You Must Change Your Life

Erin told me in an email yesterday that she's been reading this, and using it to show herself that if I can make changes in my life, she can too. Wow. That's really flattering, especially because I feel like I'm stumbling through this with very little grace, and if you saw my face or heard my voice in the past couple of days, I'm not sure you'd call this venture successful. I've been a wreck and a half. Today was the first day I bothered to wear clothes that actually fit into our dresscode at work, and I even put on eyeshadow - which was just too far beyond my capacity as a functioning human for the past week. Is this progress? Is this success? I'm not sure. Still, maybe the point isn't to be good at this... maybe the point is just to DO IT, and survive it. Sometimes it feels like I can't even do that much, but the minutes pass. Then the hours pass. Then suddenly a whole day is gone, and I'm still breathing in and out, and sometimes I even laugh.

I told my kids yesterday that I'm leaving. The entire cafeteria, full of 120 K-6th graders, erupted in yells of "noooooo!!" They're really affected. Of course, kids are always affected when their routine changes, and I'm sure my staff will have some residual chaos to deal with when I'm gone... but these youngun's came up and hugged me, begged me not to go, told me they'll miss me, tried to make me smile. I had tears in my eyes. They're such amazing little souls. We're a family here in afterschool, we see each other every day, we share our triumphs and our failures, we get angry and then we fix it, we apologize, we grow. I'm going to miss them way down in the deepest depths of my heart.

Today is easier, though. First of all, I slept, with a little help from my good friend Tylenol PM. Secondly, Tex wasn't screaming obscenities at me today, so that's an improvement. Thirdly, my Dad and step-mom are coming into town tonight. I need them here so badly... I need the unconditional love, the support, I need someone to take care of me a little bit. I need to laugh as hard as they make me laugh. Parents!! Hah. Then my mom comes next Wednesday, then I drive home. Holy cow. The time is flying.

Well, this just goes to show you: you really can reach down deep into your life and pull it up by the roots. You can listen to whatever calling is pulling you - toward a career change (Meg!), a relationship change (Erin!), a locale change (Lara!)... you can do it all at once. You can leave yourself totally groundless, terrified, insecure, out of control, grieving, exhausted, and in pain... and the days still pass, and you do okay. You keep eating, hopefully... you feed your cat, you wash your dishes, occasionally you take a shower... you see the sun rise and the sun set, you do some laundry... and sometimes you even have good days. It's amazing what you can live without (your partner, your apartment, your job, your sanity) that feels so vital to Being Alive, but actually isn't. You can take all of that away and you'd still be standing there, your essential Self would still exist.

So, why not? You want a better, different way of being? Listen to some distant voice telling you, like Rilke's Apollo, "You must change you life."