Living with a chemist isn’t always easy. We go through more bleach than your average household. He thinks the swimming pool is a big lab for experimenting. When I wanted to use a pressure washer on the concrete in our new screened porch, he said that was crazy talk…we should use hydrochloric acid instead. Much safer.
But he’s funny, that G. He found this easy-to-understand infographic about the way our weights would differ on other planets:
My clever friend, Libby, coined a new word this week: Cathargic. She was going for “cathartic” but her mouth took a sidetrack and wound up in an even more perfect expression.
If we combine:
ca·thar·sis (kəˈTHärsis/) noun the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions
and
le·thar·gic (ləˈTHärjik/) adjective affected by lethargy; sluggish and apathetic
we get
CATHARGIC (kəˈTHärjik/) adjective affected by that feeling you get on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend when you are really glad that the stress of the work week has reached an end but you are too worn out to celebrate
You feel me?
The Cathargic Spaniel
I feel silly writing about challenges this week when I have a childhood friend who just had a brain tumor removed. A woman at work lost everything in a fire a few days ago. My college roommate is sorting through her father’s house and decided what to keep, what to donate, what to sell. My friend’s husband is trying to find a job. There are people all around me with urgent and emergent challenges.
I have annoyances. Inconveniences. Overscheduling dilemmas. Middle class problems. Chronic versus acute.
But that brings me to a challenge that saps some of my energy every day, no matter the day. I know my life would be better if I could find a way to step away from it. My challenge is comparing myself to others.
You’ve read this far and I still haven’t explained the Triple Nipple title. That’s called burying the lede, kids.
In my racing mind, every person I encounter is doing something better than I am. If you are a stay at home mom, I’m not spending enough time with my kids. If you are a career dynamo, I am a schlub compared to you because I want to protect my family time. If you run, that makes me regret that I used to run. If you dress well, I am reminded that I don’t put much effort into my clothes. If you remember to use your crockpot, you are so much more organized than I am. If your daughter always has a hair bow to match her dress and her shirts never have spots on them, I am a lazy slattern who can’t dress her children. If you drive too slowly, I am a speed demon. If you drive too fast, I am clearly in the way. If you drink coffee, I am foolish for drinking Diet Coke.
Now don’t think you need to scroll down there to the comments and tell me how stupid and unhealthy this is. I pay a professional to do that. And sometimes I apologize to my therapist for taking up her time when there are people out there with real problems. Depending on the day, she might say, “Yeah, and this crazy shit makes you one of them.”
Somewhere along the way I decided that everyone else was really acing this whole grown up life thing and I am the only one fumbling around. I compare my blooper reel to their highlights tape. My inside to their outside. These comparisons are the source of my anxiety because I am constantly judging and measuring and assuming that I am being judged and measured. And coming up short.
But I do try to remind myself of the old adage that says if we all stood in a circle and showed our problems, we would snatch back our own as quick as a wink.
One day I was sitting at lunch with some of my delightfully brilliant girlfriends when a woman walked by. Libby said how pretty her dress was, so we all looked over and it was. I recognized the woman from my kids’ school and said, “Y’all…I don’t know how she does it. Her kids are adorable and she and her husband actually enjoy talking to each other and at the Easter egg hunt they all have on coordinating seersucker outfits and she brings homemade decorated sugar cookies to the potluck and she just had a baby about four months ago and her hair is so shiny and she finds time to work out and has a full-time job but her kid is never the last one picked up from daycare…”
And that’s when Nicole looked up from her salad and shrugged.
“She’s probably got a third nipple.”
Well, that’s an excellent point.
We all have something we don’t show to everybody, something that makes us feel weird or not normal. Now when I find myself comparing and judging, I dwell on that possible third nipple instead.
Guess what? One in 18 men has a “supernumerary nipple” and 1 in 50 women does too! Even the triple nipple isn’t as uncommon as we think.
I love this cartoon. I’m getting there–to the place of AWESOME and ALSO AWESOME–but it’s a challenge.
For those of you who don’t watch Disney Jr. on a regular basis, you might have missed “Big Block SingSong” and that makes me really sad for you! These short films with original songs are charming and joyful, with great lessons built in for tiny viewers. They are created by Warren Brown and Adam Goddard, a Canadian pair who have worked together for 10 years. One does the animation; one does the music. If you want something fun to share with your little ones, check them out on their Facebook page. Thirty of these little songs can be found on the Disney Jr website.
