2003-07-17 - 4:52 p.m.
FINDING MY LADDER (YUCK!)
Around here, we frequently tell children, especially our own, that the first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging. We say it, for example, to the child whose defense begins, �But all I said was...� Today, I said it to myself. What is more surprising is that I listened. I�m not out of the hole yet but I actually see daylight.
Of late, I have felt very out-of-control. I cannot control the state budget that is driving a need to cut, cut, cut, and then cut the school budget. I cannot control the people who yell at me because the cuts need to be made. I cannot control the additional cases and the increasing complexity of many of those cases that keeps me working extra hours over and above even the increase in hours that the threat of losing our health insurance thrust on me. I cannot control the teen anger that occasionally bursts out and rains down around me�and when I could not control my reaction as I wished last Sunday, I felt as though even controlling myself was hopeless.
Usually, when one area starts feeling out-of-control, I turn to another. If work is oppressing or depressing, I focus on girl scouts or my kids. If my family life is tense and messy, I turn to the world of work. And, if all else fails, I go to synagogue and connect�through the people or through the music or through the text. But sometimes even the usually full places seem empty or out of reach and I feel paralyzed.
But yesterday, I pulled myself together just a little. First, I wrote a monologue for Kat. I sat down dutifully, expecting nothing, but I had an idea and it flowed. �Well,� I thought. �If I can do this, maybe....� Then I went to bed.
This morning, the flicker seemed gone. The funk was hanging heavy as I walked into my office. The desk looked like a tornado had hit. That situation is never a good sign. After all, my office is one of the few spaces that is totally mine. I do not have to share it with a clutterer, sweet or otherwise. I do not have to share it with someone who is dotty about leopard print. I do not have to share it with someone who believes clean clothes on a floor add to the pattern. While I cannot choose the furniture and I cannot even move that furniture around without help, I decide when it is clean. I decide when it is messy. I decide how the files are arranged and whether piles are permitted. I could control this. I could gain control of this.
So, I put aside all the need-to-be-dones, the should-be-dones, the somebody-wants-them-dones and I found my ladder. I sorted. I filed. I categorized and I prioritized. I decreed that piles would have to be placed in a file and that I would remember tasks with a list. It took me two and a half hours but it did the trick. Life still looked stressful but it looked doable. I did not have to control everything. I could change a few small things and that would have to do.
Blessings are all around but we cannot always see them. Who would have thought straightening piles and washing a desk would be a rung of a ladder back to feeling connected?
And is it worth feeling better if the way back from depression is
C L E A N I N G? (Shudder)
LAST YEAR: Unintended Consequences
TWO YEARS AGO: So Sorry
IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
The Interviewer
A Claim to Fame Gone
Rachel Usurps Leah
Sounds of Silence
The Wages of Opinionated Children
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
