The community college I’m going to has two different summer sessions, each running 6 weeks. Summer 1 began May 27th and ended July 3rd, Summer 2 began July 7th and runs through August 14th. If you do two classes during a summer session, you’re considered a full time student. Summer 1 I did Psychology and ASL 1, and now in Summer 2 I’m doing Public Speaking and ASL 2.
I chose to do Psychology and Public Speaking in the summer because they’re two classes I felt would take a little bit more effort on my part and trying to do them during a show season at the Ballet, especially a Nutcracker season, felt like cruel and unusual punishment. I didn’t want to add to my stress that is already through the roof with working two jobs by adding in complex classes. (I’ve lucked out that I only have two ASL classes offered in the fall, when I’m busiest. Spring isn’t so lucky with something like 14 hours worth of ASL classes while working full time at two jobs. Yeehaw?)
My Psychology class that I took in Summer 1 ended up being my absolute favorite. Everything about it made me feel so good and I looked forward to attending class. Sure, it was quite a bit of work, but the material we were learning was so interesting and the “kids” in my class were engaging and hilarious that I found myself having so much fun, even when it was difficult. I found myself feeling what I’d consider to be a sense of grief once the class ended and I had to take some time to let myself process the fact that I’d never have that class with that teacher and those fellow students ever again and to shift into the “smile because it happened” phase of change.
Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to Public Speaking, sort of by default. It’s hard to be the second act after such a solid first act, anything would pale by comparison. I found out my last week of Summer 1 that the teacher in whose class I originally enrolled didn’t make the required number of students and I was switched to a different teacher. At first this just added to my anxiety, but then I realized it was someone my friend had taken in Spring and since she really liked her class I calmed down a little bit.
First day of class our teacher told us a little bit about herself and also explained her expectations from us for the class. This is when I learned that she did her student teaching under my high school speech teacher, who is an absolute legend. This was something I found both helpful as well as adding to the nerves. It was helpful in the sense that I felt I was already familiar with what she would be expecting in the most basic sense. I did speech and debate in high school and though it’s all quite a blur, I figured I would sort of slide right back into that frame of mind and may be able to squeak out an okay grade. The downside is that because of this connection to Ms. Brown, I now had extremely high standards for myself and feel she will expect a lot out of me as well. How do I explain to my new speech teacher that I’m actually not that great at this and that I never did this kind of speech in speech and debate? Will my speeches speak for themselves (terrible pun there, forgive me, I didn’t mean it) or – worse – will she hear me speak and have no clue that I ever sat under the Great Ms. Brown? And if she could tell, does that mean she’s going to hold me to an outrageously high standard befitting a “Brownie”?
Damned if I do, damned if I don’t I guess.
The second day of class we had a quiz for extra credit that I completely forgot about. I felt so scattered trying to get situated with everything that comes with the new class and new semester, as well as work and also teaching ballet private lessons (and then add in sorting through all the emotions with the recent floods in Central Texas) that I got to class and remembered nothing of what she told us. I quickly looked over the hand out and all the different things she told us to star in hopes it would be enough. There were ten questions and if you missed 2 or less then you would get the extra credit. Wouldn’t you know I was the only person who didn’t get the required amount of questions right? Clearly this did nothing for my confidence going into this. After class that day, I met with Dr. A to go over the last exam. I had had a dream in my anxiety a few days before that I got to her office and remember looking at the Scantron, but couldn’t remember what any of the actual questions or answers were and was super confused about the entire thing. Thankfully, it wasn’t like that and I actually forgot that it wouldn’t be the second exam that I was seeing. When she handed me the Scantron and test I expected to see way more incorrect answers but was pleasantly surprised to be reminded that this was the exam on which I had done the best. The questions I got wrong were ones I had either debated between the two answers or else talked myself out of the correct one, so I was pleased overall with the outcome. I told Dr. A how I missed her class and that she definitely has ruined any other class for me because now they’re all held to the standard of her class. She laughed and told me I would do well in my other classes and I decided to believe her, even though at this point I was certain that if I squeaked out a B in Speech I’d be callin’ it good.
We have 4 speeches we’ll have to give in class, the first of which was today. Our teacher gave us a handout with a guideline for how to format our speech and also provided different videos for extra credit that I found helpful. These videos gave me a pretty good sense of what she would be expecting, what was allowed, and which common trip-ups weren’t deal breakers. She also gave us a typed up example of what her speech would look like, as well as what her notecard would look like. The notecard isn’t supposed to have our entire speech but instead serve more like a bullet point list to help us if we got tripped up. Much like how I don’t read music in violin, I had a feeling that if I could get a pretty good sense of my speech memorized that I would feel more confident in it, because then if I completely messed up I could hope that muscle memory would kick in and keep me going. I wrote the speech when I finally got a quiet moment between work, violin, work, and private lessons, and practiced when I got home, though after practicing I realized I’d completely forgotten an entire section of points I was supposed to hit. (no wonder my timing improved!) That made me start second guessing myself right when I was starting to feel a little comfortable.
I was able to go in early and do the extra credit practicing in the speech lab, which is where you film yourself practicing three different times. I’m so glad I did because I completely spaced out on one of the sections in which I was most confident during the first run through. I ended up re-writing my notecard to make it more clear for where I tend to get caught up and kept thinking through the different parts I wasn’t confident in before class. Doing the practice before also helped me with my nerves because two of my other classmates were doing theirs before me and another came in after me. The camaraderie I felt with them helped me calm down my nerves. I’m so grateful.
Walking into class, I realized that I felt much the same way as when I was going into a psychology exam; if I’m getting it wrong, I’m going to get it wrong confidently. In speech terms I guess that translates to, if I bomb this, I’m going to bomb it the best way I know how. I decided that if no one volunteered to go first that I’d just get it out of the way; I felt okay enough to do that. Thankfully, other people volunteered quickly and I ended up fifth, which I thought was late enough to see examples of other people but early enough to not psych myself out in an anxiety spiral.
When I got up there I definitely felt myself flip into Speech-and-Debate-tournament mode and that muscle memory I was hoping for kicked in. I felt I actually managed to articulate myself the best in class than I ever did in practice, which surprised me. Going into it I was a bit concerned that my speech was disjointed and confusing, or that I would be speaking way too fast to try and keep in the time limit, but my teacher kept laughing at my jokes and quips so that made me feel a little better. (I think I still spoke a little fast, but slow by my standards. I speak fast, y’all.) When I finished, my hands were uncontrollably shaking. I had mentally prepared myself for how I would respond to my teachers small talk questions I would assume she would ask like she’d done with the people before me, picking out something from their speech to ask a little more detail about. Surely, she would connect the fact I mentioned growing up in my hometown and going to public high school and connect that I had Ms. Brown since I also mentioned my age.
But she didn’t.
I sat down and she says, “If y’all want to know what a 100 looks like, that was it.” Then she said to me, “If you think you’re going to get away with not joining my speech team you’re mistaken.” I responded, “I was trained by Ms. Brown” to which she replied, “I can tell”.
I can not describe the relief I felt in that moment, both knowing I made a 100 and also that she could tell I studied under Ms. Brown. The fear of the standard I have now set for myself dulled a little bit. I found myself more surprised by it all.
I started public school Sophomore year. I wasn’t trained in how to do all this stuff for years like my peers and I definitely was lacking in the confidence department. I was too afraid to actually practice with Ms. Brown to be worth much of anything, though I squeaked out a few medals and trophies here and there; nothing enough to qualify for Nationals, but once I got 2nd in a Senior event (I can’t remember if it was Prose or DI) that no one was expecting. It was quite different from the stand out kids that consistently did well at tournaments. I was mediocre at best. To have that praise from my speech teacher, knowing she spent her student teaching days with Ms. Brown, is more than I could have ever expected.
As I drove back to work, I was reflecting on all of this and found myself remembering what I learned from Psychology—that maybe I’m actually smart and have been this whole time. Is it possible this could be true for more than just the classes I really like? What the hell is in the water now that I didn’t have before? Where did this come from? I could probably say age and experience helps, as well as all the work I’ve done over the last few years to unlearn old patterns of thinking and relearn new ones that better serve me, as well as boundaries and lots of therapy—but is it that “simple”? Nothing about all of that has been simple, but has this potential been in me this entire time?
Like.
Holy crap.