My favorite is “I’m the Princess!” In a rocking 2:00 minute song, she pegs the wonderful melange of the modern-day princess girl. Click on her picture to hear her story…
Brett didn’t send me a picture, but she said I could use a picture of Megan Fox instead. (Full disclosure: I added the hair.)
Today, I am hosting a very special episode of “Other Bad Mothers.” Please welcome my sister, Brett, who is celebrating two things today: the day she was born and the day she came back to life– her third year of sobriety! She spent 15 years locked away in an addiction to pain killers. We can all learn something from her journey down to the bottom and back up to the peak. So take it away, Birthday Girl…
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I lay on the cold concrete floor. No mattress. No blanket. No pillow. Just me and the concrete. Lights had been on 24 hrs a day for a couple days now. My teeth felt like they were covered in fur. My room stunk and my only companion was a stark, white toilet. The door would unlock and open just long enough for someone to push a cold meal into the room with a foot. I was a dog in a cage.
This, my friends, is jail. And not just any ordinary jail…it was the very jail where I had been a Police Officer. I was the one that had held the key to those doors. Now, I was the disgraced ex-cop, drug-addicted, repeat offender that many of the officers peeked in to stare at. I overheard a lot of remarks as I sat silently in my cell. But one of those comments devastated me and still resides in me somewhere.
A Deputy peeked in and said to another Deputy “Well, what do you think about her?”
He looked up at me through the glass and said “I think she’s disgusting.”
My first thought was “Well, duh! I don’t have make-up on. Just wait until you see me fixed up.” But I was wrong. I was a disgusting 42 year old wife and mother of three wonderful boys who had a prescription drug problem that had landed me in trouble on more than this occasion. I had a disgusting problem that no amount of Mary Kay was going to cover.
So, as I lay on that cold floor I began to wonder how things ever would change for me. Why had I gotten so off track and how on earth would I ever make necessary changes? I went through the stages of grief: anger, humiliation, feeling sorry for myself, self-loathing, and every other deprecating emotion I could conjure up. I tried to pray. I had no idea how to pray and felt like I was reaching out to a person I had never met. How do you ask a stranger for help? I had only asked God for things that had brought on this demise, so how NOW do I have the right to ask for ANYTHING?
But I did it anyway. I chose to ask for Acceptance. Acceptance of this situation, right here, right now. I was completely out of control. No amount of arguing, manipulation, batting eye-lashes, begging or pleading would unlock that door. It was in those hours, in those days that my mind began to change. I finally could wrap my ahead around the amount of damage and destruction that I had brought into my life and the lives of those around me. I was from a middle class family, private school, college, flight school, commercial pilot, police officer/crime scene investigator. Opportunity after opportunity—I slowly destroyed them all.
And I was disgusting.
This was it. This was as far as I was willing to go for the love of a Pain Pill. I was no longer getting out of it what I was putting into it. The product was no longer worth what I was paying for it. Saying MERCY is hard. Giving up. Looking at strangers and saying, “I’m a complete idiot. I have made a complete mess out of my life. Can you please tell me how to put it back together?”
“I don’t know how to go to bed without using drugs. How do I work without it? Or do dishes, or vacuum? I can’t get up in the morning without it. I can’t possibly go on vacation. GOD knows I can’t get through a family function. I am surrounded by extremely accomplished people and I am a liar and a thief.”
Luckily I found a place (oops, I mean a Judge found a place) that I could go and relearn all of the things I should have already known. And I could do it with 48 other women who were as disgusting as I was. Now, don’t get me wrong. I did NOT go skipping down to rehab singing “Zippadee Doo Dah.” Not. At. All.
I arrived on my 42nd birthday. Madder than Hell.
I didn’t sleep for 14 days. Because of the anxiety, I had to bite the skin on the back of my hand so hard that I thought it would leave scars. The pain in my hand was the only thing that relieved me. I had to sneak into the showers in the middle of the night (huge rule-breaker, but hey…that’s how I got there) and stand under hot water until my muscles would relax. I threw up, I stomped around mad, I cursed, had panic attacks and missed my children so badly my heart actually hurt. I hated myself and every minute of my situation. Three months passed before I cracked a smile—and eased up on myself just a little. And then a little more.
