On Finding Peace (In the Most Warlike of Times)

 This is not a peaceful time, by any means. The bring-down of Roe is... beyond description. Something that I can't believe is actually happening now. Every day I wake up to something else that makes me wonder, how is it that we're 22 years into the 21st century and everything is... like this? 

I am a mother of two daughters and I am very concerned about the state of the world they are going to inherit. I am grateful that I have two daughters. I am grateful that my choice to have them was a choice that I was freely able to make. 

Once upon a time, I did have an abortion. It is something that I have always felt very neutral about, honestly. Neither good nor bad... it was necessary. I was a junior in college and at this time, I was without proper treatment for the social and emotional dysregulation I suffered as the result of my early childhood traumatic brain injury. And I was in the midst of my third spiral that was leading up to my third in-patient psychiatric hospitalization. I got entangled with a boy that was not right for me, in a situation that was not right for me. I had always taken care to be mindful of my sexual encounters, properly protect myself, but in the state I was in, I was without the rationality to remember this. And I became pregnant without this being something I wanted. Or, moreover, at that time, needed.

The state of pregnancy caused me to fall apart even faster. I had a complete breakdown and wound up in the hospital. And I had to get away from this person, I knew that for sure, even though I was hardly lucid. He was bad for me. And I was already bad off enough. My state of psychological duress caused me to begin to hemorrhage. The pregnancy was stabilized, but I was in no condition to follow through with it. I was in dire need of medication that I couldn't take while in this state. And I was in no condition to take on the responsibility of motherhood; I couldn't even take care of myself. I was 21, but quite on the verge of ending up on a conservatorship. I was faced with the prospect of long-term psychiatric commitment if I kept the pregnancy, which carried with it having to drop out of college, then possibly go to a halfway house or back home to my family in shame. 

So I made the choice to terminate the pregnancy. The hemorrhaging continued, and though they said it was a type of bleeding that wasn't necessarily going to mean an end, there was a higher likelihood that this was going to be the case. And the last thing I needed was a baby, one that had been made with someone to whom I had no business being connected for the rest of my life. I needed psychiatric medication. I needed to regroup and start over and try again for stability. I needed to finish my education and try to push forward in my life. 

I needed the abortion that I got. Without it, I can't even know what would have happened. I can know for sure that none of it was good. My ability to have that abortion for me was indeed a matter of life and death. 

As I said, I have always felt neutral about it. I wasn't out of the first trimester. Other women in my family disclosed to me, they'd been in similar situations and they'd made this choice, too. It was necessary. So I did it. And I'm not sorry. 

I understand the the Roe rollback only sends the decision back to the states as far as each state having the ability to decide yay or nay or whether to provide abortions, but my concern is that it isn't going to end here. And I'm just so confused as to why the government needs to be in the middle of so many things that are honestly a matter of personal choice and preference and have no bearing on anyone other than the individuals making these personal choices. And I'm disheartened as I so often am that yet again, in the name of a faith that I call my own, the people whom I still struggle mightily with resenting are using an otherwise beautiful faith to oppress and beat people up and doing everything to drive them away. 

I don't know what to do. Honestly? I seriously don't. My heart breaks, my soul is grieved, but... what can I do? I know I can be mindful of whom I vote for, I know I can support organizations that are actively fighting for the rights that I want my daughters to have. And honestly, I'm just praying a lot. Praying for balance. For this societal war to stop. For there to be oneness within the collective whole. 

And I am doing my best to just find peace in my daily life. Waking up each day and being the best mother and wife I can be and giving my all to make my family a nourishing place full of nurturance and love and instill in my daughters a sense of agency and awareness of what is wrong and right in this world and try to empower them to go out and change things. 

This is where I am focusing my energy, above all. On raising them. This is their world. I want them to be ready to grow up, to rise up, to take their place in it and make it better.

 I love teaching. I love writing. But for me, as archaic as it may sound, as much as those who are progressive will probably find themselves with a bitter taste in their mouths where I am concerned...my first and best role is serving my family. 

That is where I will make the best difference that I can make. To focus on making their young lives ones that are stable, whole, secure, and aware. To focus on giving all of my best energy to the children that I thank God and thank Roe that were my choice to bring into this world at a time at which I was ready. 

Yes, as much as I am certain few to none will understand me... the traditional path of devotion to motherhood and homemaking is my own way of being revolutionary. I'm using everything I've been given to ensure that my daughters have everything they need, and more, to take this world by storm, to be a part of the solution. 

Nothing matters as much to me... no matter how successful I may become as an author, no matter how well I might perform as a teacher...my first, last, and best responsibility in this life is to be the best mother I can be to my daughters so that they are as prepared as possible to face and forge their way in this angry, fragmented world and, God willing, help it to heal. 

And this is where, in the midst of all the chaos, I find my peace. 

On Being Queen of the Setback. And the Comeback, too.

 My life has been one of ever-constant challenges, attempts to overcome them, abysmal failures, discouragement, bouts of giving up...but I've always tried again.

That is one of my greatest strengths, I've been reminded recently. I don't ever give up. I'm like a Jack Pine thriving when the forest has burnt down. 

Setbacks have become something that I rather expect at this point. Even though I'm now in my fourth decade of being alive, I'm still working to come to terms with and understand the parameters of just how my damaged brain limits me, to come to a point of acceptance regarding the best I can ever expect things to be and stop pushing myself to do and be something that isn't possible. 

But falling down only makes me get up stronger. 

I've shared how in 2014 I wrote an entire manuscript for my first Master's thesis and I got an agent within ten queries. By 2016, that agent got the manuscript into the hands of four Big Five imprints. I was going all the way, I was sure, all the way to the top. But I didn't. I was rejected by all. Then my agent dropped me.

That was a major setback, a great example of falling down. It didn't even have anything to do with my neurodivergence. But because of my experience in living with neurodivergence and having grown stronger as a result, of having become positively indefatigable, I had the skills to overcome this, too. I certainly had to step back for several years from writing, because that was a major blow, a devastating one, to recover from. 

But I did recover. And I made a comeback. I tore down and rebuilt the whole concept thrice as strong and better than before.

