Thoughts

It's late and I should be in bed.

But my mind is active and I just can't seem to make myself quiet. The weeks have been so busy that my brain and body do not yet seem to realize that vacation has begun! There is still a lot of adrenaline coursing through me. And I'm excited to get home and see everyone.

On the flip side of expectations for home, I'm also experiencing the dissolution of a friendship. I feel myself pulling and pushing in a soft sort of way. In ways wanting it to end and in other ways wanting to talk about how and why we find ourselves at this place and time. I feel sad and lonely and hurt. It is all so subtle, so slight of hand. I'm confused at how someone I considered such a confidant, companion and even sister, can be so far away from me. I question what was the straw that broke the camel's back? It feels like it all slipped away in the dark when we weren't looking.

(Thinking about it, I'm pretty certain I initiated the parting of the proverbial waters.)

I met this person in my early 20's. We hit it off immediately and for the next couple of years were practically inseparable. Conversation was always easy and we both liked being spontaneous together. They were years filled with fun. But at the same time, if I am honest, they were years that did not always bring out the best in me. She can be an extremely negative and self-centered person. Sometimes fun came at a cost. My cost.
Looking back at journals I kept from that time, I knew even then that our friendship was not of the quality I was seeking.

But here I sit at one o'clock in the morning. Feeling confused. We live in a small town on the same street. Our spouses work together, we teach at the same school and our circle of friends more or less comprises the same people. Part of me wants to run to her and try to work out our veiled indifference. If everything could just remain more or less the same, I wouldn't even bother to try. But it is the sting of rejection and an orchestrating of events (from which our names keep getting left off of the guest lists) that hurts the most.

And I don't quite know how to deal. I keep trying the self talk. In fact I keep giving myself the same speech I give my students when they find themselves with no one to play with. And just like them, I'm not convinced. Mostly I scream inside my head how juvenile it all is and how I want none of it. And for the record, I'm not outwardly misbehaving in anyway. But it sure does make me feel my humanness, my fragility.

Perhaps I want to be the rejector not the rejected. It is safer that way.

When I think about the affirmation ~ let go of all that does not serve you ~ I know that this too needs to be let go of. Both the friendship and the fall out. To let it go quietly and freely without adding to the drama.

The most challenging part is to live consciously and recognize where I need to take responsibility. To let this be a part of my growth, for my own good. To act within my own code of acceptable and pleasing conduct. To be able to let something go, because it is better for me that way.

Namaste.

This is how we grow, by being defeated decisively by constantly greater things. Rilke.

DONE

Today is one of those days where the wheels fell off. All four of them.

After two straight weeks of going straight out, I'm done. Like dinner. Tomorrow is my last official day of school. Students were finished today. And oh my, how they were hyper and overtired!

So I'm going to go to bed and call it a day.

After all, who can complain when you've got a work-free summer ahead!

Blessed

“Home is where you can scratch where it itches” ~ Anonymous

I'm just a few days away from traveling home for the summer. I'm excited. In the last year my sister had a baby girl, who I'll get to meet for the first time. On top of this she is getting married in July. If anyone knows how to throw a party, it's Andrea! So I'm expecting that it will be a festive occasion that works its way into the next day. A few of our mutual friends from BC will be attending, so there will be an element of reunion mixed in.

Lately it seems that I have been too busy with work to even give much attention to going home. Which is probably good, otherwise I'd be so over the top that I wouldn't accomplish my to-do list. But work has been positive busy not the other kind. In fact, I feel as though I have tuned in to a nice little cadence of satisfaction.

I received my assignment for next year. Grade 3 again but this time with 3 special needs Fetal Alcohol Syndrome boys. It will mean I have some learning ahead of me as I currently know little about FAS, but I do know the students already and believe that it will be a good year. Funny, not that long ago I would have been horrified at the thought of having any special needs students! And now, here I am actually looking forward to the experience. I guess one should never say never. Success in certain areas actually makes you feel as though you have the power to change the world.

On a different note, today is the longest day of the year. Bittersweet. Living so far north, it will not get fully dark tonight. The sun casts its light in long bending rays that seem to wrap the earth, moving without interruption from west to east. I wonder sometimes if I came here for no other reason than to watch the sun in summer and the moon in winter. It certainly brings me to a primal place inside of myself.

And I've decided that this primal earthiness suits me. Most of the time anyway! I have more right now than I've ever had and yet my wants are less. My blogging has slowed because I'm just not compelled to give it all words all the time. I know what fills me and I know what doesn't. Once you get the formula, the rest is just a shopping list! I'm content and that is enough. The things I want that are important are in progress. They're already in the works and at this point don't need names.

So for right now, I'm just going to be. And I like it.

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” Frederick Buechner