My Weird Daughter and I

(originally posted on my blog at RedRoom.com)

When my daughter was six-years old she often spent her afternoons with her best friend Brianna. Brianna’s grandmother was a nice enough lady who often carted the girls around on errands after school. One day during a particularly lively play date Brianna’s grandma said to my daughter, “Melia, you are weird!”

My first reaction was to belt the woman. Who did this cleaning lady think she was to say something potentially hurtful to my lively, funny, beautiful daughter? The violent reaction, thankfully, faded very quickly. In its place was the reality I had long ago learned to embrace: weirdness doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

I had felt like a social outcaste in my two-parent, multiple-child, no-divorce neighborhood all through elementary school. My parents were not only divorced, but they left me to be raised, alone, by my grandparents. I felt as though I spent my entire childhood trying to apologize for my weirdness by doing whatever I could think of to fit in. Very little of it worked, and I probably seemed even weirder and I know I was uncomfortable in my own skin.

By the time I arrived at Junior High and met many, many other weird kids, I began to finally see that not everyone was normal. In fact that was the same year that the divorces began in my neighborhood and within a few years there were new families blending on every street.

By the eighth grade I was almost completely comfortable in my own skin, or at least I knew how to fake it very well. My best friend and I even wore leprechaun costumes to school for St. Patrick’s Day, complete with giant, green homemade top hats. We were very well received as most kids were in awe of our willingness to appear silly in public. In high school I discovered the drama department and the Rocky Horror Picture show and my comfort level with my own weirdness was nearly complete.

When it came time to raise my own daughter, I wanted her to feel comfortable with herself from the onset. I hoped to surround her self-esteem with the kind of mental cement that would keep her safe and secure even when she traveled outside of home So when she told us the story of being called weird, I told her that the next time someone called her that to thank them. After all, weird was a good thing, a compliment really. It meant she was an individual, not the same as everyone else, but in a good way.

It worked. Many people since have hurled the weird comment her way. Each time she accepts and embraces it, it deflates them and empowers her.

She has been called weird many times since and thanked every single person. By copping to and embracing her differences willingly, she doesn’t waste time apologizing for being herself or wallowing in the worry that people won’t like her for who she is. Despite the normal adolescent bumps, she is pretty comfortable in her own skin and the mental cement is intact.

My daughter and I are both weird, thank you very much.

To Sing or Not to Sing, That is the question

My first singing lesson, that was supposed to take place last week, was rescheduled for this week.

Strangely enough I think that I knew it would be canceled as I was driving to the lesson last week, unnaturally calm. I say unnaturally because I expected to be fighting the panic back, to be talking myself down out of my metaphorical anxiety tree. I arrived earlier than was required and managed to walk in to the building breathing normally.

The actual first lesson day was another story. I didn't make it out of the house because I needed to use all of my energy and focus to fend off the expected panic attack.

As the anxiety rises within the body, the mental capabilities are tipped off balance. The mental steps that I think we all walk down as we attempt to follow our logic begin to spiral back up on themselves, covering the same ground over and over again. Isn't that the classic cliche definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again in hopes of finding a different outcome.

Getting out of that head space means switching metaphors from a staircase to a tight rope. It is very important to walk that tight rope carefully and deliberately in order to make sure to keep the thought processes linear, in line and straight so as not to veer off and go back to the circular motion and returning to the same outcomes over and over again. Sometimes it takes a voice from the outside to get off the stairs and onto the line.

It is my signal to myself that I am fighting to stay sane when I know that the thoughts that concern me are becoming great fears and the solutions in turn become less and less flexible. I can't give a logical explanation as to why I was feeling panicked. Lord knows that I tried to put my finger on a scenario that I could attach to. The hope was that if I had been able to attach to a scenario I would have been better equipped to find a definable solution earlier.

I tried to remember the explanation I had been practicing for more than a week as to why I wanted to take voice lessons: I used to be a decent back-up singer. I used to be able to carry a tune. I want to learn the discipline it takes to return to those skills. (What I really want is to have the ability to sing strongly enough for a vibrato and solos, but I'm not sure I would have felt comfortable admitting to that in the first session.)

However, as the time neared (I was about 1.5-2 hours out at this point) I couldn't remember my logical reasons, or couldn't hold the thoughts long enough to get all the way through my own speech in my head. What kept coming back was the other truth, that I wanted to conquer an issue that was a direct result of the childhood sexual abuse by my guitar teacher. I suppose that even in the safety of my own, safe home, I was unwilling and as yet unable to face head-on this facet of my own recovery.

I tried telling myself that if I didn't go he would win. That concept gave me a full 5 minutes of relief and strength. It fell away quickly, though, when the unnamed panic began to creep back in.

An attempt at strategizing my way out of the lesson didn't get me very far. I imagined calling and canceling, knowing that canceling meant forfeiting the gift certificate that the Husband had given me for my birthday a year before. He spent money on this gift, had given me a gift I had asked for out loud. The idea of throwing away his gift added a layer of guilt to my panic. So I went from the idea of canceling to the guilt of wasting a gift and putting off recovery and quickly moved back to not feeling strong enough to attend the lesson to wanting to cancel to guilt. You can see the downward spiral.

Then I thought about the book project I have been working on. The book project, mind you, that I have not been able to do any real work on for more than a month, despite the fact that I have the time. I had hoped to blog about the singing lessons as a form of drafting for the book. Not long ago, it seems, I had been feeling very strong and confident about the book project and the personal resources that would allow me to research and write the thing. The last several weeks have been spent primarily in a dark place where I worked very hard at avoiding creativity, specifically the book project.

So add that step onto the spiral staircase, and we have another piece to repeat over and over again. As you can imagine, the panic only grew.

As I realized that my thought processes were out of balance with reality, I considered turning to pharmaceuticals. Specifically taking a Valium. That would require I have someone else drive me to the lesson. A surprisingly calm request moved from my lips to my husband's ears. He didn't consent immediately, but agreed in silence to change his mind about how he had planned to spend the time I was singing. He asked me if I was nervous, I calmly looked him in the eye and simply said, "Yes."

Another hour passed by (without drugs) and the Husband suggested that I talk about my feelings. Even out loud I couldn't give a logical story frame to my feelings. I could repeat that I felt ill and panicked, that I didn't want to go, but that I didn't want to waste his gift to me. Then he said the magic words that let me off the hook when I forfeited by gift certificate.

"Whatever. It'll be a donation." That concept was my ticket to finding the fine line of logic and stepping off the spiral.

Gotta love the simplicity of the out he gave me and the permission to call and cancel the appointment as gracefully as a panicked person can. It allowed me the room to cry for awhile and follow the Husband's next piece of wisdom, "If you're not ready, you're not ready."

Apparently I'm not ready. I can be okay with that for now.