Changes

It's been like this for quite a few years now. I always find it hard to live in a moment and the experience of many years, all these comings and goings, keeps telling me that it's going to go by very quickly, it sounds like a lot, 7 weeks, 6 weeks, even 5 weeks. But the damn experience keeps whispering in my ear, it's nothing, before you know it you'll have hours left, then minutes, then nothing. That nothing is such an immensely painful feeling that it overpowers other memories. It overpowers them even before they are made. Is this what they call trauma?

So every memory comes laced with shadows, with the lingering smell and taste of something already gone, even if it's still happening, it's still being made. This year is hard. The shadows are spreading, they weight the joy of moments down, they got help from the beast that holds time and fate and joy in its ugly paw. Suddenly, there are time limits so much tighter than before, moments became counted, doled out slowly to us while we wait to see the empty bottom. The beast has a name and that's why it's just so real. You cannot ignore something that has a name. You cannot escape something that sits deep within and cannot be removed even if you poison your body and make it feeble, hollow, unable to serve your regular and taken for granted purposes. Suddenly, there is an expiration date on everything. You're trying to grab things quickly by handfuls, you're trying to accumulate as many moments as you can... but they are so heavy, laden with sorrow-to-come, tears-to flow, regrets-to-have, emptiness-to-feel that you just cannot hold them. The cancer beast has already sucked so much joy from all these moments that are still happening it's maddening. And you fight it and you try but happiness feels expired already.

Hurt

By hurting others one so often hurts oneself... Trying to avoid more hurt is probably not such a great tactic when it leads to something nasty anyway. I do not have any more ideas. Just trying not to sink. I ran out of ideas. I don't see any roads, paths, exits. I live one minute at a time. Just this minute, and another minute, and another one. I even stopped asking myself 'why?' - there is no reason, no underlying explanation, no one source of all the evil. And even if there is, I cannot see it and certainly cannot defeat it.

It's only that... sometimes I feel that it could all be solved, almost instantly. That it is within our reach but we are blind to it... if we look, we look at wrong places, we get more and more confused, hopeless. But I get that feeling less and less often. These moments are becoming less and less intense. We are letting this slip through our fingers and we are not even fighting much to keep it. I think we'll both regret it if we lose it eventually. We do not even realize what's at stake, what the cost is... Can one estimate the cost of annihilating something that started as pure and good? Something that gave birth to two wonderful, sweet boys? If one bad day can influence many days afterwords, if a few harsh words can make you sad for days, what can children feel when their home is broken up? How can one ever repent of that? Just imagining that makes me choke with pain.

I woke up screaming a few times over the last weeks. I just screamed myself awake. I could still feel the terror, I could taste it in my mouth. I think I carry this fear in me all the time. I manage to push it back, to the very borders of my consciousness... but it gets me when I don't have the control, when I'm asleep.

Have I ever asked you for forgiveness for the pain, for the sorrow, for the loneliness? Over the years I have had a good share of that myself... I guess it's rightly so. Life has balanced the debts. There is no forgetting and forgiving in this world. Hurt burns deep. Only God Himself can heal such wounds.

All these thoughts

It's funny how things become clearer when you write them down. Thoughts just tend to run amok and are so fleeting that it's hard to make sense of them. Especially thoughts about feelings and emotions. Especially about negative emotions. It does not really help if you work hard to keep all these thoughts blocked most of the time. But they have a nasty way of coming back. It's impossible to avoid the triggers if they are basically all over your life.

I have been trying to focus on the positive. My sons, they give me so much happiness, I cannot believe how lucky I am to have them. I love being a part of their life, I love just being with them. Yes, there are moments when it's not all great and sweet but these are small problems when you have so much love to share. They make me feel loved. There is no greatest feeling. To feel loved and to know somebody needs you. I hope I will never let them down. They give me more support than they will ever realize. It's thanks to them that I do not let the sadness, the hopelessness become the very core of me. They keep the darkness away.

But I will have to let them go one day. What then?

Dream no longer

Did it again. Let myself live in a dream. Lulled by a dream. It never ends well, I should have known. Always breaks and then hurts more than before. First, there is hope. Such a dangerous thing. Hope makes you imagine, remember, and think about 'what if...' Then, kindled by kindness, unexpected support, caring... a dream emerges. A dream that it may last. It may still be beautiful.

"I went downstairs for my Christmas gift"

Well aimed. Well indeed. Used against me in different forms before but now it did not anger, no. It saddened beyond words. It sunk deep. Will it always come down to this? Always the same defense. Always the same weapon. My gifts scattered on the floor bored holes that made the loss final.

"I went downstairs for my Christmas gift"

Choked me with pain of a shattered dream. I let it grow too much. It sent too many sharp shards right through me when it fell apart. I got too close. Too close. Could not speak. All the joy I felt that morning evaporated so fast as if it never had the right to have been born. Hurt even more with the hopes nursed for that day that went dead with the dream. No strength left to fight it. To rescue the day. Wasted happiness. Wasted joy. So many wonderful moments that could have happened never came to exist.

Awareness, constant awareness of what this day and the days to come could have but have not been has left me empty. They will never come back. We killed them. I am crying for the lost joy, for the laughs that were taken away, smiles extinguished, love suddenly gone. We owe them the laughs now, never to be repaid. They deserve the joy! Why was it taken from them like that, stupidly?! Why did it have to hurt so much that I could not escape it?

Refused to come with us. The devil wins. Took the control over him and changed his heart. Why did you let it happen? I know. Too much good has transpired. The evil one got anxious and restless. You did not fight it. The sentence snarled at me had a purpose. To give an excuse. To shut me up. And it did. It served well. I still cannot speak. I'm walking empty and longing. Missing the warmth. The phantom of the warmth I dreamed I felt...

Cannot accept the lost dream. Cannot accept the lost joy. Cannot forgive myself for being so weak.
Feeling so heavy and sick, I cry myself to sleep. The devil laughs.

Hurricane Irene

Why write about this? So many words have been written and spoken that it feels almost wrong to say any more. And yet, there is this need to say something. After all, it's been the first hurricane I have experienced in my life - even though, technically, it slowed down just before reaching NYC and became degraded to a tropical storm from category 1 hurricane...

I was going through this 'experience' alone with my two kids. One day after returning from Poland. What a nice way to be greeted, New York! I spent the whole Saturday unpacking, cleaning the apartment, trying to make sure we have all kinds of emergency supplies, listening to hurricane news, and freaking out from time to time. My older son was a great help - surprised me so much with his mature behavior, willingness to help, no complaining about the tasks I gave him. He made me feel better, not alone.

Yes, Irene did not do as much damage as some predicted - although it did have an impact and many people are right now sitting in the dark, some have their homes flooded, transport is still far from being back to normal. But this is not the point. There are some other things that have been striking. Apart from the fact that I was alone but I don't want to go there. It's completely pointless to say anything about that. The thing that I wanted to remember from all this is people's arrogance. So many were joking about the situation, so many ignored the warnings, so many are unhappy that MTA takes so long to be in service again, and even more joking now... Some people appear to think they are invincible. They are the center of the universe just because they live in New York. Nothing can touch them. They want to run in the hurricane. Surf in the hurricane. Go kayaking in the hurricane. They need to be at work on Monday because, well, you know, nothing happened... If you call this hurricane 'lame' - do you mean you are not happy with it? Would you prefer to have a decent one, one that would ruin half the city? Then it would not be lame. You are unhappy it ended too soon? Unhappy that you bought all these things for nothing? I just cannot understand. Being in New York is not a guarantee of safety. Where does this self-assuredness come from? "We can weather any storm because we are New Yorkers and nothing will break us." Yeah, we must be so much better than the Japanese and Haitians and any other poor suckers that could not defeat some natural disaster.

I don't know why but I have a bad feeling that this attitude shown by some New Yorkers may prove deadly one day. It may be the undoing of New York. This city is not indestructible, its inhabitants are not invincible. I'd like to be happy that we are safe but I cannot stop feeling that we did not pass the test. And the more we joke about it and belittle it, the deeper we sink.

