I am Weird

Sitting in my car on a blustery Saturday afternoon on the last official day of winter, I hide from civilization. I have invisible walls that surround me and protect me from having to make conversation with others. It makes me uncomfortable; pleasantries. I suck at it and I'm ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that I'm ALWAYS the awkward, weird one. It doesn't help that I didn't shower this morning, I have greasy hair and I'm wearing my sweatpants that make me look butch. To top it off, it's Houston cold and I'm unprepared for this inclement weather and I happened to have a fleece in my car but it's the one from work that has the university logo and my name with MD and MPH on it so I look like a complete poser/tool. A completely unclean, greasy, butch poser/tool.

I shouldn't care because I'm supposed to be a selfless entity because that's what mothers are supposed to be: completely selfless. My mother is. I am not. My oldest has a water polo tournament and there are other parents that I have to talk to but I don't have anything to say and no one really wants to talk to each other. It's forced niceness. It's like sitting next to the stranger on the airplane. Everyone just wants to bury their nose into their own world but this is worse because a flight is only a couple of hours and you never see the person again. At your kids' sporting events you have to see the same people with some frequency and you don't want people thinking you are a complete asshole.

The worst are the other parents that you know from tournament teams or summer leagues. You are thrown together for a weekend or a summer and so you know each other but no more than you know the kid who bags your groceries and yet you have to smile and make fake conversation. It's the absolute worst. Why can't we just say what we're really thinking?

"This whole thing would be A WHOLE LOT MORE TOLERABLE WITH ALCOHOL!"

Or

"You're the asshole that pressures your mediocre kid so much that I WANT to wet my pants."

Or

"I've spent $5000 on my kids' extra-curricular activities and it's only March. How much are you in the hole?"

Or

"I wouldn't look like a greasy, man-hating lesbian if I wasn't constantly driving my kids around to their expensive activities and I had time to shower and put on clean underwear."

Or

"How long has it been since your last shower?"

Along the same lines, but not really, I have FOMO for my kids. Recently I learned this term from the residents that I teach. FOMO is fear of missing out. It leads you to do stupid stuff. My life is completely ruled by guilt and by FOMO. My kids have FOMO by Proxy. It's the reason I live such a scattered shit-storm of a life. I don't want ANYONE to EVER be upset or disappointed with me so I say yes to as many possible people and situations as possible. You think I'm kidding. I'm not. I'm a total people pleaser. It's pathologic. My psychiatrist just got pissed off at me recently because I canceled 5 minutes before our session. She charged me and I knew she would but somehow she thought I'd be mad about this and left me a message and told me she was going to charge me and "don't have a shit fit." I left her a message apologizing and extolling my responsible character reminding her I'd only cancelled last minute about 3 times in 20 years. For me last minute is literally last minute. She considers last minute to be within 24 hours. Apparently I cancel within 24 hours with some frequency (and with some frequency I mean about 6 times in the past 12 months). She never charged me for those other times but let me reschedule even though the policy is to charge if you cancel within 24 hours. She's been lenient, I get it. Who is NOT gonna try to pay less and not get charged for something that doesn't happen? But she's just as guilty as me. So when she left her message and told me not to have a shit-fit because she was charging me it seemed a little unnecessarily harsh. I might be cheap, but I'm also an adult and I get it. So I tried to defend myself to her when I left her a voice mail. THEN, she emailed me and reminded me of all my egregiousness this past year and it's hard to read tone in an email, but she was definitely snappy. I tell you all of this because it's a great example of me trying to have everybody like me. SHE tells ME not to have a shit-fit (unprofessional and inappropriate, right?) and I try to gently defend myself rather than calling her on it and she gets all uppity and then what do I do? Send her a huge apology email about how much I value her. Dayum I'm so weak! She should be giving me a free session for being so rude on my voicemail! Who is the mental health professional?

My daughter is ridiculously social. If I am to social situations like a CAT is to water then she is to social situations like a FISH is to water. She has scads of friends and invites and places to go and people to see. Any she's not even officially a teenager. My problem is that I try to compensate for my non-existent social graces and instead of using a healthy dose of "NO" to the affairs to which she is invited, I say "YES" almost 100% of the time. I'm already an absolute nut but this just magnifies it. It's a sickness. I do this with my boys too but they aren't as wildly popular as my daughter and I find it easier to say "NO" to them. I'm some subdued version of the Texas Cheerleader Mom. But I'm not gonna take a hit out on someone.

Well the whistle has blown and I gotta go sit in the stands and pretend like I understand the rules and cheer on my kid's team. But I draw the line at spirit gear. I will not wear spirit gear or any t-shirt that describes me in sequins or other bedazzled bling as "____ - mom" where you insert said sport of your child. I'd rather be a tool and wear my god-awful fleece that has the hospital logo and MD on it, proclaiming to the the world that I am incapable of being sorted into the mainstream.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thoughts have been swirling in my head for days. I can't keep denying the urge to write. I don't know if I'll post this one. Everyone has a blog now. Everyone writes their thoughts. In some ways its good and in some ways nothing is sacred any longer. I've been ecclesiastical in my thoughts lately. Everything is perplexing and everything is for naught. We all scuttle around this earth and none of it really matters. Everyone is looking out for themselves and their own best interest.

I have family who live in the same town as me and yet we might as well be in different hemispheres. I have friends in a different hemisphere and I'm closer to them than the oceans and time zones that keep us apart. I spent years of my life afraid to speak my mind and feeling unvalued and invisible. Now I freely speak my mind but others don't always value my thoughts and/or appreciate my transparency. I want my actions to speak louder than my words but most days my words cast an opaque shadow over my actions, distorting or obscuring my intentions. I don't want my children to want for anything but in giving them everything I fear they will lack hunger for relevant things.

The area of my circle has become overwhelming. The formula never changes; πr2. There is a constant and a variable. When you are increasing the radius by an exponent of two, even the slightest adjustment significantly changes the area of your circle. I keep pushing that radius just a little bit more and suddenly my landscape is a venn diagram of overlapping crop circles. The problem is the landscaping is killing me. It's just too much maintenance. I've no sooner mowed down one area when another is so overgrown that I no longer need a mower but a machete. The grass is so tall and dense that I loose my bearings and I never remember to bring my compass. I find my way home, but I'm dehydrated and my legs are all scratched up and I'm covered in insect bites.

And yet I have everything I need within the distance of an outstretched hand. I need to put the binoculars away because I've been looking through the wrong end this whole time.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.