Why does my house look like this??? Sad...

...black women stand up...

My supervisor rocks!

She is sadly out with a mysterious disease. We know it is serious but not life threatoning...I don't think I have ever been so curious about what is going on with someones health. I suppose she is my bff in my head and I am really worried...

So I am sitting at her desk today. I am totally uncomfortable sitting here as the children file pass and do the double takes when they see the black girl sitting here instead of the blond women they adore. It can't be helpped, I need the space...And to quote the good rev. Rice..."They will get over it" (Does anyone else think he overuses that phrase?)

The Point:
As I was sitting here, I noticed that she has the quote compulsion like I do. Just quotes stuck everywhere, most of them deep but not striking to me personally, a fair amount of them are surprisingly Xstian centered...(a secret Xstian...the plot thickens....)  This hit one deep.

To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury;
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich;
to study hard. think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with an open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, hurry never;
in a word, to let spiritual, unbidden and unconscious
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony
 William Ellery Channing.

I love how smooth and silkily this life is presented. It reminds of me rainy days on a window seats and tweed jackets and the expensive version of aerosole shoes.  Even in its simplicity it seems privileged, and comfortable, and right now? Completely unattainable. It's a picture that I will look at when my river is frothy with stress, when my self control is hidden from sight and when my bank account is empty of money and I "think quietly" of becoming a stripper. One day I could be that woman.  One day I will have the patience and time and money to listen to babes and sages...right now it is just a dream I'm treading towards.

This is Not a teaching moment...

There was a point today that was glorious only in its ability to shatter my calm. It was definitely after talking to my dentist. He says very matter of factually, destroying my entire afternoon, "it sounds like you need a root canal".

Really?

I'm not going to bother to ask how much. The best part was all the useless advice I got...the priceless one was my dad asking me to go check my insurance from my old job. Would you just shut up and stop talking?

I'm so over it.

Self Advocacy and shit...

Finding our footing...that's the theme of this semester. I have been completely overwhelmed with the transition that I have gone through in the last 3 months. So I am in mid fall on a muddy hill.

To use a well trodden phrase, I am holding on with my fingernails and afraid to look down. I really feel that I am in the space where wiley has walked off the cliff and hasn't looked down yet. It's that moment when you anticipate the fall even though it hasn't started yet - making it all the more scary in its inflation by your imagination. I thought that I was just experiencing the regular transition on many levels; feeling overwhelmed with incredible life stressors and changes, feeling mishandled by the administration of the school, feeling out of wack with my field placement and the level of responsibility, and feeling over whelmed at the weight of fatigue on my ability to do what is an incredibly boring but manageable amount of reading.

Technically, I should feel ecstatic. Having fulfilled my main goal of receiving a Honors from my hardest professor - but smooth high of that incredible triumph was soon squashed by mounting concerns in every other part of my life.

That being said, I had my field advisory meeting today. Much to my surprise apparently I am in a crisis stage at my site. I am the only one with my case load level. I am the only one with readings to do at this level. I am the only one who has to do three process recordings, plus session notes on top of the regular work assigned for class. I could go on. Let's just say that there are many people who have yet to get their hands on a client, much do anything besides run recess and do paperwork. Oh.

Oh.

I am not used to people looking at me with pity eyes but that is what happened today. I found it to be extremely amusing, in a terrifying way that the professor goes, as I walk out the door, you need to email me for a meeting immediately. Apparently no one else has two ACS cases on her caseload. Oh 

I realized today the effect of stress for me is that I can't handle tiny stressors. Like the inability to adjust when the schools wifi is not working when I am trying to get my readings printed out. My brain turned to mush and oddly enough my thighs started to feel huge.  I was like, waitawhatthehell? Now I decide to feel fat? It's like all the insecurities that always float around, waiting for their moment, suddenly gain strength and infiltrate your mind. I feel fat and ugly. I feel sad and anxious. (Can you tell I have been working with folks around naming, recognizing, and expressing their emotions?)

I know one thing for certain. I love my job. I love it. Sometimes in between sessions I walk down the hall and actually feel the sun in my chest. The rays ,not the death dealing radiation. Even if I haven't accomplished anything in session, just the interaction and contact with these children light up my day - even if I am being called a caustic agent of the principal. :)

So I feel terrible. I feel triumphant. I feel anxious.

and I'm so over feeling. Really.

Human skin wallets?! Where can I get one? (at the mutters museum)

That is all I have from the Mutters Museum of Philadelphia. I have a deep sense that there is a clever parallel between my expectations of my trip to the Mutters museum and what actually happen and the turmoil and upheaval in my life right now -  but I haven't been able to put my finger on quite yet, it keeps slipping right out of my line of sight and, frankly, I'm not looking quite that hard...