So now are more setbacks. Finding an agent is impossible because what I've got simply isn't what is selling right now. 

Okay, so you know what? After a significant period of discouragement and being quite down, I'm standing back up again. Because this time is also a gift, just like the time I was handed back in my earlier attempt was a gift in disguise, too. 

The moment I give this story to an agent, a publisher, well... that's that. It has been born and it has died. I can never go back and improve it ever again. 

So all my energy right now is focused on working this first draft over and making it the best it can be, because I'm not done yet. Not if I don't need to be. And each time I pass through it, the more improved and the best version of itself it becomes. 

I know that God knows what's happening with me, my neurodivergence, my aspirations to see my works published. He's got this. 

And in the meantime, I'm just going to get and stay busy. Because I'm the Setback Queen. The Comeback Queen. I don't ever give up. Against the odds, as it were. 

Just as my protagonist had to overcome insurmountable odds as the result of tragedy in her early childhood, how she learned to live and affirm, "I'm not helpless." 

I hope to become more like Paulina, someone who is two parts Katniss and three parts Ayla from Clan of the Cave Bear, and everything I hope I'll always consistently be. 

Not helpless. A Jack Pine. A dandelion growing up to thrive out of a crack in the sidewalk. 

Me. Just the way I am. 

Parsing Out the Struggle

 At present, I find myself in a place that feels very, very empty.

It is also a place that is at the same time, very full. Full of frustration. Full of longing. Full of self-doubt and an abundant lack of hope. 

I am not at all right now where I want to be, and worse, there is absolutely nothing that I can do in order to make myself get to where I want to go. 

I can only wait. Practice patience. Strengthen my faith. Feel my feelings. And trust that God is going to do what He has always done: come through for me. 

The fact that I had a meltdown a few days ago that sent me right back into burnout when I tried to put myself back in the same teaching situation that caused the burnout in the first place is still something that is very much with me. 

There's a difference between becoming angry or upset and experiencing a meltdown, especially one strong enough to thrust me back into a state of burnout. The former emotional states may come on strongly, but they pass with relative quickness and within a day at most, I'm back to normal. The latter states? Not so much.

When I experience a burnout, the healing takes days if not weeks. 

The first presentation is completely falling apart psychologically. My mental and emotional states unravel and I feel like I've been launched into the abyss of outer space, panicking and plunging into a perpetual unknown with no gravity to hold me, a million miles away from safety and everything that sustains life. All there is to be had is a heightened anxiety more aptly described as terror. I feel like I am trapped in a confined space with the thing that has set me off, and all I want is to get away, but I can't get away, for I'm imprisoned. If this goes on long enough, I will begin to have frightening ideations that suggest to me that there is only one way that I can get away. And the longer this goes on, the more the ideations began to become three-dimensional. If I get to this point, then this is when I will have to go to in-patient psych. 

The first order of business is to remove myself from whatever it is that's set me off. For whatever this is, no matter what it is, it is more than I can handle and I can't be coerced into handling it. Like the situation with my teaching job in the public school this fall, and the one I attempted to take on for the summer. These situations triggered me, and how. 

And the sense of being trapped was most palpable this fall...I was coming undone and I knew it but I was plagued by this guilt that I must put myself aside and push through it because my family needs me to provide financially. So I had to press on. 

But the burnout part of me screamed, but you can't. 

The other part of me insisted, but you must. 

So on one end was the outcome of pushing on for the sake of my family but being driven absolutely over the brink, and on the other, the choice not to push on and this bearing the consequence of losing my income and harming my family. This was when the ideations began to become very real. This was when I began to feel that this was going to be my only way out. 

Thanks to the support of my husband and family, I narrowly escaped in the fall without having to go to in-patient. The whole not wanting to go to in-patient is a serious thing for me; the last time I went to in-patient in my early 30's when the end of my first marriage pushed me over the edge, my ex-husband used my having been hospitalized as a means to take my children away. I wouldn't put it past him to do this again. So it is very, very important that I keep well. 

What happened the other day when I tried to go back into the school system, found things to be intensely worse, knew I had to leave but was yet again faced with the prospect of doing so meaning I would be depriving my family of much-needed income triggered not only a meltdown, but a swift plunge back into burnout because I'd effectively retraumatized myself and I was reliving the trauma of the fall in addition to the new trauma of the present. 

Knowledge is indeed power. I recognized what was happening for what it was. So did my parents, and my husband. I immediately resigned. My parents, who are of significant means, offered to just write a check for the amount I would have earned. I am grateful for their support in more ways than I can express. 

This was several days ago. And am I okay now? Yes. 

But am I all better? No. Not yet.

I am sitting here writing this right now to try to make sense of the aftermath of experiencing a burnout. There are phases, stages. A lot of it is what I've come to understand is a lot of grief. And not just grief for whatever was lost in order to escape from the burnout. Grief that has very deep roots, goes back for a very long time, through a number of experiences that are all similar to this one. 

There's grief for the present and all prior times one of the greatest of all expectations I've ever tried to have for myself has eventually died after being born in such hope: my ability to take a job and keep it. For two decades now, I've been locked into an intensely heartbreaking cycle... all I've ever wanted is to secure and maintain gainful employment, to establish and thrive in a career I've studied and prepared for and to which I know I have lots to contribute. This is why I earned two Master's degrees and professional licensure. I wanted to become a teacher. I was able to get this far, and only this far. 

I am someone who is a very hard worker. I am excited, passionate about what I do. I'm creative and innovative. I put my whole heart into all of it. I am someone who is industrious. I am someone who believes in putting my family first, and this means getting up and out and on and bringing in money to help support us. I'm compassionate and I connect well with students and families. And I'm smart, yes, I'm so smart and an expert in my content area, basically. 

But none of this is enough to save me. I can only last three months to a year or so in one job. Something just...happens. There always comes a point in time when I just can't do it anymore. I meltdown, and meltdown, and I will either quit to go run to a new job, telling myself it will be better this time, or I end up getting fired because in the final stages of my meltdowns, I've lost any and all ability to conduct myself in any manner remotely professional to the people around me. 

