On the negative nagging voices

I've been a teacher for a really long time. And I know that sometimes, student people will lash out when they're mad about something, and usually, it's the people who are failing your class who are mad at you because you did something that they think made them fail and that they are the ones who didn't put in the effort and they will find whatever thing they think can hurt you to say because they are mostly mad at themselves. And they can almost always, always find that one thing, that thing you yourself know isn't how you are your best. They almost always latch onto the things you're not perfect at, knowing yourself, and the thing you even TOLD them you suck at, and they say, "YOU SUCK BECAUSE OF THIS," and then the rest of that day, the only thing your brain can think of is that one negative, mosquito buzzing in the room voice. 

I am aware of all of these things and yet, I still look. 

Why do we do this? Why does our very "evolved" human brain (for some of us, cause, some of us don't ever hear those voices because they always think they're great... apparently) just latch on to that one mosquito in the room buzzing around saying the mean things? 

I knew better than to look, and I did it anyway: Bluebeard's Bride. Now, my brain is full of one noisy mosquito. 

Yes. You win, person who just wanted to be mean. Now, next time, maybe do better on your work so you don't have to do that to someone who tried their freakin' best and is actually a human being.

Dear future students, future review people, future nice folks in the world: if you like something a teacher has done, go to the places and make the nice comments. They sometimes drown out the mean ones, and usually, the only people who do make comments are the mad ones. 

Comic for reference.  

Advice

I think about the power of laughter sometimes.
The joy that flows through the grief, the bubbling
forbidden hysteria of the laugh at the wrong moment. 

Once, when I was very young, in a symphonic band concert,
a friend and I caught that laughter, deep in our chests, swelling,
in danger of overflowing, rolling out over the clarinet rows, contagious.

We dared not look at each other, knowing that would be our end, the trigger
for no way back from all of that abundance of joy. Giggles stifled, choking, actually
painful. Her shoulders next to mine shook with the suppression, and I felt tears prickling.

The conductor, his thick mustache bristling, his eyes serious and focused, looked towards us,
there on the back row, the last row, the third chairs, the deep bass line of the clarinets,
and we knew we had to pull the pain into ourselves, keep that joy within, clutch it. 

Deep breaths now, focus on the music, think of things other than whatever was
tickling our minds to the abundance of deep taboo within, that sense of the
things you aren't allowed to feel. This was serious business, this music. I

think of how we stared, tearing up, deep to stop our joy. Remember
the sense of refusal to be broken, of never letting that joy go, of 
holding it within until it hurts, sharing the unshared moments. 

And I remember:

they don't like it when we laugh at them. 

So keep doing it. Don't let them win. 

Let the laughter roll out of you, until,

weak and spent, you have to sit down. 

Regroup. Gather within yourself

all of that old, held in taboo. All

of those emotions you weren't 

supposed to feel. And share

them until they know we know. 

Let it out. Let the years of

joy roll out of you until

your hope, your love,

your beauty —  is a weapon —  point it. 

At their weaknesses. 

KAW 2024

Art licensed through Adobe Stock & edited by me....

Losing a friend, ADHD and Grief

I think something we don't talk about, almost ever, is the life fact of losing a friend. Not to a dramatic event, necessarily, but sometimes even the slow loss of fading connections. In my life, I've lost a LOT of friends when I was young because we moved so often. I've lost a few to distance, and a few to dramatic events that had an impact both in the short and long term, as well. 

Sometimes when I get those security question that ask you things like "the street your first home was on" or "your first grade teacher's name" or especially "your childhood best friend" I think-- who knows those things? I know people do, but it's definitely not me. I moved regularly as a child, sometimes with some notice, often without any notice at all. My family's single mother, excessive poverty lifestyle was anything but stable in those ways. I always have to choose one or two of the "security questions" that have to do with things that are less about your early childhood..... It makes me a little sad to realize how many of those usually ten questions I can't even come close to answering. (Also this is part of a discussion I think I'll eventually write about CPTSD, as well, but not today). 

But back to the point-- losing a long term friendship. Sometimes it CAN be a dramatic thing-- a big fight, especially. In our culture, we talk about losing love a lot. You turn on Netflix alone and there are going to be entire categories of movies and TV shows that deal with this. (And this doesn't count the ones based on death, which isn't at all what I'm talking about). So culturally, I don't think we practice the thought of what happens when a friendship ends.  And part of you tells yourself that you're making too much of it. That you shouldn't be this upset. That you're over-reacting. But then part of you KNOWS you're over reacting and can't help it and knows that the over reaction might even make what you dread worse. 

It's hard. It's as brutal as the love relationships. Sometimes I think it's even more brutal because a part of you, at least at some level, expects those love relationships, romance, to not last forever. (And I don't mean marriage-- because that's a different topic entirely). 

So the point is-- being ghosted by someone who you care about, who you think of as a friend, and who you try to reach out to and connect with to let them know -- "hey, this feels really bad; what's going on?" is really, really rough. 

Image from article at this link.

