Back Soon

My energy is being diverted too many places to sit down and concentrate long enough to write lately. On top of that, I feel like I'm entering a new phase of being me but am having difficulty putting my feelings into words like I usually do. I predict a mudslide of posts once I figure things out. I have some poems and random things in my head that are trying to escape as well.

In the meantime, I'm going to take another short break and see if that helps me knock some thoughts loose.

I'll be back in about ten days.

N

Open Arms

So now I come to you, with open arms
Nothing to hide, believe what I say
So here I am with open arms
Hoping you'll see what your love means to me

-- "Open Arms," Journey (1982)

This is just a note to express my gratitude to everyone who e-mailed me, called me, and commented on my recent post. Even some very friendly lurkers spoke up for the first time! Welcome! In fact, the response was so incredibly overwhelming that it was not possible to spend the time I wanted to in order to respond to each and every one of you the way I would have preferred. This will have to do for now.

I suppose the mixture of emotions in my heart now is to be expected in this long process. However, blogging brings a very interesting twist to it all. Since I have been writing my feelings down here and so many people are reading them now, I am truly experiencing some degree of guilt about what I am expressing. I know some of the things I write many people would personally keep to themselves. There is also the fact that I am developing a teensy-weensy case of stage fright. For those of you who have never met me, just two years ago I was nearly too shy to go to the grocery store. I actually dreaded the social interaction! One of my friends will insist I look quite confident in a nerve-wracking situation, but I wear a triple coat of pit stick before speaking to strangers or giving a speech. The irony of what Williams syndrome means socially in my own child is not lost on me. Ha ha. Very funny, God. There is no longer the remote possibility I can successfully slip by unnoticed in a public setting when Erik Quinn is with me. I suppose that is also true on line. After all, he is the reason you are reading this now. There would be no blog and very little of my writing without him. I would still be hiding at home.

I have thought long and hard about what to say here. There is no way I can really voice the gratitude I feel for all of your support and encouragement without sounding like I am reading the lyrics off the back of a Journey album cover, so I will cease and desist for now.

Thank you.

Guilt

I can't speak for my son, my husband, any member of our families, or my friends. I speak for ME here. I will never intentionally pretend to know how anyone outside of this particular woman named Nancy is feeling.

Today I asked myself today why I continue to keep a web log. Something is changing.

The answer: I blog because it is socially expected that I smile sweetly in public when I feel like screaming, sobbing, or assaulting someone related to my emotions that stem from the horribly cruel birth defect that my beautiful son happens to have. I have very successfully put on a brave face through therapies and children's birthday parties and parent groups and doctors appointments and IFSP meetings when it was the last thing I felt like doing. I believe that I have jumped through the correct hoops at the correct times, and I have acted appropriately and ladylike. I have prayed the appropriate prayers, and I think I'm a pretty decent mother. I have been invited to be on boards and attend meetings outside of what is normally expected for a special needs parent. I don't believe I have embarrassed anyone. I have even kept my tears to a minimum lately in order to minimize any discomfort I may cause the people around me.

However, these emotions and thoughts have to go somewhere.

If you see me on the street, it is very possible that out of politeness and in the interest of saving your valuable time I may serve you up a white lie and report that life is a beautiful bowl of cherries when I feel like curling up in my closet under a blanket for the rest of the day. Thankfully, because I have this outlet, I get up and face this big, old world every glorious day. I'm not alone. I do this just like all of the mothers I know who wear similar shoes. If we didn't, we would be missing out on a lot of what is right and what is beautiful in each day. You just have to wade through some ugly to get there, and the right and the beautiful, as it turns out, are even more wonderful after that.

Unfortunately, a lot of what I say isn't pretty. It's not supposed to be.

When nobody knew I was writing here, I wrote anyway. At this point, there are more people reading my thoughts here than I would have ever imagined would have bothered with me. That's really frightening sometimes. The side effect of this is a new sense of shame and guilt when something un-pretty comes out of my head. I have come to love many of you who come here. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that would happen. All I can do is warn you that you will never hear lies from me here, and I hope that I do not upset someone with my own thoughts. I am not sure what to do with these new feelings besides making this journal completely private from this point forward. I'm not ready to do that. So I just issue the warning that this is my journal and these are my raw thoughts. They are true, and I want to put them down so that, God willing, I can look back on my life and see how far I have come as a mother. I am so incredibly lucky to be a mother.