I'm still trying to figure out in concrete terms why that is. As I wrote in an earlier post, I likened it to going into a job situation as a pitcher full of liquid, but each day a little more is poured out and the time will inevitably come in which I am emptied out and I have no more to give. 

I have what I can perhaps describe as an intense control issue. Not to be in control of others, but I can only feel safe if I am the one who is in control of me. 

Here's how the triggers happen:

--Having to go to a workplace that is an environment that is not mine, at an hour that is not of my choosing

-- Where I must remain until a designated hour that is not of my choosing

-- Where I must wear clothing based on stipulations that are not of my choosing 

--Where I must be effectively imprisoned for a certain amount of hours a day alongside others whom I did not choose to be around, and cannot get away from

-- Where I am not in control of the lighting, the temperature, the smell, the elements of rooms

--Where I am not at liberty to choose to step aside for my own space as I need it

--Where I am not at liberty to come and go at times of my choosing

...this is literally what my own personal hell would look like.

And yes, I realize I just described what work is like for basically everyone. And I also realize that no one consistently enjoys any of this, but tolerates it for the purpose of keeping one's family cared for. 

But for me? It is beyond dislike. For me, all of the aforementioned are only tolerable for a limited period of time, depending on how clement or inclement any of these factors present themselves. The longer the period of time that these things don't present themselves as direct vexations to me, the longer I'll be able to stick around. But eventually, they will become vexing enough that I will be triggered. 

And what's triggered? This terrified, panicked fear of others being in control of me, others controlling everything about my life experience during the hours of my confinement as if the bars of a prison have slammed shut behind me and I can't get out and I can't handle it. I will eventually begin to feel like I'm in danger, trapped, and these things begin to hurt me in a way that I can't protect myself from being hurt...and so I will eventually run. Run to a new job to try to start over and tell myself that it will be different this time. Or just quit and flounder until I find a way to repeat this process. 

I always tell myself it is going to be different this time, because I have been ashamed, so deeply ashamed, that this has always happened and keeps happening, like there's something flawed in my character, like maybe I am just lazy and spoiled and entitled and willful. So I have kept on trying, and trying, and trying, attempting to prove to myself and everyone who loves me that I've got this, when I don't. That I can do it this time, when I can't. 

I now am at a point where I have no choice but to accept that this is the way it is for me. It's my neurodivergence, for one. For two, I have no doubt that the PTSD I suffer from my confinement at the therapeutic boarding school has a lot to do with this as well, for my perception of and reaction to the work environment is mimetic to what I went through there. 

But it is what it is. And I have to accept that because I can't keep pushing myself from one meltdown into burnout into another. And given how quickly my psyche absolutely bucked and threw itself out, I don't even have much more masking left in me to give. 

So I am working toward acceptance, but oh, there's a lot of grief.

 Grief to have to finally resign myself to the fact that this is something that is never going to change. I am never going to be able to go out and have any kind of full-time career again. I am incompatible in every fundamental way. 

Grief that one day, I was going to somehow conquer my neurodivergence to the point that I would function just as neurotypically as anyone. This is never going to happen, because the best I can hope for in terms of my treatment and medication has a ceiling. I have to focus on being the best I can be within my context, but understand that this context is what it is and it is never going to be comparable to a neurotypical. I'm not just going to arrive at this magical someday in which I'll be "all better." No. I have brain damage. Brain damage that can be helped, but not healed. I'm always going to have brain damage. I will never have a brain that is the same as someone without this damage. 

Grief that I am likely never going to be able to be much of an earner, and coupled with this, grief that I am never going to be in a position to maintain a completely independent lifestyle.

 I have tried. 

I have been able to physically live on my own, but always with the scaffolding of my parents. They've always had to step in and help me meet ends with the job thing inevitably happens. They've had to, in moments, handle paying my bills and the other more complicated aspects of adult life. There were a few instances in my life in which I nearly ended up under a conservatorship because I struggled so badly. I can do the best that I can, but this is also just something that is what it is. It isn't because I'm some kind of lazy, worthless person. It is because I can't help it. Again: I have a damaged brain. All I can do is my best, but my best is going to be different than a neurotypical's best. 

As I write this, and reflect on it, it all is so simple to type up and share. It is all so straightforward to express. And also, shouldn't I be relieved? Finally, I can stop struggling, stop fighting, just let go, let myself breathe, let myself be. Accept myself once and for all. 

The trouble is, there's sometimes a significant distance between feeling and knowing. I can know all of this, but I have to give myself time for my feelings to catch up.

 There's always a pattern of emotional processing after the burnouts. 

Once I've been extracted from the trigger, I can calm down. Stop screaming and crying. Put the ideations to bed. 

But what follows is this calm that isn't really calm, but just a void that quickly fills up with anxiety, an anxiety with about ten heads, anxieties that aren't even directly about anything at all.

 Oftentimes, I'll become obsessed with this idea that I am presently dying, suffering from some undiagnosed, incurable disease that's going to wipe me off the face of this earth and then what will my children do? 

Anxiety that, on the other hand, something terrible is going to happen to my children and oh God, the intrusive thoughts.

 Anxiety that isn't particularly related to anything but just manifests in my body, leaving my jaw aching and sometimes teeth broken from how hard I've been clenching, my muscles sore all over from the tension, this powerful sense of dread that prevents me from sleeping and then panics that it's now five in the morning and I really need to sleep but I can't because I'll oversleep and I have to be present for my girls. 

This eventually passes. And finally comes this overwhelming and vast sense of hopelessness and depression.

I've been here today. I don't feel doomed like when my anxiety insists that I'm doomed, but doomed as in, it's all hopeless. Hopeless. Nothing is ever going to happen that's good ever again. And oh, how the constant setbacks I've experienced in trying to plant this manuscript have been such excellent fodder for this stage. Right now, it feels very much like it is all hopeless, no one is ever going to represent or publish my books and for that matter, even if I self-publish, no one is ever going to read them and it is all just a waste. I'm just a waste. Why am I even here? I scarcely exist. What have I ever contributed to the world? What am I even for? 