I have a kind of emotional issue with my ADHD called RSD: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria that makes this kind of thing even worse. Because look, I ALWAYS worry if you don't text me back right away. I can handle it if it's a few hours. But if you leave me on read for weeks at a time, and there's no real reason I can trace it to, I'm definitely certain you hate me and never want to talk to me again, and if I tentatively say "hi" trying to rekindle that chatting and you don't reply, or you reply that you're busy and will get back to me but then NEVER DO, be pretty sure that I am devastated and spending hours thinking about it in a way that would seem stupid to most people. There's a reason why ADHD is an actual disability. It makes life a lot harder in everything, but people will say "don't let it bother you so much; it's not as big of a deal as you think" but hey, look. I want you to know that it IS actually as big of a deal to some people as we think it is. Your neurodivergent friends are definitely upset. And we can't just stop being that way any more than a blind person can just think about it harder and see things better. 

A neurotypical response to something might say "ah well; I'll deal with that when I need to; they're busy; whatever" but trust me, even if it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to you, and even if maybe you think you not talking to them when they've reached out to you is just YOU being busy and not having time to respond-- a certain percentage of us are mourning, deeply, the loss of a friend we trusted. And we don't do trust deep friendships easily, by the way.  

So if you manage to work your way into a trust circle of a person who is very introverted and also has a neurodivergent mind-- please don't ghost them. And know that the amount of times they've reached out to you to try to connect and find out what's up are actually HUGE steps, and even a short "hi, I'll get back to you soon; I'm busy" would go a million miles to let us know it's not the worst case scenario we already have built up. 

Summer Thinking: Meet Your ADHD

I tend to neglect my writing in the summer, which is absurd, because during the school year, I always feel pressured and/or conflicted in my own personal writing. I am helping students write, usually, and the critiques of other writing tend to mean that it's hard to find space for me. And in the summer, I don't teach-- so I don't have those other critiques. So summer should be ultra writing productive. Right? Haha lolz. 

This summer, I am in the first summer where I have been full diagnosed with ADHD and have medication that helps me really, truly, productively FOCUS. It's amazing and infuriating at the same time. Amazing because I can accomplish so very much. Infuriating because I'm almost 55 years old and I've had this disability my entire life and was never diagnosed with it. All those years I struggled to focus on writing my dissertation, on finishing grad school before I had my kids, on my career productivity, on grading and creating things for teaching without doing it all in a rush at the last possible minute. I honestly always just thought I was inherently lazy and the way I am is just the way everyone else is but they just aren't lazy. 

This kind of thinking is incredibly common, turns out. It also turns out that thanks to us GenX moms getting help for our teens and going "hey, I do that too? Maybe I could use some help?" a LOT of moms (and probably dads too) are learning at midlife that they have this issue. That they've been walking in knee deep water their whole life, and that now, with a little help, they can actually walk ON DRY LAND LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. 

Menopause has been my trigger, I think. I think mostly I was able through most of my life to "mask" and be mostly on target. But the hormones and a fuzzy brain from that just made some things SO HARD that I finally admitted that perhaps I could take a look at talking to a psychiatrist, and he was pretty flabbergasted by how intense my issue was and how much I'd accomplished anyway and how much help I deserved to get. 

SO what does that all mean for me as a writer? This summer for me has been incredibly productive, just not for writing. I have done a LOT of spring cleaning (okay, summer cleaning) in my home. I've gotten a bunch of piles of stuff tossed away, cleared out, donated, organized. I "Marie Kondo'd" my house, like yes, yes, yes I did. I do still have ONE area that might not happen because right now my thoughts are turning away from the urgency of "sparking joy" with home decor. But it's still possible I'll get inspired and get the little closet under the stairs done. That might wait 'til Winter Break, though. 

Anyway. I kind of came here thinking I'd write something creative and it took me like 20 minutes to re-secure my account because it had somehow gotten rerouted to some other domain (which like-- how does that even happen? Hackers? And if so, to where? Cause it just seemed glitched, not rerouted and hacked). And then I lost steam and decided to just journal about this huge life issue. 

And now I'm probably done for the day on writing. The rest of summer is already filling up with a bunch of "human maintenance" appointments for me, my kids, and a family member I'm helping out so..... this might be all we get for Summer 24. And you know what? I feel fine with that. 

Trying to Keep Up With Spring

This is less of a creative post but it's kind of me thinking about what it takes to be creative so I'll put it here in the blog no one reads anymore. 

This time of the semester (close to finals) is always kind of tricky, especially in the Spring. I generally try to avoid teaching summer classes, mostly because our contract is for just those Fall to Spring 9 months and summer is "extra." I don't need the extra to live to support my life so if I can let other teachers who DO need the income have that time, then I will. And I'm also kind of happy to have the summer to regroup, to make my inner introvert happy and bored. Happy and bored makes me a much better, less burnt-out teacher again in the Fall. 

