my mom is mad at me

I talked to my mom yesterday. She was at home and there was a party for my stepdad's son's kid - her stepgrandchild if you will. I'm not quite sure what happened but I think she feels a bit alienated from his family. She told him she didn't want to participate in the party because his family isn't her family - she'd set it up and clean up - but to her, because this isn't her family, why bother? Of course this hurt her husband quite a bit. He said, "How would you like it if I did this to Heather?" She answered, "Heather isn't having kids."

I told her that wasn't his point.

It was her point, though. She's clearly angry that she'll never prepare for my child's birthday party, christmas, etc. I think she's taking it out on her husband. I know that the dynamic in the house is more complicated than this and I know she feels made-fun-of and outnumbered. I told her, however, that I couldn't take her side on this one. She hung up on me.

This was all, of course, exacerbated by drinking. When I called Chris after the fight, his first question was, "Is she on the sauce?" The sauce causes much bad behavior at the Cadden residence. It has also caused much bad behavior at many Hax functions as well. As a result, I don't find drunken debauchery interesting or fun in the least. In my 20s, the weird shame/guilt thing I felt after a night of drinking was tolerable. In my 30s, not so much. I am also weirdly turned off by drunk people. I know it's a side effect of being surrounded by drunk family members, boyfriends, and friends who aren't accountable for their behavior while wasted. I am "forgiving" but I don't find it quaint.

People read this as such: Heather is a boring, judgmental stick in the mud. She goes to bed at 10 pm and only "has fun" on occasion. But what people find fun, to me, is kind of stupid. This *does* sound so fucking judgmental, I know. Yet, how is it that subtly making fun of me for going to bed early and preferring to do yoga to blow off steam rather than get wasted not a form of judgment? In fact, it really pisses me off. And if you know my family, if you know my friends, if you know my city, you know what booze does. You know what addiction does. You know what it has done.

I can't really discern why it is that I escaped. My sister has been a heroin addict for 15 years. My father is almost certainly drunk - really drunk - by 7 pm. My mother can sometimes turn it off but struggles with consumption-as-escape.

A long time ago, in the "myspace" days of blogging, I wrote something about possibility. I was reading all of these books about beauty and hope and I was feeling so inspired but also feeling a tremendous gap. Where is this life? Where are these people? What is this community I so long for? One of my exes commented, "Stop reading about it and live it!" He was right in noting that I had all but sunk into myself (see earlier blog about anorexia and going batty). At the same time, this was a reaction to the form of liberation available in Baltimore at the time - watching other people create stuff and later watching them get wasted. This isn't true anymore and there are communities of people doing really interesting things that don't involve the drunkenness I am describing. This is why I long to go home so badly.

Nevertheless, for many, drinking still the predominant recipe for blowing off steam. Just like having one's own kids is still the predominant recipe for living a full life. And because I don't fully embrace either as my path, I tend to feel pretty alienated. Less so than before, but it's still there. It bubbles up in the moments of anger from my mother and when I don't go out for beers after a long day. There's a shunning that happens and it's kind of lonely.

so much sad

There are many people I love who are struggling so intensely right now (five come to mind off the top of my head). My heart is breaking for all the abstract sadness and for all real life hurt that seems to be reverberating. I feel like this fist-shaped muscle will explode out of my chest right now with all the love and all the sadness I have. I can feel them right now, suffering, and I want to take it away as though I can absorb the pain for them. Maybe I am already.

do you remember a time when you were happy?

I have always been a moody gal. Anyone who's known me for any period of time knows that I have a fiery temper, though it's gotten much better over the years. I've learned to control it. You all can thank yoga for that too.* I am not a cryer. I generally only cry during SPCA commercials and when I am extremely frustrated. I don't cry at funerals. I cry in my dreams. I yell at people unreasonably in my dreams as well. The rage and sorrow are in me. I sometimes think they're going to develop into a stomach tumor or something. I believe the poisoned nature of the world, not just chemically but psychically, results in ugly growths in the body - lumps and knots and tumors.

Chris and I were talking last night about happiness. I asked him if he remembered a time when he was happy. Being Chris, he said, "What does happiness mean? I can only be happy to the extent that the world allows. I'll never live in the world I want to live in so I can't claim that I'll ever be happy in it. Have you ever been happy?"

Have I ever been happy? I guess this term "to be happy" is a loaded one. To be happy with one's life suggests that there is a state of equilibrium, that at some point nothing needs to change. Buddhist philosophy would say, "Hey you! Yeah you, the one with all the attachments. You are setting yourself up for a heap of trouble!" Like being newly in love. It's really easy to become attached to all that bliss. It fades. And being a partner, a real partner, is another sort of happiness. To me, being "happy" is the occasional thing. Strangely, I am usually happiness when I am full of hope. Hope is the closest I get.

I think Chris is right. I have opened my eyes to the world around me and while I have to close them in order to go on, or breathe deeply in order to get it out of my body, I can never forget. No matter how comfortable I get, I know that I am living on a house of cards. I find that frightening and sad. I know people who feel really blessed and really content in their worlds as they are in it now. I am not suggesting that they are naïve or they're eyes are "closed" or anything. But it does seem as if they can shake it off. I envy them.

