sueeeus

tunnel of lights

I’ve been coming to terms with the commute and yesterday found some moments of joy in the early morning light.  As I drove along the southbound express lanes, there was a point before daylight where the street lights aligned with the reflectors on the freeway lane dividers and the effect was as though I were driving through a tunnel of lights.  It was lovely.  Magical, even.  Amidst that moment of wondrous reflection, I noticed the city lights to my right.  Had I stayed in my former residence, I would never have had the opportunity to behold this jewel of a city in this special time before daylight arrives, and a jewel it is.  We have such a beautiful city skyline, and it sparkles in multicolored splendor.  I felt my face softening with the smile that emerged as I basked in gratitude for the privilege of beholding this beauty.  Blessings abound if we but open our eyes.

city lights

That said, leaving the house a few minutes late can double the commute time, which is nothing short of excruciating.

morning blur

Today I spent the day working in the fancy facility that happens to be much closer to my home than my normal office.  The Taj.  It’s a beautiful building with expansive windows and skylights, a skybridge to its sister tower, numerous escalators and elevators, and casual conference seating areas scattered about the atrium on all levels of the building.  I noticed a dry cleaning drop box and a DVD return box.  I was a bit perplexed until I stumbled upon the employee resources area where one can rent movies, pick up their freshly cleaned clothes, and shop for gifts and various sundries.  There is a bank branch area with a live teller.  A live teller!  Not just an ATM machine.  There is a company store, separate from the other gift shop.  There is a [commercial] coffee shop with baristas and pastries.  Baristas!  The cafeteria is enormous with several themed dining options.  It felt like I was in a city or a shopping plaza.  It was overwhelming.  Far from my comfort zone.  I walked out on the terrace and found a private bench nestled among giant planters filled with foliage where I hid had my lunch and breathed deeply the wonderful crisp November air, trying to fend off the anxiety.  My work facility is a customer facing area, so our digs aren’t too shabby.  Or so I thought, before I experienced The Taj.  They have dry cleaning and DVD rentals.  We have complimentary hand sanitizer.  I think that all those amenities are intended to sum up to the conclusion that The Taj is a great place to work.  But I don’t think it’s a great place for me.

I was considering spending one day a week at this facility, but am having second thoughts.  The facility is huge, and the building where my counterparts work is not The Taj, so maybe it will be palatable after all.  I will explore further before I decide whether I want to branch this direction or not.

tornado

Oh the thinks I think.  I need to think.  I need to write.  I need to settle.  I need to rest.

...two hours into the commute... ...on the freeway... driving at the speed of...

I left the house at 5:39 a.m., and made it to work a little after 8.  Part of me wonders what on earth I have done, moving my family and my self out into the country.  Granted, had I been able to leave the house at 5:20, which is the goal, I might well have made it to work by 6:30.  Traffic is insane like that.  But who knows.  Part of me is concerned about winter and how life out there will be.  I have to remind myself that thousands of other people live out there and still function, so we will also be able to function.  I may have to work from home if the roads are particularly bad.  And thanks be to God that I can do that. 

Everything will be okay.  I know that everything will be okay.  But right now, everything hurts.  Only, I don’t dare take much time to give it much thought.  There is too much to do in this storm right now.  There is work.  There is caring for my children.  There are appointments.  There are meetings.  There is a steady flow of things that require my time, all my time, so I just keep going, keep doing, and walk through this storm.  Things will settle around me and everything will be fine.  The blue sky will burst through the clouds.  There will be sunshine and fresh air.  Everything will be fine.  Everything is fine.

Everything is Fine

We are warm.  We are fed.  We are safe.  We are comfortable.  We are loved.  We are fine.

I miss writing.

I’m back.

I hope.

is patient

is kind

does not envy

does not boast

 is not proud

does not dishonor others

is not self-seeking

is not easily angered

keeps no record of wrongs

does not delight in evil

rejoices with the truth

always protects

always trusts

always hopes

always perseveres

~I COR 13:4-7

He’s moving out. Packing his things.  Hurting.  Angry. He wants me to fight for us if I believe in us.  He wants me to ask him to stay. And I don’t. 

I tell him I’m sorry. 