C-word

After months spent at my desk, with nowhere to look but at my computer, enclosed within four tight walls and no view out my foil-lined window, I find it hard to work when I actually have a view to look at. It's raining now, the air is fresh and the green outside looks more green than it has any right to do... Or maybe I forgot how intense colors may be. I changed the location but my computer followed. Oh, yes, I brought it along, of course. We've become very close over the years, closer than a person should ever get to a thing...
I would gladly go outside now and let a hundred raindrops roll down my face. Some part of me is craving this cold and wet sensory experience. But I'm too lazy, too afraid, too busy with everything, whatever that everything may be. I have mastered the art of shielding myself from all kinds of experiences for the sake of control. It was never my conscious choice. It just somehow developed without me trying hard or even ever thinking about adopting that way of life.  It was only much later that I learned the loses are great when you do that and the control does you more damage than good. I also learned that once you start, it gets such a good grip on you, it won't let go. It feels as if it wasn't me anymore, it has a life of its own. So what is there to do if you did not truly make this choice and then you cannot change its consequences? I just realized how ironic that is. I would like to stop my tendency to control everything, I would like to break free of my shackles, I would like to start feeling with my whole being, but I feel utterly powerless and clueless as to how to do that. I guess I should be happy it took over only some areas of my life, ruined just a few things for me. I can still control the rest, right?

Forlornness

I'm just so incredibly sad. I cannot shake if off... It's funny that I could be feeling angry, upset, hurt, totally infuriated... But no, I feel sad. Sad. Sad. And tired. Very tired.
I could get into that power-struggle game but I know this would just lead to more hurt, nobody wins in power-struggles... Everyone is a loser. It does not solve anything, it just aggravates any problems that already exist and creates new ones.
So I was shown my place. I was shown how little I mean. How easily I can be punished on a whim. It is curious, again, how it did not make me feel weak but only sad. And frustrated. Should I change my life because of that? Should I expect more of this? I have always suspected that the line about equal rights is, well, only a line. Cold hard cash is what gives you power and control. You don't bring it, you are not to make any decisions. All the things you are doing would cost money but as you are doing them, nobody cares - you are not earning, you may just be saving -  and that just does not cut it. The fact that I have given so many years... does not count. I cannot do things like these that were done to me. Although I have to tolerate this now never-ending, incredulous money-wasting, down the drain and up the air, every day. Money wasting that may have dire consequences, which may lead to broken health and broken lives. Far more than what I have ever wasted. But I don't have any power to do anything about that. I can just look. I am expected not to say much about it. It is not my business. I'm not PAYING for this. I cannot make a few phone calls to help get over my sadness and my frustration. I don't hold the power. As I always said, I own nothing, I am nothing. I'm just floating here and there and there is no place I belong. No place I can call mine. It's been shown to me. Loud and clear. It filled my heart with so much sadness I cannot describe it. I cannot lift this weight that seems to have crushed me and pinned me down to the ground. So I will just have to deal with it. Somehow I will have to find a way to deal with it and go on. If I still want to have a life. Some life. I don't plan ahead anymore. There is always something waiting for you to make your plans never come true. You cannot prepare yourself for everything. Planning seems so futile. I've been there before so I may just as well go back to living only day by day, one day at a time.
I just wish I could stop feeling so sad. I would prefer to feel angry. It's equally exhausting but does not make you feel like slowly dying inside.

The study of what?

I watch people sometimes. So fascinating. Every move. Every little grimace on their faces. Sometimes I watch myself. Sometimes I feel so detached from myself I don't know what I feel or want or think. So I'm trying to figure out what's the deal with me by analyzing what I'm doing. It's something like experimental linguistics - you cannot get into someone's head to see how language works in there so the only thing to do is to observe its external reflexes... Unfortunately, it seems that that approach has not been the most efficient in linguistics. Whenever you go you'll find question marks and disputes, and speculations, and no, absolutely no definite answers. Still, every linguist is trying very hard to project an air of confidence and present their ideas as some revolutionary solutions worth a Nobel Prize. I'm getting sick and tired of reading all these old phrases and even more disgusted to find myself using the very same academic tricks in my writing. Not to say that all of these findings/investigations are untrue/uninteresting. It's the need to sell them that turns the process of discovery into some cheap merchandise.
But I digressed, as usual. My problem is that I'm using too many words trying to say simple things. Or maybe trying to say something that should be buried, hidden, forgotten. I just envy people who feel good in their own skin. Envy them so much.

Demons

I hear them sometimes
They whisper from the walls
Little breaths of words
Split-second images
I stare into the darkness
Heart beating faster
Faster

My own personal demons
Sometimes I say...
Just do it finally!
Destroy my life
You've been trying for so long
I'm tired of being
The prey

I feel them sometimes
Reaching down my spine
And up my throat
Twisting and turning
Somebody's screaming
Cold fingers
Entering

Egocentric and human

I'm sometimes wondering (yes, I do that sometimes even though being a mom and a student I don't have loads of time on my hands) how we are able to filter through so much terrible information available non-stop on all kinds of media and maneuver our way in this mass of horror in such a way as to keep being essentially egocentric most of the time. I'm not talking about the old childish 'selfish' thing. This some of us managed to overcome, at least to some degree. I'm talking about the inability to step out of one's little life and be less concerned about our petty endeavors, problems, these mostly not so very dramatic issues (as dramatic as they sometimes feel...). It is not possible for us, little humans, to take the burden of being aware of too much around us, it would crash our processor. We must perceive everything through our own experience, no matter how limited it is. We must obsess about our little world, everyday problems, responsibilities, maybe some reaching a little further into the future and maybe some of them involving somebody else than just us, the ones doing the obsessing.
It's only from time to time, when something really huge hits us, something that cannot be easily ignored that we shake off the state of egocentric little-worldedness for a short while and look around, wide-eyed and shocked... realizing that there is so much happening. There is so much that we would rather not know. Because if we really, truly, and fully 'know' about this we won't be able to find any peace, not even back in our little world of well-known worries. I know it is easy to say things like this and yes, not so easy to fight off the flurry of everyday stuff, smaller and bigger, stuff that sometimes really buries us so deep that we cannot see any light. We do realize sometimes that these worries of ours, at least some of them, are not that big but only when we compare it to what other people have to carry. So often we just stop looking around, get so engrossed in our lives, that we block anything else.
And then we hear a story of a little boy who is abused by his own mother, whose little 5 year old life is full of pain and sadness, and anger, and no love, no safety, no closeness... And then a big earthquake hits some part of our planet. And so many people lose their loved ones, their homes, their whole lives turned into a nightmare in a matter of minutes. The feeling we get then... I don't know, we feel disturbed, uneasy, sick. We feel so sorry for this little boy, for these people struck by the cruel nature. For a moment we forget about our own problems, these thing we need to deal with and so many of which feel like too much, too difficult, so burdensome... But then, we just need to come back. Our instinct of survival tells us to continue with our lives, take care of our problems, stop taking all this other crap so seriously, who can worry about the whole world, right? Donate a few dollars to help the unlucky ones, feel the appropriate amount of pain for the little boy, outrage towards the mother... but we cannot keep the pain, it must subside, we have so much of our own to carry... We can take only so much, don't we?!

Improvements

This one little question has been bugging me for a while now... What needs to be done to change something in yourself that is obviously not good? It seems that just realizing what it is does not make it go away. Even if you do something and you think, "oh, that's no good, why am I behaving like that?" you still are often not sure how to answer that question. So really, can you pinpoint exactly why you're doing the things that you feel have some underlying source in your core being? I mean, you can understand some of it but how accurate is that? Some people say you can only know yourself - it's close to impossible to really 'know' another human being. Others say that you cannot even know yourself and I tend to agree with that other stance. The hardest thing for me would be to write an extensive characteristic of myself. One that would list the main qualities, traits of character, typical tendencies, give some explanation and justification for why I turned out the way I did. I feel it would always be incomplete, always fragmentary. Would other people's perception of me help complete the picture? Maybe they could see something that I cannot? What if I completely disagreed with some of the opinions - who'd be right?
Wouldn't it be fun if we had a machine that would test us extensively and spit out a psychological profile plus possible ways to improve oneself? We could still disagree, that's ingrained in our human nature to question and contest just about everything around us (which can have very different outcomes). But maybe it would help accept some of the things that we tried hard not to see and through a conscious analysis finally come to understand and manage to change the most distractive traits of character, tendencies, fossilized habits of our mind and body?
I don't know. I just feel that I would need to change so much about me to make me a better human being for people around me and for myself. I feel that some things have just gone terribly wrong and I cannot undo anything. I don't want to drown in a sweet blissful ignorance of my own shortcomings and suffer myself for the rest of my life. I would like to start living with a better, improved me. One that will just give me some fucking peace and quiet. Some ease and simplicity, less worries, more joy, a nice, agreeable human being. Is that so much to ask?!

