Sticky Side of Heaven


Please feel free to respond to any of my thoughts. I love interactive discussion!
My e-mail is liltoad2000@aol.com.

 
I am supposed to write down what I am feeling at the moment. I have an ache in my side from sitting for too long. I feel bored and stiff. I am ready to go home but I also want to write something that will be meaningful to me. I am attempting to breathe through my heart more to help loosen it up. It is very hard and immovable from years of fear. Fear of everything from being called on in class to being yelled at by my ex-step-mother. Fear of communicating my feelings, of allowing another person to know what I am feeling. Fear of myself being invalidated, and shamed by others. It happens so often when I say something about myself, then people tell me that my statement is wrong or invalid or they have their own negative feelings. I've even been laughed at and rejected so why should I continue to display my feelings for others to do so?

Sigh, but unfortunately the consequences of my fear and uncommunicativeness are becoming physical, painful and are impeding my growth as well as potential and current relationships including that of my son. I don't want to live like this. So I will continue to try to breathe through my heart, to become more aware of how it is feeling. To allow it to guide my mind instead of the other way around.
posted by Candice at 4:33 PM

 
Whenever I give myself a good pity pity session, I inevitably feel guilty about it. I don't even allow myself to feel bad when I need to. Self-pity is a luxury. I mean, really, look at all the things I have. Technically, I have my health. I am not bed-ridden or dying of cancer or puking constantly from some disease no one has heard of. Sure my feet hurt, but damn, my grandmother has the corner on that market and you don't hear her complaining do you? So what that I can't hear? I have more hearing than most deaf people and its better than being blind, right? Sure I am financially destitute at the moment. That will change eventually as I go on to actually get a real job. I have a potential career. Sure it has cost me a lot of money and time and life, but I should reap the benefits eventually. I'm no beauty, but I also need to stop staring at the gorgeous women and look at the other 95% of the population. I'll start to feel a little more normal. It would help if I could look at everyone without judging them so harshly, especially that person I see in the mirror. I may be living off of others right now, but I am so blessed that they have the belief and the faith in me that I will re-pay them in kind or in kindness. I would like to stop shutting myself off from others for perceived hurts and keep myself open no matter how painful I perceive it to be.

I stood up for myself the other day and it was not expected by the other person or even by me and was met with resistance. But inside it felt good, it felt like for a brief moment I believed I honestly had an opinion of what I thought was best and I voiced it instead of conceding to the other person. Sure, my love life sucks, its not even existent. But with a person as wretched as me inside who would be interested. If I can change that, to be more confident, less critical, more open to life, things may change.

This is not meant to be read by anyone who knows me because it is such a small facet of who I am. I don't want to have to defend my thoughts and feelings because someone is only getting a peek at a small bit. I rarely write in here when I'm feeling good. What's the point? I want to be out and about experiencing life when I feel good, not typing at a computer screen. I also don't want the demand of writing something halfway entertaining or intelligent. I have no interest in doing that at the moment though I may get back to that in a few months or years. I have an idea for a story that could be fairly interesting but there are so many people out there clamoring to get a book published. I hate being a lemming. For some reason, if everyone else wants to do 'it' or have 'it' then I want no part of it. I can take this to an extreme level. I contradict myself a lot too so you have to take my statements with a grain of salt.
posted by Candice at 3:45 PM

 
Don't read this post. Honestly.






I am a leech of the worst kind. I ask and ask and ask for my own selfish reasons and I don't give anything back to my friends and family. I don't think of the other person. I am always and completely self-centered. I am constantly thinking about me, things that happen to me and what I think about that. My opinions are the best and if everyone could just see my point of view they would see how right they are. I judge everyone and everything from their driving to the clothes people wear to they way they drink their tea. I include myself in these judgements and can never do anything right. The words I say in conversation are always 'off', never suave or charming. I look like a pig. I can't even dress so that I look presentable. I hate looking at myself in the mirror in the mornings. I don't understand how people can look at me and not feel nauseous. Maybe they do. I have no redeeming qualities, what good is there? I know that the world would be a better place without me. This is not hard to see. My life sucks. I have no income. I am a single deaf mother who wears glasses. Can't sing or even talk quite right. I don't know how to play the piano. I have no grace in my step, no beauty in my face, twinkle in my eye. I am a financial burden on my grandparents and parents. My sister subsidises much of the 'extras' in my life. I don't have anything to show for my life or career. I don't have a significant other. In fact the one person I met in my life that I thought was the One, he wasn't interested. I haven't talked to him in 4 months and I still cry myself to sleep. I am always sick with seemingly serious things that dissapear when I step into the drs office and I step out with huge bills for others to pay. I have creditors chasing after me because of an ex-boyfriend. I have my son's father knocking on my door after a 4 year absence. I'm being charged for $6000 worth of credits that I was not allowed to take but were not taken off my record. Too boot I'm also being charged with the fees and insurance that go along with being a student, even thought I was never a student. What else? I'm fat. Did I say that yet? I don't fit into any of my clothes anymore. I want to eat healthier but I don't have the money to do that. My son still sleeps with me instead of being a big boy. I watch too much tv. My feet stink. I haven't shaved my legs in 6 months. My teeth are yellow. I have acne, big fat pimples. My hair is just a flop and my thighs are floppier. My breasts are too big and my stomach hangs out. I'm not considerate of others and rarely ask wuestions or show interest in their affairs. In fact if I could go and live in isolation with no mirrors and a mumu, I would be better off. More? My nails are unkempt and my glasses are dirty. I see spots with or without them on. I am slow in all I do, everything, slow as molasses. I have no friends in this town and probably won't ever. People have a hard time smiling at me in public. In fact I am often skipped over when waited on in line. The person behind me is called up instead. I can't do math in my head. I can't express my feelings in appropriate ways. I cry easily. I get angry but never show it to people. I self implode and make my life miserable instead. Sigh. I must end my self-stomping for now.



