Digging It Out Of The Trash

My life has been a whirlwind of insane events over the last two months. Every ounce of me has been uprooted and changed. And I don't like it.

I've been "just dealing" with everything that's been happening, telling myself to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and make it through another day. But I don't want to just barely survive. I want to live.

I have avoided blogging for several reasons. First, I have found that when I am most open and honest, I get a greater response--on both ends of the spectrum. People call me and ask "politely" if I'm okay, or how I'd doing. (By the way, if you do that, that's ALWAYS a sure sign to me that you've been "checking up" on me. *wink*) I don't like those questions. Especially when they're asked every single day. I appreciate the concern, but sometimes it almost feels unauthentic. Not just that, but this is a very difficult time for me, and every day is a challenge. Sometimes I just need support and encouragement, not questions.

The next reason is because sometimes avoiding talking about it keeps me under control of myself. My emotions are terribly out of whack right now, and talking about what's bothering me usually sends me into an awful crying fit. I try very hard to keep myself pulled together so my children won't be alarmed by anything going on.

Third, I've pretty much put a stop to every bit of writing. Period. I tend to do this when I'm going through a rough time. I plug my writing and it comes to a screeching halt. There again, it's the same as above: writing is talking, and talking brings out a lot of emotion at times.

Those last two reasons have had me thinking, though. The last time Robert was deployed to Iraq, I wrote, and I wrote a lot. I wrote about everything and shared every emotion I felt during that time. Sometimes I wonder if that was a good thing or not (I am glad I did it, for posterity).

I don't like to allow myself to become vulnerable to the general public. At the same time, though, I know without a doubt that every time I share something deeply personal, without fail I get a lot of response from others sharing their own similar experiences, or offering to pray for me, or just letting me know that they care and are thinking about me. That means a lot.

I guess you could say when things started getting hectic in my life, I decided to just trash my blogs. Let them go to waste. Have the weeds take over. I figured eventually everyone would forget about me if I just stopped talking. Then I realized that I've always blogged for me. Yes, the attention is gratifying, but that was never what made me start my first blog. I wanted to share. I wanted to live. I wanted to connect.

So while I would love nothing more than to hide, I think I will dig this blog out of the garbage and bring it back to life. That doesn't mean I'll be here every day. I have to take it slowly--one day at a time.

One Step At A Time

When I decided to go back to college last year and finally get a degree, it was a huge leap of faith. Several months into my education, I became incredibly unhappy with my classes, but couldn't understand why. My grades were great (except for the last class I had), but there was something missing.

I was excited about the prospect of earning a college degree. But the excitement of what I was going for quickly waned. For years I'd dreamed of becoming a teacher, yet when the sudden realization hit me that this was a dream that would quickly become reality, I was uneasy, unsure, and most of all afraid of making a mistake.

Dreams Morph

It wasn't really that I no longer wanted to be a teacher. I'd still love to at least give it a try to see if I'd be good at it or not. But my course of studies was definitely not one that I enjoyed. Social Sciences, which is what my major was, just did not seem to be my thing. Yet, after having waited so long to finally decide to stick it out and get a degree, I was afraid of admitting that I was not enjoying my studies. Shouldn't learning be fun, after all?

After a few months of deliberation and consideration, I finally decided I needed to either change paths or suffer and deal with the agony of studying something I wasn't interested in, just so I could say, "I finally finished." Not good.

See, this is how I've lived almost my entire life. Living and doing to please others. So worried about what others would say or think about me. But this is my life. The only miserable person would be me. And that just wouldn't work.

Dreams change. People change. And if we aren't careful, we could go on living off of dead dreams...dreams that died so long ago they're dirty, stinking, rotten dreams. I think that's where I found myself: Fighting for a dead dream. My life is much different now than it was 10-15 years ago. I finally figured out there's nothing wrong with a dream dying. There's something really wrong with holding on to it and trying to make it still fit into my life, though.

Making a Change

I worked up my courage and decided what I wanted to study was something totally different. I realized then that the school I was attending did not offer a program tailored to my needs. This was obstacle #2. To change my plan, I needed to change schools. Scary.

Change is never easy and rarely fun, but sometimes very necessary. Once I'd finally worked up the nerve to talk to someone at a different school, I discovered my zeal for higher education suddenly sparked to life again. Just hearing about a possible course of action I could take to change my college major made me feel better. I knew these classes would be much more interesting to me. It was the right thing--for me.