Me

With me everywhere
It never leaves me
Maybe this is how it must be
Maybe this is who I am
Maybe it cannot be any different
Ever

Incurable sadness
Hiding deep within
Most people
They would be scared to see
Too much of a burden to carry
To know me

Unreadable
Not a bubbly happy person
Not somebody who'd pick you up
With the strength and energy
That is so beyond reach
Always has been

Ordinary

I am so ordinary. Average. Pretty but not beautiful. Common. Intelligent but hardly exceptional. Typical. Feeling the feelings that everybody feels. Living the everyday life. The mix of joy and desperation plus lots of the middle so-so states of mind. I'm no different than anybody else. At least not by much, just this one bit different in this and that, again, the average different. We form the mass, the mob that serves as this convenient backdrop that lets the exceptional few shine the more brightly. I believe I was moaning about that averageness of mine in some previous post... I don't even want to go back and read it. The cyclic nature of human mind. We think we thought of something for the first time just to find out later that it has been thought about a thousand times...
Being exceptional is costly. Not everybody can carry the burden, the responsibility of being the envy of the common ones. Of inspiring the common ones to do something a little less ordinary once in a while. Don't we feel grand then?! Oh, my, we did something almost original! Almost creative. It is amazing how self-centered most of us are. We must internalize everything. Grind all the experience and sensory stimuli through our insides. The limits of the insides determine what we make out of the input then...
I think I'll just go back to my acoustic analysis now. Nothing original is going to be born today. No inspirational fuel available. I have just looked to my left and saw the toilet. It is conveniently located door to door across a small corridor from my bedroom. Now it just spoke to me. Save yourself the trouble. Let it go. Embrace your ordinariness. You will only cause trouble if you try to be more than you possibly can.
Smart toilet. Quite out of ordinary, in toilet standards, of course. One thing just struck me. It just cannot be an American toilet. It's so un-american to think that way...

Undone

I can feel you
I can see you
I know what you are
I know what you do
You
I think you are getting away
I think I'm losing you
I don't know life without you
And you are already standing in the doorway
Ready to leave
You will not even look back
Why look at the grief
Why see the despair
Why relive the words
That never ever should have been said
Your dead eyes
Keep following me
Keep haunting me
Cannot sleep
Cannot breathe
Cannot live
I don't remember how a good night sleep feels like
My eyes burning, dry
My body carried through space and time
Somehow I'm moving
Somehow I'm speaking
Somehow I'm not crying
Impossibly alone
Trembling
Stupid
Weak
Heavy as lead
My hands are
Heavy as lead
My eyes are
Overflowing
With uncried tears
Untold grieves
Unshouted cries
Unlived pleasures
Undone
Unsaid
I have imagined dancing
I have imagined singing
I have nothing
I have nowhere
To go
This is where I'll stay then
Not wanted
Not loved
But...
Why can't you brush my hair away
Gently
Why can't you look straight in my eyes
Sweetly
And take my face in your hands
Softly
And pull me toward you
Slowly
And make me forget
About the time and place
Let me float
For just this minute...
Let me...

When?

When will you stop hurting me with your words?
When?
Speaking to me, looking at me like that...
When will you talk to me and not think these ugly thoughts?
When?
As if I were your worse enemy...
When will we able to spend time together.
Free of bad memories.
Free of fear.
Free of suspicion.
Free of attacks.
Free of bitterness.
Just.... us.
When.... ?
No expectations, no.
Why should it be better, ever?
But the longing remains.
It remains.
It hurts.

These suggestions, these vile pieces of something that must be going on in your head, you throw them at me and watch me. Watch how I react. Some twisted, passive-aggressive way to try me. Always trying me. You will always find something to feed on. Obsession. It's eating away at your soul. It will consume you. You will destroy yourself and us.

I'm somewhere in the air. Losing myself. Twisting. Turning. No balance. No top, no bottom. Silence full of noises. Frozen. Motionless. Eyes burning. Insides crying, sobbing, shouting! No! No ground. Empty space full of swirling mess. Tied.

Sometimes... I just want to... let go...

People

I feel crowded. I don't know. It's strange because I felt lonely not so long ago... It's just there are days when the number of words I speak to so many different people leaves me empty. Maybe I'm not saying the right words. Maybe I'm not myself when speaking to all these people. Maybe it's just too exhausting to articulate all these words in English... yes, maybe it's just this physical/articulatory/gestural exhaustion when you go from not saying almost anything one day and then speaking with ten different people on ten different topics and ten different levels of conversation, all of it in only a few hours... I hear all these words buzzing around my head, I hear my words and I hear all these people's voices, I see their faces, their grimaces, their gestures... And I need to go and speak to still another person today when I feel like simply being alone today. Making these noises go away.

I went. I came back. More words. But these were better words. She made me feel more human again... though she does not know so much about me. Is this feeling real? Do you need to know a lot about somebody to have a meaningful conversation? I guess not. Depends on what topic. Depends what you consider to be a meaningful conversation. All these words are weighting me down now.

Another day, another group of people to talk to. A totally different topic/setting/people. I can do it. I mean I can do it with flying colors. Go there and talk to them as if I cared about what they have to say. As if there was nothing else in my life - just them, just their issues they feel obligated to relate to me, some good, some maybe less good, I don't know, I don't care. I'll go there and smile and be nice and make them feel comfortable and happy talking to this nice thoughtful woman (me). Or not. Maybe I should be a cold bitch instead. Show them how little power they have over me. Be arrogant. Be over-confident. Demanding. Yes. I could do that. But I will not. Only for the sake of my loved one involved. Only for his sake I will not be a bitch today.

Tender

Unexpected tenderness
Forgot how it felt
Forgot that it existed
Tenderness that goes straight
Through the skin
And gives you
This feathery feeling
Of having been touched
But not really....
Not the uninvited
Crude touch
Not the one that
Leaves you feeling
Empty
A gentle one
A whole one
One that makes you
Feel

Forgotten
Better leave it
Forgotten
Do not expect
Tenderness
Do not long for it
It can hurt you more
Because it cannot last
You know it cannot
You've seen it go
Not expected to return
So forget now
Forget
These useless feelings
Brush off
The unreal
The disconnected
Unexpected tenderness

Dichotomy

I don't think there is a real dichotomy between ewa and eva... I think it's just easier to think in such terms to be able to deal with my two worlds and transition more or less seemlessly from one to the other. But it is still quite amazing how many different experiences, attitudes, thoughts, and feelings one can carry around in a single human brain. It's rather astounding that most of us somehow avoid suffering from some kind of split personality disorder. From time to time, during moments like now, when I'm balancing on the edge (still physically in Poland but with my mind already in NYC), I do get to hear some whisperings of my alter egos, as if this life on the edge promoted personal disunity. 

So who is ewa? Do I leave her in Poland every year to meet again next summer? Or she has never truly left me? Shy, lacking confidence, pessimistic, ambitious but not working hard enough, systematic but overly scrupulous, sensitive, dreamy, emotional, but still practical, rational... puzzling, unstable, but still able to be responsible.

How is eva different? Is she more confident? Maybe sometimes, maybe under some circumstances, maybe. Being among strangers forms an illusion of having a lesser need to exercise constraint when dealing with people. But this is just an illusion of a person who grew up in a small community where nothing went unnoticed. One still needs to be cautious, there are still constraints, there are still limits, maybe we have them within us, maybe we cannot escape them. But is eva more daring, more energetic, less contemplative?

I would probably never see the contrast between the two if it weren’t for my comings and goings all the time. I wouldn’t even notice that I have changed. If I had never gone back for the last 10 years and then suddenly visited my family here, they would not know me. I would not know them. I would see then how much I have changed but I would not be able to put my finger on how and when and what exactly changed. I’m so glad my mom comes to stay with us almost every year. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t understand me. We would not be able to talk as we do now. And still, there are things that I cannot tell her even now. There are things that have grown in me secretly and as I have not really talked about them, they made me more distant, more withdrawn in a certain sense. Because I carry these things in me and nobody realizes what’s in my mind, nobody is allowed to without my control over the amount and form of the information to be released. If you deny access to your mind to most people around you, you alienate yourself more and more. I’m not that far yet, my way of dealing with this is letting people know a bit of me, each one knows only a bit. This way, I’m not completely shut within myself but also not completely open. Being open is just not an option. Too dangerous, too risky, what would be the point? 

The only problem is that sometimes it’s so hard to carry this stuff by yourself, with nobody to help you out. And you add a grain of this and a grain of that as you go and soon you are choking on it. You cannot contain all these things that you’re not supposed to share. I’m so tired of pretending I’m somebody else. So tired of not being able to be truly myself only because most people would not have a stomach to accept me as I am. It’s not that I blame them – why should they step out of their conventions and let me be myself. And also, maybe it just would not be good to let yourself be too ‘yourself’… I mean limits and conventions are not all bad, they were probably created to protect us from going too far in indulging our whims that could become something serious and potentially destructive.