posted by Candice at 4:21 PM

 
Hey All! Just thot I'd send along a noe to say that this is the unofficial "Foster Candice's Personal Growth" week. Apparently that is the theme anyway. I wish I had exicitng words to explain it all. To boil it all down into a nutshell here: I learned this week that I seek out rigidity in other people and actively try to loosen them up. Think back on all the conversations I've had with you. Doesn't it seem that I tend to play devil's advocate alot? That I always have to say something outrageous to try to shock you into thinking of another perspective? It doesn't always work and can be downright annoying when I disagree with everything. This is deeply engrained into my psyche and I am trying to figure out why I do this. I have a few hypotheses that I won't list here but if you want to call me, I'll tell you.

Will is becoming a true CODA, I'm a little shocked as I thought it would be a few more years before it manifested. What is a CODA? It's a Child of a Deaf Adult, this moniker generally is applied to hearing children rather than deaf children of deaf adults. This is a unique life situation that tends to shape a person's life in similar ways. They have their own national association and get together to share the 'burdens' of their existence. I say that 'toungue-in-cheek' but in my view the existence of having a parent that to some degree is dependent on the child can be a burden at times, depending on how the parent approaches it. Let me tell you my example and then I'll elaborate more on older kids.

Will and I were playing upstairs when, suddenly, he sat up and said 'what's that?' i listened and heard a loud car "That's a loud car driving by." Will looked at me and said "No, telephone!" I ran downstairs and sure enough, the phone was ringing. The kid just turned two!!! I was thinking he'd be 5 or 6 was when this would start, I guess not. Other examples include asking hearing children to make phone calls, interpret overhead announcements, or interpreting the waiter's specials of the day. I have promised myself that I will not force Will into the interpreter role. He may willingly volunteer, but I don't ever want him to feel a sense of obligation. That's not something a young child should have to bear.

News flash!! Will went potty in his potty chair for the first time tonight!!!!! He looked very nonchalant until he saw mommy jumping up and down, then he got excited!!

Well, it's midnight and I am officially a pumpkin, g'night all, sweet dreams!
posted by Candice at 9:03 PM

 
The things that go through my mind when it roams...goood grief! When I put Will to bed tonight he was rolling around and quite uncomfortably, maybe even painfully, rolled over on my bony elbow...and it got me thinking. Elbows are seriously inconvenient items. Often overlooked except when causing pain, elbows are highly maligned. Anyway, I couldn't think of any romantic, artistic, or poetic references to the elbow so I thought I'd hop online and do a quick search and come up with something, for sure I'd come up with something. Goodness, even knees get more acclaim, ugly things that they are. There are a million poems and songs regarding a lover's lips, their hair, their bellybuttons, but I couldn't find a single reference to the beautiful, knobbly elbow :(

Among the things I did find:
a site that tested to see if you could tell your arse from your elbow - http://www.assotron.com/arse-or-elbow/#
a guide to the 'Elbow Maneuver' which is a roll-over move in kayaking invented by some famous maverick
an online travel guide to elbow etiquette in airplanes
a rock band named, you guessed it 'Elbow', Dave Barry would be so proud
of course, numerous sites relating to golfer's elbow, tennis elbow, skater's elbow, toothbrushing elbow
a glorious site advertising elbow grease for lonely adults, those of you with delicate sensibilities don't want to know more
apparently there are quite a few places named 'Elbow': a town in Canada, an inn, a Cay, a pool bar, and a horse in Elmira
elbow pads for gardeners and cowboys
a site called "Elbows with Teeth"...don't ask me, I have no clue
a disturbing site called Elbow World that talks about the 'Flight of Stairs Driver’s-Ed Coarse' [sic]
didn't see anything relating to the funny bone but I think it is relevant here and quite painful!
posted by Candice at 7:14 PM