But I've kept an objective eye on all of these phases, having experienced them before, knowing which is coming next. This doesn't make them vanish; I still have to feel my feelings, I have to sit with them. The only way out is through. But by making this an objective experience, stepping out of the midst of this and saying to myself, "You're in the depression phase of the burnout aftermath today. It really sucks. All of this feels very real right now." and then, "But this is all very textbook considering you've been through this before. This is actually a good sign-- this is always the last phase. It is going to pass soon. And even though all the things you're telling yourself sound and feel very believable, you can know and trust that God has always closed doors only because He is going to open one special one He has picked out for you and in the looking back, you'll understand why all of those agents said no, why there has been so much rejection. It is all going to make sense, just like every other time things that didn't make sense eventually did."

And then I nudge myself, let's go. Let's move. In the affirmation of my protagonist, You're Not Helpless. So I allow myself extra time to rest, I am gentle with myself, I do the things that I know soothe me, but I then take moments to get up and wash the dishes, clean the house, do the laundry, make sure everything is in one piece. The other night, in the middle of all the anxiety, I channeled this into cleaning as I soothed this part of myself, saying, "You're all to shit right now because that's what happens and it's okay. But you're going to get this house clean. Because tomorrow, when you wake up, there's going to be a window for this anxiety to diminish and you'll be able to get out that window only if you wake up to a clean house."

And so it was. So it has been. 

So I'm in a balanced place. I am hurting, but I am healing. I am validating myself, and I am finding ways to pick myself up to take one more step forward at a time. I am accepting whatever phases and feelings come in these days following, and I am maintaining an awareness that they are going to pass. 

My husband told me tonight that he is very proud of me. He is proud of how I have taken healthy steps to move myself up and out of this in an authentic way. He is proud of how I have handled this like an adult. 

I'm grateful for his praise. And I'm grateful, too, because I know he's right. I believe that about me right now. 

And I'm plugging very much into my relationship with God right now. Pain is an excellent fertilizer for enriching one's spiritual connection. And He is giving me what I need to get where I need to go. All of this lined up with my daughters going with their bio dad and his (God-sent totally awesome) girlfriend for a fun beach weekend, giving me an almost five day weekend to take time to myself, work on my novel, work on some art, rest, relax, and have kind of an opportunity to power-boost my way not only back into wellness, but maybe even into a place better and more healthy than I was before all of this happened.

God is good. He is always good to me. He hasn't failed me yet. And He is taking me somewhere. And every day, more and more, I am handing him my writing career especially and just telling him, "Take it. You make it into what You want it to be. Guide me and show me where I need to go. But I'm not in control of this. You are. I trust You." 

And I just have a quiet knowing somehow within me, even though my feelings haven't caught up... that all of this isn't going to be for naught. My writing career will happen. My books will be published. And no, I'm sure I won't ever be famous, but...people will read them. People will be inspired by them. People will want to know me. And they'll find me, right here. They'll be reading these words that I am writing right now. And the thing about this whole thing, my whole desire in wanting to write, will take place: my experience, my stories, will become meaningful to others who are like me, who will borrow from my strength and I will enable them to heal. 

All in God's time. And in the mean time... I will keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when I can't see the road stretching out before me, for I know that God is laying it out and He is leading me somewhere more beautiful than I could have ever imagined or every arrived at on my own.

Thy will be done. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Futility and Acceptance: My Neurodivergence and Trying (and Failing) Again to Go Back to the Classroom

 Every child has a dream of what they want to be when they grow up. 

My answer to this question when I was very young was, a unicorn. 

My answer as I began to grow older and find myself at ever-constant odds with life: to not have a damaged brain, to be able to just be normal. 

Normal. Able to do the things that I watched the majority of the people doing around me with impunity...making and maintaining friendships, intimate relationships; getting along with their parents, their teachers; finishing things they started; going to a party and having just a few drinks or smoking a little weed and comfortably not needing to overindulge not only in the moment but not needing to continue overindulging every day that followed until an inevitable crash and burn; and, finally...perhaps greatest of all....

The ability to start a job and remain in it. 

Pursuing and earning advanced degrees and attaining professional teaching licensure was barely a challenge. Academics always came as natural to me as breathing. Having something with which to busy my mind, my hands, was an area in which I thrived. I have two Master's degrees, in fact. I'm a licensed teacher in one of the highest categories. My second thesis and the theory I created are being used as teaching material at my alma mater. 

But actually going out into the working world? I've tried, God knows that I've tried over and over. But this is where my abilities cease. This is where I simply just can't. Can't. No matter how hard I have tried. I am psychologically, neurologically unable to adapt and maintain. 

I can't begin to describe how the two decades of this cycle of getting a job, trying to convince myself that it is going to be different this time, putting all of my effort into making it different this time, only to end up so overwhelmed and pushed into a place of ASD meltdown, then burnout, and having to resign and get the hell out of the situation because I'm in such a bad way psychologically that I'm having very dark intrusive thoughts that have me on the verge of needing to be put into in-patient care. 

I am industrious. I am a very hard worker. I am passionate, inspired, always busy, task-oriented, eager to contribute to my family income, to be a 50/50 partner with my husband to make things happen. So what ends up happening every single time I've ever tried to hold a job makes me full of such deep self-loathing. I must be lazy. I must be a real piece of do-less garbage.

 Especially when my family, and my husband, who haven't always understood, will meet me in moments where I'm sobbing and screaming at home saying I can't go back and I can't do this telling me to knock it off, stop being spoiled, stop being willful, stop doing this on purpose, to get the hell over myself and get back in there because work = money and money = what's necessary to live and... God. 

They've meant to be helpful trying to kick me in the tail and get me to snap out of it but it hasn't helped, because I've finally realized, they have finally realized... I cannot. fucking. help it. I am the way that i am. It is the way that it is. And I have to let go. I have to stop fighting something that cannot be overcome. 

When I was five years old, I fell six feet off of a rock wall down onto concrete and suffered a traumatic brain injury. My frontal lobe was damaged irreparably. For a long time, this wasn't understood to be what it was. I spend the majority of my life being misdiagnosed with more mental illnesses than I can recall because the presentation of the social and emotional dysregulation as the result of this brain damage took make forms that were mimetic of many mental illnesses.