Like most people, I LOVE museum gifts shops. LOVE. I go to museum for the information and the art yada yada but my hand sweats in anticipation as soon as I know that next corner is going to smoothly transition me from learning to BUYING. I am not sure why everyone loves a gift shop...but for me its the perfect combination of everything I love to do - learn random shit and buy random shit.

I have never in my life - walked into a museum shop and looked for the exit first, until today. Having just walked away from a glass case that, all the way on the bottom shelf, right under an old tome old illustrations of the inside of women muscular formation...was an abortion pick. And next to that were the forceps with a battering thingy to piece the babies skull.

Pause. Really?

I have always wanted to go to the Mutters museum since I had heard about it in high school. It is about ten blocks from my high school and it was fuel to my fire of medical school. Uh huh - talk about not updating your desires....Since then I'm a completely different person... a person who is uncomfortable with seeing skinned baby bodies and what untreated syphilis does to your skull (it eats it). I am uncomfortable looking at what a bullet does exactly to a brain or seeing the skeleton of a 18th century midget prostitute and the skull of her tiny aborted baby looks like. (They couldn't get the baby out because of the deformity of her pelvis. So they crushed the head and tried to pull it out, when that didn't work they cut it out of her stomach (I'm not sure we would call it a Caesarean section) and then she died three days later from the wound). Love life.

To be honest - I was partially fascinated. Even the arm that had small poxs on it was amazing. I always wondered if it looks like chicken pox (it.does.not. - you have that and you know you are going to die -soon.). But when we got to the basement (I can't fathom why they couldn't put it on the second floor) my stomach got a little queasy. My mind was still there but my body was oooover it. I knew I was uncomfortable but I pushed along because I didn't want to miss anything - and also didn't want to see everything. but I looked anyway...knowing it might have some negative effects on my tummy.

I turned to Adiva and said in a particular voice - eh, I think I'm nauseous. She confirmed her nausea too and with relief I didn't hide we swiftly headed nodded to the swollen colon and marched toward the light. The sunlight on my skin signaled freedom but I dragged along my wonders at what I had seen asI calculated the distance to the closes bar (my moms house, no comment).

For example, who were these people? Were any of them black? How did they get here? Did these folks know what was being done to their bodies? Or to their children's bodies? Were their spirits here, floating around them protectively? or just languishing?  Were they restful or angry? Were they noting my presence to come get me later????

Listen. It was a once in a life time experience. And while I understand that they aren't closing - I will never go back - you can bet your bottom dollar on that Annie.  So uhm, make sure you update your bucket list frequently - it can't be a good thing to go doing things you wanted to do 15 years ago without checking to make sure you still want to do it. Otherwise - you might end up face to face with a dead dried baby tied up on strings.

I mean really. What's wrong with you? ugh.

(Glad I went) chuckle.

Omg, I cant....

Really, why update?
By the time I press submit some other shit has happened. Uuuggghhh. Would you believe that I have to move again? Well, I don't have to but to reduce some stress from the limited budget I have to respond the stimuli...
Anyhoos, the new thing? Investing less of my sanity into my "space" and placing that wholeness in my mind....regardless of where I'm laying my head. Boy, I'm boring myself with this...

Complaints...

I joined the stop complaining group today. I don't know why. It seemed like an interesting experiment. Kinda like a fish trying to walk - I really don't know what the hell I'm trying to do. Seems unnatural... I didn't want to ask 'what's wrong with complaining?' because it seemed like asking "What's wrong with doing drugs?" - like I'd be admitting I had a problem by admitting my ignorance.

What if I do have a problem? What if I'm the "I don't have a drug problem I'm only here because the court says I have to be" guy? No has ever really complained about me complaining..and since people have rarely shied away from commenting on my personality I can safely conclude that it isn't a massive personality disorder...

However, there is a niggling sense that I should know why complaining is an issue. I know it can be annoying...if you do it too much. But what is too much?????  How do we separate rigeotous indignation from "complaining"??? I mean, what if your food is cold, or nasty, or poorly prepared, or just eww? You aren't supposed to say anything?

Anyhoo - you have to wear a large colored rubber band on your wrist and every time you complain you have to switch it to the other wrist. The point is to go 21 days without a single complaint - it took the founder of this movement 5 months before he could go 21 days straight. It will take me eternity. I need some exceptions to this rule.

1. Anything I deem racist, sexist, or classist, etc. Evil suckers don't get a free ride on this trip.
2. Terrible food/service - I'm paying for it - I deserve it.
3. If my feet hurt (beau gets a pass, he put in the contract no complaining about feet and has affirmed the comfortable shoes are sexy theory)
4. If I'm tired from working too hard at anything. How else will I get through it? (This one may not be legitimate - thoughts?)

