Fake Flowers and other 5th grade tragedies

I continue to struggle with what is real and what is not real in my world.

There are only 6 days left of school, and my son is feeling every single one.  In his world, he stopped learning things of any value a month ago.  To his defense, he is one of the smartest, fastest learning kids around.  Things in his head just click, and common core standards have left him bored with the lessons that are taught 12 different ways so that everyone gets it, when he got it the first time, finished all the lessons and enhancement materials on the first day, and has to sit, often for another week, with nothing to do.  This in not a whine about the failing health of the school system in California, or even a justification to let him be a slacker (I don’t let him, read on), but more of a baseline for how to balance what is real and what is not. 

My son is 11.  He has started puberty.  Yes, every bit of it.  Hair, height, food, sleep patterns, disgusting smells, and the over use of hair gel. What has also come with it, for an overly intuitive, smart ass, super witty, hysterically funny kid, is a complete sense of loss of reality.  His body doesn’t quite fit, his voice doesn’t quite sound right, his desires don’t quite match his abilities, his logic is totally flawed even when the argument is flawless, and he is angry. Angry, like all of the time.  There is zero justice in the world, good things happen to bad people, while good people get hurt, and he gets no say.  He has decided that the real world is not to his liking, and since there are no actual requirements to participate, why bother.  He has already passed 5^th grade even if he does not go to school for the rest of the year, so why bother.  It, for him is one more way that the world is showing him that it hates him.

But that’s not real.  The world does not hate him.  The world, more than likely does not give a damn about him.  But I do. 

He may have figured that out.  I mean, I am the person he is taking all this anger out on, and I am the one that hasn’t left. Anger is real. He gets to have that and I get that it is testosterone infused emotion, fueled by introspection, and a little bit of laziness. He hates transitions.  And in a world full of them, especially in his recent past, he is struggling. He is questioning his place in the universe, his value as measured by someone else, and how to break out of that while still wanting to be taken care of.  How much of the real world, (that couldn’t care less about his 5^th grade science project), does he still have to put up with before he can be done. And does he, in the true sense of the world, need to rely on anyone else for his own sense of freedom.  If everything in his world is subject to change, how does he know what is real?  If everything can change, his body, his heart, his mind, that what can he rely on.

On the sill of a bay window, in a kitchen I have been spending a lot of time in recently, there is a new bouquet of artificial flowers.  They are sorta pretty, until your realize the red is too-red, and the green is too-green, and the narcissus are too-white to be actual paper-whites.  I won’t even talk about the Styrofoam and glass marbles in the clear vase hat make up the base, because there is no water.  No movement. 

I know how the flowers got there, and heard the story of why they are preferred.  It seems fake flowers are preferred because they do not change.  There is no fading of color.  There is no stagnation of water.  There is no dropping of dried petals or crinkled leaves.  There is never any imperfection.

I thought about this for quite a while, about why this might be a desire at all.  I got it, the need for stability, to have something in the world on which you rely, which you can predict to be the same.  Lasting.  Forever.

Except nothing is forever.  Everything changes. Lasting, without change, is not true. The only thing real is that which you create.  Real requires work.  Fake, well, fake is an illusion.  A mask.  A charlatan’s crystal ball.  No one gets to know what happens.

So as I try to explain to my son that everything changes, nothing (including the school year) is forever, how do I also help him know that I am real?

This week some of that belief about what is real, and what is not, hit me.  With some words I did not create, I was labeled as invisible. Non-existent and dismissed inside of a world I was creating.  This hurt me more than I realized when I thought it through, but not for the reasons you might think.  Yes, I still have all my deep seeded fears about no one ever getting to know me, and about no one seeing me, and well, about being disposable and worthless as judged by my mere existence.  I know the words were just words of self-protection and zero ability in the moment to make the hurt stop, truly.  What hurt was my own self-doubt that I could change.  What if I was the fake flowers, pretty for a time, but with no substance?  What if I really was surface and shallow and not able to adapt and learn?  What if my being real, flaws and all, wasn’t enough?