(The view of part of some campus buildings from the second floor window)
From Kindergarten through Eighth Grade I attended a private Christian school in a small town near where I live. We mostly used a self-taught curriculum and classes were separated by groups of grades since our school was so small. These groups occasionally fluctuated from year to year. The summer after Eighth Grade, before my Freshman year, my parents pulled us out of enrollment there. I was away at Bible Camp and they forgot to tell me until I asked sometime late July or early August when we were going to get our uniforms. I digress. My Freshman year I was homeschooled using this same curriculum. I can only assume it was thought that since this was self-taught, the transition to homeschooling would be smooth and easy and we would be able to accomplish our work without much effort on the part of adults. What actually happened is I didn’t do any subject I wasn’t interested in or couldn’t understand. I remember realizing that if I kept up with this, I would basically never have more than an Eighth Grade education, though I would have a High School diploma—mom was filling out the transcript anyway and submitting it, no problem. My friends had gone to public school and I made a list of reasons (I don’t think it was quite an actual PowerPoint, but definitely same concept) about why they should let me go to public school. This might seem like a simple agreement for some, but having come from a private Christian school where I was intentionally enrolled and a negative stigma against public schools rampant from the opinions of the mouths of many of the adults that surrounded me (never mind that half our church had kids in public school) it definitely took some persuading. I’m not sure how I got the courage to do this, I don’t remember, and I don’t know how I got my parents to agree, but they did, especially considering I couldn’t drive quite yet and we lived out in the country and my mom wasn’t a big fan of taking me places.
Sophomore year is when they bring the students in one at a time to meet with the Counselor to see what you might see yourself studying after graduation in either a college, university, or trade school. I remember sitting in that office riddled with anxiety, having no clue what my life would look like this year or how to navigate it, let alone what it would look like once I was graduated. She asked me, “well, what are you good at?” and the panic only increased; I’m not good at anything. I’ve had an unconventional schooling experience by comparison up until this point, and the limited options we had through Eighth Grade were things I definitely wasn’t good at. I thought about the fact that I volunteered at my church and I seemed to be good at that, so I said, “I don’t know, helping people?” and she said, “what about being a teacher? or a therapist?” to which I wasn’t sure. The latter especially was a hard no to me as I had the thought, “if I can’t even handle my own issues, how could I help anyone else through theirs?”
My Junior year, as I looked over the options of classes I noticed American Sign Language was available as a foreign language to Juniors and Seniors. Having learned a few songs in ASL at my private school and remembering I was good at it and how much I enjoyed it, I asked if I could take that instead of Spanish. Finally, something I was good at. I took ASL 1-4 in the two years, was voted “Who’s Who of American Sign Language” (which, there was four of us Senior year), and really took to this language and culture in a way that’s hard to explain. My teacher encouraged me to look into going to school at our local community college for an ASL Interpreting degree.
When I graduated, I went to the Bible College attached to the Bible Camp I’d gone to almost every summer since I was 4-years-old, a dream of mine since I can remember. I wanted to go to the college, work at the camp, and be full time staff, living out the rest of my days working for this place that was such a big part of my life and one of the only safe and consistent places for me. This was a two year, non accredited school. I was top 10 my first year, Salutatorian my second year, and against all odds was on summer staff both summers. (The first made possible by a friend of mine on staff who requested me for his department after the first pick turned it down. He got struck by lightening before summer began and I ended up running the department myself with only the knowledge of what I had from interning at the summer camps. 18 hour days, and I was the only staff member to not get sick that entire summer. Also, he survived, but with immense mental deficits as the lightening entered the right side of his head and out his left foot. Wild times.) After my second summer, I applied to be full time staff but was rejected. At the time, this was the biggest loss I could imagine. Everything I’d ever hoped or planned for was now impossible and I was faced with going back home to a place I didn’t enjoy with no back up plan, feeling like a complete failure, especially when compared to my contemporaries.
I got a job and looked into what it would take to go to the local community college for that ASL Interpreting degree. As a rather anxious human pre diagnosis, this was quite the feat for me to make the calls and meet with the adults that could answer my questions, let alone actually asking those questions. Still, I did it, and they seemed very happy to have me, but then financial aid fell through due to issues with my parents information (long story) and I couldn’t afford to go. I later learned my sister and I both had college funds, but she got them both since no one thought I’d go to “real college” when I got home and we were in the middle of the Great Recession.
For ten years beginning in 2008, I flitted around from job to job, taking what I could get until something better came along. I wasn’t anywhere longer than about 6 months for the largest chunk of that, my longest stint being 2.5 years before I had to quit because by that point my health had tanked so badly I couldn’t tolerate an 8-5 without passing out. By this time, I had been taking ballet classes for a few years and was teaching the younger dancer classes and as I had to strip down my life to the bones and rebuild it back up in hopes my health wouldn’t get increasingly worse or remain that way, I was able to keep the dance classes—even though teaching looked like my sitting on a stool verbally giving instructions to the class and my assistants I requested basically doing all the actual teaching. I’m eternally grateful.
In this time, I’m pricing wheelchairs but hesitating before ordering one, partially because I couldn’t afford them and also partially because I was told by one doctor if I started using one I’d likely never get out of it. My muscles would atrophy and bones become weaker and it would lend to a complicated life shift. This also coincided to what I call the “Great Revolution” of sorts in my personal life where I realized everything I’d been doing was not working and if I kept going this way I’d end up on the debilitating end of my conditions and basically be a ward of my sister my entire life. This could not happen. So I began by challenging every thought that entered my head with two questions: “Why do I think this?” and “Who told me to?” Over the years I was able to pinpoint what was actually something I believed or believed in, what was serving me, what was harming me, and I began to re-pour my life’s foundation and slowly be able to build my life back. I went from being unable to walk a grocery store without passing out to holding a (albeit extremely simple and low stress) part time job at the courthouse in the same department as my sister with a boss who was the opposite of the bosses I’d had before. Here, I was able to further unlearn some of the conditioning I’d acquired and show myself that people in authority can be safe and what I’d experienced before wasn’t how it is everywhere. This did end up being too much to allow me to continue also teaching the ballet classes I loved so much and in March 2020 I told my ballet bosses that this would be my last year teaching. And then we broke for Spring Break and the world shut down, causing that season to end there.
Flash Forward to today as this back story is long and I haven’t even begun to write about the actual point of this post: I work in local government in that same part time job I got at the end of 2018. I’ve worked here knowing that if you’re full time, they offer a tuition reimbursement program to employees who pursue degrees. I’d assumed the whole time that this was just another thing I’d never be able to take advantage of because I’d screwed myself over with all my health conditions (triggered by stress) and wouldn’t be able to handle a full time job and school.
Lo and behold on January 6 in the year of our Lord 2025, something clicked, and I realized I could actually handle taking on classes. The irony is that I’m actually working two full time jobs as the performance studio arm of the teaching studio I worked for hired me on a few years back to work for them as well. My health has slowly been improving over all this time, with baby steps here and there in the right direction, the most recent breakthrough being realizing I can eat walnuts which helps reduce the inflammation in my brain stem that’s causing most of my issues, but all of those details are for another post.
Again, I did the terrifying thing, I asked the questions, I somehow figured out how to apply for school, register, found the locations of all the classes, etc which may not seem like a big deal for most but for me is substantial. I have four classes this summer, two in each Summer I and Summer II, with my first in person class being General Psychology—the real point of this blog post. (If you’ve made it through all this pre-info, bless you.)
I’m pretty sure I was so nervous I was shaking that first day of classes. The teacher I’d chosen was one recommended by a dance mom friend who used to work at the college and said she was outstanding, so I felt a little bit of hope that if all else failed, I’d at least have a good teacher. I did as much preparing as I could to allow myself to at least feign confidence until I was familiar enough with the campus and the practices and everything that goes along with getting a college education. The first day, I couldn’t find the elevator and forgot to scour the maps for it before. I took the stairs, which is one of the limitations I haven’t been able to shake myself of (along with reading physical books), and the rest of the day my brain was a bit of dead weight, thought being too difficult to hold on to for long enough to be substantial. I took rigorous notes as I knew that the most important information for how to be successful in this class would be given that day and I knew my brain wasn’t to be relied upon to hold onto it that day.