I think my husband is right. Having too much time to think is not always so good. Usually it is easier and safer to have your time filled with things to do and take care of, filled so effectively that there is no way a stray thought could enter your mind, no way you could find time to do anything beyond the necessary, productive things you have planned. Of course, a bit of contemplating is useful if you do it in order to improve your life, make it healthier, happier, better – not only for you but also for others around you. The problem is my contemplating does not usually bring such results. I guess it’s positive, then, that soon, in just a few days, I will have so little time to do anything beyond the practical and the necessary that I may forget about any whisperings or alter egos that surface in my not so busy time. Time to go back. To my good, academic, tedious incarnation… Being idle is not serving me well. I need things that will take over my mind. Completely.

Stand still, for a minute

I'd like to be able to clear my mind so that I could see things as they are. I feel that I may already, at this point in my life, be influenced so much by everything that I have experienced (in an obviously subjective sort of way) that I often cannot decide where the 'my' part starts and where it ends. To be perfectly honest, I kind of doubt there is a way to keep such an open outlook on the world. After all, everything seems to look different depending on your standpoint... But does that mean that there is no untarnished, fair, totally objective state of things even in the smallest of matters? I'm not even talking about universal truths, truisms, and such... these have been ripped apart by so many philosophers that it became impossible to figure them out anyway. I'm thinking about really small everyday stuff that still has so many facets to every person involved that it's seems impossible to untangle the 'truth'. How can we ever come to terms with anybody? How is that possible to live in peace, communicate, cooperate, etc. if everybody has a different angle of looking at things? It's like a kaleidoscope - one tiny movement, a slight change of position and you see tremendous evolutions in the image you're looking at.

Sometimes I feel I have run in circles, let myself be caught in the narrow scope of my perceptions, become so absorbed in my own limited experiences that I'm missing so many pieces, missing them completely and irrevocably. Ones in a while this awareness becomes more acute and I feel uneasy and try to stop and think what it is I'm missing and how I could find a way to see more fully, more wholly. But then I get busy again and I go back to doing a hundred things an hour without a second to spare to do anything about it. The whole thing just leaves me with an aftertaste that reminds me from time to time that I should probably do a major remodeling in my world if I want to stop the process of becoming so hardened in my ways that I won't see anything clearly anymore.

If life was simple....

If life was simple we would not have our heads full of stupid thoughts that we don't need. We would not have so many fears, questions, uncertainties... If life was simple we would get up in the morning knowing exactly what is going to happen each and every minute. Everything would be predictable, systematic, under control. Nobody would wonder what if and what next and whether this or that. We would have our paths set at some point and the only thing to do would be to follow it, faithfully. Things out of ordinary and shocking and exciting would, of course, have to cease to exist as a price to pay for safety and control.

Why this sounds like a nightmare? I mean, it probably is a dream for many people tired of their messy, unpredictable, fucked up lives. What is the force behind this sick want so many of us experience then? What is the limit for most of us? This uncrossable point when we just have had enough and the only craving we have is to become a hermit living in a perfect harmony with nature. I guess some of us can never reach that point. We are like hamsters in a cage running ourselves silly in circles trying to get to a nowhere point. I wonder what would make me quit this endless race. How easy it could be to make me give up. What makes my wheels turn?

My darkest hour

Wounds that time can never mend

The truth that imprisons

Lies that entangle

The more you search

The more pain you find

Disappointment tastes so bitter...

Liberation leads to destruction

The pain inflicted comes back to haunt

Penance makes no difference

Life feels more and more

Like a struggle

When you forget the meaning

Of hope

Nights are filled with

Anguish

Your touch transforms everything into

Ashes

He is not awaiting my return

That love

He had

Is no more

Back in Poland, again.

I wonder... what if I had never left Poland, what if I had stayed here. What I would be like right now? Who I would be? How much different than who I am right now? How much worse? How much better? I cannot deny that all these years in New York must have changed me. All these people I have been around changed me. All these things I got to do, experience, enjoy, and suffer... I wonder how many of these things were place-specific and would have never happened if I had never left Poland. I guess I have mentioned a few times in my posts (though I don't exactly remember as I hardly ever go back to read what I wrote) that I was not exactly the best fitting peg here, especially in my home little town. I'm pretty sure I would not have stayed here, I would have moved somewhere, but where, I'm not sure. I have to admit it - my brain hurts at the thought of me spending my whole life in this small place with a thousand or so people. It feels like I would not be fully alive. It is a struggle to stay alive here.

I have a couple of friends here. People who are quite a few years younger than I am, a young married couple. They have very few friends here, hardly anybody to go out with, to have an engaging conversation with, people with whom it is easy to relax and forget about everyday responsibilities, sometimes so tedious. It might not seem like such a huge problem, it's not like I have tons of friends and hours of free time to go out with them but... But I do have a few close friends worth talking to, people who are always interesting to talk to, always ready to share the good and the bad. AND when I go to my school I am surrounded by people who, certainly not being perfect, are accomplished (or getting there), interested in something other than everyday needs and pains, people who have a story to tell, almost each and every one has experienced a completely different life than I have, each one has something new for me to learn, each one has a different perspective on the world around, a slightly different point of view.

What a blessing that is, I only realized when I noticed how desperate this young couple is to stay alive, to keep growing while everybody tells them to stay down, to keep dreaming while so many people around them forgot what it even meant. Are they wrong to try not to drown in everyday life of a small community? Are they wrong to keep wanting more? Is it wrong to be afraid that all these people will drag them down and slowly drain all their wants and aspirations away from them? I wonder, would I be just like them if I had stayed? Would I have had enough strength to win this fight and find myself a way to stay alive without the advantage of "having it easy" and "being lucky" - something that one of my aunts was kind enough to point out to me when I visited her...

Linguistic and other types of conversations

Some conversations tire me out so much. Not all kinds of conversations, of course, some are inspiring and make me feel so much more alive. I'm talking about some specific type of 'linguistic' conversations, under some specific circumstances. Conversations with professional linguists about their area of linguistic expertise are so draining... I am not the most social of creatures but there is hardly anything I love more than a good, engaging conversation. I can be charming, thoughtful, funny, very agreeable in general. Well, maybe not with everybody, but I guess with a majority of potential interlocutors I would find a way to appear quite pleasant to talk to. I can adjust to lots of different styles, I guess. However, there are people with whom I find it hard to talk even though I like and/or respect them. I believe it's the task of adjusting the social style in combination with discussing linguistic topics (at least some of the time) that make it so much harder.

Let me make it all a little more explicit. It's easy to talk linguistics with someone who knows obviously less than I do on some topic - than I do the social work only, and to someone who knows more linguistics but whose age and social interaction style is closer to mine - than I can concentrate on the linguistic side of the conversation. The headache comes when I talk with a linguist who knows obviously more than I do AND whose style I have not been able to figure out yet or who is just so very incompatible with me that no adjusting can fix the gap. The feeling I get then is that I'm walking a very thin line stretched high up and it takes so much effort not to crash! On the optimistic side, I must say that the line walking is getting a bit easier - could it be connected with the number of articles I add to my 'read' list? - so maybe I will eventually get to the point where the social part of the conversation will be my main challenge? Because if I stay as I am I will always, even if subconsciously, play this game of getting people to show me who they are and how they talk before I truly start talking to them. It's always a testing period first. How awkward I feel before I have that done! It's so easy when I meet somebody who saves me the effort and either lets me find out what I need to know within just minutes of our first conversation or clearly has some rules established as to what is allowed and expected. But... how interesting to get to study somebody who has no set rules but at the same time is not willing to open up and let people see exactly what they are made of. I have to say it can be a nerve-racking experience, though. Because to get this kind of a person all figured out, it sometimes requires giving a bit of oneself away. The outcome of such a procedure might not be exactly as intended or expected. Occupational hazard, I guess, it could be called.

My boys

Ok, I have just looked at my last post and I must say it sounds pretty bad. I should always wait a little to cool off before rushing to write down my turbulent thoughts. It might scare somebody. It might scare even me in a year or two, who knows. And definitely in 10 years. I just hope my kids never find this blog (I guess I'll just stop writing and delete the whole thing one day) or they will think their mom was pretty crazy.... Not that they will not be able to figure that one out without reading the blog, sooner or later they will see things more clearly.

However, to think of it, I do behave in the most normal of my ways around them and it's not something I have to try hard to do, I guess they do stabilize a lot in me. They are such a delight to be around (except during the let's-go-crazy-and-run-around-the-house-screaming exercises... or my-life-is-so-awful-because-I-have-to-do-homework kind of thing... ). I love my bedtime reading time with Thomas. We often also talk and the questions, comments, thoughts of my 6 year old son about life and our world are so amazingly insightful and delightfully naive at the same time that it is always extremely refreshing and beautiful to talk to him. Once we were reading about Marie Sklodowska-Curie and he said "You wouldn't like that mom, not to be able to go to college. I know you love to learn and girls could not go to college at that time. I know you would not like that at all." Some time earlier we talked about the times when women could not study, when black people could not sit on the bus with white people. He asked so many questions about that and it was so wonderful to see how unimaginable it was for him, how devoid of any sense. I would like him to stay that way forever!