 
Every night when I put Will to bed, I stay with him until he falls asleep. I still convince myself that he's not big enough to face the scary dark all by himself (never mind that he's not afraid of the dark...his mom is!) Anyway, I use that hour to just be quiet and let my thoughts roam...kind of a western style meditation that I'm really good at. For some reason, my thoughts lit onto what I would do if I met a famous movie star. I was trying to use all my psychological knowledge to get inside the head and psyche of a famous person. I have all these ideas of the typical profile of a star and basically I decided that there was nothing I could say that would make me stand out from every other fan they've probably encountered. I am every other fan, just not as crazed as most. And I kinda thought, well how could I make myself special, what if I was dying of a terminal cancer and...well...my thoughts got kinda silly, I guess, but in the end I realized that there really wasn't anything special about me that wasn't also true for many other people. It seems that when young, many people dream of being something or someone, or doing something outrageously incredible and as time passes you come to the growing realization that your personal 'big bang' isn't coming, that you are going to live your life out in relative obscurity. It can be sad, maybe. It certainly makes me feel the incredible smallness of being a lone human in the great infinite universe, like a single dust speck in the Grand Canyon. All of a sudden the room felt like it was whirling and tilting through space and time with nothing to hold onto, I was a victim of my own insignificance in the great scheme of things. Who knows how long I would have wallowed in the tides of dusty universal throes, but at that utter sinking moment, my son stirred in his sleep and nestled deeper into my side. My brain turned itself inside out and considered the opposite end of the spectrum. To this tiny bundle next to me, I was the entire world. For a brief, all too brief, moment in time, no one will be more special to him than his mommy. [Currently, he won't let any other kid in daycare come near me. "That's MY mommy!" he says in the bulldog-fierce voice of a two year old]. What a paradox to simultaneously feel like universal small fry on one hand and on the other...well...Goddess of tickles and airplane rides, Creator of yummy fruit shakes. How tremendous is the responsibility of meaning EVERYTHING in the world to someone. Whatif, whatif, whatif? Yikes, I have scary thoughts I don't want to type out, there's no wood to knock on in cyberspace. Soon enough, my son will grow up and won't even want to acknowledge my existence and I'll be reduced to an insignificant speck again. That's when I'll adopt a dog.

Funnies:
- Will has decided that pulling his pants down is his new skill to practice (he is currently potty training), unfortunately he decided to practice in the produce section. I hid in the beets so no one could see me and laughed myself silly. I'm afraid I reinforced the behavior, he now thinks it's hysterical.
- He sings to me often "A b c d e f g h j l p q r t e u d v r s twinkle twinkle twinkle dee mana nana deena doo ere is umkin ere is umkin." He will do this for 15 minutes at a time.
-Tonight we went to Barnes and Noble to look for a psychology treatment book and Will discovered the escalators. We rode up and down a few times while he laughed and laughed. We get a lot of smiles from strangers. One of the attendants even demonstrated his scanner gadget thingamajig for Will.

Ooooff! Me ty ty, time to go ny ny. Hope all is well in your respective corners of the worlds! G'night folks.
posted by Candice at 8:02 PM

 
Hi!

I'm feeling a little shy about getting back on here :) It has been a long time, hasn't it. Much as I know you all love keeping up with me, this is a lower priority on my list of things to do (like job applications and dissertations). I'm mainly hopping back on here cause I've got feelings again, bothersome things, and need to blow a few of them off. Let's see how should I present them all?? I can list them: frustration, hopelessness, sheer panic, depression, anger, stupidity. There's also good stuff like love, joy, satisfaction, success, happiness but those aren't as interesting for me right now and I'm not in the mood to be funny :-P Maybe I should explain things by situation: school, job, applications, terrible two's, sleep, bills.

Gosh, I don't know.

Hmmm.

It would help if I wasn't so tired at the moment, I should go to bed. It's not unusual for me to go to bed at 8:30pm anymore. However, I started a meal in the crock pot and now I have to wait for it to finish (Beef brisket in a lemon/garlic/mushroom cream sauce...sorry Jenn). I'm doing pretty good with the food stuff. You have probably heard that I lost a few pounds, 30 or so. Funny how I thought it would make me feel better, and it does but it certainly doesn't change any of the things that I'm dealing with. I guess the most draining, even more than working 50 hours a week, is the constant battles that I do with Will, every morning and night. Almost from the moment I wake him up in the morning he doesn't want to do anything that I need him to do to get ready to go to school (even though he LOVES going there). So it ends up being a battle and he screams until I drop him off. It is such a relief to go to work. I ended up at work this week in tears because I out-shouted him for the first time ever. He had battled and cried nonstop from 6:30am when I woke him up allllllllllllll the way to the car. I gave up trying to get him into his coat and put him in the car without it (it was warm that day). Turns out the lack of coat gave him enough wiggle room to get out of his seat while I was driving. I yelled at him louder than he was screaming. That shut him up, I don't think he's ever heard me scream. We pulled over and I got him back in his seat and went to school. When I took him out he wouldn't look at me, talk to me and was as stiff as could be when I carried him in and tried to give him a hug. That evening he cried when I picked him up and didn't want to go with me. I feel like such a horrible mother that my son doesn't even want to come home with me.
posted by Candice at 7:01 PM