The last time I’d been in a conventional learning environment was almost 20 years ago, when notes were taken with paper and pencil, tests were taken on scantrons (which felt so futuristic), and research was done exclusively in libraries. Most students didn’t have cell phones and those who did likely couldn’t access a web browser from them. I’ve heard certain terms from teacher friends that I knew to be related to how school is done now, but I had no personal experience with it. Using the platform Canvas was entirely new to me and I was concerned I’d be expected to be proficient on the ins and outs of it from the start. I was also in a class with students who attend one of the Collegiate schools, making them mostly Juniors and Seniors in high school, some of them having mothers who graduated while I was in high school.
These “kids” took me right in as a peer, and my teacher, Dr. A, assumed nothing going in to this semester. She was very clear on expectations, walked us through how to access our textbook through Canvas and the further connection of McGraw-Hill, walked us through how to do the Chapter Mastery requirements for the class, and even showed us how to access Tech Support, emphasizing how wonderful they are to work with. I cannot express the relief I felt this first day, fuzzy brained and all.
The class was spread out over 6 weeks. Given that usually a semester is 16 weeks, we were squeezing in quite a bit of information into our time, having a Chapter Mastery due about every other day or so, an exam every other week, and occasional work on the weekends due to holidays throwing off our groove. I found a way to read through the text book without passing out, taking cues from the fact I can quilt (which is more paced) but not crochet (which can be powered through) and taking notes as I read to help break up whatever it is that causes my brain to shut down after a few pages.
Two days before our first exam Dr. A presented us with a survey the department passes out to all of the classes with various questions. She said it wouldn’t count against us, but any of the questions we got right would be extra credit. I felt zero hope on this and told myself I’d be proud if I get just one answer right and just sort of did my best with it. We got our results back the day before our exam and I was confused at first. Did she say this was just a completion grade? But then the girl who sits next to me, Lilly, told me she got seven correct, and I realized that the “5” on each side of my page was telling me how many I got correct on each side and somehow I’d managed to get them all right. I was shocked, and instantly felt that this is where I’ve peaked—this is going to be an omen of sorts because if I did so well on this that means I’m going to bomb my first exam, right?
Apparently my assumptions are misguided. I managed to score an 88 on the exam, but with the curve it was a 93. I was pretty surprised and felt that surely this was the peak, but also was shocked because I didn’t try all that hard. Wasn’t I bad at tests? Wasn’t I not that great of a student?
I got excited during these next few classes because we learned about the importance of sleep, which Dr. A stressed to us, explaining how it’s better to study over a series of days and get good sleep at night so our brain can process through everything we’ve taken in rather than a couple days of all night cramming. She also talked about the effect stress can have on the body and these two topics are huge contenders in what I learned led to the bulk of my health issues I’ve been trying to combat largely on my own. Stress was a huge trigger for the worst of it, and I must prioritize rest or else I’m not nearly as effective as I can be. It’s not often this comes up organically. I was thrilled.
The second exam covered four chapters that were pretty intense, full of information over a wide array of complex topics with little time to grasp them. I felt Dr. A did a great job of explaining them to us in lecture and had practice modules on Canvas available for us as well and I was feeling fairly confident in them in the lead up to the exam. The day before, she gave us a handout to help us apply three of the more complex concepts. We got through the first page and I felt I had a decent grasp on it. We got to the second page, and we get into our small groups to go over what we thought the answers were to a series of worded questions about the next topic. I felt pretty good about it until we went over it all and on the fifth question it was nothing close to what I thought it was.
This sent me straight back to fourth-grade-me, trying to learn fractions and not understanding how they were getting the answer. Back then my teacher was out and I was too afraid to ask the High School math teacher for help and I developed a complex with math I still haven’t found my way through. This time, I held in the panic I was feeling and stayed after class to ask Dr. A how she got that from this question, completely blanking about the third page entirely as I was trying my hardest not to go into full blown panic. Dr. A told me, “this is a poorly worded question and I won’t word them like that on your test” and I asked “so is the answer A or C?” and she replied, “It depends.” At this point, tears are just falling out of my eyes. I felt like an idiot and said, “this feels like a word problem in math class and I’m really bad at math.” She said, “I teach statistics and help people with their math trauma all the time, it’s okay” then she asked if I had a moment and we sat down at one of the desks. She told me there’s 50 questions on the test and it covers four chapters, then asked me how many questions that gives me for each section. I said, “When I say I’m bad at math, I mean it. I missed a bunch of questions in ASL not because I didn’t know the number signs but because they wanted me to give an answer to a simple multiplication problem and I couldn’t manage it.” She said, “It’s a little over 12” to which I replied, “I believe you.” Then she went on to explain how even if I completely bombed this section, which she didn’t think I would, that I would be okay. I was thinking how I didn’t feel confident in any of the sections and my brain wanted to spiral about how I could bomb all of them, but I shut it down. She didn’t need to see that side of me, especially when she was helping me.
I’m going to paraphrase the next bit because I was coming down from the panic, trying to keep the spiral side of me silent, and also taken aback by her next words that I don’t remember exactly what she said, but it was something to this effect; “Emilee, you’re one of my brightest students. You really should consider a degree in psychology”.
Wut.
I left shortly there after, having calmed down but crying a little bit in my car. Letting myself feel is still something new and I’m learning how to allow myself to do it, especially at this point, so I gave myself the drive to process through it until I had the time to go more in depth later. The last couple days had also been filled with many of those little annoyances that are enough to derail an already tense day, and as I tried to reassure myself that I would have time to go over the information that evening and do the practice modules that would likely help clarify things, more things kept derailing including someone stopping by the studio and taking up 45 minutes of my time I didn’t have to spare with a question that could have been a one sentence text, and then being unable to access the module. The panic came right back up. In the end, I told myself that if I didn’t have those available to me, I could still read the concept in my book and try to work through it with the information I did have. I was going to be okay. I gave myself until 7:30, then I had to go home, make myself eat, and calm down enough to sleep well, the latter two of these three tasks being things I struggle with on a good day.
The next day, I joined in with the study group that formed from the “kids” that sit near me in class. We went over the details of the ear and eye, each ending up being the extra credit on either of the two versions of the test. I was grateful for their help as that’s what got me the extra credit points I managed to scrape up. I took the exam, feeling more confident than I expected. The way I described it was if I was wrong, I was confidently wrong. When I turned in my exam, Dr. A asked me how I was feeling, and I told her I was feeling alright. I thought that was very kind of her to check in. I wasn’t expecting it, being used to largely having to handle things myself, consideration like that being something I don’t come by often. It meant a lot. We got these exam results quicker, and the next day I found that I received a 94, no curve, with all but one of my incorrect answers being in the first section—about the eye. Of course I didn’t go over that section, focusing on the more complex ones and assuming I knew enough to get by. I couldn’t help but laugh.
The chapters we covered before the third exam were absolutely packed with information; different specific psychologists and their different specific methods on different specific things, the different psychological conditions that were covered, different types of therapy, different stages of development—so much information. We were all feeling a bit of the pressure, the study group meeting again and often, though I was only able to join for about half an hour on the day of the exam. This time, it all felt more “clinical” for lack of a better term. Not so much needing to know exact definition, but definitely needing to remember which psychologist had which theory and what happened with each experiment, etc. Again, I felt if I was wrong I was confidently wrong, so I just took it for what it was, took my time, and did my best. She had them graded by that afternoon (Wonder Woman, I swear) and the group chat blew up again. I’d gotten a 95, no curve, no extra credit. A 95 all on my own with an entirely multiple choice test. At this point, I’m thinking back on my history with schooling. I knew I was a smart kid in elementary school, but about 6th grade all of that went out the window. I got my first B, cried in the back of my friends mom’s suburban, failed my first test the next year, more the following, then by the time I’m in public school I’m just doing what I can to stay afloat. What I’m starting to see in this class is that, over all that time, I was doing my best to survive to where school was so far secondary I couldn’t do any better than I was. The changes that greatly affected me began in 6th grade, and got progressively more intense for years way past my school days. My church closed, my family moved out to the country and away from proximity to anyone, they pulled me out of school, my best friend moved to another state before technology had us connected like today, my great grandma died, my grandpa died, my other grandpa died, my friend died, then another friend, and another, and another x30 before I stopped counting after five years, the abuse began, then more change, then more and other abuse, more friends dying, my own near death experiences and health challenges, then my health fully tanked…all these things just stacking one on top of the other with all the other nuances of life mixed in amongst the rest of it. Did I mention the hurricane that wiped out a nearby town, trashing my parent’s house with it? It’s no wonder my grades began to slip, that I struggled to take tests or learn new things, that I wasn’t all that good at writing essays.