With David it's already a different story. He's is maturing and becoming a little man. When we have a bit of time to talk we often end up discussing things that need clarifying - things that look good on the outside but may not be truly so, ways to lead a good life, be a good person. He must be in the middle of figuring out the moral part of his life views/attitudes. He still has such wonderful, innocent understanding of how life should be. Life, love, relationships - this is all simple and obvious for him now, good is good and bad is bad and that's that. He knows already things can get uglier, more difficult, more complicated but this somehow has not tarnished his heart yet. He has no baggage yet, no hurt, no burden to carry. I can only hope I teach him well and he will be able to take the hard part of life and still remember about the beauty he has in himself now, despite of my own weaknesses/deficits in that area...

The enemy within

How can I do anything if I'm playing against myself? I have realized these things about myself, I have known them for years but no, I have not realized how much this is not how life MUST be, I haven't realized how much I let this take over my whole life, every aspect of it.

I choose suffering and feeling miserable as a 'safe' place where I can have control and nothing can become an ugly surprise. I would like to keep this feeling of security and control but at the same time stop feeling morose and pessimistic... Somehow these things became all one package. Why did I even decide to see a psychologist if deep down I had never believed he would help me? I will not let anyone help me because that would involve destroying the carefully built world of mine. And I don't know any other world, I don't know any other me. I don't know how to behave differently. I don't know how to be happy, what that means, how it feels like, how real it is.

As much as I don't want to be like this I sit here not seeing any other way for me. I'm scared that my children will learn from me to go through life like this. I fear they will waste so much time in their lives, just as I have been doing it for years and years, because of my fucked up attitude that I surely model for them every day...

So why did I start seeing a psychologist? Because my feelings were becoming too difficult to cope with even for me. I can have the luxury of being this suffering, moody person if I have somebody next to me who will pick me up from time to time, who has a much more optimistic, cheerful approach to life, who will inject some joy into my life. Joy that, although coming from outside and not from within me, allowed me to feel normal and safe and maybe even a bit optimistic occasionally. But when that person, tired as hell and hurt by my destructive quest for misery, started to fail, I found it harder and harder to go on. With nobody to lean on like that, with somebody that actually started to add extra weight to my misery, to this carefully balanced amount that I was able to take, I could not continue being a parasite for bits of happiness to keep me nourished. Apparently, I do need these bits and pieces that fall of the table of the ones who know how to be happy. But I have drained him, I have left him so dry and bitter and disillusioned that there may be nothing left. If I don't start to generate my own joy, and share it, there will be no laughter in my world, no smile, no support, no warmth.

I'm so tired and empty. I know these feelings so well. They are familiar, almost comforting. I don't want them but I don't stop them from engulfing me, numbing my pain, keeping me in this imaginary safe-place. Maybe I really don't want them to go away, I guess D. is right. I wouldn't know what to put in their place. But it means that... I will never stop being like this, I will not let myself or anybody else help me out of this fake safe-place.

What would it take to get me out of there? Can I be taken in peace or rather it must be by force? How drastic would the measures need to be so that I finally let my soul, my mind, and my body to unite and feel good, simply happy, simply? Can you please out-control me, out-smart me, put me in a place where I cannot run, where I cannot fight, where I have to strip off everything that weights me down, where there are no weapons, no tricks, no manipulation, no defenses... and rip it out, rip this horrid destructive part of me that can only lead to more and more misery, the thing that will make me the end of my own family, my own life. It just pushes me further and further. Please take it away, please take it away, please take it away....

So what next?

Well, you could say that my breakdown was just a waste of time and energy. You could say that, certainly. But maybe just for once in a while I will try to see some good in all this? I did manage to see a few things more clearly thanks to my, let's call it 'ordeal' of thinking that I might have skin cancer. Maybe that was the purpose of the whole experience, if, of course, one believes in higher purposes in things and maybe one wants to believe...

The thing that had such an impact on me in my therapy session last Thursday was discovering how I take all the joy away from my life, of every possible aspect of it, because of my unexplainable (so far) tendency to see everything in black. I don't fully understand how and why I do it and as I realized that this was so hard for me to grasp I felt hopeless - how can you fight with something you don't understand, whose roots you cannot see, something that probably started years ago and just attracted like magnet all kinds of more or less real suffering, problems, hurt... things that made this sick mind of mine even worse and worse. I realized that each and every day I spend like that is not fully lived. I waste so much time in my life worrying about things that may never happen that I don't see the good parts anymore, I don't have time and energy and hope left to deal with things that need improving. How sure can we be how much time we have? You don't need a life-threatening disease to end your life. A car will do. You may even drown in your own bathtub. It does not matter how you die - once you do, there is no going back and although you may not care then (or you might, that's another discussion) it is pretty easy to imagine you would want to fix a thing or two if you knew that your life will not be particularly long. Now, I think that was the main reason for my breakdown, I panicked when I realized that I had no clue how to fix this thing or two and well, I do NOT have all the time in the world to find out.

Will it be enough to figure out this? Is it even the right question? Is it really the problem of me choosing suffering over happiness, worrying over joy, that has made it so difficult for me and for my relationships? Would everything look different if I was different? What if this way of being has become the very core of 'me'? Can you change the very core of yourself and still know who you are? Not that I would miss that part of me, once I stop to think about it... Is this feeling of low self-confidence and craving for outside appreciation (something present in my life for as long as I remember) the result of a failure to become a true self? I feel I don't know myself. And I don't really like this person I don't know. But I don't know anybody else... Is that a conundrum or what?!

A day that did not go as planned.

I want to make several major changes to myself. It seems that can be the most ambitious of my projects ever. I don't know how I'm going to do that but I really really need to find a way. If I don't it's not going to be a happy end to anything, I'm going to have too many regrets to even die in peace.

I had a major breakdown today. Although I'm not a stranger to breakdowns and generally feeling miserable for bigger or smaller reasons, this one was different. It was different because it was totally owned by me, caused by me, generally all about me. Would sound almost egocentric if it was not about a negative thing (but maybe it still can be egocentric even if it is negatively egocentric?). I think it was worse than the ones that my husband caused because then I could suffer and still feel a bit disconnected from the source of suffering (obviously, I must know a thing or two about suffering or disconnection, or at least it sounds like it). But this time the suffering was all mine, inside and out. You cannot run, you cannot hide. The last days have slowly built up the pressure and although I was bravely fending all the feelings off desperately trying to stay calm, I could tell yesterday night I getting close to losing it. I had to go to a meeting with my psychologist in the morning and although I felt like staying put today I decided to face the day and do everything what I was supposed to do. After all, that's what I do most of the time. I get up and do what I need to do and maybe even more sometimes. There are days when I do it with ease, there are days when I force myself to do every little thing. But I still do it.

But my day really ended right there at the psychologist's office. I mean, how can you manage to fend feelings off when you are talking about them?! I know that's a point but it did a lot of damage to me today. My mind is so messed up right now that it's pretty amazing I'm actually writing this and maybe even in a coherent way (difficult to judge that when you have your brain all numb). Anyway, I cannot continue because I took sleeping pills a while ago and I'm hoping they will make it possible to close my eyes and just stop thinking for a while. I'm going to think some more tomorrow. Possibly without a new breakdown. It is just too exhausting. And I have so many things to do tomorrow. So many.

An issue of being (in)significant

I'm thinking. Is everybody in this world screwed up in some way? If most of us are, then how do we know what the 'normal' state is? Most people would probably say at this point that it depends on a person - a very convenient way to get out of giving a real answer. But is there any truth behind this typically given answer? Are we really so special that there is no state of being normal - mentally and emotionally healthy - that would fit all? A lot of us, growing up in more or less Western culture, have felt the need to be an individual, somebody special and unique, at least a couple of times during our lives. It is amazing that we strive to maintain this individualism thing while we are so insignificant, most of us at least. We create the 'higher purpose' notions, the 'every life is valuable', and such to make us feel that our little life that has so far brought nothing into this world, actually does make sense. Of course, from our standpoint the pain we feel is more acute than the one felt by somebody next to us. We just cannot help feeling it. Even if we know somebody is suffering much more than we are it will hardly ever help elevate our pain. Although I do know a few people who instantly feel better when they find somebody whose situation is worse than theirs... But that's not exactly what I'm trying to talk about. What I'm saying is that so often we forget we are not a center of anything, not to mention of a universe. Our brief moment here on Earth will pass as millions others have and we should consider ourselves lucky if we don't cause any major damage. I cannot believe how worked up we sometimes get about our little things, our little miseries, victories, failures... It could be easier to accept that there is no higher purpose, no goal you are supposed to reach, no particular destiny you should fulfill.

