so much that Could Have Been that  will never have the chance to be realized As It Was.  Maybe my writer went off in search of it.  She's been gone a long time.  I guess As It Was is a pretty elusive creature.

March is a bad month for me.  I am hard-pressed to think of anything good that has ever happened in March in the 26 years I have been alive.  And particularly this week, I find myself thinking about the fact that I will never know how things could have been.  I will never know the way I could have been now, if things hadn't happened the way they did.  Yes, there is some anger there.  And resentment.  And hurt.  If I'm honest, it's pretty raw, and I don't know if it's the month or the events of the past several weeks, but it's a pretty rough looking wound that's having a hard time healing.  The fact that my writer has "r-u-n-n-o-f-t" only makes it more difficult: it's not easy doing all this work in my head and my heart without my words. 

To be clear, it's not What If or If Only that are haunting me right now.  I've done rounds with them, too, believe me, and ultimately, I beat What If in the final round.  As of today, If Only and I are tied.  If Only is looking a little weak these days.  I'm pretty sure I can take her next time. 

So no, it's not What If or If Only, but Could Have Been and As It Was.  It's been so long (both so long, and so little time at all), that I know for a fact Could Have Been and As It Was are both hopeless fantasies.  In fact, it's been so long that I don't even know As It Was anymore.  She is just an illusion I hold onto in the hope of making some semblance of a change to become who I think I could have been.  She is also a fantasy, and one I need to let go of at that: who I think I could have been is probably different from who I would have been, and is definitely different from who I have become. 

As for Who I Am...I'm sure she is in there somewhere, underneath the What Ifs and If Onlys and Could Have Beens and Would Have Beens.  Ultimately, I know, that she is the only important one, and that she is the most constant, the most stable, the most secure.  It just doesn't feel safe to let her out yet--she's been hurt before, you know?

Lately, too, I've been running across those quotes about how things happen as they should, and the universe is unfolding in the way it is supposed to, and how the events of our lives lead us to where we ought to be.  I saw another quote about how the most beneficial events in our lives are the ones that were also the most difficult and painful.  In this writerless state in which I am forced to exist, this sort of global perspective and acceptance is lost on me.  If things are happening as they should, it's because I'm making it so, not because any sort of force put the right obstacles in my way.  If I am overcoming and moving forward, it is not because I am seeing the pain as beneficial or as what I needed to become who I am, but because I am overcoming and moving forward and I have the blisters and scrapes and sore muscles and bruises to prove it. 

Regardless, my writer is missing.  Have you seen her?  This disembodied piece of me is longing for a place to land, I'm sure, and the writer-shaped hole in my body is a black hole where wordless emotions and unprocessed stories are going to die.  If you see her, look into her green eyes and tell her As It Was is gone.  Let her cry on your shoulder - she needs that, even though she'll deny it.  She likes dark chocolate and wine.  Fuzzy blankets calm her and make her feel safe.  Let her cover her head with it and pretend that she's not crying as she won't want you to know.  Make her shower and shave her legs and put conditioner in her hair so it doesn't get too unruly.  Let her dress in big cozy sweatpants.  She prefers unlined paper and black, smooth pens.  Sit with her, if you will, until the words come.  Pour her another glass of wine, and sit again until the tears fall and anger shakes her through.  Let her be quiet.  Trust the moments of not-writing, as long as she stays at the page.  And then, when she is writing again, send her home to me.  I need her to help me turn As It Is into As I Will Make it Be.  There is much work to be done, and I can't do it alone.

Consequential Truths

I need to get into writing regularly.  So many times, I have something happen, or I think of something, or I pass something that makes me think, "OH!  Oh, THAT.  THAT is something I could write about.  That is a poem, or a story, or an essay or a blog post or a word waiting for me to write it."

And then I get to the end of the day and I think, "hey, I should write."  So I sit down with my computer, or my journal, or my pad of paper, and I wait.  "There was that one thing I saw that I thought I could write about, but...that's just too self-absorbed.  Nobody wants to read about that.  Nobody cares if that happened.  That's not exciting.  It's one of those 'you had to have been there for it to make sense' things."  This, my friends, is the way nothing gets written.

