Keeping the Dream

So how are you? Time has gone by so fast.

January was to be the month I took some time off. I needed some space, in part to the emotional flashbacks I was receiving through Megan’s suicide, in part to the growing stress at work, and just in part that I needed a break.

My time is spent between trying to homeschool my daughter and work. That’s about it…and trying to maintain some kind of internet presence through my blogs. These writings, the ability to step apart in this way and express my thoughts and feelings are very important to me.

But January was far from restful. Issues concerning work intruded upon my first shift off, and then when my second approached, we had a major fire set by one of our clients at the apartment complex where three of our sites are located, one of which is mine.

So, to make a long story short, I returned to work to be with my clients and now my company is finding itself kicked out of the complex.

So we’re in a major transition now. And I feel like that is reflective of where I am personally. On the one hand I could panic. All the variables are unknown at this time. They tell us that all the employees will work for Bell, however, they don’t know where or in what capacity.

I know my requirements are very specific at this time. I need to be able to continue to homeschool my daughter. I need to be in a area that is within the center of all my driving.

But at the same time, I want change in my life. I want to be able to maintain a regular routine with my daughter. She needs it. It’s crucial to her learning, and I haven’t been able to maintain that, because of the very work hours that enable me to homeschool her in the first place! I work nights and the shift varies from week to week, which enables me to have her, but that weekly variation also creates its own problems.

So I don’t know what to do. And I don’t know what to ask for. That’s not true. I don’t know what solution to ask for, but I do know what I want.

Maybe that’s where faith comes in. When you can’t see how it could work…not with what you know, then that is the time to leap beyond what you know and trust that something, someone will catch you…or at least meet you. That it will work out.

I can do that.

In my post, Why Am I Here?, this past Sunday, I talked about Sylvia Plath’s writing about indecision, and the fear that surrounded her.

Her words reveal not only the fear over making choices, but about the fear of loss. Every choice wasn’t seen as embracing something as much as relinquishing something else. It’s symptomatic, I think, of a society that gives you the impression that you can…and should have it all.

That’s the first lie I had to give up.

It’s easy to see why I should have believed it. What’s more seductive to believe you can have it all, when society says, as female, you can’t have any of it - other than what’s prescribed in a very narrow band of choices? I realize many of my choices were knee jerk reactions to what I felt was constricting me.

Deciding to be something means deciding not to be everything else not chosen. If that’s what you focus on, every choice is about losing.

But I wonder what our fear of loss is really a blanket for?

There’s more to our inability to make a decision other than being paralyzed by too many choices. Because I’m beginning to see that depth is, also, a matter of choice.

Indecision protects us from diving in deep. In our hesitation to even get our feet wet, we spare ourselves the unknown places of the deeper section of the water. We run back and forth from one body of water to the next contemplating which one we want to swim in, and all the time we are safe on the shore, fooling ourselves into thinking we’re trying to choose, when we’re actually trying to avoid.

Avoid what? Intimacy, for one, either with another person or with ourselves.

It’s the same thing isn’t it? The person who’s afraid to commit to a monogamous relationship or pick a field of interest to develop their skills and talents. It’s all about holding out, because there might be something/someone better.

But the fact is, we don’t want to give in to anything or anyone. It’s not a journey or a race, not even a rat one. It’s a game of dodge ball we play, and indecision is the excuse we use to keep us in that game and out of the very real world of depth with its demand and risk of courage and vulnerability.