Okay, at this point, Ted Kaczynski's manifesto was more succinct and made much more sense. What I'm trying to say is this: You are witnessing a woman grieve. You are seeing someone bleed gallons of sticky, copper-scented blood. You are watching someone heal twisted, ropy scars. Some of you have no idea what I'm feeling, but you come here anyway, and I always attempt to take you with me on this ride through my writing. In this sense, my blog has turned into something fabulous, because I never feel alone. Ever. There are those of you know exactly how I feel and have similar scars. Frankly, I am hurting right along with you, and, dammit, I truly believe many of us are making progress. It's not a pretty process. If it is, then something isn't quite right. That's my opinion.

This is the most incredibly personal thing I have ever dared to do, and it's only because of the wonderful feedback I have received that I have kept baring myself in a very public forum under a very bright spotlight. Much of what I write is happy, but much of it is not, and I will not apologize for it. That wouldn't be fair to the people who come here to read my true thoughts or to myself. There is poison inside of me, and when I write, I feel normal again. That's a pretty amazing gift in a life like mine. I have always grappled with my struggles through writing. After I am finished typing here at my desk, I am almost euphoric. I feel like I have just been violently ill but know I will not be sick again for some time. I then get up and go on with my daily life, and I am thankful for who I am and what I have. It is good. I am a fairly happy person on most days. I pray that you can feel the same emotions if they apply and can let them ebb and flow just like I do in order to heal and move on. I don't want to depress anyone or cause them sadness. Maybe I'm completely flattering myself, and I haven't made a dent in one single moment in one single day of one single life. You know what? I'm really completely okay with that. However, I have a knot in my stomach and would never want to hurt anyone with my words. This just needed to be said. If I'm doing more harm than good, I'm hanging it up and will continue to write--in private.

Whatever happens, thank you for loving me, scars and all.

By the way, I love you, too.

-- N

Writing Contest

I entered three of my previous posts in the This Blog "Blows My Dress Up" contest for humorous essays. It sounds like fun, and I encourage you writers of humor out there to enter! Laughter is the best medicine.

UPDATE: You can view my entries and those of others here.

Sunday Drivel

Last night a friend gave me a CD of Richard Cheese & Lounge Against the Machine. It is one of the funniest things I have ever heard. This gentleman borrows a variety of popular songs from the 80s, 90s, and today and sings them lounge style with a big band feel to them. I thought his rendition of Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle" was the funniest thing ever until I heard "We Are the World," "Gin and Juice," "Baby Got Back," and "99 Luftballoons." Whew. Classic. It's an adults-only CD, as the language is a bit dicey because some of these songs are from the heavy metal and rap genres. However, in my opinion, it only makes them that much more ridiculous and fabulous.

I took the plunge and entered my first essay contest last year. I chose a topic regarding home ownership. There were over 13,000 entries, and they have been announcing monthly winners all year. The grand prize is $250,000 to go towards a new home or property. They are posting the winners on April Fool's Day. My chances of winning are slim, but it has been fun to dream all this time. According to National Geographic, my chances of winning are about the same as dying in hot weather (1 in 13,729) and better than being legally executed (1 in 62,648). Golly, that's good news! I'll miss the suspense of waiting, but a year is a really, really long time to wait for anything.

Yesterday I put together a submission for my first Pacific Northwest writing contest. I entered one of my poems this time. That was a little more difficult for me, since those tend to be gut-wrenchingly personal. It's sitting in an envelope downstairs, and I feel a little like I did when I was in my creative writing class in high school -- vulnerable. I'm getting braver when it comes to putting my writing out there, and I owe a lot of that to you. I haven't written in years before this blog. I'm hoping to get published somewhere eventually, and this is a good place to start. The only writing contest I ever entered before that I can remember was the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, a competition to pen the worst opening to a novel in various categories including "brown bag" (sexy stuff), "It was a dark and stormy night," science fiction, and many others. That was way fun. Now that I think about it, I should try again.

I'm hoping today is as beautiful as it was yesterday. It was over 70 degrees again. Erik was into everything yesterday. He is rebelling against his only nap now, which may disappear entirely, and threw handfuls of dirt from the planter on the landing twice yesterday, requiring me to haul the vacuum hose up the stairs. As cranky as this makes me, I can see he is a whole lot of typical 2-year-old these days. That's a good thing.

Off to shower. Have a wonderful day.