I feel that my life has very little purpose and I don't think I have been able to accept it. I will not write a book that will move millions, I will not compose music that will be played for generations to come, I will not leave anything behind that would be worth while. I can only make very little scratches here and there. I am bringing up two human beings who will probably have their own share of being screwed up and I can do nothing about it, as much as I would want to, as I myself am not particularly healthy in my mind and in my soul. My greatest contribution to this world, my children. And even that I have no real power over. Not only can one say it is not a big deal to reproduce but also that we have a very narrow window of making a difference in their lives anyway. Is it wrong of me then to draw the biggest sense of purpose and strength and happiness in my life from them? It probably is. What will be left when they go their own ways?

My desire to be perfect and do only good and make a huge difference is hardly humble. I don't understand where I have gotten these ideas from. I would hardly say I possess any delusions of grandeur. I guess it must be my own personal way of making sure that I will never feel too good about myself because that would be too close to being proud. Once you adopt such high standards of greatness you are sure you won't get there so you are safe - no chance you're going to be proud. It is true - my life is full of circles, I seem to use these circular paths a lot in my life. The more I think about this the more I feel this is a pointless waste of time. I won't be able to change anything. I don't even know myself. What am I trying to do? I really want to understand who I really am and what makes me do what I do and feel what I feel and how I can finally find some peace in my whole life, a little bit of peace when I feel safe and not uncertain, satisfied and not numb, calm and not anxious. I cannot find a way to disconnect this whole thing from other people - to just reach somewhere into me and find these things. I believe that if I managed to do that I could become a better person. Somebody I have always wanted to be. I wish I could teach my children to be such people - calm, good, sincere, considerate, loving, and so no, and so on. How can I teach them when I am so not even close to all this? I'm afraid of letting my children down, of not giving them what they need to grow up to be better than me.

Tactics

It seems that focusing on somebody else's faults and mistakes is a very widespread technique employed usually when we need or just want to present ourselves as fault-free. A defense is not a particularly appealing method of surviving an attack. An offense, or a counterattack, sounds like a much better idea. Not only can we win the fight but also make everybody forget the original reason behind it. It is particularly useful if we were primarily responsible for the fight in the first place. Having emerged victorious we may feel pure and righteous as it is a well known fact that it's the good guys that win.

A major drawback of depending on this technique too often is that it may take over your life and you will be doing it on a smaller scale but on everyday basis. You will be doing it to win a fight, get an upper hand in any domestic argument, excuse your own not-so-perfect actions to everybody (including, and maybe even most importantly, to yourself) - it will simply become a feel-good-about-yourself necessity. It will fell so good you will forget that you do make mistakes too and may not be always right. The outside reality you have created may become very powerful although you often do not realize you are implementing the whole machine more and more often in your life. You may just be doing what works, without giving it a lot of thought.

It is quite difficult to maintain a positive self-esteem when faced with our numerous imperfections. It may be even more difficult when you tend to be very particular about things, when you like things nice and neat. It's a shame though, if we need to build our own confidence at somebody else's expense. And this, unfortunately, proves much easier than making true changes in ourselves. Of course the easy way is not foolproof - we must realize that whatever we achieved, esteem-wise, in this way, is very superficial and unless we keep putting soap in our eyes and capitalizing on other people's weaknesses for ever, it will eventually become clear that our moral core, which most probably exists in most human beings, has suffered enormously in the process. Once we allow enough of the degeneration to eat at our soul, it is very difficult to reverse the process. You find yourself lost, unsure of who you are, haunted by a feeling of your smallness.

Now, have you become simply obnoxious along the way? Has your spouse adopted the same strategy to deal with you, even if for different reasons? Who is to blame... Is that the question you have just been thinking? Of course it's not your fault only, the dynamics of any relationship make people change and shape their ways constantly, but is looking for the one to blame a way to solve anything? It may just be an extension of what you have been doing. The moment you decide that your partner is 51% responsible and you 'only' 49%, will you feel victorious again and absolved from any of the blame? It's easy to tip the scale to your benefit if the only thing you need is an excuse to go on using your offense tactics. Who doesn't like some peace of mind, even if based on very shaky foundations indeed...

Who am I?

Of course I knew that. It's not like I'm living my life without a deeper thought crossing my mind. I have thought about myself and why I do the things I do and why I do them the way I do and how I perceive the world and people around me... What did happen this past Monday, though, was that my perspective changed. As if I turned 180 degrees and got a different view at things. Or something like this. I realized a very basic thing - something that most people know, at least to some extent, but maybe not so many of us actually use this knowledge so much. The fact that what I, me, myself think/feel/believe may not necessarily be: 1. universal 2. true 3. effective - the list could go on. I'm not speaking here about simple things - like a situation when somebody insists that you cannot possibly hate this color/cake/dress/house/fill-in-the-space because this is so beautiful/delicious/elegant/etc... (although it is surprising how many of these simple ones one has to hear in one's lifetime!) I'm talking here about a very big picture, about how we perceive the world and people around us from our very specific point of view without often realizing how much we add to everything, how many preconceived notions we bring to everything.

It's not inherently bad, this is how we cope with the complexity of life we need to face every day - we build on our experiences, learn from our actions and their outcomes, draw conclusions, we construct a truly amazing, intricate structure that helps us analyze, understand, and deal with many completely new situations that life often brings. The hidden problem may be that some of it happens subconsciously, we just add little pieces and bits here and there and may not keep track of every connection, every little question and answer, observation and conclusion, problem and solution. After a while we may lose any sense of where all this has come from, what the pieces are. Even worse, you start to treat your structure as a constant, not a variable. I guess we wouldn't be able to live without forming some kind of stability in our perceptions. The thing we have built becomes a force that drives our life more than we would ever imagine. How can one possibly step out of all this baggage of experiences and thoughts and judgments... many of which are often so imprecise and subjective. After a while we start thinking this is how the world works - this must be it, we have confirmed it so many times, we have observed and touched and smelled and burned our fingers - we KNOW, we just KNOW that this or that is normal, whatever that can mean.

Now, as I said, I knew that. I knew that I was always, for as long as I remember, thinking or feeling that nobody could possibly be interested in me just for me, without wanting something from me, without some kind of exchange. I think I have tried very hard to make myself more, in many different ways, believing that just simple plain me would not be enough to interest anyone. After all, you want value for your money. So I have tried to be prettier, smarter, more creative, more sophisticated than I felt I truly was. The fact that I see how this has been happening does not change the fact that I still have the structure deeply embedded in my soul. I cannot see how I could ever change something that has become as natural for me as breathing. I don't know how to see things differently. I don't know if I can reach deep enough to find just me, without all these things I've added. How much are they 'me' now? What if I don't like them? Is there a core part of a person at all? What if I wouldn't like it if I found it? I think I have always tried to make myself more likable and acceptable and interesting not only to other people but also to myself. It seems that I have never liked myself too much.

Decisions, decisions...

It's amazing how I am able to make certain decisions in my life - big and small - and somehow not feel totally in control of what I decided to do. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I find it quite hard to accept I made a wrong decision. I hate the "should have" or "shouldn't have" problem so I try very hard to prevent a situation when you are forced to say the hateful "should" thing. I deliberate and think and talk to myself and do a lot of hard mental work in order to foresee each and every facet and all the possible outcomes of my upcoming decision. Everyone older than 6 or 7 knows this is quite often not feasible, even in some simple decisions there are threats and dangers lurking in the shadows. I won't even mention the big, life-changing, crucial-for-your-future decisions. These give me some big time willies, to say the least. I cannot understand how I have ever been able to make any of these. Some of them turned out very positive, some rather devastating.

I know a few people who are much more capable than I am in facing the "should." They simply never say it (or almost never) even if all the circumstances indicate that the classic "should" situation has arisen! They know the "should (not)" will just make you feel more wretched and what would be the point? But I just cannot stop the "should" from popping out every time it gets a chance! I must say I have learnt to control the thing a little - I try not to sound it loud and clear too often but it does reverberate in my mind instead anyway, or maybe even more when I prevent it from getting out and about...

Now I'm starting to feel a bit nervous as I just remembered one or two decisions that are waiting to be taken and I feel I just cannot, simply cannot, get it right. Something, some part of it will surely go wrong. And this is how I don't usually let myself be fully content with lots of things. Always something that could have been improved if only...