My goal going into this at the beginning was maybe a B or better, but once I got an A on that first exam, I thought, “maybe I can manage an A.” Then when I got a 94 on the second exam (which ended up actually becoming a 96) I thought, “maybe I can manage a ‘Highland A'”. At my private Christian school, the grading rubric was different. An ‘A’ was a 94-100, ‘B’ was a 88-93, ‘C’ was an 80-87, and anything below an 80 was failing. To end this class with a 94 or above felt far fetched, but would feel almost full circle; back to that little girl I was in elementary who was confident, smart, safe. But could I manage that? 16 weeks worth of a college class in 6 weeks?
You see, this class isn’t the only thing happening at this time. Of course it’s not. Life be life-in’ and it doesn’t stop for anyone. During this, I’m still working two jobs, dog sitting between three different families, I finished two quilts, and then there’s the general life happenings and my health sometimes likes to remind me that it’s still not the happiest with me. I’ve had the immense privilege to be in therapy for the last year and a half with an absolutely incredible psychologist. There have been some pretty intense sessions we’ve had lately and one of the defining themes was hitting a sort of point of finality. I couldn’t see a way around or past it, but I knew there had to be something I was missing. It was quite overwhelming at times and extremely emotionally taxing, at one point causing me to ask my therapist point blank, “is this even something that’s supposed to happen?” and she replied with, “well, it depends. It depends on what you want.”
You mean, I get a choice?
Of course I know I have a choice in my life, but this really struck me. This concept was about my place in the world, if I’m even anyone’s priority (I’m not), and how the hell is someone supposed to handle being no one’s priority on the days when life feels like way too much and I’m overwhelmed? Who am I supposed to turn to? I have my friends for when it gets to that extreme that if you understand I’m so sorry that’s something you have to understand, and I’m grateful for those friends that answer me in my darkest, but what about these in between times? The moments when I know things will be okay, that it won’t always be like this, that there’s nothing anyone can actually do about it, yet I’m in this heightened state of rage and everything feels like too much? Is this—letting someone be there for me in these moments—even supposed to happen? Am I supposed to put this burden onto my people who are already burdened with so much else from their people (family, kids, etc) when I know that this will pass and I’ll be fine by the morning? My therapist tells me it depends on what I want.
And that’s when it all clicks.
In my general psychology class, I’m learning the overview of psychology, touching on many different topics within the field, getting the science behind what I’m learning. In this, I’m reflecting back on my own experiences as they become relevant, evaluating what I know with what I’m learning, applying that thinking pattern I adopted almost 8 years ago: “Why do I think this? Who told me to?”
In class, I get a kick out of dropping tidbits of my life seemingly out of nowhere to see my table mate’s reactions. You don’t really expect it out of me, which is half the fun, and being this is a psychology class it was often relevant. More than once, the girl next to me would say, “girl, are you okay?” which would make us both laugh and I’d say some sort of quip like, “my therapist earns her keep!” which would then open up the floor for exciting questions from someone their age such as, “do you find therapy to be worth it?” and I can tell them that, with the right therapist, it’s more than worth it. You may not find the perfect fit first try, and that’s okay, but keep trying because finding the right therapist is like magic and it’s such a huge privilege to even have the opportunity to attempt to see one. What I didn’t expect was for their reactions to show me how abnormal my experiences have been. To me, it’s all I’ve known, and I’ve been told, “it’s not that big of a deal” or “quit being dramatic” so much that it’s so ingrained I couldn’t even reach the thought to be able to hold it up to my two questions of clarity. But now it’s excavated from the depths of my being, held into the beam of my headlamp, fully exposed. Why do I think that these extreme experiences I’ve had are normal, casual, not that big of a deal? Who told me to?
They aren’t. They are big deals. They are traumas that I have faced and thankfully survived. The things I have been through in response to them aren’t moral failings but rather symptoms of my body, mind, spirit reacting to them, trying to keep me going in spite of it all. Sure, people “have it worse”, but this has been bad, too. It’s a lot, and I don’t have to downplay it. It’s up to me if I’m going to “play the victim” to it, and I think it’s pretty clear with the work I’ve done over the last almost 8 years, and the progress made in therapy over the last year and a half that I don’t want to play the victim. I want to learn, I want to understand, I want to grieve and begin to heal.
I’ve made great progress with that in recent days, but there’s something about the wonderful trifecta of an established, supportive, safe therapy practice, a psychology class taught by an incredible human where I’m learning the science behind psychology that I can apply to my experiences, and the support of these high schoolers with their wide eyes to the world, under developed prefrontal cortexes, and welcoming presence that has brought me to this place of clarity.
When it clicked, the “it” is the fact that for so much of my life I have been told, be it through word or action, that I can’t trust myself. That I am not a safe place for myself. I’ve been told to question my intuition, to not question authority even when they go against my experiences of what I know to be true, that coping mechanisms I turned to to keep myself from the extremes of mental distress meant I was “possessed by a demon” or not safe to be alone or if I disclosed it then people wouldn’t trust me with themselves or their kids or they’d look at me with those eyes full of pity and fake concern (If it doesn’t concern my therapist, then it shouldn’t concern you either), to just deal with all the ways my body was telling me something isn’t right and when doctors told me it wasn’t anything, welp, that’s all there is. For 36.5 years of my life I have been made to believe that I can’t trust myself, that I am not a safe place for myself. That I had to find my affirmation through other people telling me I was safe, confirming that my choices were okay, and to know that I wasn’t alone.
But I’m not alone. I never am, except that all of us sort of always are. As Glennon Doyle said it, I’m the only person who will be with me my entire life. (Or did Amanda Doyle say that? Regardless, check out their We Can Do Hard Things podcast. So good.) When it comes down to it, I’m all I have, and as long as I make myself my priority, I don’t actually need anything else. This doesn’t make me a lone wolf like I was made to believe it did. This isn’t me being a recluse or antisocial in a society that is very much one in which you need other people to survive. I still need my people. I still need to text my friend the drama of the day, or see another friend when our schedules allow, or face time my niece to hear about her summer intensive. I still need to show up when my friends, who have their people who are their priorities, need me, and I know they’ll show up when I need them in spite of it all. But when it comes down to it, I am my own priority, and that is all that matters. I am all I need.
I truly thought the possibility of me being able to get an ASL Interpreting degree had passed. That it just wasn’t in the cards and life had dealt me too difficult of a hand to make it happen. But what is meant for you will find you, and now I have hope, true hope, for the first time in a long time. I have a five year plan for the first time ever and even in such, I know it leaves room for fluctuation or new opportunities. I’m “pregaming freedom”, as I told my therapist on Monday, and it’s a euphoric way of going through life that I didn’t know was actually possible.
This is why we do the work. This is why we push through. This is why we try. It’s hard as hell and exhausting as fuck, but if you can open your mind to the possibility that life might not be what you’ve been told it’s been your whole life and that better is out there and begin to take steps in the direction of where that little candle of hope inside is telling you to go, it’ll open up to you.
All in good time, it’ll find you.
I used to think, if I had a top 5 of favorite memories of my life, what would they be? And I would struggle to come up with them. Not because I haven’t had good moments in my life, but it felt like somethings was missing or not quite right or laced with difficulty in one way or another. It’s hard to explain. But now, this week, I have a certain, without a doubt favorite memory of my entire life thanks to my psychology class. The combination of getting (almost) the entire class to sign a certain book for Dr. A, not giving into the anxiety trying to tell me not to go through with giving it to her because what if it’s not ethical or it gets her in trouble or she doesn’t find the humor in it that I do? The sound of her exploding in laughter, tears in her eyes from the pure joy of it all, and her reading it to the class the next day before our last exam, everyone around me enjoying it just as much, knowing how much this class has meant to them and how much they all also appreciate Dr. A.
This class has been six weeks of magic in a way I never could have anticipated. I am a better person today, July 3, than I was on May 27th when I first stepped foot into that class (after Dr. A found a group of us down the hall because we had somehow been given the wrong room number). I hold this experience in my heart and know I will be reflecting back on it as a touchstone the rest of my life.
People say this kind of shit, that some experience meant a lot to them and they’ll never forget it, and most of the time they’re just saying the words that they feel are supposed to be said when something signifiant ends, but in my case I mean them.
And in case you’re wondering if I managed that “Highland A” for my final grade?
I got a 101.9%.
Hell. Yes.