Breathe, Release

This is still an ongoing process. I will be starting classes at my new school, under a new degree program, in less than two weeks. I'm still scared, but excited. It was far from easy for me to make the decision to change my major, let alone withdraw from my current school and enroll in a new one.

I don't like change. It makes me nervous. But there are times in life when change is required, and when you make it, your life instantly shifts and becomes better, especially when you know the change placed you back on the right path.

For now, I'll breathe, and release. Very shortly, I will hold those wonderful documents in my hands that verify my accomplishments. Those will be fantastic, no doubt. Even better than that is the inner satisfaction I have, knowing I'm doing something to better myself and my family. Nothing can top that.

Books that surprise you

I can’t keep it a secret any longer. I am officially a Stephenie Meyer fan. Specifically, a Twilight fan. I didn’t want to be. I tried my best not to be sucked into the vortex. Alas, I failed.  :)

After watching the Twilight movie this past weekend, I was too interested in “what happens next…?” I had to grab New Moon to find out, and ended up reading it in less than 3 days.

I love it when books surprise me…don’t you?

One hour at a time

I’m at a time in my life when I am faced again with living in the moment. I literally have to mark my life one hour at a time. I am having trouble sleeping at night. I don’t feel afraid, just leery of closing my eyes. I hate this.

The time passes slowly, when I wish it would fly. When I’d like it to slow down, it moves too quickly. It’s my Catch 24 right now.

I’m sure it sounds like I’m talking in riddles. Those closest to me that read this will know exactly what I’m talking about. I dread the coming months. I dread the endless sleepless nights. Before it’s over with, I may be spending many nights away from home. I don’t know how else I will make it through this.

Have you ever lived like this? Has your life ever been disturbed in such a way that very little feels stable? I’m so thankful that my God never changes. That is the single shred of hope I have to hold on to right now.

Make Sure You Know Your Mouth

I've had a cavity that I let fester because I haven't had dental insurance. I had already went beyond "pain." It had hurt for so long that I guess I just ignored the pain. Until part of my tooth broke off last week. Yeah. When I went to the dentist, hoping he could wave his magic mouth tools and fix it, he shook his head and told me that I'd either need a root canal or pull the tooth because the nerve was exposed. Without dental insurance, guess which choice I went with. Yep. Extraction. So that meant a referral to an oral surgeon.

You know, the worst part about having a tooth pulled is not the actual pulling (which last about 30 minutes, by the way). It's the sitting in the waiting room reading the 3-page stapled handout they give you. You know, the one that lists a full page of things that could "possibly" go wrong with your oral surgery (paralysis on one side of the face, brain injury, DEATH). I mean, by the time I finished reading that litany of intimidating "possibilities" I was scared out of my mind.

Thank God Crystal, my sister, went with me. She must have sensed my anxiety because she started texting me goofy stuff...from three chairs down. :) She texted me a silly joke: What does the rabbit say when he mimics a frog? Rabbit! :) I broke out in laughter and I'm pretty sure the people sitting across from us thought we'd lost our minds.

After waiting for an hour, they finally called me to the back and introduced me to the chair. By this time, I'd worked myself up into such a frenzy that I had horrible heartburn and felt like it was going to turn into a vomit session at any second. Then they made me sign my name and date the bottom of the "possible side effects" document, which totally made me feel like I was signing my own death sentence.

What really freaked me out, though, was when the assistant came in, squirted the numbing agent on her q-tip-thingy, smiled at me, stuck it in the wrong side of my mouth, and said, "He'll be in in a minute to give you a shot to numb you."

I pushed that stick out of my mouth with my tongue, pointed to my left cheek and said, "On this side?!" My broke tooth was on the RIGHT side!!! I must have startled her because she grabbed the x-ray and referral sheet and said, "Let me go call your dentist and double-check." Uh, yeah, that's right, sweetie. You go call, but I know what side of my mouth my bad tooth is on!

I felt very much like Shaggy at that moment: ZOIKS!

About 45 minutes later, after two shots (and I could swear they gassed me just a tad!) and some soothing from the surgeon, I was down one tooth. Best part of it all was that my sister was with me and kept both my kids in the waiting room with her. They were very interested in what was going on with my tooth, but I'm glad they didn't see that their Moma is just as big a chicken as they are when in the dentist's chair!

Moral of this story: If you need to have a tooth pulled, you'd better be sure you know which one it is, else you might leave the chair without a tooth that didn't need to be pulled! :)