My boys

My six year old son:

"Mommy, I would never want any other mom than you. You are the best mom I've ever had. I love you."

The funny aspect of 'the best mom I've ever had' made it even sweeter. He said this when we were goofing around and laughing together. He just stopped, got serious, looked me straight in the eye and made this oh-so-wonderful-and-so-much-needed declaration of love... Next, he gave me a big hug and continued playing, most probably oblivious to the fact that he had just given me so much joy, so much happiness, that all the worries that I carried in me felt suddenly lighter, less serious, more manageable...

That same day, when he saw me and his dad sitting together and sharing a meal, he came over to us with a huge smile, gave us each a kiss, told us how much he loved us, and put one arm over me and one over his dad, bringing us close together, at which point my older son jumped up and joined us.

Moments like this one are what makes us take all the baggage we have, no matter how heavy it is, and carry on. Moments like this keep us sane, and even smiling, and maybe even roaring with laughter from time to time. My boys have lifted me up so many times, have saved me so many times, that in a way, if it is true that every person has a role to play on this Earth, they have truly done their job already. But I will need them again, and again, I fear. And one day they will not be 6 or 10 years old. They will be 15 or 19 and maybe around that time I will have to learn to deal with life without their sweet, open-hearted love so close by me... just as they will learn to face life without me so close by their side. But that's not now. Now I'm the best mom Thomas has ever had and I still get hugs and kisses from David. I just want to freeze time so badly!

Same old

It's been a while since I lost it like that. I felt so numb again. I still cannot completely come around. I don't think I can take many more of these. They cost me so much... as if all hope, joy, life was being drained away from me. I feel so empty and vulnerable. I cannot get my brain to think because there is nothing left to think. Nothing left to say, to do. My mind shuts down as if to save me from too much trauma. It's my low pain threshold kicking in. I guess.

The thing I wrote about (kind of) above happened a week or two ago. I felt so helpless again. I think this is what makes it the hardest. This feeling that I cannot do anything to help, to stop the destruction. A bystander? How can you be a bystander if your whole life's at stake? It's not going to be better. It's not going to be ok. I'm holding on to some pitiful little remains of a hope I once had but even with my eyes shut tight I cannot help but see that it's not going to last. We are two broken people, carrying more and more burden, and the load is becoming too heavy. I don't want to face it all. I want a solution, help. But somewhere deep inside I don't believe there exists one. No solution. Too late, too many things have happened. Or maybe I'm just tired. I feel so tired. I cannot let go of my little hope that we will manage to find a way, a way to make it all work somehow. A way to be ourselves with each other. A way to make our marriage real.

I hate this look in your face when you're pretending everything is normal. I hate it even more when you call our life a farce. Fear and anxiety have become my daily companions. I don't cry so often anymore because it only makes me go deeper into despair, it makes me give in to dark thoughts, it takes me to a place where there is no hope. So I hold the tears back with all my strength because I feel I wouldn't be able to come back from where it would take me. I've spent too much energy already on lifting myself up and making myself go on with my life. And I have to go on for my boys, I have to smile for them. I want to smile for them. They make me happy, they bring me joy, and they add sense to my life when everything else seems devoid of it completely.

But the sadness and heaviness is getting more and more difficult to ignore, to silence. It's harder and harder to concentrate on my school, find any motivation to go there or interest in studying. It seems harder and harder to do what I'm supposed to do. It seems pointless to make an effort. I feel anxious and sad. I get busy to make it go away. I don't allow it to take over. How much longer will I be able to go on like this? How much longer will you be able to continue pretending you're coping? You are not coping, you are avoiding. Trying to block things out, drown, stop the obsessive thoughts from invading your mind. You are suffering but will not do anything to try to improve our life. Nothing constructive. Because you feel as helpless as I do... Because you don't know if you can take it to invest in our relationship again, to let yourself have hope again... You will just keep yourself numb by working too hard, drinking too much, smoking, staying away... Because once you lost trust and hope, nothing remained. Should I let you go? If I make you so miserable that you need to practically destroy yourself in order to stand being in my proximity, should I make you stay? What life would we have if we went apart? What life would our boys have? Nothing seems important, nothing else that I have in my life, when I ask these questions.

What is wrong with me that I cannot be a normal wife, a normal partner? What if it is too late to save our life together, even if we managed to solve the biggest problem we have been experiencing throughout our entire relationship? What if the baggage we have accumulated proves to much to get rid of, even if my search for answers and help is eventually successful? Do I even believe that I will ever be successful?I don't know what makes me be the way I am, How can anybody help me figure it out and make it work?

What made me decide to go look for some help now, the doctor asked me today. What was it? The feeling that we are dangerously close to an edge, some turning point that, when taken, offers no return. We are destroying each other so we keep growing apart to save ourselves from more hurt, more pain, more despair. But as much as we would like to pretend this could still work, it won't. If we don't start some serious repair work, it's all going to be ruined. And I know how you don't like repairs, I know how much you'd like to just demolish the whole thing and build a new structure. You know it doesn't work like that, it's not one of your construction projects. We need help. We have needed it for a long time now. I fear that we are running out of power, out of hope, out of everything that has somehow kept us together for so long. 15 years.

Happy Anniversary, my husband. Happy Anniversary. I can't live with or without you...

Replaceability Principle (RP)

I'm finally starting to have a very clear and precise picture why academia may not agree with me as much as I thought it would. Not that I stopped liking the things that I have for so long now - all the learning, thinking, and discovering I do and all the people that I get to meet and spend time with delight me and make me feel alive even if I'm half dead from exhaustion. It's the pains of finding a topic to explore, investing a lot of time, effort, and sanity to develop it, research far and wide, design tasks, carry them out (only after a long and painful process of recruiting participants ... and the possibility lurking always right behind the corner, the dreaded possibility that your brilliant study, idea, plan, whatever! will not bring any valuable or even just interesting results... Add to that another danger, another dread that somebody, somewhere, is working on the very same thing as you are and will finish the race first. There is not second place here. You can wake up one day and find out that your painstakingly written work that you are about to finish has just been published... by somebody else. These are challenges that make anxiety your truly close companion, that make your heart race and mind operate on the very brink of losing it.

Although having a family does not make it easier to cope with the fear that everything will go a-wastin' and there won't be another chance like that, this is not necessarily closely intertwined. Maybe it does magnify the problem to a certain degree but it seems that not having children to take care of does not make it much easier to safeguard yourself against the pitfalls of papers and research and journals and conferences, and so many other academic traps. You obviously have more time and opportunities, more chances to finish before you are outrun but being single or childless does not guarantee a success. If you are free of additional responsibilities you may have to deal with a different type of a problem - how do you explain why you still cannot make it? How do you excuse your lack of achievements, results, or even ideas? Pure despair.

What we all share is the lack of perspectives. We cannot compete with the few but noteworthy high achievers who breathe their work and will always be faster and more effective. Who are we kidding? We are not contributing to the field. We are just playing in there. We are doing our little part from time to time, at the very best. There is a position for a linguist open at my dear old Queens College. A hundred and forty applications have come and many of them stronger than I will ever even come close to dreaming of being able to put together when I get to the point of looking for a job. I think I should get my license to teach ESL as soon as I can and start some decent work. I really think more and more often about that. Sounds more and more reasonable. I hesitate only because if I did this there would be no coming back and I would have to deal with the fact that there is nothing else to strive for, nothing else to do, change, achieve, or find out... just everyday life. I know there is enough in everyday life to fill my time, there are so many things to do! But would I be able to fill my mind as well? How would I feel? What if I felt relieved? What if I felt trapped? How can I possibly know? Why do I have to have this feeling that I cannot lead my life empty of some higher level struggle? That it would make me feel as if I was wasting my life. Why do I have this impression that there is something do to, more important, something to create, something to leave, or I could just as well be dead? Why a decent money earning job, free time to read some novel, watch a movie, take care of your family, get some rest - why all this does not seem like enough? I mean, I'm really not special at all - extraordinarily smart or talented, clearly predisposed for some particular calling, things like that... There is not even one logical reason why I should feel that I need or can do something extra. I would really like to learn to take pleasure in little things and find my place in the world, a place that I would create for myself, not based on what other people say defines success and happiness. Custom made place, not generic. Sometimes I feel that I'm chasing some dream that is not really mine. Some idea of what is important. It's so upsetting that I still haven't figured out myself. Will I ever know exactly what I need and want and what would make me a better person? The only stable thing in my life is my family. This is something I don't need to question. My love for them is something that I feel with the whole me. The very thought of them getting hurt overshadows everything. I know that one thing, one thing that I am perfectly sure of - if I lost them everything else would not be worth anything, would be so unimportant... Why then lose your sleep and sanity over things like that? There are things that are dispensable and some that can never be replaced. It's not hard to realize that but it does appear pretty hard to actually act on that knowledge - adjust the time and effort that you devote to caring for/about something according to the 'replaceability principle'. The principle that ranks the importance of the content of a person's life. I should make it my life principle. My very own RP.