(photo of an empty college classroom with four rows of tables each with two rolling chairs at them. Three rows have four tables, the fourth row has three. A blank whiteboard is at the front of the class.)
The perfect way to spite perfection is to do it anyway. You got this.”
Not to be egotistical, but I said that.
And the best part about it is, I didn’t remember saying it until a friend quoted me and gave me credit.
Don’t get me wrong, I remember having the conversation with my friend; I remember saying something that resonated with her so much she joked I should put it on a shirt, and as I was typing back my reply of “You can use that” she was typing, “I may make a post with that as the title…” so I changed my response to “You have my full permission.” I remember reading back over the text then, and thinking, “damn, that is a good sentiment to remember, isn’t it?” And then we carried on with our conversation.
See, my friend Hannah is what I’d consider a kindred spirit. As soon as we met I knew there was something about her that just felt like she’d been in my life this whole time and she wasn’t going to go anywhere. Not physically, of course, as I knew when we became friends that she would only live here as long as her husband’s medical internship allowed, but I could sense she would be one of the friends that would find a cozy little home in my heart and stay there for the rest of our days. So far so good.
Hannah and I met through the ballet studio I now work for, but then was just volunteering with. I wasn’t even dancing anymore as she arrived the first season after I’d had to give it all up due to declining health issues. Safe to say, Hannah met me and got to know me at my absolute worst. Yet she still sticks around? She’s a saint, y’all. But really, she is a deep, precious soul who never loves half-way. She is immensely passionate about her dreams, investing her whole person into them, which makes you feel like it’s a delight just to be in her orbit. The authenticity that radiates off of her is intoxicating, making you want to be a better, more authentic person just from being around her. And she loves her people fiercely; no matter the time or distance or any other matter, if I were to call her, she’d answer and be whatever I needed. (Now, she’d probably be dancing when I called, but listen, in this house we respect boundaries and know that if I call and she can’t answer, if I leave a voicemail she’s calling me immediately first chance she gets.) She is a gem and a delight.
Hannah lives life with her eyes and her heart wide open. She has experienced things most people would never even imagine and couldn’t fathom enduring themselves. She knows joy and sorrow in equal measure, yet she chooses the joy day after day to be where she sets her sights. She can find the joy in spite of the sorrow, even when that looks like staring down the tunnel of unimaginable grief again. And since she does all of this with open eyes and an open heart, there is so much we can learn from her.
Hannah is also a writer. Newer to the public sense of that world, but that doesn’t diminish her gift. It’s innate, and she has recently found the courage to begin sharing her thoughts with the rest of us; thoughts so uniquely her, yet ones that can be related to by any reader. That’s the power of authenticity, and she’s drenched in it.
And so, dear reader, once she’s put the kids to bed and has a little more time to make it more official, I will update this little post of mine with a link to her words so you can see for yourself. (Edit: here’s the link!)
See what bravery looks like; what it means to show up in spite of your fears to spite perfection by doing it anyway. Get your glimpse into the world of one of the people I consider myself most honored to call my friend.
Recently I opened up Facebook on a web browser. I don’t have the app on my phone, and only keep my account because it’s the only connection I have to my half-brother, and because of Facebook Marketplace. (I’m granny-core trash, y’all.) I was there to look up something specific, but got distracted (as one does) by the first post on my feed.
It was the picture of the 6 month old daughter of my childhood best friend.
A simple, unassuming post.
I had forgotten this friend had a baby. I knew I knew she had a baby, and I recalled she had gotten married a few years back, but I definitely hadn’t thought about it in who-knows-how-long. I couldn’t remember the baby’s name, so I clicked on her profile and scrolled back. It took a minute to find it, and in my scrolling I saw various pictures of her family, including her mom for Mother’s Day, and her brother for I don’t remember what.
I found myself in a bit of a mind-fuck.
Here is the person I spent the glory days of girlhood beside. The person I sat with talking about the days we would be married and have kids. The person who I dreamed alongside and whose memories are so intertwined with mine it’s impossible to think of the core of my childhood with her removed. Kindergarten through 8th grade, we were inseparable, and even after we went to different schools we managed to hold on for a good many years, keeping in touch over time, our tiny town being the touchstone. Her dad even asked me to come work for him at one point, which I did, her family feeling just as much like my family as my own.
And then her dad fired me. And her brother divorced my friend. A friend I’d only met because I worked there and her mom was worried her brother’s fiancé wouldn’t know anybody and asked if I could hang out with her, to which I anxiously agreed, tweeting my feelings of dissent in the lead up. Turns out she had felt the same and we’d both gone along with it, ending up becoming great friends in the process. All of this change was too much, too painful, the hurt too deep given everything. I was confused and somehow had sensed it would happen before it did I just assumed they’d wait until after the holidays to do it. In retrospect, I don’t hold any ill will, I’ve learned and moved on and wish them the best, I just also don’t choose to keep up with her family. I hadn’t really before anyway, she being our main connection, so it’s not entirely unheard of that our friendship distanced, as that is something that happens when people have different lives in different states.
As someone who has known a lot of loss in a short amount of time and also very young, all things considered, I have found that sometimes I forget that some friends are still alive. Distance can make them become a person in my memory, similar to those who have died, and I grieve and learn to move on and go on with my life. Some of these friends (dead or alive) are more like ghosts that have slipped out with little notice, and some are like limbs that have been amputated. Whichever, I learn to carry on over time. So you can imagine that seeing the picture of the baby of one of these amputated limbs can be a bit jarring.
Upon reflection, it sort of blew my mind because I can recall memories from our childhood, and our other close friend doesn’t feel like this. My assumption as to why this is is that the other close friend still lives in town, and even if we don’t see each other often I was at her wedding and her baby shower and hear of her updates more regularly than the other. Something about it is different. Maybe it’s just that they’re different people.
Having the reality that this friend is still alive jump right back to the front of my mind was jarring–she’s living and breathing. Her parents still exist, my own mother occasionally telling me she sees them in Walmart, though I quickly put that from my mind as the memories of how all of that ended are still painful and complicated. Her brother is remarried with kids of his own. It’s all there—this life going on.
This person with whom I learned how to exist in the world, who dreamed with and alongside me yet never dreamed we wouldn’t still be actively in each others lives is living all the milestones we imagined with a loving and supportive family along side her, and I’m over here. Separate.
It’s almost as though all the memories from before feel like they belong to someone else. Surely those are a stranger’s memories, something I’m reading about in a book and I’ve seen the documentary and my sleuth skills have lead me to the somehow still public Facebook page of the person I’d just spent two hours learning about whose name I’d hardly heard before. No, these are my memories, this is the person from my past, this is the other part of my girlhood.
Few people from those days are still in my life, which probably contributes to how distanced and othered it feels. I can actually only think of one that is still actively around, and even then its distanced to a degree, but in a loving way that I think feels natural. Everyone else, all those people I thought I’d have forever, even ones that lasted nearly to my 30s, fill that space of “stranger’s memories” in my head. People whom, if I up and moved to another state and deleted my Facebook for good, I’d never hear from or about again. Maybe I’d also have to change my number to truly make it permanent, but still.
All of this makes me incredibly grateful for the people who are in my life. The people from different times throughout who have found themselves walking a similar path, that are living along side me from their respective places, whose memories I can look back on and smile and whose memories are still being made. Those people who don’t feel like strangers, but are people I know surely. There’s some from nearly every phase of life, and I cherish them more than I have words for.
Life is wild and weird and doesn’t always take us where we expect, but I truly believe, if you’re open to it, it’ll take you exactly where you’re meant to be.
(photo is a picture of the author on stage at a church her private school used for talent shows, signing the word “yes” while also singing along to what was the song “Jesus Loves Me”. I am wearing a white dress with blew flowers, my hair pulled back in a ponytail, with ankle high white socks and brown loafers I never remember owning.)
I became a Swiftie right before the 1989 album released, so by the time reputation came out I was all in. Back then, the fandom was centralized on Tumblr and followed Taylor’s instagram and the speculations were that there would be some secret album called Eclipse that she would drop the night of the eclipse that August.
We stayed up late, just in case, freaked out as Taylor’s entire social media was wiped, and lost our collective cool when we first saw the snake. We were rewarded with the first single called Look What You Made Me Do from her upcoming album, a noted difference from the musical stylings of her five previous albums, and we ate it up like a lavish Thanksgiving dinner.
