Things Change

So now I am only working at the loathed job two days a week, and would you believe I actually miss it! It reminds me of the Joni Mitchell song, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone". How true, but I have to be sure to remember how trapped I felt when I was there everyday. How depressed I was, and how I started putting on weight. Now I am being challenged I am venturing in to the unknown and learning new things, which is good for me.

But what if I am the person who can never be satisfied with what they have an is constantly searching for the next thing. I feel like I need to resolve these career issues soon. I need to become settled enough and happy enough with where I am in my career to think about starting a family cause that is going to be the next step . I don't want to rush into that, but I also don't want to put it off for too long....

I felt like a ghost today
walking through walls
practically invisible.
How strange to be back in a place
you feel you have left behind to look people in the eyes
and watch them see right through you
how sad and yet how fitting
and some how meant to be
it offers up a universe in that uncertainty

she almost has taken over and used up all the space
her presence can overwhelm. I see it now.
The vastness that is within her can make
the room feel small
a tiny spekeled piece of dreams
a rainbow on the wall.
In three years I have managed to make a mark I know
it is the quiet moments which happen very slow that breath the new life into
the ones who knew you when
the big brown eyes that watch me when I'm walking through a room
her smallness and her shyness at times of pleasantries
can reach right inside of me
her sweetness is profound
we have the same nature
deep within our souls and as she reached for me I felt entirely whole.
for it redeemed all my feelings resentments and the like
it wasn't really just that I'd done it out of spite
there are more reasons
more than I can say
I'll never really know
I have no way

update

Gosh, it's been a very long time hasn't it. I have forgotten about you I must admit and although some people write blogs in the hopes that someone might read it. I actually hope that no one ever reads mine. I have written so many personal things in here and seem to have trouble distinguishing it from a diary. There is a part of me that very much wants to go back and edit things that I have said in the past but I guess I won't. I am making this basically anonymous anyway. I can't believe how depressing some of the things I wrote here are. I am not feeling that bad anymore. I am quite content for the most part. I am enjoying my summer vacation, one of the definite perks of teaching.
My husband and I were supposed to go to Greece this week but on the way to the airport my husband realized that his passport expired and we had to cancel our trip. It is a disappointment for us both but we are making the best of it. We have decided to go to Cape Cod instead, not nearly as exciting but it should be nice.
I am surprised when looking back through my writings to here how down I was on myself. I think I was being a little melodramatic, things are not so bad really. Yes, working with toddlers is not what I want to do but I won't have to for much longer and there are lots of other things I can do. I have gotten a top notch education out of the deal and even though it has been quite trying it is almost over! This fall I will be working two days a week in my toddler program and the other three days I will be student teaching at P.S 290 with 1st graders, working with a teacher who is very well regarded and has written a book about her curriculum which is very interesting. I read it in one of my classes last semester. It was impressive to me that she has been able to design a curriculum which is so unique and has so much political content and have it go over in the public school system. I am excited about working with her!
Another exciting change that has happened in my life is that I have begun to slim down! I was never overweight but I was getting there. This passed year was very stressful for me as you may have noted from my previous posts. Working with little children is so draining. There is so little time to think of yourself and your own needs I found it impossible to drop the weight during the school year, but as soon as summer vacation rolled around I was determined. The diet I am using is one that my husband helped me come up with. Basically it is a low calorie diet. My husband the scientist discovered that a person of my height 5' tall and my age 31, who is moderately active needs to consume 1500 calories per day to maintain their weight. In order to lose weight I must stay below this. I have been doing this for almost three weeks now and have lost 5 pounds. I try to stay below 1200 per day. It can be challenging at times but it is so worth it because I feel so much better and can move my body with so much less effort. I hope that this will become a permanent change and the negative attitude and the weight together will melt off of me. The real challenge will come once work and school start up again but I think I am up for it. I will keep you posted.

