Spliced

     This is two old blog posts that I spliced together for an assignment for my Creative Non Fiction Writing class.  It was harder than I thought it would be.  Plus, I lost interest.  Earlier in the semester when I started this piece, these topics were still up for me.  Meaning, I was still struggling and working though these issues.  Last week when I was working on it for a final rewrite, I found that I had moved on.  I love history and what it can teach me.  But then let's move on, shall we?  Maybe that's why I like to blog so much, it's immediate, authentic and raw.  Otherwise, what's the point?

     So, hot off the press - my last semester's angst.

Madeleine Albright’s 4:03 AM Visit

     I’m still laughing about a Gilmore Girls' episode I watched recently.  It depicts the night Rory dreams her mother is Madeleine Albright.  In this scene, Ms. Albright plays herself!  Rory and her mother Lorelei have this freakishly close, girlfriend-like relationship.  I try not to think the word enmeshment, and just enjoy it because for the story line, it works.  Plus, Rory gets her chance to individuate in the end, so what's not to love.


     Ah, but I digress.  Back to Madeleine.  Every year at the exact time of Rory's birth (4:03 AM), Lorelei wakes her up by coming into her room, laying in bed with her, and telling her the story of her birth.  In hysterical and blatant terms, she says things like, "My ankles were huge…It was like doing the splits over a crate of dynamite...I was swearing like a sailor - on leave."  But this time, it is the first women Secretary of State of the United States of America who is running the lines.  Priceless.  


     Have I mentioned my recent obsession with Gilmore Girls?  I heard on NPR a couple of months ago that Netflix may be bringing it back with new episodes.  I think the original show is about 15 years old and at the time I probably only saw the first season or two.  There are seven, so I'm enjoying what is for me, a fresh new story.  The writer Amy Sherman-Palladino said that if they do the show again, it would be done right (good writing, good story line, same actors, etc).  I decided that if they are going to do it again, I wanted to see the old stuff first.  It’s the absolute perfect balance of effortless entertainment and intellectual, rapid-fire dialogue, with jam packed witty, obscure pop culture references.  Hold on to your hat, cuz it's a zany ride.  And it came into my life at a much needed time.  

     I had a mini melt down this semester.  I’m in school again after many years, and for the first time since starting this odyssey, I wanted to throw in the proverbial student-towel.  I was ready to call it quits.  How do you stop being a student....in mid semester no less?  I'm sure there is a lengthy process for that.  Damn, it had taken me all that time and hard labor to figure out the process of becoming a student.  The prospect of figuring out how to stop being a student, seemed just as exhausting.  It didn’t help that I was functioning (or not functioning as the case may be) on sleep deprivation and anxiety - produced by the double whammy of extra work shifts, and more homework than usual.

     This quick and unplanned decision to leave school, suddenly solidified during an uncontrollable cry in a bathroom stall somewhere in the math building.  I tried to be quiet about it.  I really did.  But you know how these things go, you're heaving and sobbing and sounds unavoidably escape.  But the women who were coming and going from the bathroom, didn’t seem to mind.  Thankfully they didn't call the campus police, or a school nurse – medical or psych.  Point being, they mercifully just let me blubber on.  (Maybe it's a common occurrence for people to be crying in the math building.  It wouldn't surprise me.  I feel their pain.)


   It had become clear to me that I just couldn't keep up this pace.  I jumped into school a year ago with my usual "get it done" determination, a motto which has taken me far in life.  (Oh, the long list of accomplishments I could show you!)  But the truth is, I have come to believe that the price is too high.  And I have paid dearly for my "go to" attitude over the years with illnesses and burnout of several professions.  The older I get, the more I ask, "Why?"  Actually, I know why.  I've had a life time of pushing faster and faster on the hamster wheel.  The faster I go, the less I have to feel.

     Life has been hard, and with that comes painful emotions.  Who wants to feel that?  One of my emotion-numbing behaviors of choice has been to embrace the Type A Personality of “go go go - do do do”.  Yea, I was a champ.   Recently, as I mapped out my curriculum until graduation, I realized I would be in school another two and a half more years.  My original plan was to just bulldoze through it.  I can make it happen!  But after my wake up call in the bathroom stall, I remembered that that's not the way I want my life to look.  Other than school and work this year, I haven't done a whole lot.  No time.  No money.  I can't even tell you the last time I went to a movie or had lunch with a friend.  As I saw this path stretching out before me for the next two plus years, I felt a serge of depression.  

     The upside of this story is that I am learning, and healing.  Good therapy, good healers, good support - all have made a positive difference in my life.  I can now spot my old patterns faster, and with that clarity I don’t buy into them as much.  I know that pushing ahead at a breakneck speed, will not bring me the balance in life that I seek.  Far from it.  And so I am backing off and slowing down.  It may take me longer to graduate, but a diploma is not my only goal here.  I also want to feel my emotions and experience all that life has to offer, in a balanced way. 


     So I flipped on Netflix for practically the first time in a year, and there they were.  The Gilmore Girls.  We are getting reacquainted, they and I.  They are reminding me how to slow down and have a laugh, or cry, over good entertainment.  It’s OK for me to go there, to allow myself to let go and have some fun.  Of course, when I slow my hamster wheel down, the emotions will come.  That’s what happens when we pull back from our addictive behaviors.  But I’m ready.  I know what some of those issues are and they scare me.  But I’m ready.