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...