At a panel on punk rock, my friend Katy said that she realizes that she feels things real hard. She likened living in this world as being inflicted with tiny little paper cuts all over her body all the time. One can keep moving, but it hurts. One gets used to the pain, but it's always there. I guess I am "happy" when I can forget for a moment, listen to a great song, laugh, breathe into the pain, and hope. I just wish I could cry.

*I am by no means suggesting that yoga is a panacea but it sure did help me a lot. I believe with every bone in my body that it's the reason I don't drink as much as I could, yell as much as I used to, and generally abuse my body in other ways.

apples and oranges in the air

There was a time when I could burn the candle at both ends so easily. I remember in early/mid-20s when I was working almost full time, in school full time (then teaching full time though I was a "part-timer"), doing yoga full time, engaging in activist work, and going out with my friends. I just kept going and going somehow, juggling all of these responsibilities and inhabiting vastly different worlds simultaneously. One semester, I taught seven (!) classes, was in a new and demanding relationship, was working with SWAT to organize a living wage campaign, and working at a restaurant. This was around the time that the Iraq war started so I meagerly organized a walkout at Anne Arundel Community College for the five students who weren't in the military and gave a shit (these were different times in the US with a different brand of jingoism). Understandably, I burned out fast and hard.

I was also starving myself in order to gain some semblance of control over my life and freaking out about EVERYthing existentially. When I was in the thick of it, I didn't have my period for three years I was eating so little. The most disturbing thing is that I was proud of myself for having that much self control. I recall staring out my bedroom window and sobbing about how clock time was fucking up my life; a pressing weight that meant I couldn't ever do enough and could never relax because the next day would always come. And who were we to measure time in that way anyhow? How oppressive. (EP Thompson eventually confirmed my suspicions but way after the fact)

When it became clear that I would perish in Baltimore, fade away, I moved to San Francisco and went a little more crazy, but then got a lot more sane. Going out of my mind was a function of cumulative events to be sure - the death of my grandparents (anyone who knew me then knows why), the disintegration of my relationship, ending my MA, working and going to/teaching school since I was 15, a profound disillusionment with the political culture coupled with newly radical understandings of the world around me. All of these factors resulted in a loneliness so absolute it consumed me. This was coupled with an ethic that if I just stayed busy enough, I could outrun the pain. In SF, I let the pain catch me. And as a result, the pain and I could confront one another.

Yoga and cycling played a central role in saving me. I had to eat enough to at least exert myself that much. These activities got me out of my head and for those moments, I could be. In so many parts of my life I felt so alien. In the post-9/11, pro-George W. Bush frenzy that engulfed the collective consciousness at the time, everything I saw around me felt like a breach to my values and physical activity was the thing that I could rely on to escape all the vitriol that flowed through my body and poisoned my mind. I was also surrounded by lovely people in SF. One person sticks out in my mind most acutely and though she and I speak only sporadically, her presence in my heart fills me with warmth whenever I think of her. I loved my life in San Francisco. Yoga in the morning, tea in the afternoon, reading and writing, serving ice cream and burgers at night. But I wanted to teach and eventually found myself back in Baltimore to pursue my passion.

Something changed in me when I got back. I completely eschewed the busy ethic. I thought it destructive and a path to burnout. I didn't want that. So the pendulum swung to the other end. I became protective of my time and I held onto it stingily. I became rigid. As a result, I disengaged under the pretense that I needed time as though I could place it in a savings account and draw upon it later. That didn't work either. All that I accomplished was a flakiness and a kind of hedonism where I did what I could when I thought my energies would allow it.

I am now trying to strike a balance between busy and manageable, but I don't know where that balance is. I was careful when I first started school to not take on too many responsibilities. I was feeling so overwhelmed by starting again and I wasn't sure what kinds of time commitments were necessary to make it through. Feeling out those commitments wasn't easy the first year because of the strike. This year, I have a better sense of how to organize my time and I am now trying to be a little more giving with it. So I gave myself over. Now, and it only took three weeks, I am completely overwhelmed. The demands of organizing are fairly steep and there don't seem to be intermediary roles. You either are or you aren't doing it.

Upon a cursory reading of "activist burnout," I read a bit of what I already knew. The expectations of activist involvement are often all-consuming. There's the sense that "people are dying" and a partial participation is a sign of your privilege to opt out. In a workshop at Left Forum called "Organizing in a Culture of Isolation," one of the panelists noted the way in which activists often discuss how busy they are as a measure of commitment and how this is a reflection of the the busy ethic in the US. I do it, for sure. I don't think it's a conscious thing but it does happen. One of the common questions that people ask around this is how activist culture rewards "devotion that leads to personal sacrifice." The Protestant Work Ethic still suffuses our hearts and minds. Here I am, in it. With eight meetings pending, a paper to write, and perhaps more coursework this coming week, I immediately feel swamped knowing that I will not be able to meet all of the tasks with all of the attention they deserve. This level of commitment takes me back to the time when I had the energy to engage thoroughly. Better stated, what kind of time in my life I am reminded of when I did engage in such a consuming fashion. Can I make this sustainable?