 Every time I saw a professional, I was given a new one. Some parts fit in presentation, some even more than others, but the requisite treatment overall has never been successful because... this isn't that. I wish it was, for the answer would be straightforward, the remedy one applicable in a contextual way, the response predictable. I didn't even show a response to psychiatric medication until I was well past my mid-twenties, when my brain had finally stopped developing. 

Now? Medication has proven to be effective to a particular degree. Lithium and Seroquel have served to stabilize my moods that were constantly influx due to perpetual overstimulation by helping screen the stimulation out and giving me an emotional baseline that I'm held to and drawn back to if something does overstimulate me. Ritalin was added in later to further aid in the executive dysfunction to help me with attention, focus, and enabling me to have a heavier weight to hold me down to the baseline. 

The medication enables me to function to the best of my ability. But that's the thing: the best of MY ability. This is still in no way comparable to the best of a Neurotypical's ability, which is what the world is created to serve. And this has time and again set me up to fail and blame myself for my failure.

 I've always harbored this dream that enough medication will overcome my brain damage and make it so I'll one day wake up and join the Neurotypical world and carry on alongside them without incident. And each attempt was successful for a period of time. Three months. Six months. Nine. Then, I managed to make it for almost three consecutive years in the school system and I really, really thought I had once and for all WON. 

But my mangled neurology caught up with me. The whole time, I didn't realize then but I see now in the looking back, from the first day, and each day that followed, I was like a pitcher full of liquid out of which a little more was being poured out each day. There was no way for it to be replenished. And eventually, it would be empty. I would be run entirely out of any abilities to cope any longer, to mask, to make myself fit into the proverbial round-hole world as a Neurodivergent square peg. 

The post-pandemic public school classroom was an absolute hellscape of disorganized disarray and more demands put on teachers than we could fulfill with severe admonishments and consequences when failing to do so. This was my absolute worst-case scenario. But I tried to soldier on. God, did I ever try. I'm not lazy; I want to work. I'm not selfish; I know working is what best for my family, and their needs are more important than my own. And I love teaching; I am a passionate, competent professional who lives for my students from a place of love that is very much like that I have for my own children, as all children in my care are no less dear to my heart than my own. I worked hard to get my degrees, to attain my licensure, and I wanted to do the work I trained so hard to do.

But it wasn't that simple, as for me, nothing has ever been at all "simple."

 I realize now in this moment of coming to a point of acceptance that in the context of my presenting on the ASD spectrum, my propensity for inflexibility and rigid thinking and perception was incompatible with this. There was no order. There was no ability for me to know what to expect, to have enough time to be organized enough in my own space to have the safety, the control I needed. I need to feel like I am in control of my environment. I need a stable routine to serve as a grounding force. I need a reasonable amount of space and time to take care of myself and take care of my responsibilities in order to function. And I had none of this, and that is actually an understatement: everything that I needed was inverted and I had the extreme opposite of all of it. 

 I melted down. I burnt out.  I had to resign my position.

But yet, I blamed myself. I went all the way back through evaluation, neuro doctors, psychiatrists. I was worked all the way over again to find out what I could do in order to get through this. 

More meds were added. The longer I was away from the school system, from the traditional realm of in-person work, the better and better I was feeling. I found employment through an online teaching organization and I could do this and be home, be in control of my schedule, my environment, not have my ASD manifestations triggered. 

I mistakenly took this to mean I was ready to go back into the public school system as it seemed I was "all better now."

I took a job as a summer school teacher in the public school and boy did I ever jump in with both feet. I bought and gathered supplies, got organized, focused, ready. I wanted this so bad. With everything in me, I wanted it to work. I wanted to prove to myself, my husband, my family, that I fell down again because of my inherent mental health issues, but look how hard I worked to stand back up again. I was going to show them. I was going to overcome this time. I was going to succeed. 

And it only took a period of about 72 hours before I had to face the fact that none of this could be further from the truth.

The chaos was still there, and worse. The disorganization was still there, and worse. The heaped on unreasonable demands were still there...and worse, for they didn't even come with adequate enough time to even plan for me to meet them. It was all in this hellish whirlwind of insanely high, unattainable demands, no responsiveness whatsoever in terms of providing me with the time I'd need to meet them, and chaos, chaos, chaos. 

Five different rigid curriculums. Demands for how to use literally every minute of the day. A state testing style assessment to be administered, data to be aggregated across three different levels. I didn't have a badge, wasn't being provided with one, so I couldn't even enter the building without someone letting me in. I didn't have an email so I couldn't use the smartboard to guide students in online work. The printer was broken, so I didn't have the ability to provide them paper work. Though we were supposed to implement these five curriculum sets, not all the materials came in, so there was that. My ability to try to get the students to access the online curriculum was hampered because their account hadn't been set up. I didn't even have time to orient myself with the school building enough to know where to even take the kids. My co-teacher came down with Covid so I didn't even have her support to accomplish anything or have her there to help at all. 

Oh, and we had two days to prepare for all of this. Not even two days. About three hours each day, because interspersed was an avalanche of information being dumped on us, more and more. Then a meeting would occur later, and so much of the information had changed. The first day happened, and then the last day was four days later on the last day before students would have arrived. And my co-teacher was sick. Everything we had planned to try to rush to put together was split 50/50 between us so when she wasn't there, it was 100% on me and that was just it. And I didn't even have a straight up uninterrupted day to try to get it together. Worse yet, normally, my saving grace during the year was being able to stay several hours after school to pull it together and take as much time as I needed so I could be organized and ready for the next day. This wasn't the case; they rushed us out of the building and locked it an hour after the day was done. 

 That was all it took. I broke. 

At the end of one of the third disruptive informational meetings, I absolutely fell to pieces. I burst into tears in front of an entire room full of strangers, colleagues whose names I didn't even have the chance to learn, and I mean I just sobbed. "Two days each with three hours to prepare for seven weeks all by myself isn't enough! It's not enough! I can't do this! I can't!" And thank God for the kindness shown to me by the special education teachers who I had gotten to know briefly, whom I'd told I was on the spectrum, because they helped me through it...they knew how to help me through it, just like they devoted their lives to helping autistic kids like me through meltdowns every day.