And then I met some wonderful girls. Girls just like me who were mothers, sisters, wives, daughters. I realized the stories we could share, because WE understood each other. WE could relate. WE could rely on the strength of each other to unburden ourselves of the grief and guilt that WE had used to tear our lives apart. When I shared my experiences with others and waited to be judged, it was met with “Oh my GOD.. that’s exactly what I did…”
I emptied every bit of my trash with those women. Nobody judged, because they had been there and hell, even done worse! I had always heard the corny saying “The truth shall set you free.” Well, not in my experience, until now. I happen to prefer Gloria Steinem’s version: “The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Damn straight, it did.
Nothing has been more FREEING than letting my truths out. I was my own prisoner and kept myself in my own prison. It took a long time to slowly creep out of that cage into the real world. It took a lot of people. It took a lot of listening. I was in treatment for 7 months. It took what it took. And that’s what it took for me.
It’s been three years now that I have been drug FREE. Believe it or not, I can get up and go to work drug FREE. I can take my kids to school, drug FREE. I can vacuum and do laundry drug FREE. I can sleep at night and get up in the morning. I am FREE. Free from the self-imposed chains that bound me.
There is no gift in life more valuable to me than my personal and emotional freedom. And I will do anything to protect it.
I would encourage anyone with a drug/alcohol addiction to engage in long-term residential treatment. I returned to my treatment center on my 1st year clean and spoke to a room full of strangers. I told my story with no guilt or shame. Afterwards, someone approached me and asked “Do you really think a leopard can change its spots?” I replied, “Probably not. Good thing I’m not a leopard.”
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And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is how you tell a story! Happy Birthday, Brett. I’m so glad you’re here. I love you and I’m proud of you.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about mistakes and the way I punish myself for making them. And of course it reminds me of a story…
When Richard and I were dating, he lived for a time in Baltimore while I was still in Georgia. We traveled every other weekend to see each other. One weekend, I flew to Baltimore to spend four days with him. On Monday morning, he had a class to teach so the plan was for me to drive him to campus, drop him off, then spend some time exploring the city. I was off-kilter and unfamiliar with everything that morning–his car, getting out of the garage, the neighborhood, the one-way streets around campus. I was dependent on him and having to listen for instructions. Following blindly.
Even more so, I was unfamiliar with the greater situation–being a divorcee who finds herself in love with a man who then moves to another state but wants to stay together. That weekend felt like me trying out his life in Baltimore. Friday night faculty party, Saturday exploring the Inner Harbor, Sunday lunch with his family. The day before, Richard had driven into a lush old neighborhood of wide green streets and tall homes to show me a house he was thinking of buying. A house that was way too big for just him. I can’t remember much about it, other than it was more beautiful than any house I had ever imagined living in. It was across the street from a house with a sunroom filled with yellow, green and blue parakeets and gray cockatiels. I imagined walking my dachshunds past that aviary every day. I remember that. And I remember how he said, “I wanted to know what you thought about it. If you liked it.”
So I was shaky and it was Monday and I had a lot on my mind. We were about a block from his building when he told me to turn left. I waited for the light to change and for a flock of students to cross, then I began to turn.
He blurted, “OldladyOldladyOLDLADY!” and stomped his foot to the floor to pound the imaginary brake. I thought he was having a stroke so I turned full on to face him and ask what the hell he was going on about. As I kept turning. He shouted, “STOP!” and that’s when I saw the old woman making her way across the crosswalk. I slammed on the brakes. She was about halfway across and the light had already changed on her. I was still a good ten yards away, but she gave me the stink eye anyway and finished her trek. Cars were honking at me from all directions.
I was so rattled that I had to pull over. Richard wasn’t saying anything, just blowing a big breath out very slowly. I burst into tears and sank into the steering wheel.
“It’s OK. It’s OK,” he said as I had a snot-slinging fit right there on the side of the road. “I tried to tell you to stop.”
“No! You kept saying ‘old lady old lady old lady!'” If you want me to stop, you say “STOP!” I wailed.
“OK. It’s OK.”
“I can’t believe I made a stupid mistake like that!”