So I picked real anyway.  I am real.  I adapt and I change.  I will not stay the same, without growth and I decided to try this in practice.  What if all this frustration my son is feeling is much the same as my feeling of not wanting to be fake (I mean, really, how many more times do you have to do math papers you aced three months ago just to get to the end of the semester). 

I want my world messy. Calm, easy, moving forward, but messy.  I want leaves on the counter from real bouquets. I want conversations that are hard but real, and filled with love.  I want to change the way I do things even as I make mistakes.  I want my son to get that, too, that I will change with him as his needs changes, and we will be okay as we figure it out.  That transitions are real, and that I will help him through it as I transition myself.  I want him to see that modeled in my life with other people who are real so that he can see that change is okay, and maybe grasp some (of my hard learned) lessons that life and love are fluid, always adapting.  I hope he sees other models in his life doing the same.

It is exciting.  Scary.  Terrifying, actually.  To get to move out of fake and in to real.  I also hope I get brought flowers (apricot-colored tea roses and dutch irises are my favorite, just in case you need to know that), and I will happily clean up the fallen leaves to open up space for more real in my world.  Join me.

Just a beginning list.

Gratitude. A not complete list. Just a list for today. A small micro-shift in my outlook.

1) Coffee.  Not having an allergy to coffee. The social aspect of coffee.  Having coffee made for me.  Having the coffee made for me brought to me.  Having my own travel mug for the coffee made for me.

2) A job. Accrued time to take off from the job.  The paycheck that the job provides.  The money from that paycheck that lets me pay for my life. A boss who gets that I have a life.

3) My ex-husband’s claim of sobriety.  My ability to see how his lack of sobriety affects me.  My ownership of how toxic our relationship was. My ability to see my role in our toxic behavior.  My belief that genuine sobriety exists and that he can have it.  My self-trust that I can see myself clearly with or without his sobriety.

4) My children. Everything about their amazingness in this world.  The knowledge that we can fight and still be amazing.  Faith that they know I am doing my best.  My best being good enough. Their best being good enough.

5) Chocolate.

6) This quote: “The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion.  The tunnel is.”

7) Email.  Spell check. Keyboards with backspace keys. Not immediately hitting the send button.

8) Willingness. Openness. Honesty. Mistakes. Forgiveness. Ownership. Freedom to take another path.

9) People. People in my world who keep showing up even when their path is hard, too.  People who love me. People who see me.  People who talk.  People, who, when they talk, talk with me and not to me.  People who are flawed.  People who are human.  People I have the grace and good fortune to be allowed to love.  People who let me in.  People who hold my hand.  People who kiss my tears. People I trust.  People who trust me. People, who, when they read this, if they read this, know who they are.

10) Journeys. Growth. Change. Progress. Backsliding. Learning. Sharing. Giving and receiving support.  Letting go and holding on. Knowing when each is important. Knowing how.  Failing at knowing how. Starting again.  Trusting that I am on the path I am supposed to be on.  Hope, that when I am not on the right journey, something with guide my path.  Never giving up. Acknowledgement that if I can change, I can hope for it and see it in someone else.  Holding hands while on the journey so as not to get in each others way.

11) Emotions. Every single one.  No hiding. No Fear. I get them all.  That any single emotion is not all-consuming.  That the strongest emotion is love.  That love really does work.  That I can love without apology and without regret.  That I can be all in and not lose any part of myself to it when I remember to do it from a place of love.  That the people in #9 get them, too. Humility to understand that I cannot control someone elses emotions, nor have any right to.  The wisdom not to try.

12) Happiness.  Not as an emotion, but as a state of being. Knowing I can claim it and not take anything away from anyone else. Grace to not flaunt it. Happiness where happiness is.

13) The amazing power of truth.

No kleenex in this pocket.