If I was writing regularly, I think I would be able to bypass those thoughts.  I would be able to skip the self-doubt, the thoughts of it not being worth it, the tendency to forget, the ability to throw away thoughts like they are just somebody else's trash blown into my yard.  It's easier falling into this pattern of not writing.  It's easier to dismiss those thoughts as unworthy of finding their way to the light than it is to actually put them on paper. 

But those thoughts hang around, whether I want them to or not.  Then, I'm stuck with the dilemma of wanting to write about so many things, I can't pick just one, and I can't organize my thoughts because there are so damn many of them and so many things that just aren't worth writing about, I can't pick one.  Writing regularly, or even semi-regularly, would take care of that, I think.  It would unclutter the list of "things to write about" in my mind, perhaps making it shorter, perhaps just organizing it a bit. 

I've read many books on writing, and they all say essentially the same thing: just write.  Pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, however you do it, just do it.  It's that easy, and also that difficult.  The bigger problem, I think, is that writing for me is therapeutic.  I use it to understand my internal and external world, and I use it to explain my internal world to the outside world that seems to so rarely understand.  I don't want to write about the big issues affecting the world; I have nothing to add to these discussions.  I don't want to write fluff.  I want to write about how I noticed the sun setting on the way home from work for the first time in months.  I want to write about the joy I get from loving the kids I work with, and I want to write about the pain of never being good enough.  I want to write my truth, however inconsequential, and I want it to mean something when I put the words to the paper.  I want me, my story, my work, my heart to mean something. 

*****

There's this girl I've been working with intensively for the past several weeks.  She is aggressive.  She is unpredictable.  She has the strangest conglomeration of behaviors you can imagine.  She screams and laughs hysterically for no reason we can name.  She throws herself against walls, chairs, people, doors, and the floor.  She barks at mirrors, at light fixtures, and at door hinges.  She says the same thing over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.  This girl broke my glasses, pulled chunks of hair from my scalp, left me with bruises on my arms and legs, and she exhausted me, day after day.

She called me "babygirl," and as we walked and walked and walked, and worked and worked and worked, she would periodically ask, "are you my babygirl?  Are you my best babygirl?"  I have never seen a child so loving towards others - we would pass children in the hallway and she would exclaim, "look at her!  Isn't she so beautiful?  She has blonde hair and pink shoes, and she's the most beautiful babygirl I've ever seen.  Wasn't she a beautiful babygirl?"

On the last day of her admission, her mother took me aside, crying.  "Thank you," she said.  "We don't want to go.  We want you to keep working with our daughter."

I took the mother's hand.  "I have loved working with your family, " I said, looking into her eyes.

"No," she said, "you don't understand.  For 12 years, people have treated us, have treated her, like she is crazy.  Thank you for not treating my daughter like she is crazy.  Thank you for liking her.  Thank you for getting her, for getting us, for taking the time to see her."  She hugged me, crying on my shoulder, in the middle of the hallway with the nurses and doctors and therapists and administrators walking by. 

"Thank you, " she said again, "thank you for liking my daughter."

*****

Why did this story need to be written here?  Why now?  There is metaphor here, although I am having a hard time connecting the dots in my head.  Rather, the dots are connected, but the words are not coming as easily as I would like. 

In spite of the fact that I have always been a writer, I have also always believed that my words and my work are unimportant.  My thoughts, my words, my heart, are easily cast aside as unimportant.  Lately, I find myself believing there must be something wrong.  There must be something broken internally.  Something fundamental to my existence as a normal, social, living breathing loving human being must be broken.  Crazy.  My truth is that I feel unworthy of being anyone's "babygirl," most of all my own.  It's an unwillingness to take the time to be gentle, to tell myself I'm not crazy in this crazy-making world.  This does not mean anything in the larger scheme of the world, but this inconsequential truth makes it easier and easier to dismiss my words and thoughts, and makes it so much harder to write anything I can deem "worthy" of page space.

What I want from my writing is for me to take the time to see me as unbroken, and that, perhaps, is the hardest thing to do.  I want my writing to tell my truth in a way that touches the hearts of others and makes them feel seen and unbroken.  I want to tell truth in such a way that others can feel as though their truth might also be worth some space on the page, worth the spoken words, the artistic rendering, the place in their heart.  I want my writing to form a place for even just one person to believe that, maybe, their truth is as I see it: whole and consequential.