And that’s when he LAUGHED. “You didn’t make a mistake! HITTING HER would have been a mistake. You may not have seen her but you stopped in time. You AVOIDED a mistake. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Still. I couldn’t shake it. That was 11 years ago and I can still see that woman in her tweed coat and it makes my chest tighten up to think how close I came to hurting her. Eleven years, and I’m still stuck in that intersection because I almost made a mistake.
Do you ever do that–carry guilt from things you ALMOST did wrong? That was one of the biggest differences between Richard and me. I was so worried about doing anything wrong or hurting anyone or making a nuisance of myself that I spent most of my energy worrying over what to do and then worrying over what I did. Being grown up is scary. Being in charge of things like a car or a life or my own heart–that was all so overwhelming on that Monday morning. He was more of a “well, let’s make the best choice then see how it works out–no harm, no foul” kind of guy.
Sometimes when I find myself wallowing in “oh, I can’t believe you almost did that,” I say, “Old lady old lady old lady” and move on!
This is an interesting kind of mind game.
While sitting in a chair, lift your right foot and move it in clockwise circles.
While you’re doing this, draw the number 6 in the air with your right hand.
Your foot will change directions and there isn’t anything you can do about it.
Weird, huh???
Let me know if you managed to beat the Six Trick.
Share this post with your friends if you thought it was fun!
Look, I know I’m lucky to live the life I do. I KNOW. Tonight, I had to change channels away from the news before Vivi saw a picture of a child killed by poison gas in Syria. I flipped to local news where she saw coverage of the school hostage situation near Atlanta. Nope. A quick punch of the remote and there’s Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins with his fangs hanging out. I know, I know.
Then my mom guilt kicked in that I wasn’t spending 5pm-7pm doing a craft project from Pinterest with my adorable children while a healthy, balanced, organic, free range, fair trade, non-GMO, locally sourced meal from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook simmered in our solar crockpot. Nope, G was heading to pick up pizza. Non-organic pizza because we had a coupon, dammit. And we ate it off of Sonic the Hedgehog paper plates left over from a birthday party.
Evil Chicken
I know we are lucky to have money for pizza, a roof over our heads, birthday party paper plates, and a TV. Still, today has left me spluttering. I saw a sign once that said, “Raising children is like being pecked to death by chickens.” It’ll kill you, but it takes a good long while.
Top Five Stupid Things That Are Eating At Me:
I know that in a couple of days I’ll be back in the ring and swinging. Today, not so much.
Top Five Things That Kept Me Going Tonight:
“All Shall Be Loved”
All Shall Be Loved.
And I live to fight another day. Back to the trenches!
By Charlesjsharp, via Wikimedia Commons
G cleaned our hummingbird feeder tonight and made fresh nectar for a tiny bird he has named “Buddy.” A few weeks ago, G was out on the deck in the still of the morning when a little hummingbird flitted in and out of petunias in the flower boxes. The two of them spent a peaceful few moments together. G delighted that the hummingbird showed no fear as it came closer and closer to him.
As bluebirds are special to me, hummingbirds are the bird that G shares with his Avo (the Portuguese word for grandfather). When Avo retired to his little house in Carmo de Minas, he made a project of feeding the hummingbirds. But one day, he forgot. That afternoon, he took his walk two blocks over to the town square to sit under the shade trees and rest. While he enjoyed the stillness, a little hummingbird flitted up to him. It hung there, flying circles in the air before Avo’s face. Avo laughed, hauled himself up off the bench and began his slow walk home to fill the feeder. The hummingbird buzzed beside him all the way.
G’s grandmother, Vovo, died a few weeks ago, right around when Buddy showed up on the deck. G and I are both rationalists, but when he told me about the hummingbird that wasn’t afraid of him, I said, “I think it was your grandfather, here to tell you that your grandmother isn’t suffering.” We, the rationalists, let that thought be, let it hold itself up against all logic, just like the hummingbird.
I cannot think of hummingbirds without remembering this tiny jewel of a poem by Raymond Carver:
Hummingbird
For Tess
Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird,”
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box. When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.
—Raymond Carver
When Raymond Carver wrote these lines to his beloved Tess Gallagher, he was dying slowly of an inoperable tumor. He knew there would be a day when she would need to be reminded of how much, just how much, he loved her. So he wrote the word “hummingbird.”
Peace to Avo and Vovo and all those who have flown before us.