 Everyone else just ignored me. 

I resigned.

So here I am. At the end of all of this, because I have decided, yes, this is the end. And perhaps the beginning. It is the end of me trying to force myself to fit into something that I am simply not made to fit. And it is the beginning of me finally accepting who I am, particularly my limitations, as being what they are and to give up trying to force them to be what I want them to be, what I wish they were, because I've neve been able to, and I never will. 

It hurts. And it is freeing. My husband and parents are supportive, wholly and finally. I am never going to be able to go back to the public school system. I am never going to be able to go out of the home and into any kind of outside employment. And so, we are going to have to make some adjustments. 

We're going to sell our home and move into an apartment so that we can reduce our overhead expenses enough to accommodate me working part-time in a limited capacity for now on. My parents are going to help us through this summer. 

And we are just going to adjust our lifestyle accordingly so that I will be able to finally accept the fact that I am limited and I always will be. And avoid any further attempts to push back against this. Because the 72 hours I just went through was me being back where I was in October all over again. It was enough to push me into burnout almost extreme enough that I would have had to go to the hospital. If I hadn't resigned last night and tried to force myself back into that situation today, I have no doubt I would have had an even worse meltdown and subsequent burnout that would have resulted in me being hospitalized right now. 

It is what it is. I am what I am. And I'm finally ready, I think, to embrace this. I didn't choose what happened to me when I was a child. I didn't wake up one morning and think, I believe I'll go out and get a TBI and brain damage that's going to make my whole life a struggle. But it happened. It does define me. I am autistic. I have an organic personality disorder and executive dysfunction due to an irreparably damaged frontal lobe.

 And I have to live my life accordingly. And so I will. And I hope in time I can be someone who exists to demonstrate to others like me... you can, too. 

Theology of Fear vs. Theology of Love

 There are a few things that I really struggle with still on my spiritual journey.

The first is big: One of the main tenets of the AA program beyond the 12 Steps is this powerful principle of how holding onto resentments is tantamount to poisoning yourself. You're effectively accomplishing little more than, as they put it, beating yourself in the head with the club you'd like to use on the other person. But even though I know this to be true in my heart, and I've done a lot of work and come a long way on letting go many resentments, there is still one in particular that I struggle to reconcile.

The second is even bigger: if I hate people because I perceive that their actions are hateful, then I am no better than they are, ultimately. In fact, I become the same thing as what they are, just in a different form. The world is positively sick with this very problem right now... in trying to fight back against those who certain groups passionately believe are perpetuating injustice, intolerance, and bigotry, so many members become themselves just as unjust, intolerant, and bigoted...complete with a justification for being this way that is the equivalent provided by the oppositional party.

That's the trouble: resentments are poison. They will bring about the destruction of everything within us that is goodness and love. And without goodness and love as our guiding, motivational force from within, then we are just adding to the chaos, the strife, the dissonance of the endless plunge into the abyss of "us vs. them." 

No one is ever the better for it. 

Or, in the words of a protest sign I saw circa-2003: Fighting for Peace is Like Fucking for Chastity.

But, for the sake of real talk, even with all this in mind, I still struggle mightily with resentment towards those people and/or entities that use religion as a weapon to hurt others, and at the very least, launch out on a campaign of fear to try to compel people into adopting their system of belief.  

Jesus preached such a clear message of love, but in my experience, one which has been maligned in such a backwards, inverted manner over and over, ceaselessly, in the four decades I've been on this earth by so many of those claiming to be Christians appear the motivated in their faith by pure, unadulterated fear. 

Yes, fear... as if the "fear the Lord" thing in the Bible was meant to be taken literally. They adhere to the tenets of this faith because they seem literally afraid that failure to do so to the most extreme degrees possible means that they will spend an eternity in hell. 

Legalists. Fundies. They're everywhere.

For those who are on the outside of this faith, as I myself once solidly was, this fear is repellant. 

Literally. 

Who on earth would want to come from the outside and into a faith where the followers thereof are on an obsessive quest to put as much certainty between themselves and eternal damnation as they can? 

I know that for this outsider, even from a young age, I knew that from this perspective, to do so anywhere near perfectly enough to even breathe a sigh of relief was impossible.

 Because that's the thing--we're all imperfect. Deeply, fundamentally, irrevocably imperfect.

 It's literally how we were made, even in the context of this faith... there was one season of human perfection at the beginning, but then, oops...the original creation themselves fell short, and so it was that we were all doomed to fall short until the end of time because if you gain nothing else from a perusal of the Old Testament, it's that God can really hold a grudge.

And that's why the part in the Bible about Jesus being sent down here to die for our sins so that we might be forgiven as often as we need to be really matters, because... in and of ourselves, we literally cannot ever do enough to performance art ourselves out of hell. 

But why is it that the fear-focused pedants somehow seem to skip over that part of the Bible? At least they always struck me as doing so for the majority of my life. The way that these people lived demonstrated to me nothing of what I learned so much later than I needed to...that Jesus was love itself, His sacrifice was a greater love than there ever could be, and because of this, when we accepted Him into our hearts, we were in the clear because... we are saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus and not by our own efforts or works (Ephesians 2:8-9). 

And so, this is where we should rest. We should be embraced by this love, and allow ourselves to grow this love within ourselves and allow it to transform us. 

Because honestly? When this is the foundation, there is a motivation that stirs up your heart and you start to want to seek guidance from scripture and pray to be lifted up and manifest this grace, this promise, in your daily life. 

You want to try your best to do the right things because you are motivated by a desire to love God back as hard as He has loved you. And you accept that even though you'll try your best, you'll fall short. But you can rest in the fact that even when this happens (because it will, and often), His love for you is unchanged. He's always got His hand out to help you back up. And the best part of all... maybe (hopefully) you'll never stomp around thumping a Bible in your hand and quoting parts of it at people. But know what will happen, when you strive from this place? People will see something in you that inspires them. People will want to know what you did to get to where you are, and they may ask. And then...then you can tell them. Because maybe they will want to hear, and why?