He probably hates me. He thinks I am miserable and lazy and a horrific slob. Oh well. I don't really care what he thinks right now. He doesn't even know who I am. Am I supposed to take a blow like that and pretend I don't feel it. Come on now. I am still human, right. Oh there is so much that is wrong with my life. I don't even know where to begin. He thinks I will quit my job and never amount to anything right. Yeah. I'll just spit in the face of all that I have achieved, walk away, move on, open a new chapter, for what, no one will care, nothing will change, time will keep going in it's mindless way. It is such a pity that life is not more mailable. I could have been somebody. I think once upon a time I could have had a shot. Now it's over. I'm getting older. My dreams have to die, because they never came true. There is nothing ahead for me. Nothing to look forward to. I am never to find my way. I am not good at what I do. I take no pride in my work and each day is more miserable than the last. I should tell Sarah to start a blog. Then she could share her misery with the world too. Maybe it would make her feel better to let it all out.
When I look at her I try not to see myself in five years, but we are more the same than I am likely to admit. Accept, she has a spine, a backbone, a voice, she has a presence and makes a difference in our school. I am a ghost passing through. I am not real to them and they are not real to me. What about the performance review. Will it be better just to skip it. Will I be in for a rude awakening when Rachel tells me, "I know you've been dreaming of something better but what you will actually get is something much, much worse". That would be unfortunate. I would be left with out an alternative. I would be completely dependent on Sam. I would have nothing. Losing a teaching job is hard to do, but I've done it before. I was much younger then. Time was on my side. Maybe the world was my oyster but I didn't know it. Didn't grasp at it. Let it slip away. I'll never get their because I don't like to play by the rules and that isn't as glamorous as it sounds. It just means that I'm always cutting corners and never quite ending up where I want to be. I don't think I'm very well regarded among the Hillside school sect, and I'm sure their are rumors about me swirling around the place. Maybe I will get the axe, maybe I should, maybe not, better to wait, make nice, hope everything stays the course.

why me. today I had a young girl humiliate me and now I have taken harsh criticism from Sam. Oh what will I do. I am unable to move out of this misery. It is all consuming. Over the years many people's lives have moved forward and yet mine stays still why? I wish Dr. Gordon were still alive so he could explain this all to me and help me find a way out. I don't know where I will go from here. Sam is right. My fantasy of getting out, of doing something better is just that, a fantasy. I will never get there. I will never have a successful career or have the respect of anyone because it is not in me. If Jennifer saw me now. She would laugh. She would laugh so hard at me, because I am still here, still on the periphery of life. On the outside looking in. No matter how much I try. Does he realize how he has destroyed me. There is nothing that I can do to improve my situation. If he wanted to hurt me so bad he has succeeded. There was a time when I thought I was moving forward but in all these years nothing has changed. I have made momentously bad decisions and life has passed me by. Before I know it I will be 31 years old. I have nothing to show for it. What is he talking about does he even know, because it makes no sense to me. This must be some kind of a joke.