I let him down.  I wish I had been stronger from the beginning.  He says I used him and that he wishes we’d never met. It’s my fault.  I told him he could believe in me and trust in me.  And I let him down.  Father, I’m sorry.  He doesn’t believe that I love him and that I’ve always loved him.  But he says these things from his hurting place. 

I don’t want him to crumble and I dont want  him to fall.  I want him to rise up and shine, glorious and victorious.  To find himself, to find his peace, to find his joy.  All these things I want for him, and he doesn’t know or understand.  Only that I’ve just pulled the plug on his life.

I don’t have the means to tell him this, other than send it out in a prayer.  Dear Lord, bless him and keep him, make him healthy and safe.  Hold him tightly, tightly, tightly in your embrace and warm him with your love and fulness, through and through.  Heal him, Father, I pray.  Take the pain from his body and from his heart and shine in him and through him so that he can see and know and feel and understand that he is and always has been loved and precious.  Bless him, Lord.

These things I pray.  And forgive me for the sorrow I’ve caused by my own wrecklessness in thinking that I could be more than who I am.  I am sorry.

Nobody truly knows our hearts but you, God.  He doesn’t know my heart and intentions from the beginning were pure and full of hope.  Just as I don’t know his heart and intentions –my perception is so far off, and  maybe his is too.  We’ve not understood each other for so long.  

I’ve tried.  I feel as though I’ve tried.

I’m sorry that I failed.

I feel good today.  I’m on the other side of a 4-day jaunt in the land of SSRIs.  I gave up, and went on them.  I gave up, and went off them. 

I give up.  I give up.  I give up.

Uncle.

I just couldn’t take the side effects, and if I took them for much longer, there would be the trauma of withdrawal to face as well.  As is, I was willing to accept any withdrawal symptoms, because I figured they couldn’t be worse than the symptoms I’ve already been enduring.

I was feeling as though I was losing track of myself.  I need some time to myself once in a while, and I just don’t seem to be able to carve any out.

I’ve decided that I will learn other ways to cope.  I will have to make time for myself.  Somehow.  I don’t need much, but I need something.

This weekend was good for me.  I had several hours to clean and tidy my house.  It feels so good to have tidy surroundings.  It makes me smile.  The simple things.  I also got to spend a little time visiting a friend who has several children, so our children entertained each other while we had some grown up visiting time.  Very nice.

9/19 Back on Celexa.  Starting to wonder if/what my cycle is.  About two years ago I quit zoloft cold turkey.  Seems like about a year ago I quit Celexa.  I can’t remember when I went on the Celexa, but I remember tolerating it very well.  Wish I could remember how/what causes me to draw the line and decide I need something.  But here I am again.

I took it last night.  This morning is Day 1. I feel tightness in my jaw, and I’m very tired.  My quads ache.  My morning blood sugar was 124, the highest it’s been in ages.  I’m fairly certain the jaw tightness is a side effect.  I hardly slept last night for other reasons, so I’m not counting that as a side effect.  The aching legs?  Dunno what’s causing that.  Blood sugar?  It’s usually higher when I have a bad night, but not that high.  I also have low appetite and low grade nausea, which are definitely side effects.  And the libido?  Obliterated.

Browsing through my archives looking for dates for my adventures with anti-depressants and I see I’ve blogged so very little in the last year.  It’s kind of sad.  I used to love to write.

Mostly I have no time.  No time.  No time.  No time.

Maybe I’m thinking that the Celexa will help me normalize again so that I don’t feel so much like my life is out of control and that I  have no time.

Here’s hoping.

—–

9/20 Day 2.  Morning blood sugar 104.  Sleep quality – good enough.  Aching quads and  hips.  Low appetite, low grade nausea and headache, blurry vision.  Noticeable irritability, but feeling less internalized if that makes sense.  I can feel the effects already, the way the med buffers things.  I’m more apt to say how I feel, even if it’s irritable.  I’m not used to being irritable.  More used to being hurt or upset, but not crabby.  Contrary appetite – craving carbs – would love to dive into coffee cake or something  horrible like that, but am not willing to pay the price.  God bless the hyper- inflated cafeteria for saving me from myself.  Scrambled eggs again.  I don’t really want them, but they seem to be the lesser of all evils.

