Summer's Defeat

Summer is now officially half over--according to my kiddos. Only six weeks left to do my best to cram as many fun-filled activities as I can on a budget that daily curses those who believe $8.45 an hour is overpay. The youngest, eight going on twenty-three, has explained to me in no uncertain terms that I am slacking. Apparently, I am not quite cool enough to grasp this eight year old's take on the summers of the 21st century as opposed to my summers of the oh-so-long-ago 20th century.

I won't lie, I was a bit taken back. Me, no longer cool? Unthinkable, unfathomable, quite unheard of. But alas, I have to admit that when I look at the other cooler, hipper, better paid parents I do seem quite drab. I am not in a place to head out each weekend to a new amusement park. I don't have the resources to join the local pool for a $600+ share to allow me a summer of sitting with parents who are with it. And to top it all off, anything that is in my price range seems to fall under the no-way-in-hell-am-I-doing-that-old-people-crap category. As much as I would like to, I just am not a wealthy woman when we are speaking monetarily and quite honestly, it's a bit disheartening. As a parent you wish you could whip your children off on every commercialized fantasy they see on television, but that simply is not my reality. The weight of this reality evoked a defeated sigh.

I became entrenched within a vision of me in a muumuu, red with enormous violet flowers. It, of course, had the two very deep and might I add convenient pockets to cart my glasses, false teeth, kleenex, and ill-gotten Sweet N' Low packets. My hair was thinning and a drab grey because of course I am to old to worry about my hair nor can I afford the box of Clairol to hide the grey. Not that it would matter, I wouldn't be able to read the directions because I will have forgotten where my glasses are. I'd find them an hour later though--I'm hoping.

This elaborate nightmare continued and I was -jeez- I don't even want to write it but I was....fat. Not just little old lady in a green polyester suit fat, no; this was morbidly obese. I am assuming from the many mornings spent at McDonald's getting breakfast and my free senior citizen's coffee on the side. Other seniors speak to me but I continuously forget mid sentence what my point was and just wave a hand as I suck on my gums since I have forgotten to Poligrip those dentures in on this particular morning. Eventually, I regain my train of thought and interrupt everyone in the vicinity to ramble on about the kids these days and how it was when I was knee high to a cricket.

It was about this time my daughter noticed my glazed eyes and open mouth and began poking me repeatedly. I snapped out of my horrific reverie and plastered a smile across my lips for her benefit. I didn't bother to explain what I was thinking despite her nagging. I just grabbed her small hand and wandered over to the dining room table and sat her down while we looked through some local family publications and the web for a Friday night outing that was by her terms--cool. We finally found one that was acceptable and affordable which pleased me to no ends because I was once again the owner of the cool factor.

Unfortunately though, this same scenario will be repeated again, too many times before school starts back up on August 26. And each time I will feel inferior and somewhat of a failure. I am sure my outlandish visions will be replayed, only the next time will have never before seen, extended, director's cut scenes included. I will do my best to once more soothe the savage beast that is a summer child without comparing myself to other parents. However, I am a comparer; so I will most certainly compare myself to her friend's parents in my mind and dread the first week back to school when every child is chock full of exuberance and stories about their summer. And once again my defeated sigh will get lost upon the stomping footfall of a child who has yet to learn the evils of money, parenting, and the world at large,

~DivineChaos

© Copyright 2013, Copyrighted.com

Photo Credit: No Place by Chris-tel

Designs

I realized at some point I would have to admit this fact to others, but most importantly to myself  in my life. I have done this in stages, the admitting, I mean. As a child, I was too young of mind to see the consequences of any of my actions. I think this is the way of most who are really quite young. And  quite honestly much of the destruction in my childhood has been created by those around me in unconscious and intentional ways. I did not realize then I am gifted with a foundation of familial dysfunction and destruction.

As I aged a bit and began to have relationships with the opposite sex I was still blind to the fact that I was indeed in the middle of adding to this foundation of destruction.  I choose unwisely more often than not. I choose to enter relationships that traded one brand of dysfunction for another. So naïve of me to believe that dysfunction has only one face. There I was designing my destruction unwittingly, allowing others to mistreat me. While I am not subscribing to the ideal that their behaviors are my fault, I do believe that by staying in these relationships that I was in fact showing up for the planning of my destruction.

I grew a bit more and though fearful of the unknown I had grown more fearful of the known. I was no longer willing to toss myself of the side of life's cliff. Somehow, I had determined that there has to be more to life than this. I recognized I had a small set of wings. Not upon my back like one of God's winged creatures, but rather, attached to my heart and spirit. I became the young sparrow, pushed out the nest with the hope of flying but not with the self-assuredness that I could fly.

I hit the ground hard. It took me a long time to muster faith in those wings again. I built an exterior that laced defensiveness, anger, and stoicism to prove to myself and the world that hitting the ground had not phased me. This habit was one of the first real self-imposed designs of destruction. Somehow, I believed this persona embodied strength. If I was strong there would be no way to get hurt again. That was insanity atop destruction.That niggling voice in your head telling you to back off from a situation out of fear turns the arrow on the compass. I was directionless.

Time has passed. Some days it has passed quickly, others years have seemed interminably long. I learned that I brought destruction upon myself. I have no control what others say or do. I have no control over whether they like me or not and approve of who I am or what I do. The destruction woven in my childhood by others, then co-signed by me in my young adult years taught others how to treat me. I played a significant role in that by staying around for continued dysfunction and destruction.

I have picked up many bad habits along the path of destruction and have spent a lot of time evaluating which of those habits are really serving me well. The hard outer shell which I once thought kept me shielded from pain has slowly cracked. The uselessness of this juvenile defense mechanism is  acknowledged for what it truly is. It does not keep pain out, it locks it within. I have become a much different person these days. I allow myself to be vulnerable and at times it is painful when someone takes advantage of that knowingly or unknowingly. I have learned that I am alright being quiet and alone with myself. If others choose to take me as I am or leave me to myself is of no consequence because beauty of  who I am now  has grown despite the scars of destruction.

I am now at a point in my life where it has dawned on me in the clearest of ways that I am the only one who can design who I am. If I put up with or stick around for another's insanity than I am choosing to internalize and once more destroy myself. Only I have the ability to change myself. Each entity in my life has taught me good and bad, right and wrong. I have learned what I want out of relationships, family, life, and myself. Occasionally, I get caught up in the minutiae but now I have the ability to stand back and look at the overall design of the project that is my life. When I realize I am backsliding, those wings beat a bit and the sound returns my eyes and spirit to the direction of designing castles in the sky rather than prisons on the earth. The sparrow though small still flies in these instances perching atop the castle ledges.

I am the architect of my destruction yet I am the creator of a slightly askew abstract that when finished will represent the colors of who I truly am and what I have overcome. Those who wish to see the work of art have free passes, those who don't can pick up my discarded plans and build their own destruction.

~DivineChaos

© Copyright 2013, Copyrighted.com

Photo Credit: Google