It's Been a While

Sorry I have not written in so long. I have been very busy and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I wish my therapist Dr Gordon were still alive but he died in 2007. A week or 2 before my niece was born and a month or 2 before I was married. He helped me so much, in so many ways. One thing in particular that he did was give my life the direction that I so desperately needed. I was a bit of a delinquent in high school and a bit of a slacker through college and beyond. When I was 25 years old I gave up smoking pot, alcohol and cigarettes which was all that remained from my adolescent indiscretions. There was a time in high school, Sophomore year when I was doing pot a few times a week, drinking once or twice a week and doing acid or mescalin about once a month. The following year I gave up acid for mushroom and an abusive relationship for no relationship. I hit the harder stuff in college or after which culminated in the end of it all circa memorial day weekend 2003.
At that time I was hopelessly enamored with a white rapper who shall remain nameless. He was absolutely uninteresting but for some reason I neglected to see this. Except for a couple brief encounters we shared very little. Nearly 2 years later I had not been able to get over my feelings for him. I had at that point written numerous unrequited love songs for him which had yet to have seen the light of day. He was there the evening I decided to go straight. He had begun a relationship with a friend of mine and their love affair had given me a catalyst with which to continue torturing myself. I used every opportunity I could to see him and every dysfunctional turn their relationship took I relished. He would give me just enough to keep me hanging on as some men are so good at doing. It was a rough time. I was so starved for his touch or the touch of anyone for that matter that on this particular night the situation came to a head as they say. I had learned of his relationship with my friend in the spring of 2002. Less than a year after our encounter and when the hope of a reunion was still painfully real in my mind and yet I took the news quite well. I was in some ways thrilled by the coincidence of yet another love triangle emerging in my life. I was also aroused by the possibility that the object of my affection all the sudden been restored to a real position in my life-boyfriend of friend. Every interaction between us after the news was vague, ambiguous, hard to pin down. The alcohol and marijuana did not help to clarify things in the least. I was very confused and still very much in love with him and my friend and I lost a lot of our intimacy in the process and that's why I decided to quit dope so I could see clearly again .
My friend left for Korea in August of 2003 and that was the last time I saw her. Six months later I orchestrated a couple meeting with the rapper fella. I eventually built up the courage to confess my feelings to him which culminated in the inevitable rejection, but ultimately allowed me to have some peace and closure regarding the situation. 4 1/2 months later I met my husband. I had begun playing shows in small venues in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn with a friend. She was a friend of my future husband's who was also a musician. We met one night playing a show together at the CB's Gallery and a few weeks later he came to see me perform there. All the songs that I had written about my unrequited love had finally come to fruition.
Now I am happily married but the obsession that drives me is my career or lack there of. As you can imagine during my years of inebriation I was not exactly making the most of my potential. I had always been good with kids and had a lot of experience working with children so an obvious choice was to go into teaching and I credit teaching with in part getting me clean. I was responsible for little children and I had to act that way in order to keep my job but more importantly in order to earn the trust and respect of the little one's in my care. Now I am 8 years in to my profession as early childhood educator. I am receiving my master's degree at Columbia University. You could say I am a success story and that I have turned my life around and that would all be true, the only trouble is I have no interest in continuing in this field per Se. I enjoy children but I have realized that spending my days with toddlers has become increasingly unpleasant and I am ready for a change. I have spent the past couple years grappling with this issue and have yet to take the plunge in to the unknown. There are practicalities holding me back. I want to finish my degree and my job is currently paying my tuition. I plan to take the plunge at the end of this school year if the economic crisis does not interfere. I think it will be an exciting chapter in my life and I can't wait to begin it. I hope I can achieve my goals in time to start a family. Thanks for listening.

my husband and I are not getting along. I am not always easy to deal with. Neither is he. If things don't work out between us I need to have a plan. I don't want to end up homeless. My name is not on the lease. This is his apartment. Technically he could throw me out and then what would I do. It isn't easy, being a woman. I need love and attention so often. It is the life force and it is one of the most important things there is. Many people do not seem to understand this. I am so miserable right now. My life is a terrible strain on me. It seems that everyone else is enjoying themselves, while I am stuck in a trap from which I can not escape. It's much easier to move down than up as we all know. Our life together is a challenge. The solace that I got through work is gone. It is a difficult industry, the childcare industry that I work in. I am a mule, but when a mule no longer has work what does the mule do. That is the decision I am currently faced with.

My brother was on a kayaking trip yesterday with a group of young real estate brokers. He was in a kayak on the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge. He and an acquaintance of his were riding in the Kayak together. As they passed by the waterfalls art exhibit their boat capsized. It's been all over the papers. My brother was interviewed on the channel 11 news last night. It was a really scary experience for him. He easily could have drowned. Luckily he is a very strong swimmer. He is fine. Two different newspapers carried the story. One was The Daily News, and the other was The New York Times. The Daily News reporter actually spoke with my brother and interviewed him, but the reporter who wrote the article for The New York Times never actually spoke with my brother and a lot of the information written in the article was incorrect. My brother did not have a camera with him and neither he nor the other man who was in the boat with him were taking pictures or horsing around. It is clear that the writer from The New York Times was writing what the tour guide told him and did not take the time to speak to anyone else. It seems to me that this tour guide was concerned mainly with ridding himself of any blame for the accident and the writer did not care enough to check his facts. I spoke with a friend of mine who is an experienced kayaker and she told me that the currents under the east river are extremely dangerous and anyone who knows anything about kayaking would never take beginner kayakers there. Even if the guide gave them instructions about how to get out of a kayak he should not have expected beginners to be able to perform this move. It seems to me that the writer and the tour guide both have a lot of explaining and apologizing to do.