Because you showed them first.

You showed them that you found a faith that works for you. You showed them that you believe in a God that is all loving and all forgiving, at all times, no matter who you are, who you've been. You showed them that by embracing this love and finding within it your own personal truth, that this loving, supportive, unconditional connection gives you peace, joy, and strength that will endure through trials and difficulties that ought to have crushed you. 

It really is that simple.

 Don't take my word for it. Look at who Jesus really was, what Jesus actually did, and everything that follows in which we are reminded and guided toward who we ought to pray to be and allow to be done through us. 

But yet... the fundies. The legalists.

 The modern day hypocrites and pharisees who in days of old were shouting and praying in the streets for everyone to see how holy and righteous they were, who now blast this behavior out over social media, turn it into a brand, promote it on swag, emblazon it in books. 

Ah, yes: We're RIGHTEOUS! You're DOING IT WRONG! If you're not doing it the exact ways that we're telling you that you should, well... you can just go and get...well, you know. 

This grace of life to which every person on earth is heir, for Jesus died for ALL of us...is made out to be an exclusive members only club that oftentimes once some of these megalomaniacs get big and loud enough you literally have to pay a fee to buy into...oh, the retreats, the workshops, the speakings, the conferences. Where the hypocrites and pharisees can parade about on a stage to engage in the same behavior that Jesus Himself angrily clarified in Matthew 23 that He had NO patience for. 

And what purpose does this serve? None of any kind that Jesus was all about. Yes, these modern dayers do this thing and the whole purpose is to narcissistically gratify their own perverse egotistical need to be holier than, better than, more righteous than everyone else and what they are concerned about is how many likes, follows, devotees they can accumulate. 

Meanwhile? How many people, people just like I used to be, who were imperfect, lost, struggling, full of self-loathing, people who have a deeper, more palpable need for a sustaining relationship with an all-loving God than average, are they alienating? 

Answer: all of them. 

But do they care? Why, of course not! They're the proverbial mean girls, the queen bees of the world holding court in the high school cafeteria that is the world gathered en masse on these platforms. They are WINNING. They are the popular kids, the girls with the shiniest hair, the nicest clothes, the highest degree of privilege. And anyone who does not bow down and kiss their feet and hail them as the be-all, end-all of Christian wisdom and how to apply it, well... 

...just as was the case in high school, we the proverbial denizens of the Isle of Misfit toys can just slink off into the shadows, shamed. That's right. And sometimes, these entities will literally en masse shame others who dare to have a different perspective than them. 

I won't name names, but I will just say a popular fundie duo who are everything I'm talking about here had a big, expensive, exclusive conference and literally broadcast a video of a faith vlogger who had an alternate perspective on Christianity and shamed her, called upon their sycophantic flock to shame her and that is just...so ugly. Ugly in the same way it was in high school when the mean girls decided to single you out for being "different" in some way and enlisted a whole flock of flying monkeys to visit torment upon you.

And... pardon me for a moment, but... it just turns my stomach that people who are on the outside as I was once upon a time look at the Christian faith and this is what they see. This is what they think it is. This is what I thought it was, and boy I'm here to tell you, I wanted no part of it. I already carried the weight of a shame more immense than I could scarcely bear. And these types of people did nothing to try to reach me, and everything to use my own obvious failures to shame me further, to use me as something to step on to elevate themselves higher. 

I am grateful, however, that there are voices--including the particular voice of the vlogger that was publicly shamed--speaking up that are calling out this nonsense for what it is, that are opening up new perspectives for those on the outside to enable understanding that everything this set seeks to put out there about this faith is not what it is even really about.

 And I hope, in time, that these voices grow louder and louder and that the message of love becomes louder than this message of fear. 

And meanwhile... my husband's son from a former marriage was born to a woman who is a flaming, abject, over-the-top fundie. And, naturally, she insists that an astronomically high rate of tuition be paid for him to attend a private CHRISTIAN school which is little more than a converted warehouse governed by a group of adults who are employed to teach there based solely, it seems, on their possession of scorchingly terrified religiosity and not at all based on possession of relevant degrees/education that would otherwise qualify them to teach; they operate out of a homeschool curriculum book drafted by a large-scale terrified religiosity motivated organization, so who needs actual credentials, am I right? As an educator myself, I shudder to imagine what exactly is in that material and to what degree any of it is factual. 

Oh, and of course... the rules:

1. Contemporary Christian music of any kind is prohibited because it sounds secular.

2. Harry Potter is banned because witches/magic/spells = the devil.

3. Halloween is banned. No, they have some kind of ceremony to celebrate Martin Luther.

4: There are no dances, because dancing is evil. This means no senior prom. These kids get dressed up as if they were going to prom, but instead they go sit around a table in a brightly lit room, listen to awards be given out for athletic excellence, they eat, and go home. 

Yeah, I just... I can't. And yet, I know I need to let it go, "to each their own" this mess, but... it just gets me fired up because it is hurting people.

Unitarian Universalism advocates a free and responsible search for truth; the Wiccan rede declares, harm none, do what ye will. I'm down with that. But letting go of this resentment is just very hard. I've got a lot more praying to do. And I will do it. Because I don't want to let this resentment or any, for that matter, diminish whatever light God wants to grow in me to help others. And it will. So I must let go. 

For now, expressing myself like this helps. And yes, I'll pray. I'll work on healing leftover hurting places within me that this is clearly bringing up... I'll ask God to work through me as I work toward this healing. And I'll just try to focus my energy less on things that are broken, that I can't change nor control, and try to focus it more on things that I can fix, what I can do, to be a part of the solution.

And meanwhile... I'll just keep writing. And doing my best to love God and know that He will always love me. And also, to do my own best to love me. You know... I'm someone who just used blatantly used the F word in a piece discussing Christianity and also someone who totally thinks that we might technically be able to call Jesus a demigod because... the shoe fits.

But you know what, y'all? For real... in the looking back, when I was that lost, hurting teenage girl, I would have trusted someone like me and I would have gained more from someone like me than I ever gained from those that sought to alienate me because they were drowning in their own egos and eaten up with fear. 

