Month: January 2014

An Honest Legacy

Leave a comment

Shakespeare said that “no legacy is so rich as honesty”. There is probably no legacy as costly either, however. To be honest is be vulnerable, to show them your belly and risk being struck.

Today, I was boldly honest with a friend of mine and it struck me how rare that instance is: me being completely honest. I often tend to keep back how I feel deep in my core in favor of homeostasis, or, rather, lack of confrontation and discord. It has kind of always been that way. I keep certain things, deeply heartfelt things, to myself out of fear of others’ disapproval or disappointment. I’m trying to be more honest, to step out in trust more often, and what I realized today (again) was how…freeing it can be to be honest and have someone utterly refute your fears. They do so by not only listening to you and not turning away in disgust or disappointment, but by also being supportive and encouraging. That never fails to take me by surprise. Tearfully so, most of the time.

I’m very thankful for my friends and their support and encouragement. It means a lot and strikes my heart each and every time you prove such amazing mettle as a friend. Thank you, from the bottom of my little heart. Thank you.

An Unfair Comparison

Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This blog post is not aimed at anyone, nor is it an exercise in shaming persons – man or woman, great or small, or what have you. It is simply a post born of a thought and worked through into a premise as I work through my own issues with self-esteem and comparison. You are under no obligation to read it.

= = = = =

Dear You,

Now, I know that you have read the letters and blog posts that tell you not to compare yourself to others, to not look at their bodies and think yourself fat or unfit or unattractive or what have you. They tell you to remember your power, that you are great/beautiful/handsome/wonderful just the way you are, man or woman. You shouldn’t compare yourself to anyone else; you are individual, you are unique, you are special. Comparing yourself to someone else is unfair to you. And I agree.

But what about me? Yes, me. That one, whether nebulous or specific, that you’re comparing yourself to.  It’s unfair to me, too, you know.  Just as it’s unfair to you when people compare themselves to you. When you compare yourself to me, you not only undo your individuality, you undo mine, too. Such a comparison, at its heart, presumes against the individuality of both the comparer and the compared. It assumes that you and I, or you and someone else, are the same in all things. When you compare yourself to me and wonder why you don’t look this way or do this or have that, you aren’t allowing for one very fundamental detail:

We are not the same person.

Between you and me, there is a plethora of differences – differences in body type, health, family history, maybe ethnicity, life developments and changes, jobs, particular emotional stressors, children or no children, and on and on. So it’s not only unfair to you when you compare yourself and hinge your self-esteem on someone else, but also to the person to whom you are comparing yourself. We are all in this together, but we are all fundamentally different people and far too individual and unique to be comparing ourselves to each other. I am not like you and you are like no one else. So let’s be fair to ourselves but also to others and let them be the special, unique, wonderful people that they are, too.

Thanks, Me

Picking Apart the ‘Literary Princess’

Leave a comment

On the way home from lunch, I sang Disney songs to my daughter as I drove. When “Belle” from Beauty & the Beast came on, I found myself pondering the lyrics of the song, which I had never really considered before. Not really. Belle puts down her life in this “poor, provincial town”, which I consider quite unfair now.

I would dare say that she is not only dreaming of “something more” but she does so because she is bored. How can one possibly be bored in her day and time? But then I realized something. Not once throughout the film does Belle show any particular skill, aside from attracting birds like Snow White and reading. She doesn’t cook, she doesn’t clean, though might assume she does so for her father. However, we see no evidence of it. For all we know, it’s Maurice who does the cooking and cleaning, as well as the inventing, in their house. (And just how do they make the money they need to survive if her father cannot sell his inventions?) She bemoans her provincial life, though almost all I see throughout her trip through the village are folks who work hard at whatever it is they do: the baker, the farmers and vendors at market, the barber, the milliner, the bookseller. What does Belle do? Wander the village and purportedly read all day, if she finishes books as quickly as she claims. By the way, being able to read in and of itself in this time period, THAT took time and tutelage and position. And yet she cries out, “There must be more than this provincial life!” However, the fact of the matter is that she seems to have it easiest of anyone in town aside from, forgive me, Gaston.

Belle was always my favorite ‘princess’ growing up because she loved to read so much. In my mind, I had never seen a heroine so like me. But now that I think about it in-depth, her character is a sort of social double-standard. I do envy Belle her version of a “provincial life”. I should dearly love to be able to sit around and read all day long and then run into the village and trade out books from the book store that I never had to pay for. I will admit that I have always romanticized the idyllic life, though I know that my imaginings of it are more like Marie Anoinette’s little manor, the Petit Trianon, or as sweet and simple as Buttercup’s farm in The Princess Bride or even the Shire. And Belle’s little village life that she so despises and wishes to get away from is nothing if not idyllic.