I don’t know what time I finally was able to fall asleep after the excitement, but I don’t think it was very long as I was developing some concerning symptoms that would later upend my life, one of them being extreme fatigue. When I woke up the next morning at 6:30 unexpectedly, the air felt different even inside my house. I looked out my window and the sky looked different in ways I still struggle to explain. I grabbed my phone, checked the radar, and saw that the hurricane that was slated to go south of us moved in the middle of the night and was now aiming straight for my county. We weren’t planning on leaving—we never leave—but this one was making us nervous. My sister had a 2-week-old baby and quickly she and my mom as well as her in-laws were on the road in the direction of Austin and out of harms way. Dad and I were staying behind with the dogs and to hopefully fend off looters. As we worked to secure everything on the property to avoid projectiles, we became increasingly nervous. By 10am dad and I had a discussion, loaded up the dogs, and followed our family, 2 hours from the suggested evacuation cut off time.
We passed National Guard vehicles going in the opposite direction and ended up in a hotel that also had Red Cross vehicles, lying out of harms way but poised to jump in to help in the aftermath. To say it was surreal is an understatement.
I sat on the hotel floor, watching storm chasers while also going on Target’s website to pre-order the reputation album and the magazines that were being released, pausing briefly to wonder if there would be a home to deliver to by the time it shipped and how would I change the address if not. Whose address could I use? Whose would be left?
I stayed awake riddled with anxiety, watching storm chasers as they showed places I knew well blown completely off the face of the earth, describing what couldn’t be seen in the darkness, wondering how my family that stayed behind was faring. They were told to write their social security numbers on their arms with sharpie so their bodies could be identified later. It was all surreal. (They survived, thankfully.)
The next morning, Dad received texts from our neighbor who stayed and we heard his horror story of holding their door closed for the entire duration of the storm while his wife mopped the never ending stream of water and their chickens blew away. He checked on our house which was still standing but ended up having to be stripped down in what was a nearly 4 year endeavor to get my parents back into their house. Dad heard from our neighbor and we learned of an open route we could use to reach home. We filled up any gas can we could fined, loaded up the dogs again, and headed home. Once we surveyed the damage, seeing the full extent of their house, fired up the generators and plugged in the fridges, we drove to the outskirts of the nearest town while dodging downed telephone poles and the cast offs from the cotton fields that covered the roads until we found a bar of service to call mom. As we parked on the overpass of this now ghost town, I pulled up YouTube and watched the lyric video for LWYMMD, trying to memorize the words and get the proper cadence to the chorus, not knowing the next time I’d have service to hear the song, wondering what I was missing in all the excitement everyone else was experiencing.
I don’t remember much of the next few months, and the preceding year is quite a blur. Not only did Hurricane Harvey obliterate my home town, my health was in sharp decline. By Spring 2018, I had to quite my job and stop dancing ballet because my health had gotten so bad I was nearly passing out at the simplest task. I was also losing friends to various different things in one of my biggest years of grief-by-friend-death that I’ve known, which if you know me you know is saying something.
As I found myself faced with all of these terrible things happening at once, all of this loss and change and grief and pain, there was a moment when I was walking from my parents trailer they were living in to my tiny house in the back yard that somehow faired best of any of the houses. I looked at the tree that held up the storage building next to my house which kept it from taking out my north wall. I’ve named this tree Fred, and he was in bloom. I thought back onto everything I’d lost, and considered everything in front of me. Every nerve was raw and, as someone who didn’t know how to let herself feel let alone grieve anything that was happening, I realized I had a choice:
I could stay the way I am, making the choices I’ve always made, doing what I was told and living a life that wasn’t serving me, or I could try something new.
Somehow, I knew deep down that the choice I had to make was the latter. If I wanted to survive, if I wanted to not become the ward of my parents and then my sister once they’re gone, if I wanted any hope of taking my life back and improving any smidge, I had to ask myself two questions with any thought I had:
Why do I think that? Who told me to?
Sounds simple enough, right? Oh, sweet summer child. “Simple”, yet it would go on to be the string I pulled that unraveled the sweater I had been stitching my entire life.
I started small, “Why do I think that I have to keep this job that I’m passing out at? Who told me to stay here?” Well, my parents told me this is the adult thing to do, and that life is hard so I need to just learn how to deal with it because it’ll be hard anywhere. So I quit. ”Why do I keep going to this church, even though the drive alone drains me and sets me back for the entire week, and I don’t feel like it’s adding anything to my life? Who told me I have to go?” Well, I go because I know everyone there. If I don’t go, they’ll definitely ask questions. I can hear them already in my head talking about me when I’m gone, speculating as to the real reason and assuming I’m a “heathen” or “fallen off the wagon” or whatever other things I’ve heard them say about other people. I’ve been raised in church my entire life, deeply committed, purity culture poster child, salutatorian of a bible college. I thought back to after I was in a bad car accident, and how no one from this church reached out to see if I was okay, and instead they assumed I was disgruntled and left the church. I was without a car and injured, not bitter or disgruntled, but they assumed. So I left.
On and on I used this metric to peel apart the layers of my life, identifying the different things that actually caused me stress which was triggering my health issues. Over time I learned I have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, an inflammation of the brain stem that causes issues similar to that we’ve since seen in Long Covid patients. I had to get a handicap parking placard because I didn’t have the energy to walk a grocery store, let alone stand up long enough to make the food. I was pricing wheel chairs, but my chiropractor, the one medical professional who believed me, told me to avoid getting the wheelchair as long as I could because, “once you’re in the chair, you’ll never get out of it.” I couldn’t afford one, anyway, uninsured and now unemployed, except for teaching ballet classes at my studio which consisted of me sitting on a stool and pointing with a stick while my assistants essentially did everything. I owe my studio owners so much for allowing me to adapt the way I needed to in spite of it all.
Now, it’ll be 8 years this August since the hurricane. I’ve managed to slowly but surely push my baseline in ways I didn’t even expect. While I was considered relatively mild back then, I’m definitely considered mild now. I learned my ME was caused by stress (shocker, I know) and triggered by my inability to eat monounsaturated fats after my gallbladder was removed. Turns out it didn’t need to be removed, and my issues were caused by a genetic condition doctors said I didn’t have called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which affects connective tissue, and a co morbidity called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, which is where (TL;DR) your body is sensitive to histamines. Once I learned this, I was able to know how to treat, fuel, help my body and slowly work my way back to a baseline that allows me to not only work, but also as of this week begin college classes.
My therapist asked me on Thursday how it felt to be in school. I told her it feels fake. This degree is something I’ve wanted for 20 years but wasn’t allowed back then because my family couldn’t afford it. Then when my health tanked, I never thought I’d be able to handle the course load to do it. So much so, that I never even considered it until a friend of mine heard me mention it casually and she said, “Well, why can’t you?” and when I tried to list all the things, she debunked them, gently, one by one. Finally I said, “I can’t do math, Rose” and she said, “Emilee, there’s AI now you’ll be fine.” Listen, I’m not a fan of AI and avoid it as much as any human can, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t that I would use AI for any math class I have to take, but moreso that I felt supported. I realized in that moment that I had friends now who knew math and would be more than willing to help me. I’ve built a life filled with people who add to my life, not just suck it out of me because I’m helpful and convenient.
It used to be difficult for me to listen to reputation because it brought back really painful memories from the hurricane and the life I used to live before. I got to go to the reputation studio tour, though I couldn’t drive to Houston because that one limitation I still have even to this day, I had a friend graciously offer to go with me, even though she didn’t care for Taylor’s music and stayed somewhere else while I was at the concert. I took my cane with me. My phone fell outside the stadium, only breaking my back camera leaving me only with unzoomable selfie camera and my polaroid. I remember so little of it from my own memories given my physical limitations at the time affecting my cognitive function, but I was there.
As the Eras Tour came around, I was too afraid to be disappointed (at no fault of Taylor’s, mind you) and thus ruining things that I almost didn’t even try for tickets. When I decided to at least try, I panicked when I didn’t get them first day, being thrown to the back of the line instead of the front with our reputation tour boosts. Thankfully they corrected the second day and I scored tickets to Kansas City night one.
My fear was rooted in experience, but what I forgot in that fear was all the things that were happening last time that weren’t happening this time. I was a completely different person then, living a life I was told to live, grieving the loss of friends who had died and ones you’d decided not to be in my life anymore, figuring out the limitations of my illness, filled with so much uncertainty.