About the buffer.  I’m not as affected by things that are said.  I hear them and have the time in my brain to process the thoughts, “That sounded crappy.  Do I care?  I don’t.”  Dismissed.  I feel better that way.  So I can tell that the meds are making this difference.  Otherwise my thoughts would be, “That sounded crappy.  Why would he say that? Why would he say it that way?  Why would he use that tone of voice?  What does he mean by that?  What does he really mean?  What is he really saying?”  See?  The meds make a difference.

9/21  Morning blood sugar 126. Lordy. Terrible headache, terrible back pain, radiating through the hip joints and the upper quads.  Low appetite.  High thirst.  I’m not used to being thirsty.  Prone to tears.

9/22 Morning blood sugar 105.  Can’t take this any longer.  Not going to take the next dose tonight.  I’d rather be depressed than go through these side effects.  My body is in so much pain.  It’s so strange that this medication has such a drastic physical effect when last time the only symptoms I felt were low grade headache and low appetite and slight dizziness.  This time around, Lordy Lordy.  I have a very high pain threshold, too.  I give  up.  I actually took a vicodin to help, and it did keep things slightly at bay for a few hours.  How crazy is that, though, to take a narcotic to offset the pain caused by an SSRI.  Craziness begets craziness.

All around me, the people I love are struggling.  I see my niece and nephew, teenagers without a dad.  I had a dad, but he wasn’t there for me, and when I was a teenager, I especially needed the love, support, affirmation, and validation of a dad.  My niece and nephew don’t have a dad, because their dad was my brother, and my brother is gone.  Who do they have in their season of need?  Who do they have to help them navigate these teenage years?

I get so caught up in my own world that I don’t even notice this struggle they have, yet, if I take a moment to be there for them, to be with them, I see their need.  My heart weeps for the gaping void that is the absence of my brother, their father, their dad.  They need a dad.

And what of my own children?  Their dad is not present, and is lost in his own reality that I simply cannot comprehend.  My love is there to be a dad for them.  My beautiful man.  We are a heavy load, and stepping into a broken family, trying to pull the pieces together amidst the insanity that is our situation is overwhelming.  Navigating the emotions and perceptions and differences in opinion is so very difficult.  Sometimes it seems like it’s too hard and too painful to try to continue, but if we can step back and take a deep breath for a moment, we might see the rainbow and the sunshine and realize that we are strong enough to prevail, and that love will find a way.

All around me, the people I love are struggling.  I see families in which the parents are exhausted and consumed by the demands of very young children coupled with the demands of making a living and staying afloat, simply trying to make ends meet.  Thresholds are short, emotions flare.  The love is there, somewhere, but it’s nigh on impossible to carve out together time in which to nourish and replenish and edify one another.  Who do they have besides each other in their season of need?  Where can they draw strength to navigate these toddler years?

I get so caught up in my own world that I overlook this struggle they have, yet, if I take a moment to step out of my own chaos, I see their need.  My heart weeps for the growing void in their marriage.  They need rest.

We gather together, each of us holding our own expectations for this family time, each of us hoping we will be nourished and that this time will help draw us out of the dark places where we find ourselves stuck.  And if we don’t get out of our own heads to see the struggles all around us, we are quickly overwhelmed and nearly crushed with despair.  But if we do find a way to look beyond our own suffering, to see that we aren’t alone, we can put our own troubles into perspective, and suddenly they don’t loom so large.

When we do this, and talk with each other, we reminisce about the good times when we’d gather.  We were younger, the collective stress seemed smaller, or at least different.  We laughed and sang and played and ate and painted and played and sang and laughed and ate.  We had so much fun.  Life for all of us is different now, but we try to step away for at least a moment, and stay up late to play board games, allowing the kids to mill around us, trying to recapture at least a glimpse of the way things used to be.

These are my people.  They are a part of me.  I am a part of them.  Uncle walked through the door and I saw my dad – they could have been one and the same.  I couldn’t hold back the tears.  We embraced.  We spoke of life.  Uncle tells me how very proud of us my dad was, and how much he loved us, his children.  He explains an unfortunate nuance of Korean culture in which the fathers have burning love in their hearts for their children, but their sense of aristocratic decencies prohibit them from expressing this love.  He speaks in response to my surprise at learning that my dad was proud of us, and especially proud of me.  I never knew.  It’s a tragic cultural chasm, for parents to be unable to show or assure their children of their love.

my people

My aunt is so beautiful.  Her smile radiates.  Her love for everyone emanates.  Her name is fitting – it means Powerful Love.  Auntie’s cooking is the best Korean cooking in all the land.  All the Korean ladies want to learn her ways.  She prepared a glorious feast for her family, our family.