That's what matters. That will always be the gauge by which I measure whether I'm doing okay enough or not.

And for now, I'm doing okay. 

On Being Still and Knowing.

 I am at such a major in-between season in my life right now. 

Oh, the process of writing and then attempting to plant this book. I write because, in a word, I can't not. This story exists in me, and it has to come out. And so it has. So it continues. I've progressed midway through the third of a probable seven books in this series. 

And the first of which is now making its way however falteringly through the world. It is out with a  publisher who should be getting back to me any day now with their decision. It is out with an agent as well. 

The waiting is painful. And I already knew this. I've been through this cycle before. It is abjectly nonlinear. What seems like it is going to be one step forward ultimately proves to be an about-face return right back to where you began. This will go on for months. It may go on for years. You may rise to heights higher than you'd ever imagined only to be dropped right back down to square one. I've seen people gushing on Twitter about getting signed with an agent, the champagne bottle popped with husband and friends...and I softly sigh because... dear friend, take a moment to take a breath. This is not the be-all, end-all that it seems. A step forward, yes, but... it may end in a champagne-worthy conclusion, or it may not. The agent will pitch with your query letter. They are facing even greater, more exclusive giants. May God bless you with success, but nothing is certain...nothing but rejection. Anything else is an exception of divine proportions. 

This go-round is even more challenging. Bafflingly so. Despite the fact that the original concept got so far on such comparably little effort and heartache and this redone version is three times better... there has been so much more push back. 

Seventy plus rejections, and they're still rolling in. No interest. No room on anyone's list. Even my parents, who had always been at least marginally supportive and interested are now so very hands off, disengaged. 

It has hurt, it has caused me confusion to the point of heartbreak in moments. But still, I write. But still, I keep pushing on. 

I'm just in the middle of a major in-between season. And it is huge. And despite the frustrations and unfulfillment and setbacks in the present, if I know God at all and what He's already done in my life, in other in-between seasons...everything that seems to be bad is actually good. 

He has a plan for me, a plan for my story. I am on my way to it. And the reason I'm having all of these doors closing and all of this pressure is because He is pushing me toward some particular end. An end He has already chosen, one which I couldn't ever even imagine or get to on my own. 

He has done this for me so many times in my life before, and He is doing it now, big. 

This in-between season is a time to truly count it all joy, because I am growing not only spiritually, but in my commitment to telling this story, to pushing it out. If He made this easy for me, it wouldn't be as worth it. But each difficulty faced, each challenge accepted, each moment when I have to keep striving without accolades, without external validation, I am being forged in fire. 

It is almost exciting, in a way, when I step back and look at the big picture. This is just how He works in my life. When I am crossing over a major bridge, growing from one place into a place of abundant blessings, a place that is another piece of my heart's desire fitting into place, He doesn't just make way. No, He makes me strive for it, pray for it, trust in Him for it, press into Him for it, reach my hands up higher and use every disappointment and dead end to hold a little closer to Him. 

He has always had a plan for my life. And in every in-between season, when I have chosen to affirm His love and ask Him to grow me, to make me ready to receive, in due time, I get to that other side. And what He's got waiting for me is even better than what I could have conceived. 

So it is where I am today: Psalm 37:4-- I will delight in You, Lord, and You will give me the desires of my heart. You've never failed me, and I know You won't, ever. I affirm this in Jesus' name, Amen.

The Day My Daughters' Elementary School Went on Active Shooter Lockdown

The horrible, heartbreaking events that have occurred in Texas have brought to mind a memory of one of the most frightening days of my life, as a parent. 

My girls were in Kindergarten and 2nd grade. I was just about to leave to go pick them up when I noticed my ex-husband was calling me. His voice was strained though he was trying his best to hold it steady. He asked me if I'd heard what was going on, if I knew that the school was on lockdown due to some kind of unspecified active shooter situation. No, I hadn't heard, and of course, I immediately became hysterical.

He raised his voice at me in that same strained, steady manner, demanded that I get my shit together immediately and keep it together because me losing it was the last thing anyone needed.

I tried.

He explained to me that there wasn't anymore information available, but he ran immediately to the school. when he heard. The police had it barricaded off, and he said he saw officers in tactical gear storming into the school with assault rifles. The only thing the police on site reported was that children were going to be bussed to the middle school, and all the parents needed to go there.

I was ready to throw up because...that reminded me too much of what I'd read about the aftermath of Columbine, how parents had to wait at the middle school for their children to get off the bus.

I fell to pieces. He told me to stay where I was. He told me that he was on his way there, and that he would be the one to collect them. My heart turned inside out. I knew exactly what he wasn't saying. If something had indeed gone wrong, he was going to be the one to face the news first.

In the context of my ex-husband, he's always been a less than stellar father, pretty much lackluster, uninvolved, more wrapped up in his own mess than anything else, but the stress and reality of this situation was enough to make him snap his head up and be a father, a man. That, in and of itself, was frightening, too.

Of course, I got in the car and rushed to the middle school. We were there for several hours, and there was no further information. Finally, the busses began to arrive. And my little girls got off and ran to me, to their father, sobbing in confusion and relief.

In apartment complex beside the school, a man had gone in and shot his ex-wife, his mother, and authorities were able to be alerted of his would-be plans to storm into the elementary school and murder his children. Officers had immediately rushed to the scene, protected the school inside and out. They were able to intercept the man and shot him dead before he could carry out his plan.

My daughters described how one minute, everything was fine and then the next, everything fell apart. They announced a lockdown, but they didn't do the things they'd been taught. Police officers came running into the school with big guns, shouting at everyone to hurry, to follow them. Everyone in the whole school was rushed into locker rooms. Police officers with their big guns stood outside to guard them. Everyone was crying, they said. Everyone was hugging each other. Some of their teachers were crying, too. Their teachers kept telling them over and over how much they loved them. No one knew what was happening, they said. Everyone was just so afraid.

I will be forever grateful to the police officers in our town with how quickly they reacted, and just thank God that somehow, they received this news not a moment too soon.