But now?
Now, I’m living a life I’ve chosen, filled with people who love me and actually care about me as a person. I’m working a job I enjoy, going to school for my dream degree. I’m setting myself up for a life that is sustainable, where I won’t have to rely on people who don’t understand me and who bring me down simply because they’re the people I know. I’m building a life where I am enough. I’m doing the work to unlearn everything that doesn’t serve me and relearn the things that make my nervous system stay calm. I’m learning to trust myself, my voice, my inner knowing even if it offends someone else. I’m learning not to disappoint myself even if it disappoints others. I’m working with an incredible therapist who, ironically, lives in the town we evacuated to and who has done more for me in our 16 months together than I could have ever hoped for in a lifetime.
As I stood in my kitchen making eggs this morning, I was thinking about Taylor’s letter she wrote about being able to buy all of her previous work, and how reputation was so perfect she couldn’t imagine how to improve it in a re-record. And now she doesn’t have to. And at first, I felt that pang of hurt I’ve felt from the pain I experienced during the release. But then, I played the album, safe now to stream without lining the pockets of assholes.
And what filled my head was memories of Eras Tour, memories of redemption, memories of recounting seeing Karyn in Houston in 2018 and how much this album still does truly hold up. I could listen to these songs and not feel pain, but feel freedom.
And I stood there, and I thought, “goodness, this feels like it would have been such a perfect representation for when I took my life back” and as I started to think, “I wish it would have been around then”, I realized, it was.
This album was what I was listening to as I stood next to Fred, considering my next options, every nerve exposed and emotion raw. This album is what I played as I was taught by my dear friend Nargiza how to learn to grieve. This album is what was playing as I made hard decision after hard decision, playing as I built myself back, playing as I made new, true friends, playing as I reclaimed myself.
This album was introduced to the public the exact day of my life that I point to when people ask if I can remember the day everything changed for me, and it’s been with me ever since, and now it’s with me as I stand here, a new person, living boldly the life I was always meant to and building a life I’m so proud of. And I can stream it, knowing full well that Taylor gets all of the credit for her work after her long, hard fight to do so.
I’ve been in therapy for a little over a year now and today’s session included me admitting that I realize I have abandonment issues. So original.
If you knew me in real life, that’s not something you would expect to be my reality, and if you knew me in real life you might be tempted to mansplain my own experiences to me. If you did either of these things you’d be shit and I’d either not have spoken to you in enough years that you don’t *actually* know me anymore and/or are family and I can’t write you off. (I can, technically, but it’s not something I know I can do without having regrets. Damn my bleeding heart.)
One of the places I’ve known abandonment is through previous therapists who somehow heard what I told them and thought, actually you’re doing just fine. What she told me was, “You have really good instincts. I don’t think you need me anymore.” When I heard that I just said, “okay, thank you” because I’m not one for challenging authority. I’m more of the working-really-hard-to-make-sure-you-like-me-and-don’t-dread-when-you-see-my-name-come-up-on-your-calender type. What I was thinking was, “you just diagnosed me with OCD during a global pandemic two sessions ago and also, is there any hope if you’re saying I have good instincts and no longer need therapy after three months while I’m also still trying to convince myself life is worth living?”
Ironically, what got me to give therapy another try was a guy. It’s ironic because if you knew me, truly or not, you’d know I’ve never had a boyfriend. *gasp* So when there was this perfectly lovely guy who was interested in me and vetted by a dear friend, I didn’t feel I really had any reason not to date him except that my scalp felt tingly? I don’t know how else to explain it. Anyway, I found my current therapist based off vibes and its seemed to work out. I’m still low key afraid she’ll decide I’m fine and we’re finished, even though the last time I expressed this she said, “Well, you are fine, and we’re not finished.” Bless her.
There’s been less than a handful of sessions that have caused her to make a comment in the realm of, “I’ve never seen you like this before” which I take to mean she’s worried about me in that moment and can tell I am in the thick of the darkness. Today’s choice of words was, “I don’t often see you like this”, because we have been here before, but it is indeed a rare state of being. I tend to err on the side of optimism, yet if you know me you know I’m a walking oxymoron and my life is full of juxtapositions.
Today, I started the session convinced this would be the time I signed off and felt no better than when we began. I knew there would be nothing she would be able to do for me—there’s nothing anyone can do for me and that’s pretty much the whole reason I’m in this mess—and I was certain I would feel nothing but defeated. I’d been working for an entire week to try and find any sort of optimism, a sliver of hope to hold onto and time and time again my hands came up empty.
At one point, I equated my experience to toilet paper, because if you’re not laughing you’re crying, right? And she saw right through my facade and made the most incredible comment that I swear will be the title of my memoir if I were ever interesting enough to actually write a memoir people would read. At the end as we recapped, and I joked that she won’t be able to look at toilet paper without thinking of me now and she’s welcome and also I’m sorry, she said, “That [the potential memoir name] is definitely the weirdest thing I’ve ever said in a session.”
Reader, this felt like a badge of honor.
I don’t know if she had any clue what she was getting herself into when she took me on as a client 16 months ago, she certainly had no way of knowing it would go to the depths it has in that time frame though she’s so good at her job I wouldn’t be surprised if she expected more than meets the eye to a degree most may not. I’ve made every therapist I’ve worked with cry, and it took her a while to join that club (a testament to her wonderful boundaries and also her way of knowing what is appropriate when) but one of my favorite moments was making her laugh out loud in such an unexpected way that she immediately covered her mouth. My other favorite is knowing the weirdest thing she’s ever said in a session was in my session. Heck yes. Welcome to my weird little brain, make yourself comfortable, it’s bound to get weirder.
Truly, every time we meet I’m amazed at how good she is at her job. She seems to know exactly what to say or not say or do or whatever at the perfect time. There are little specific moments that are ones I reflect back on to remind myself of reality when my brain gets all doubt-y about things. I don’t know that I have ever felt so seen or heard or known by any one person before, and even as a self proclaimed “open book”, that’s a rare feat indeed. It’s not often I feel safe enough to truly be seen, but she manages to create that space and hold it for me, no matter how much I try to sabotage my progress.
What’s the point of this post? Not much, really, other than to say that a good therapist is worth more than anything else I can conjure. I don’t know what I did to deserve finding such a wonderful one, but I’m forever grateful.
I hope if you find yourself in need of help, you’re brave enough to seek it out. And that if the first time isn’t a good fit, that you’re bold enough to try again. And I hope that you find in someone the safety it takes to truly be able to show up authentically and work through the darker parts of yourself. We all have dark and light inside of us. It’s up to us to take responsibility to learn how to manage them in productive ways for ourselves. Some of us have more privilege in the resources to cultivate this management and balance between the two, as well as the grey area in between, and we won’t all have it figured out and perfect no matter what we do. But we can start where we are, with what we have, and we can begin to see life open up for us.
I truly believe what’s meant for me will find me, and the same for you, if we’re brave enough to live authentically. It’s difficult and ugly and painful sometimes, but it’s also beautiful and peaceful and safe. Both can be true.
(I learned that from my therapist)
If I ever do end up physically publishing anything, a lifelong dream of mine, you can bet your buttons she’ll have a dedication at the front of the book. Its the least I can do.
I’ve been writing since I was seven years old; basically as long as I’ve known how to hold a pencil and form letters with it and put those letters into (often misspelled) words and string those words into semi-coherent sentences.
When people would ask, I would say, “I’ve been journaling since I was twelve” because I knew I was not-quite-thirteen when 9/11 happened and I somehow forgot my diary at home that day so, even though it went against my perfectionist self, I wrote my thoughts on a piece of notebook paper as the teachers of my private school rolled the TV into our classroom “so we don’t scare the little ones”.
But thinking back on that 2001 diary, I knew it wasn’t first. I bought it in what we called a “merit store” with all the “merits” I’d accumulated for overachieving or whatever. My mom was volunteering and since I had the most points I got to go first and mom pointed out the diary because she knew I was “into that sort of thing”.
Recently, I found a box unearthed by Hurricane Harvey that destroyed our town in 2017. This box was in a storage unit my dad built on our property when we moved there in 1999 and it’s where we housed the boxes we’d packed before we moved into a 5th-wheel trailer on the property as they “finished the house”. (Plot twist, it was never fully finished until after the Harvey repairs.) I packed these boxes as a ten-year-old and naturally most things that mattered to me then didn’t hold much worth to me now. Tucked in this box were a few notebooks and diaries—two of them Lisa Frank, thank you—that I had all but forgotten yet instantly recognized. The oldest was from 1995, when I was seven. The entries were scant, the handwriting atrocious, yet the statements were powerful. Somehow I managed to document in my dozen or so entries some of the most momentous occasions of my young life.