Winter Break Reflections

My chronic lack of time has changed my blog to an orphaned child... I guess I don't have time to think anymore. Funny. It's only when I have a break from school that I allow myself a little bit of free thinking time. And it's not fun, definitely not fun. Why think about things that are upsetting and beyond control? Why reflect if reflection only brings uncertainty? Sometimes I am forced by some incidents to think about all kinds of less than agreeable things during my crazy semesters but the amount of work and thinking I have to do about school, house stuff, and kids makes it quite easy to push the anxieties out of sight. Well, maybe 'easy' is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is doable. I know it is a very risky tactic not to face the bad stuff and pretend it does not exist in a naive attempt to make believe that what you cannot see will hopefully disappear... That's so immature. All serious, responsible, smart adults take care of the messes, find solutions, intervene, whatever it takes to remedy a difficult situation. I tend to avoid. Evasion became my very ineffective way of coping. There is always something to evade. I have to say that it took me a while to perfect that technique and then to realize that I did. It is a surprise for me to learn that I do this. I still carry in me the imagine of me as a person who always tries to resolve everything, prove, explain, persuade and do it fast, on the spot, so that nobody manages to escape my powers of setting the record straight! Apparently, life has finally taught me. There are times when I still feel the urge, I still feel the tingling sensation rising in me when something's not right, when I desperately want to change something... But now, most of these 'issues' are so difficult or so emotionally draining. Facing them is such a burden. I give up before I start then and just hide in my shell secretly hoping that maybe it will be safer like that, maybe everything will work out by itself, maybe I won't have to take risks or make so much effort to fix the bad... maybe everything will be ok if I close my eyes for a while, maybe the monsters will disappear and never come back? Maybe...

Poland 2009

A full circle again. But this year is somehow different than last one. I'm trying to figure out why and how but cannot put my finger on it yet. Last summer was exceptional in many ways - probably most importantly it marked a certain closing point in my life as I finally got my B.A. and was on the verge of starting a new chapter of my student life. Not to mention that my student life is really a lot my whole life as all the other aspects of my life get influenced, I need to plan around my school, and often make sacrifices on both sides. Can't have it all. So many things changes last summer, or rather right after, both for me and my family - new schools, new apartments, new challenges. September was so incredibly hard for us all.

Now, I have a year of grad school behind me, I understood that I would never be a regular student and would never achieve as much as I would like to or could if I were alone but also understood that I would never want to be alone and as much as I get upset sometimes that I should be doing this or that and be at this or that conference, seminar, workshop.... I still think that it is less important, that this does not define me as a person, this is only something that I do but not who I am. I realize that the fact that I think this way makes it very impossible for me to succeed in academia, where you have to be so committed that you are ready to sacrifice everything in your life to reach your goals.

There is only so much I can do if I want to be the person who brings my children up. There is more and more I have to do being a mom, more and more I have to think about as my kids grow. I don't want them to feel like obstacles on my way to building a perfect career. I want to make sure I know them and they know me for who we are deep inside. I want to live with them and not next to them. As much as I can. My school is great, the people I meet there are (at least some of them) smart and interesting, I have made some friends, I learnt a lot (and realized how awfully much I still have to learn) but would give it all up in a split second if given a choice between that and my family. Well, I would be less exhausted if I had no school - that's for sure... I would quit it right now but the problem is, I don't know why, it does make me happy... It is crazy how hard it sometimes gets and I still think that without school I would not feel as happy as I do now. Why? Sadomasohism? I really think there is more wrong with me than that I realize.

Depression

Sadness. This feeling of weariness that makes one numb and hopeless. Uneasiness. When one feels something may have gone wrong but it is hard to know what. Anxiety. What will happen next? What is ahead of me? How wonderful it would be to be able to always say and do what should be done and said. Nothing more, nothing less. Utopia - by whose standards would that be judged?! I'm tired of not knowing how to be myself. Again. Maybe 'myself' is not acceptable? How will I ever manage not to alienate people by trying to be one of the my selves I'm fooling myself now. I never try to be myself, there is no such thing. I'm always pretending, more or less, that I am somebody that fits in. But I don't, most of the time. I should just stop talking more often.

Pain

I give up. I will never write a positive post ever again. The evening after I wrote my last post I was struck with the worst pain I'd had since being in labor... I did not sleep almost the whole night suffering and risking to overdose on painkillers as I was taking one after another with no effect. When it finally stopped around 4 am I was afraid to move. I felt as if I were made of glass that will break into million pieces if I make it move an inch. It took me a whole day to persuade myself that no, I am not made of glass and my body can probably take much more pain and still function - maybe not perfectly well but still well enough for nobody to notice. I'm good at hiding things. Sometimes.
Pain is a funny feeling. It clears your mind of unnecessary stuff and leaves you with the fundamental building blocks of your existence. You are aware of every tiny particle in your body and how your whole being can crush because of just a few of them. You see the big picture. The most important things that you would miss if you had to give in to the pain and its source. But for that it needs to last a while, a short period of pain is just a nuisance you can kill most of the time pretty fast. It cannot go on for too long, though, because then it gives birth to fear and as one wise little green guy said "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate... leads to suffering." I guess it can also work the other way around. Fear and suffering seem to be entangled in one scary nightmare. Anger and hate are closely connected too but for me anger is often a result of feeling powerless about something that is very important to me. I've never experienced the full power of hate though I do not doubt that under certain circumstances I would be capable of this feeling as well. I hope I never will.

A little light

I am in a surprisingly positive mood. I don't get this feeling that often so I felt it was worth noting. I am wondering, though. How much is this a change in my brain that has been brought about by some general feeling of content generated by several little but hopefully good things that have been happening or by a little less natural means. I won't elaborate but yes, that's my question...
I mean, I don't really want to undermine my suddenly acquired ability to feel good for a change - I enjoy it no matter what the source is. I would just like to know a little more about the mechanics of the whole thing so that I can make this miraculous thing happen again, if that is up to me at least in part. I'll just go and figure this out. Now. Before it becomes an elusive memory of something that happened long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away!

Me and control, again

I'm starting warm up to my language saving enterprise. Maybe enthusiasm is contagious after all? I think what I am dealing here with is not necessarily a problem with the fact that languages are not very neat - what can we expect, after something has been around for so long it has too get a little messy eventually... The problem I have to overcome is my love for neatness and control. I have to overcome my drive to put everything in nicely organized folders. I have to accept a bit of blurriness here and a big yawning gap there and the fact that I may not be able to systematize and understand everything at once, or maybe ever. Just like I may be forced to let some things in my life spin out of control from time to time as I have no chance to keep everything going in the direction I set. The best I can do is work slowly and add, add, add little pieces, constantly hoping that they will all fall into place eventually... Why put a restraining order on everything?

"The aim of science is surely to amass and systematize knowledge" (V. Gordon Childe)

Why does it sound like labelling and reducing? Can it be done differently? Both in life and linguistics?!

My miniscule contribution to the field of linguistics

Sometimes I think it is useless. I have not really found what I want to do for the rest of my life. It is all a great coincidence that I study linguistics and I am going to hate this sooner or later. People around me seem to think I am perfect for this just because I do it well but I think I could do just as well in many other fields of study - the real question is what I want to do. I envy people who know, who are 100% percent sure this and only this is their passion and they could not be doing anything else. It is a perfect situation unless.... you cannot do the thing, for some reason.
One of my classes this semester is all about saving endangered languages. It seems that is Daniel's, our professor's, mission in life - to save languages that are on the verge of extinction, or maybe at least manage to record and analyze some of them before their native speakers all die. This is a meritorious enterprise. We are saving languages, we are saving human heritage, we are adding another data set to the great big bank of languages so that other linguists can finally figure out the intricacies of mysterious Universal Grammar. Something that makes us human. Something that we all have, no matter what, where, how,and when....
This is what makes linguistics such a tedious field. I labor at figuring out how person markings work in some never before documented language so that one day somebody who has a talent for seeing the big picture gets a Nobel prize for putting this puzzle together. I will suffer through this for the greatest good, for the sake of humanity, hoping that it will make a difference one day that we know exactly how to answer the famous Plato's problem. But one day I will be doing only what I will find interesting, exciting, and insightful (I hope). I just have to find it. I am thinking ethnosemantics in multilingual societies. Sounds interesting enough. No time for that now, though. Have to decide if my endangered language has cases...