Thoughts and Memories

Memory may be imperfect,

but mine lasts a long time.

Some things I remember,

some are lost along the line.

Still, never in my wildest dreams

did I imagine something like this.

Never would I have considered

Taking another swing after a miss.

“If at first you don’t succeed,

try, try again,” said our old friend,

a quote I failed to take to heart

from our Founding Father, Ben.

Now, though, I look around,

bemused and wondering what I see.

Uncertainty and anxiety, my friends,

and the results of severe PTSD.

My memory is long, and I

remember vividly how we

fit together and you inspired

romanticism in poetry from me.

Still, memory is broken in places

and I find myself wondering

just who it is you’ve become, now,

and I can’t stop pondering.

Unsolicited Human Resources Visit

I was taken to Human Resources, today.

Today started out quite badly but has ended rather well, much to my fortune. Unfortunately, I woke up extremely exhausted and had such difficulty staying awake that I could easily have crashed the car had I not managed to stay just vigilant enough… but I couldn’t stay awake in class to save my life. I practically slept through the PowerPoint presentations and I’m not sure how I managed to pass the tests. Kat told me it’s because I have more brains than the average bear, and I’ll take that. I’ve always taken pride in my intelligence, particularly when others recognize it and commend me for it.

            While I’m not sure why I was so exhausted this morning, I’m equally unsure of why suddenly, around 09:00, pain shot through my chest near my left shoulder when I shifted and raised my arm slightly. The pain persisted, so I went to Kat’s office and asked if I could enter for a minute; she accepted and I closed the door behind me to sit before her and explain what was happening.

            I explained the pain and that I didn’t know why it was happening. She got up from her chair and instructed me to sit in it and lean back after she told me to take off my duty vest and belt. I followed her instructions and leaned back as told to do, then broke into some tears.

            “I can’t seem to stay awake—it’s making me really emotional, I’m sorry,” I said, my voice cracking as tears broke free from my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. She looked at me kindly and said: “It’s okay. I know it’s from frustration. You’re frustrated with yourself because you can’t stay awake.” She explained that she understood because she got the same thing; she tends to cry when she gets overly frustrated with herself. It felt so good to have someone stand before me and tell me that they get it.

            Kat told me to rest my head on her desk and get some sleep. She said she was going to go “do uniforms,” which meant going into the back room and picking out uniform items for us to take home today to wear tomorrow and for the rest of our time working on the Sound Transit account. I couldn’t believe my ears—I was being instructed to get some sleep—while at work! I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I moved the chair to the place she’d indicated on her desk and laid my head down, when she added, “and if you feel like crying, go ahead and do that, too.” I can’t remember feeling so blessed.

            I know that I fell asleep because I woke to a knock on the door. I’m not sure why, but I thought it was Kat, perhaps announcing her presence before entering since she knew I was sleeping as she’d told me to. Instead, it was Ryan, one of the instructors.

            “Are you okay?” he asked me. He’d asked me this quite a bit over the past couple of weeks and it made me slightly concerned because I felt—still feel, really—like more attention is on me because I’ve had a couple of difficulties that I view as minor but I understand how those above me view them as major. For example, when I had difficulty breathing, it would be a major problem if it persisted and I was unable to wear my duty vest because it prevented me from getting enough oxygen while breathing. I said I was okay and that Kat had told me to wait in her office for a little bit.

            “Are you okay to talk?” he asked. I thought he would want to talk to me again, as he’d done twice before. I was wrong.

            Instead, he led me to the head of Human Resources, Heather, and dropped me off in her office. I sat before her while she explained that falling asleep on the job is a terminable offense in my line of work, which was something I already understood because it had been covered in our first day of orientation. She repeated this probably three or four times before our conversation was through, but she did allow me to explain my situation to her and exactly what has been going on with me, which at first made me feel like she was truly listening… but by the end of the visit, I was left relatively unsure, in part because she got the last word.

            She led me back to Kat’s office and I re-entered after Heather left, sitting in front of Kat again.

            “What happened?” she asked. She asked if I’d gotten any sleep. I felt jittery, then, the way I feel when I’m woken suddenly from a sleep that may or may not have been very deep. It was a kind of jittery that comes from anxiety, I later discovered, but at the time I explained it to Kat as “the jittery I feel when I’m woken up suddenly, so I know I slept,” at least a little.

            “Ryan came and knocked on the door and then took me to her—her name was Heather?” Kat nodded and said yes. “He took me to Heather’s office and she explained to me that falling asleep is a terminable offense, which I already knew…” I explained what had happened and Kat looked at me. I’m not sure if her expression was sad, irritated, or a little bit of both, but she then explained to me that she had not wanted to involve HR.

            She had wanted to take care of me and help me feel better without involving HR because she understood that with me, like with her, all I really needed was a little rest and I would be good to go. And I was, for the most part. I still took a nap after I got home, but I did feel more awake after the short nap I’d taken in her office. She told me that she’d told Matt, the other male instructor who actively taught classes during the first three weeks of training, but that she hadn’t told Ryan, and she’d wanted me to simply rest for a bit in her office without needing to involve HR.