Clearly, something in the practice of documenting, of writing, or scratching pen to paper and tucking it away has stuck. I’ve filled countless journals, written on a semi-successful ballet blog over the years I was dancing, had two poems published and many never seen the light of day. Writing is what I do. I don’t know that I’m necessarily any good at it, but how I feel when I’m writing – either on paper or typing up one of these fella’s to shout into the void of the interwebz – is a high I’ll chase for the rest of my life. It simultaneously brings me comfort no one else can give and helps me to feel centered in a way I struggle to explain to anyone who doesn’t also experience this with something. I write because I have to, no matter what ends up happening with those words.
I’ve been debating starting this Substack for a bit. I love the concept of blogging and really enjoyed it when I was documenting my dance adventures. That chapter of my life has all but closed, yet I still feel drawn to this particular form of expression. I just watched a live stream (after the fact) with Glennon Doyle, Abby Wamback, and Amanda Doyle in honor of their book that just released called We Can Do Hard Things and one of the notes I took was of something Glennon said, sort of off handed, that lead into a deeper realization and conversation,
“You will never leave you”.
I don’t know how frequently I’ll post here. What I can tell you is that it’ll likely be a lot of brain dumps (like this) along with random poems every now and again, and probably some pictures occasionally. It’ll have a lot of thoughts and feelings and probably not have any sort of theme other than this is my life and I feel compelled to write about it. I’ve been in therapy a little over a year now with an absolutely incredible therapist and it’s only now that I really feel like I’m beginning to be able to sort through the muck I have surrounded myself with as I have muddled through to survive this life and starting to see the connection to all the deeper parts of me and what they’re trying to tell me – what I can learn from it.
I don’t plan on really advertising this. If you’ve found it, I feel that truly means you were meant to. I hope if you feel compelled to stick around that you feel good about it and maybe have a moment of reflection or two yourself.
Mainly, I hope you’re able to find a way to live your life in a way that feels like home to you.
May we all be so lucky.
This is for you, stranger, person who may know my name but have never had the chance to know me. May this space be the proverbial seat on a train next to a stranger or meet-cute in the grocery store—that interaction you weren’t expecting but leaves you feeling warm inside. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
For a moment, I had entertained the idea of moving over to Substack from WordPress. It seemed the thing everyone else was doing, so maybe I should see what all the fuss is about, right? And then someone I follow pointed out how Substack allows Nazi’s to post on their platform, so I’ve decided that’s not for me, and I’m going to bring back here what I had taken there.
There are a few posts I made that I will post in order, then post new ones from there. I debated deleting my old posts and “starting fresh”, but I don’t really think that’s necessary. I’ve lived a lot of life since my last post on this blog almost 2 years ago, but a simple post can help catch everyone up, and then we can move forward.
The end of 2023/beginning of 2024 really felt like (another) turning point. There was so much I was feeling and couldn’t quite explain. I’d survived my first season working for the Ballet, which was intense to say the least, and I was finding new layers of myself I hadn’t known before and trying to sort out where everything belongs in the grand scheme of things.
In January 2024, I started therapy. My insurance through work covers therapy, but you have to choose from their list of approved people for them to cover it. I was apprehensive, to say the least, given the town I live in. I’m born and raised here. I don’t know everyone, but everyone seems to know someone I know and word gets around fast. What’s more, the people who knew be in my “great before” seem to have missed the memo of who I am now, whether that be intentional omission, not paying attention, or the people in my life now having more discretion, I’m not sure, but I don’t mind it. It can just get a little awkward when people expect a certain version of me to be met with someone who is staunchly Not That. Not one to rock the boat, I don’t make a big song and pony show about it all, so it can be easy to miss if you’re not looking for more than what I can add to your life (versus actually knowing me as a person) and if you’re not safe I’m not about to go into any sort of detail of “How are you? How’s life?” more than I’d give to anyone else. Ironic for someone with a blog, but still. If you’re reading this, you’re either open minded or genuinely curious, and the nature of your curiosity is none of my business. No one’s forcing you to read this. You can click away and carry on with your life at any time. All this to say, I didn’t want a therapist that would either know the players in my story, nor would bring a certain religious opinion in to the session.
What I have found is the most perfect therapist for me. I didn’t really know going into it, based on some past experiences, that therapy was supposed to feel this safe. I knew it was supposed to be where you could say the things and receive the help or whatever. I have had one counselor before, ironically attached to a religious organization, who was the first to really make me feel like I wasn’t some hopeless lost cause that couldn’t amount to anything more than I was. She was wonderful, and I’m grateful for the work we did. Still, it wasn’t what I have found therapy to be this time. The person that I had seen (unintentionally) during Covid lockdown meant well, but wasn’t good for me. She brought in a lot of her own stuff and me, being an empathetic person who wants to make sure everyone is taken care of, ended up holding space for her as much as she for me. It wasn’t any big unloading on her part, but I can feel everything she was carrying, and that made it difficult for me to feel safe to give her my burden as well, even if it was her job. After three months she told me, “you have really good instincts, I don’t think there’s anything else I can do for you.” and what I wanted to reply with was, “okay, but I still want to die more often than I think a person should” but what I said was, “Okay, thank you.”
My therapist now is the boundary poster child, while still managing to be relatable. She is the safest person I’ve ever been around and is so damn good at her job I make sure to tell her as often as I can because I’m sure not everyone feels that way. People are people, after all. She’ll reassure me if and when I need it, but also won’t hesitate to call me out on my bullshit when necessary. I’ve seen exactly one tear fall from her eye, and that was the session after Honey died. Her expression of emotion and the radiating empathy showed me that I’m actually allowed to feel this loss. That dogs matter, sometimes more than people, and this wasn’t any small matter to be facing. After seeing that one tear, I went into, “oh gosh, are you okay?” mode and she promptly shut that down with, “This isn’t about me” and we carried on. I did ask the next session if she was okay, or if that was for me because I didn’t want to be presumptuous. She thanked me for asking, and said it was for me, and I told her how that made me realize all the things I’d realized about being allowed to feel because if my loss was enough to make my therapist cry, surely I was allowed to as well. Another layer peeled back on myself, revealing more things I didn’t know were there the whole time.
Recently, I’ve found myself keeping to myself more, which would have felt counterintuitive or even illegal to the me who was last writing here. Instead, I’m learning it’s not only allowed but encouraged. It’s a good thing to me to feel safe enough to keep to myself and know my world isn’t going to fall apart with my sadness. Emotions happen, and they’re allowed to, I’m going to be okay. I don’t have to tell other people about it to be safe. I’m safe with myself. I’m not a danger.
I, of course, am also not an island, and this doesn’t mean I don’t need people, on the contrary. We are such social beings we’re hardwired to need others. I still vent to friends or whatever, keeping them in the loop of the things that matter. It just means I don’t have to look to them to carry everything. I have my own two shoulders, and they’re strong, and some of this is stuff only I can carry. This is all done, thankfully, under the guise of my therapist and I am grateful every day for the privilege of knowing and working with her. How did I get so lucky to find her, first try even? All I did was look on our list of approved providers, paid attention to how each name made me feel, looked up websites, and called (after hours so I wouldn’t get an actual person, that’s too much). She actually lives about 4 hours from me, though she has an office here locally, but all the clients local to me are virtual. The best of both worlds–not here, but from here enough to know the places I’m talking about but not enough to know everyone I’m talking about. And even if she did know everyone I’m talking about she’s so good with boundaries that she won’t let on one bit. I’m learning this is how it’s supposed to be; who knew?
Now that it’s been a year and a half, I feel like I’m finally in a place where I can start writing again. I mean, I’ve never stopped. I journal and slap together stanzas I call “poetry” and what have you, but now I feel I’m in a place where I can write here again, in a more public setting and in a way that’s authentic without worrying about saying too much, or whatever. I don’t need this to be what holds the space for me; I’ve learned how to hold space for myself.
The next few posts will be from my Substack. I’ll put the publish date on them, so you can keep up with the timeline or whatever.
Thanks for coming along for the ride, I’m glad you’re here.
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