When the siblings and I were alone, they remarked at how talkative Daddy was – they’d seldom seen him so.  I shared with them the things  he’d told me about a Korean father’s love and pride for his children, and his reticence to express it and I realize that they have grown up much the same as my siblings and I, in the shadow of fierce love.  We have all made strides to ensure that our children, the next generation, are secure in their knowledge of the love we have for them.  This is our gift to our children.

I gaze upon my cousins – I can’t stop looking at them.  I see my own brothers and sisters, I see myself.  The pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place and I see who we are.  I see who I am.  I know where I’m from.

first cousins first meet - part I

first cousins first meet - part II

What a gift these days have been.

It’s a wondrous thing, how music can capture and convey so much heart.  I hear music, and I want to be a part of it.  I want it in me.  I want to be in it.  I want it to come out from me.  I want to be it.  Barry Manilow (laugh if you will) said it.  “I am music…”

Sometimes I feel as though I nearly am.  I feel that way with language and other things too.  Somebody once told me that is called intuition.  But I don’t know.  I just know that it feels as though I’m standing at a doorway.  I know what’s beyond that door; I can see it as clear as day.  And if only I could or would walk through that door, it would all become a part of me, and I’d be in it, and it would be in me.  I would speak forth in foreign languages.  I would play any sound on any instrument.  I would be one with music and language.

Alas.  What keeps me from stepping through that doorway?  I wish I knew.  Is it fear? Fear of failure?  Maybe.  Probably.  I don’t know.  I just continue on in my mediocrity.

There is a song that has been touching my heart lately.  It’s called “Rise“, by Shawn McDonald.

In a way, it captures some of the essence of me, and the things I’ve been going through for the past couple of years.  Me, Phoenix Rising.  I love the melody and the octave changes.

“Rise”
[Chorus]
Yes I will rise
Out of these ashes rise
From this trouble I have found
And this rubble on the ground
I will rise
Cause He Who is in me
Is greater than I will ever be
And I will rise

Sometimes my heart is on the ground
And hope is nowhere to be found
Love is a figment I once knew
And yet I hold on to what I know is true

[Chorus]
Yes I will rise
Out of these ashes rise
From this trouble I have found
And this rubble on the ground
I will rise
Cause He Who is in me
Is greater than I will ever be
And I will rise

Well I keep on coming to this place
That I don’t know quite how to face
So I lay down my life in hopes to die
That somehow I might rise

[Chorus]
Yes I will rise
Out of these ashes rise
From this trouble I have found
And this rubble on the ground
I will rise
Cause He Who is in me
Is greater than I will ever be
And I will rise

I have few answers. There isn’t much that I really know. I’m not necessarily that smart. I’m a little bit book smart, but life-smart? Not so much. I just live every day trying to be my best. One thing I do know. I know who I am. I am kind. I am gentle. I am good. I am patient. I am steady. I am faithful. I am peaceful. I am loving. I am upright. I seek to do no harm. I am [mostly] responsible. I avoid conflict. I am compassionate. I love everyone.

Am I a doormat? Maybe. I don’t know. I’m hyper-sensitive, yes.   It’s a character flaw, and I’m working on it.  I saw a bumper sticker today that said, “Jesus was a pacifist.” I’m a pacifist. For sure.

And all I want, which is all I’ve ever wanted, which is pretty much the same thing that almost anybody ever wants or has ever wanted from the dawn of time, is to love and be loved. Simply put.

I have children. They are my life’s dream come true. They need to come first, so I don’t even know what ‘me time’ is any more. I have to be strong and steady and firm and loving for them. I have to be everything they need. Because I don’t want them to ever feel, for even a moment, that they don’t belong or that they don’t matter or that they’re not important, or that they’re not wanted. I want them to be secure in who they are and how they fit into this big, chaotic world in which we live. It’s so hard, being a parent.

What can I do, besides what I’m doing?  I just go on loving.  I go on breathing.  I go on trying.  I go on being.  I go on praying.  I go on.