            Suddenly, it felt as if Human Resources was the enemy. Like involving them was my first step out the door of the company for which I’ve just barely started working. Thinking back on it, I’m still not quite filled with dread, but I am wary. I’m aware that things I cannot control could cause me to need to find different employment, and the idea is terrifying to me because I feel like I’m in a job that’s actually a good fit for me. I don’t want to be proven wrong by forces outside my own control.

            I left early today to make at least one appointment with the VA. I ended up leaving a message because the nurse didn’t answer her phone—perhaps she was on lunch—and she has yet to return my call. In the meantime, I’ve purchased melatonin to help me sleep at night and niacin to wake me up in the morning, as the sleep issue has been relatively persistent since starting my 07:00-15:00 training shift. Perhaps that persistence is why Ryan took me to HR.

            Regardless of the reasoning for what happened this morning, today did end on a positive note. I had a good nap after I got home and left my voicemail with the nurse who works for my doctor at the VA, we took Persephone to play at the mall, and we had a decent dinner. Here’s to hoping melatonin and niacin are enough to fix my sleeping problems.

A Chance to Start Over

I’ve completed my first week of training at Securitas and I’m bruised and sore. It’s the most amazing feeling in the world. I can’t believe how much I missed being bruised and sore from training—and by training, I don’t just mean my job training; in this case, I mean physical training, specifically hand-to-hand self-defense. Also, learning how to properly use handcuffs was a plus. I have bruises on the back base of each hand, on my left thigh, and on at least one hand; all of them are practically invisible but I expect they could turn color by morning.

            In moments like these, I find myself thinking pain is weakness leaving the body. I find myself wondering, why don’t I have this attitude towards running? I think the answer is, before today, I hadn’t a solid enough reason to run. Feeling sore and feeling bruises form on my body—particularly my hands, which I use so often—has me feeling like I’ve actually felt serenity again. This brings me to my next idea.

            Humanity needs violence. Violence may not always be against other animals, including humans; violence is simply destruction and that also happens in art. Art, however, is not enough for me. I prefer a certain amount of structure, which I have learned from the Art Institute, but which writing has always held for me; I can use what I learned and what I know to illustrate the things I write. My plan is to begin the day I buy a new Surface Pro because my friend dropped the one I have and it broke, last year. I’m upset about the fact that it’s been broken, but I’m not angry with my friend; she held it by the tiny plastic thing and something happened with her body—maybe it was her bad hand she held it with—and it dropped. I didn’t have the case for it then that I do now and I hope a Surface Pro 4 will have the same measurements so I don’t have to buy new shit. I digress; while I love art and I am an artist, I also need discipline in my life and the only thing—literally, the only thing—that has given me the amount I need is martial arts.

            I have missed it since the day I left in 2007. I have certificates in my file celebrating every belt transition I made, all the way up to First Degree Red Belt. Then, before I could test for Second Degree Red Belt (1^st Degree Red is a red belt with a black stripe through the center, run horizontally; 2^nd Degree Red is a red belt without the stripe), Sifu came to me to have a conversation—which I found actually meant, to talk down to me and make me feel like shit.

            He told me that I wasn’t “giving it 100%.” I couldn’t fucking believe him, but I felt guilty. I felt like I was disappointing him, and he had been “Big Sweaty Guy” in the Bill Nye the Science Guy episode on Heat! I told him I was doing the best that I could, He, a 7^th Degree Black Belt (far and above black belt by an additional 6 level-ups or however it works after Black Belt) at the time, told me that if I (a 1^st Degree Red Belt, remember) had to keep up with him when he led class, otherwise he would bump me back down to White Belt. The very bottom of the belt hierarchy; he would start me over again from scratch, after all the years I had already put into the program and all the money my grandparents had spent.

            To give you a sense of what this meant to me, I’ll tell you the belt hierarchy, beginning with White Belt. After White Belt comes Yellow Belt; then, Orange Belt; Green Belt; Purple Belt; 1^st Degree Blue Belt; 2^nd Degree Blue Belt; 1^st Degree Red Belt; 2^nd Degree Red Belt; 1^st Degree Brown Belt; 2^nd Degree Brown Belt; and finally, Black Belt. I wanted so badly to make it to Black Belt and I was willing to do anything I could to attain it without going backwards.

            I freaked out and internalized everything he said. I vowed to keep up with him, caution be damned, and I got hurt. Sifu led us in lunges wherein we pretended to lift someone up; thus, while deep into the lunge, we had to lean back with our arms out like they were around another person. Looking back, I’m pretty sure this happened because my knee overextended my feet. Sifu had not properly taught us to lunge without overextending our knees. My left kneecap popped out of place—and right back in as I hit the ground like a screaming sack of potatoes.

            Everyone told me to walk it off—carefully. Everyone. It felt like it healed well enough, until I thought it had healed well enough to wear short but skinny heels to my sophomore year Open House at my high school. I had barely made it upstairs and started to stride down the hallway when my knee gave out and I fell again. It didn’t hurt as badly as the initial incident, but I limped heavily for the rest of the day and my grandmother finally agreed to take me to the doctor.