I think I'm missing some important exceptions buut looking over the list of exceptions and saying I'm missing somethings seems to be a message of some kind...a light bulb moment but I think -- I'm missing the point. Don't you hate when that happens? I mean it's lik-- nevermind.
                                                               

That way goes trouble...

Yesterday was a scary day for me. It was one of those days when I fully felt my humanity. I mean that most days I go through the day fulfilling my duties to some degree, waking, washing, going to work, talking to people, filling out paperwork, hanging out out with my friends and spending quality time with Ocho. Whether or not I am going to die rarely comes up.

Yesterday I did not think I was going to die. I felt though, at the end of the day, that I could see the seams of my humanity, my sanity, myself begin to bloat until the bits of glue holding the edges together began to make those stringy stalactites in attempt to hold me together. I stood on 120th and Lexington and reached deep down in my strength and decided that I was not going to lose it on that street because I said so. It was so weird, I felt like a super hero, or and Octavia Butler character - it was like I had this orange ball of strength that I reached into to stick myself back together - it futile though, like using spit on ashy elbows. I knew that I wasn't going to make it home before I fell apart. I was thinking "If you could just make it home before all this comes out you will be fine". But just as I thought that the edges of my vision got all fuzzy. I was thinking...it's 5 something and rush hour on the 4 train is cut throat - I can't make it home through that. I thought about sitting on the steps for a while and calling Mo, since that is what I usually do - but she was too far away and I was scared to be alone with all this "stuff" coming out. So I called Tasha and she came to help me keep it together. I was thinking somewhere around 10 O'clock that I really didn't want to be alone - I felt like I had broken up with someone. You know how you feel when the initial numbness goes away and the hurt, pain, and missing them hits? Yeah...that's how I feel now.

Yesterday started with blessings and ended with me looking at a tunnel and realizing that that ways goes trouble. One way is determination, and the other depression. One way stout with the possibility of failure, the other a vocational coma.  Although I was sad yesterday morning I got to school early and decided to grab a bite. I was talking to my friend jazzy who called to check in with me (blessing #1) and to tell me that there is a possibility I could move in with her...if her roomy leaves (life changing that would be [yoda voice]). While talking to her I see a tall, attractive chocolate young man who looks familiar. I glance at him. He glances at me. I walk over to him and say Don't I-- and He reaches over sweeps me into a hug and says "Ms. Adens!?!" It was an old student from one of the programs I used to teach at about 5 years ago. Short story long, he works there now and they need a night GED teacher....(blessings blessing blessing). We exchange numbers and he leaves with a promise to give me the info about the job. I walk over to the counter to get my ill advised breakfast purchase and the papi tells me "nothing baby that guy paid for it"....What is the message??

Yesterday I stepped into school and swiped my id card with all the hope in the world - my finger tips tingly with possibility and excitement that disaster could be diverted.   Then during class I check my email to see if the dean had written me back. She did, just to reiterate that there was nothing that could be done. I would receive my first payment today and every Monday until the end of the term...stop..wait..what? Yall aren't giving me a lump sum? Nope - they are going to give me a weekly check instead of my money...because I am not an adult enough to budget my own cash, I can't be trusted with the money that I took out as a loan. I'm being infantilized by a system that fucked my life up in the first place...?

Let me be more clear. The dean and I decided that I could pay my rent for four months and not eat in January. My rent needs exceeds my cash for the term...so if you spread it out evenly it doesn't give me enough monthly to pay for four months. Follow me? I won't make my rent and I haven't even tried to eat yet.

This morning I am feeling better. [Section Redacted] I think over all that there are many details missing from this post - it is simply because I was so fascinated by that emotion event, it was like seeing my own heart beat, that I had to share it that way.  I am not going to say "don't worry about me" because I am fully aware of the content of this post and the mercury heaviness of this revelation but I am not a danger to myself and others. Promise.

Reflection on life changes...

Yesterday morning I was razor focused on getting my honors, finding a professor who would mentor me, and dealing with my queer anxiety and it's random daily expressions in my days.

Last night, I only had three separate dreams about going into anaphalactic shock and having my breathing pathways shut down. Yep, I took my girlfriends emergency and projected my brand new legitamate fears onto them in my dream. The sad thing is that every time I couldn't breathe, I remember being all alone and trying to stuff my fingers up my nose...obviously that wasn't going to work. So as I dropped to my knees for  lack of oxygen I would wake up, fall asleep, dream, drown, wake up and again...lovely.

The anger and hostility has yet to abate and I already feel it looking for a target in my school administrators and conversely affecting my desire to do well and succeed. This will be the third time I have entered one of these institutions only later to feel betrayed in someway or another.  The beau is coming over tonight so maybe I will be able to sleep through the night....

I still can't believe the changes that 24 hours can make.