Thoughts, Facebook Bound

I've been taking a haitus from Facebook for about 9 months now, and it's been wonderful. I'm less often upset, struggle less frequently with feeling forgotten and left out, and it's helped me refocus on the people that are willing to reach out in the real world.

I got on tonight and man, it's not as horrible as I've been saying. I do struggle with feeling like there's something wrong with me that I'm not wrapped up in the lives of people from high school. Doing a little stalking, for some reason it hurts to see people I was close to being close with each other but not with me. I'm not sure what it is about me that makes me see it that way, but there it is. Facebook bound. Bound by regrets and lack of comprehension at why my life has moved away from those people and their lives haven't moved away from each other.

It is what it is.

I was able to catch up with family members, which is one of the brighter ways Facebook binds us together. My cousin posted, probably a long while ago, a video of a girl playing a song about depression on her guitar and commented that she personally mourns for the girl she was before she developed depression, or whatever the right word for that would be.

I don't know how to articulate my response to that. I'm kind of baffled and struck by the foreigness of that thought. I remember my childhood as a largely lonely time with some great room to roam in and my siblings as my only steady social contact with peers. I've got large gaps of not remembering--years--and it was mostly the outdoors that fed my happier memories from that time. I've never related to other people talking like their childhoods were this great time of lack of difficulties and worry, and I honestly don't remember very well what it was like "before" depression entered my life. I'm kind of grateful for that because I don't have this memory of myself as more engaged in and capable of living life without emotional struggles. When I cast my eyes backwards over the past I see progress and I see how my situation grew better as I aged, even amidst depression and heartbreak and growing up. I'm not left mouring for how I used to be, at least not from childhood and adolescence. Maybe for who I was as a missionary, but the missionary I was still had depression so lack of that struggle is not what I miss from her.

I'm a little all over the place tonight. I'm trying to talk more, to get things out.

Old Newspaper Clipping

That title is inaccurate, but I've gone with it because it is more picturesque.

I've been cleaning out the piles of papers I've had boxed up for years as I prepare to move next month. (As a trained child of lay-it-away-for-the-future-ers, I've found a lot.)

I liked the rhythm of this particular freewrite. (Set a timer, and write the whole time, pen never stopping.) At the time of the notebook I discovered it in, I was a writing lab tutor at Snow College. I'm fairly sure I was attempting to either jump-start or convince myself to write one of the weekly self-critique papers I had for my tutoring class, which was meant to show what I had seen work and not work during my time in that lab that week. Here it is, circa 2006, 7 or 8:

Alicia. Running her paper was a little wordy  I helped her by doing something helped helped helped helped pointing out by reading having her read helped a lot  I need to go extrapolate and type this up  Time is slow thank goodness  Oh man I want to leave  concentrate  Having her read helped her a lot and doing good concentrate  she started picking it out herself  too many words stuffed into things  Oh gosh I love sugar  why is that something I need sleep  Um  when she also needed comparison I helped her with that  I need to also talk about the times she worked or sugar  I mean what was it specific details  nice and love to pieces --> food, always stops in all of those things that makes her cool and she was able to see that after just working on the 1st half of 2nd paragraph  I need understanding with the questions about Craig it helped  a lot and she could tell what was lacking about Jo 1st paragraph intro thinger was a little unorganized so out of it I helped her figure out how she wanted it all to relate to the thesis  I think I can go write this now.

Weakness

I was talking with a friend tonight who is a teacher. She's had a rough year and missed more school than normal as a result. The kids noticed and asked her about why she's be gone or late so often, and she told them that she's been having a hard time with family struggles and with her health. She expressed she feels bad for being less reliable of a teacher and not being there in class for her kids as much as she'd like.

There was a small turning in my mind. I thought of myself as a young kid dealing with a lot and how it might have helped for an adult to honestly share that they struggle with hard things and demonstrate that it's ok to feel that struggle; to model that taking care of yourself is important. I thought how high the chances are that there is at least one child in that class that might actually be better served by seeing her working through and addressing the tough things in her life than they'd be served by my friend never missing a day of work.

It gave me hope that the actions, inactions, or patterns we see as our biggest failings might sometimes be exactly what another person needs to experience through interacting with us, and that those "weaknesses" may be the best things about us on occasion.

I've been thinking recently about the fact that our weaknesses might be gifts after all--gifts to keep us humble, to help us turn to and teach each other, gifts which propel us to grow.

If they are, loving myself becomes easier.

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You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously.

-uncredited