            They found that I’d broken some cartilage off inside of my knee and they opted for arthroscopic surgery, wherein they would remove the cartilage and create scar tissue in its place so that it would heal better. It was agreed upon and that’s what happened; I was on crutches for six weeks and I never went back to martial arts.

            I don’t know why I didn’t go ahead and drive to Prague regularly to take martial arts in Germany. I guess the place lacked the structure I sought—the structure that had been given at Lenderman’s Academy of Martial Arts. I felt that it was not worth a 2-hour drive to have no direction before grappling with another person. If I had learned nothing, how was I to defend myself? I saw myself then as I see myself now: starting over. The difference is, I believe I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I truly am starting over; with my fitness level, I may as well know nothing. My soreness and bruises remind me of that.

            My self-assurance that I’ve come to terms with having to start over: I want to get started, rather than get back to it. Breaking my ankle the day before having Persephone—in addition to actually giving birth to my daughter—was like pressing the reset button.

            But that’s no reason to give up. It’s just what I’ve been asking the universe for: A chance to start over.

A Letter to A New Friend

I care about you deeply. You are important to me because you are a good person, underneath it all. Underneath the needless apologies and automatic defenses; behind the walls you’ve erected to protect yourself from the people around you, you have a heart of gold and all you really want to do is help people. I resonate with that.

            All I’ve ever wanted to do—short of being an artist—is help people. Part of the reason for me to get a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology is because I want to help people; what better degree to pursue for such an endeavor? Naturally, I want to help you. The thing is, I’m not even sure you realize you’re damaged; or, perhaps you do, but you don’t know how to accept constructive criticism from another person because all you’ve experienced have been negative people who have nothing nice to say.

            You’re not trying to be mean. I can accept that and appreciate it. What I think you don’t realize is how you sound to those around you even when you think you’re being “just fine”. Your voice is so sharp—as sharp as the nose on your face, as sharp as your very chin, so is your voice—and when something comes unbidden from your mouth in an environment you don’t prefer while you’re surrounded by generally undesirable people, your voice is sharp.

            Tone of voice means a lot in communication, my dear friend. The very sound of your voice when you say something—your inflections, as in, the way your voice rises and falls during speech—including the speed with which you talk and the words that come out of your mouth are all parts of the communication process. I don’t think very many people think of communication as a process; I think people think it consists only of what is said, rather than how.

            It is clear to me that you pay attention to what you say, friend. Many people do, when communicating. What I’m not sure you know is the meaning of your words. I’m not sure you know the true message you send with your body language, the words you actually say, and the tone of your voice.

            It’s different with me. When you’re with me, your tone is softer. But even when you’re with me, you’re so defensive of yourself, like you think your defenses must be up at all times and like you believe that the best defense is a good offense. God forbid you should ever offend anyone, though, so you preface many of the things you say—things that are hardly ever offensive by any nature—with “No offense.” None offense is taken and I feel like there is a larger underlying issue with you that perhaps you don’t recognize, where you feel the need to disclaim yourself before saying anything.

            Anything I say is met with, “No, I know, but—” something. Do you realize that you always say “No,” first? The first word out of your mouth when we are speaking is “No,” when I have something to say that isn’t a general nod, “mm-hmm,” or silence in listening. I might tell you that, while I understand your point of view, I think differently about the situation. The first word out of your mouth is, “No,” but I don’t think you even hear yourself say it. You hear yourself say the following “I know,” before you continue with your point and your endeavor to make me understand what you’re saying—which I do, dear friend. I do.

            I want to help you, friend. I want to help all of my friends, but I think the struggle for you is internal. Perhaps it is something only you can work on yourself and I am so glad that your goal for the year—if not beyond—is to help yourself. My hope for you, dear friend, is that you are also sincerely interested in personal growth. Perhaps there is something subconsciously that makes you speak the way you do or even act a certain way.

            I want you to remember that I love you. No matter how hard it gets for you, my love for you as a friend remains. Remember, too, that when everything is a joke, nothing is, and there is always truth in jest. I recognize your jokes as a method by which you wish to be understood and communicate your true thoughts to the outside world, but you’re so afraid of ridicule or backlash that it cannot be said in sincerity. Or, so you think.

            Where is your fear founded? What kind of terrible past have you endured to make you feel so insecure? Secure people speak sincerely and unapologetically, my friend, and you do not fit the bill except when you’re with me. Perhaps it is my sincerity that helps you to relax every so often and if that is the case, I want to move with it. I want to spend more time with you to help you feel sincerity and know it for yourself. I want to wrap you in security and make you realize that it’s okay to have your thoughts, your feelings, your opinions, and it’s okay to share them, but there is a time and a place for everything and there is always a good way to communicate a thought, even if there is no good way it can be received. Fear not, my friend, for I feel that most of what you could say would be received without judgment.

            I fear that your religion gets in the way. Perhaps it is what keeps you going and helps you see the light in life. Who am I to judge your feelings? Better that you tell them to me, in due time, as you will. Just remember, my friend: I love you.