I hate funerals.  I actually don’t hate just the funeral part, I hate everything about them.  I hate the flowers.  I hate the required attire.  I hate the music. I hate the tissues, and the dim lights, and the satin pillows. And the cold. The lack of life.

My dad died 13 days ago.  His funeral was 5 days ago.  I haven’t cried yet. My blog today is all about wanting something else. Choosing. Balance.

In the pocket of my jeans, or sometimes in the side pocket of the purse I am carrying on any given day, I carry two different items.

The first is one of about 10 different “tokens” I have had for years.  I own a pocket angel, a rock, a couple metal stones with sayings on them, and a rather smooth amethyst worry stone.  These rotate through my pocket depending on my mood, and right now, the one I have been carrying most is a token that says “balance”.

The second is a coin.  It doesn’t technically belong to me.  The man who actually owns the coin is currently carrying the coin I usually carry.  It was potentially a selfish trade right at the time I requested the swap.  A little bit of commitment and possession, wrapped up in a tiny piece of plastic, in the middle of not having any idea if I have any claim to the feelings at all. I am grateful.

I have been holding on very tight to these two items (actually to the point of having a crease on my left hand) for the last four days.  I wake up with them in my hands in the morning.  They are currently right on my laptop as I type.

I was gifted with a total moment of perfect clarity on Sunday morning, with the tokens cutting into my hand all night.  I had slept nine hours straight after having not slept more than 2 or 3 hours a night in the last week, and everything else has been pretty much a blurry nightmare.

The clarity came in the form of understanding that the coins I have been carrying are attached to feelings and actions I have zero control over right now, and even less insight into where they are going. The clarity came from understanding my own fears and insecurities being really unmanageable.  The clarity came from knowing I had just walked myself into something with my eyes wide open, and lost myself anyway.  I knew I had been put in a box of accommodation to lots and lots of other people, and it had left the authentic me raw, vulnerable, and frankly a kind of fucked up emotional mess with absolutely zero soft place to fall.

This has me scared in a really awful way. I am currently risking losing all my emotions at all.  That sounds dramatic, I know.  Like I should I be concentrating on the really good stuff.  I am pretty good at making other people know they are loved, and wanted, and real in my world.  I have been a friend, a lover, a confidant.  I have been understanding and willing in the face of unnecessary dishonesty.  I have been a dutiful daughter, a balanced sister, a frustrated but present mother.  All those roles, all that responsibility, and all that strength made it so I have shut off. I don’t want to shut off.  What I want is balance. Equity. Ownership.

The kind of grip I have had on the pocket tokens is essentially the same reason I  hate funerals.  I get no say, none at all, in some of the things around me.  I get to comply. Because even though I may looking at the same thing, there is a view that is uniquely my own and no one can see it but me. 

I want flowers now, not in some wreath with fancy ribbons left on a grave to blow over in the wind.  I want to see people I never see NOW, before the only time we hold each other close is in pain instead of in joy.  I want adventures, and love, and commitment, and friendship, and support, and happiness, and I want to know that the people around me want it, too.  We all get to have it.  The good stuff doesn’t run out.  Until it does.  And then the funeral is all that is left.  Funerals sometime feel like a way to kick us in the head and remind us that we don’t have time to waste, life is short.  What are we waiting for? Can I hope to find some balance, so that at the end of everything, the people I have invited in won’t sit at my funeral, in dim light, with boxes of tissues, grieving never having enjoyed my life.  Balance. Tradeoffs.  Living outside of boxes, and in perfect clarity. Willingness to live. No regrets.

Maybe I won’t have to cry, not really.  Maybe when I do I will find someplace soft to be because I will have built it, created it, celebrating the amazing life I am lucky to hold, and the places of love that expand as I hold on to little tiny tokens. I get to choose. Funerals aren’t like that, but love is.

Do you have a token to share? I would like that.  Invite it even.  I am all in.