So let’s think about this. Belle goes from a discontent lower-middle-class (though a head above just about everyone else around her) village girl who wails that she wants “adventure in the great wide somewhere”, to a settled, pampered princess in a castle that, no doubt, now survives and thrives on the taxes of the surrounding villages, including the one where she lived. They do have a HUMAN staff to feed, clothe, and pay wages to now, after all, don’t they? But, in all of this, I should have liked to see her boil a kettle for her own cup of tea just once. A woman who can take care of herself; now that’s inspiring.

Art Made Nightmare

2 Comments

Disclaimer/spoiler alert: If you watch “Downton Abbey” and have not yet seen the 1/27/13 episode from Season 3, you may want to skip this blog post.

.

.

.

.

.

.

I adore “Downton Abbey”! It has been a very long while since I’ve been that enthralled with a television drama. We started watching it two years ago this month and, for Valentine’s Day in 2011, my husband bought me seasons 1 and 2 for my gift, and then season 3 for Christmas this year. So wonderful!

However, there is one episode that I do not allow myself to watch, not again – Season 3, episode 4. Sybil, the youngest of the Crawley girls, arrives home with her husband Tom Branson (the former chauffeur) close to giving birth. In her early labor pains, Sybil starts to exhibit signs of pre-eclampsia (swollen ankles, muddled mental state), which are ignored by the stately Harley Street doctor that Lord Grantham prefers over the local Dr. Clarkson. Dr. Clarkson insists in taking measures to protect Sybil from going into full eclampsia but is shouted down. Sybil gives birth to her baby, a girl, but, late in the night, she begins to have headaches and seizures. It is eclampsia and there is nothing to be done. The family stands by helplessly as Sybil slips away, her husband sobbing over her, her newborn girl now motherless.

As brilliantly as the episode was acted, it was too close to the center of fears that plagued my heart and mind during my pregnancy.  Granted, I watched it after Elizabeth was born but it made no difference. I still sobbed and ached and hid my face in Ben’s shoulder. My mother had two pregnancies before she became pregnant with me, and suffered from pre-eclampsia with her first and full-blown eclampsia with her second. She lost both babies, the first (my brother) was stillborn and then Mom had seizures with the second (my sister), the baby born early and passed away from respiratory distress three days later. So, when I was diagnosed as pre-eclamptic, I was terrified. I feared so much something happening to me and leaving Ben and Elizabeth without me or, ever more the worse, something happening to us both and my beloved husband being left all alone. They did weekly blood and urine tests, non-stress tests to monitor Elizabeth twice a week, put me on blood pressure medication, and when my swelling did not decrease, nor did my protein levels, I was put on bed rest a full three weeks early (I was teaching at the time and Elizabeth was originally due to arrive a week after the fall semester ended). I was scheduled to be induced 9 days before Elizabeth’s original due date and, when I went in for it, they put me on magnesium to keep me from going into seizures, pitocin to induce labor, and saline to keep me hydrated. Still, I was afraid. I do not remember much of the day but, when it was announced that a cesarean was going to be necessary to keep Elizabeth’s heart-rate from dropping, I began shaking and didn’t stop until the operation was over.

This episode embodied everything I feared. Art become nightmare indeed. Perhaps, some day, I will find the fortitude with which to watch it again but, until then, the fear is still too fresh, my heart still too tender from it. Again, it was perfectly executed and intensely acted. Just a little too much for me.

Unique as a Snowflake

Leave a comment

DSC_0278

This was my window today

We have all heard that phrase: “unique as a snowflake”, though my favorite version of this aphorism is Fight Club’s admonition that “you are not a unique, beautiful snowflake”. And it’s true. We aren’t snowflakes and to equivocate our personal individuality to a weather phenomenon whose own “uniqueness” is relatively short-lived is unfair, I think. We as human beings are of a far greater complexity than snow, rending it simple by comparison. We are made up of unseen variables that cannot be counted, measured, or quantified. We don’t simply disappear when we are joined with other people; even though we mix, we are still individuals.  We do not blend so that no one can tell where one person ends and another begins.

People are not snowflakes, however pretty and momentarily-unique the latter might be. People are so much more than that. There will always be more to a person than you know, more than I believe we can fully fathom. Their individuality does not melt away, no matter how heated the situation, nor does it freeze into stagnation, no matter how icy the world outside is.

The Two Sides of Me

Leave a comment

I am a woman of two elements: fire and water. Fire burns with passion and intent, fierce and engulfing. It can destroy but also smelt and refine. Water flows, finding new ways around when one is blocked, nourishing and refreshing where it goes.

And that’s where my brain kind of stops. Well, the eloquent side of it anyway. I wanted to talk about the two sides of me: the emotional and the rational. It’s been foremost on my mind lately, as they have been foremost in what I have been dealing with in the new year, but the truth is: I got nothin’. I have no idea how to voice what’s in my head. How to talk about the rational decisions and the emotions that follow. Less and less easy a task the more I think about it. I thought I had it, I did. I thought I could just let the words fan out from my brain in a semblance of order that makes even a modicum of sense or contains value. But, yeah…

I got nothin’ this time around.