But Spring-- Spring we are all a bit tired. Students aren't "NEW" to this anymore, and they maybe aren't quite as rosy and enthusiastic about things like "learning to write a research paper with MLA sources!!" Now with parenthetical citations!! (To be fair, it's been parenthetical citations for a pretty long time, so it's not really a new thing, but I was going for a vibe there.) 

Not an eclipse. Kinda the night sky; Stars and Moon.  By LoFfofora Licensed via Adobe Stock. Please do not reproduce unless you pay them too. 

And so a week or so ago (it was longer than that really but who is counting) we did Total Eclipse of the Sun activities. Except in Texas, the clouds mostly came out to play and ruin our glimpse of the small dragon who occasionally comes out to take small bites out of our star. It did get a little chilly, the sun went dark for about 30 seconds, the birds caught zoomies and students, who had clustered around the quad and gotten snacks and eclipse glasses, milled about, not sure exactly what to do and a lot disappointed. 

My smallest offspring and I stood on a walkway up a bit higher and watched. A couple of the dual credit high schoolers were also up there and we all peered at the sky to see clouds part, which they did a teeeeeensy bit. Then the eclipse was officially over and we went back to our day. Pretty underwhelming for us, honestly. 

I did really like what my college's student life offices tried to do. They had music blasting, including "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (which we also looked at in my classes.) "New Moon on Monday." Other moon related songs. And when the sun briefly went dark, the campus lights came on and students dutifully "oooooh'd." 

Moving on into this coming week, we are moving into Research Projects. It could go well; it could be difficult. One never really knows. I will get some essays that make me smile and I will grade them and we will do Presentations and then a few weeks from now I will dress up in the cap n gown and traipse in to the cap n gown music and sit there smiling and clapping for the students who have passed their first two years of college and are moving up to the next couple. Some of them will have written Research Projects for me in the past. The dressing up in cap n gown and cheering for students in a milestone is still one of my Favorite Things™.

And so, it is Spring. We might want to fall backwards into piles of cherry blossoms (sort of a reference to this long loved sad poem) and melt into the landscape of our own sorrows. But this is Texas, and we don't have cherry blossoms. So I guess we're just gonna melt into the oncoming heat (coming soon to a small campus near you) and be glad it's not quite summer YET. 

April is National Poetry Month.

We read poems today.
Short ones. In my literature &
composition class. Students, stuck inside on a spring Tuesday,
a day a little mud-luscious, 
listened to Langston Hughes, ee cummings,
Dorothy Parker. Margaret Atwood. Marge Piercy. 

Well. At least some of them listened. Some of the we
focused instead on their phones. Look,
I'm not of the age of the "shakes fist at sky/ this blasted generation" type.
I'm good with the social media. And the dank memes & the culture wars.
But really. These are some good poems. Razzle AND dazzle. 

We
are supposed to be studying tone. As in "don't use that tone with me"
teens.

And also speaker. And voice. We
definitely read some Gwendolyn Brooks. And I told them how, when I
first learned that poem, in high school, I had never heard a real poet read a real poem. 

Not really. How would you even do that in 1987?

Can you imagine? 

And the revelation when I finally did hear Brooks emphasize that 

WE
at the end of every line. Jesus. What a voice. Singing sin and gin.

But, even then
I did get to hear music.
MTV, radio.
Oh I loved me a good pop song. Lived for it, really.
Cassette tapes carefully curated,
pause pressed to stop the DJ from talking over the song. (Why did they
do that? Anyway?) We
would scramble, and the DJ would talk anyway. 

I remember calling in, once, to dedicate "Keep on Loving You" by REO Speedwagon
to a boy with curly dirty-blonde hair. "To Scott from Kim." The thrill
when I heard the DJ read it out in a long list of

to xxxx

from xxxx's

(I don't even know
if he heard it.) I also did (not)
          keep on loving him. We
          were doomed from the start,
          I guess. 

So anyway. Back (as it always goes) to the students. 

The room is always a bit dim because the
PowerPoint you need to keep
(this generationanygenerationme) engaged
doesn't really show up in full light
using the ancient projector. Dim.  
And they're probably a little sleepy. 
And April is still (as far as I can tell)
the cruelest month. 

And they smiled when appropriate and eddieandbill and bettyandisbel 
are still always as charming as they've always been (which
if you ask Dorothy Parker was never). They
seemed sad at Piercy's Barbie Doll. 

And I ran out of lines of poetry to share. And I let them go early. 
How's that for a tone? 

KAW 4/2/24

I'm LITERALLY on the moon.

That title is not poor literary device use. We tried in January of 2024 but the second time in February was the charm and it worked!! My two creative anthologies I curated and my own short stories in other anthologies finally landed on the moon!!  

I honestly don't know which thing I'm more proud of-- the short story about space dragons, the shapeshifter story, or the two anthologies I curated to publish dozens of intersectional feminist writers, along with a dear friend. And I was also published in an anthology with a really weird and wonderful story about an undead cyborg girl... inspired by a James Tiptree story called "The Girl Who Was Plugged in." Regardless-- they are all on the moon in an incredible digital archive. SQUEAL!

Here is news about the project!