Well, I finally confirmed for myself what I've suspected for a while now. I have anxiety attacks. This explains the weird sensations I've had for months now that the doctors just couldn't explain. My husband chalked it up to hypochondria (which I vehemently denied). The doctors just said they couldn't figure out what it was (contributing to my mistrust of Western medicine). After all, there's nothing in my life that would cause additional stress...like a move, job change, change in income, miscarriage, and lifestyle change! When I think about it, I've had these attacks for almost 18 years now. I've always ignored this possibility because in my head I see anxiety as one step away from schizophrenia. I know this is highly unlikely, but given my mother's mental health history, it makes sense. When you're mother or father has a severe mood disorder, you find yourself hyper vigilant about the symptoms in your own life. I wrote a poem about it in the margi...

Driving home one day this week, my head was swirling with too many thoughts to track. How are we going to pay our bills on my salary? When will I be able to blow dry my hair without fear of keeping someone awake? How much more money is my husband going to spend on the new place? When will he be back at work? How am I going to get my 5th and 7th periods to "buy into" this reading thing? Will I ever convince them that they can trust me? Where can I find the time to formulate a plan to help them? I was already in tears as I thought about the social obstacles these kids face. The poverty in this town is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I can handle the sights of it, but I am still struggling with some of the hidden rules in their community. They don't believe they can trust anyone in authority. Education is too abstract a concept because the results are not immediate. They are so far behind their grade level that most of them have just given up. I've watched the...

My cousin, Geoffrey , turned 21 today. I called him tonight to wish him a happy birthday and was thrilled to hear his voice. It was filled with life and a sense of awe. As he so aptly put it, "I'm sure Shakespeare has a word for how I feel right now, but I'm too lazy to look it up." I remember that feeling. I still feel it. We talked briefly about those moments in life where you look around and understand right there what a wonder it is to breathe. About an hour later, I found myself stopped on the road waiting for an accident to be cleared. As I watched the medical helicopter fly away, I mumbled, "Lord, please help them." When I was 18, my response to being stopped by an accident was, "Someone had better be dead since I had to wait all this time." Now I want to cry. I love how putting some time under your belt changes your perspective. I find these days that I say two prayers on an almost daily basis. The first is in the morning before I even stre...

Right now I'm jealous. I'm envious. I want something that I see in other people. I want a cause. I want an idea that moves me. I want to wake in the morning inspired by something beyond my control. I want to give my life away for something greater than myself. I look around and see that my life has spun far out of control. It's cluttered and suffocated by boxes of trinkets and too much credit card debt. This isn't me. I once said to my therapist that I really don't care what other people think of me, but that I thought I was supposed to care, so I forced myself to do so. There's a reason I'm created this way. There's a reason why my greatest drive in life to live my life. There's a reason why following the "rules" has left me feeling empty. I think I need to drop out of the race. I'm cleaning out the closets of my house and my head. I haven't felt this sure of anything in a long time.

I just finished loading boxes into my vehicle. Before I drove to Kissimmee last night, my dear one told me to "load up as many boxes as possible." This tells me that 1. We will be moving in to the new place very soon; and 2. I haven't boxed up as much stuff as I thought I had. When I signed up for this new stage in my life, this was not exactly what I had in mind. I am *still* sleeping on the floor in our friends' house...still eating way too much fast food...still driving six hours each weekend...still wearing the same clothes and flip-flops to work each week...still going to work with bare ears...still waiting to see how our money situation is going to work out. It's the earrings situation that really gets to me. I had a rather emotional week. The a/c condenser in my truck went out, and my lovable, gear-head husband took it one evening so he could replace the part. This gave me a chance to sit in the new place during a fabulous thunderstorm. The batteries in my ...

Tonight I did something I've never done before. I called the cops. On my neighbors. At 1:00 a.m. I was in the process of describing my for-rent house in an email, and just as I was about to type about my quiet neighborhood, I noticed it was not so quiet. I could hear the same shrieks and screams I've heard all day and assumed were the by-product of a neighbors kids playing in the pool. Just to be sure I wasn't imagining the sounds, I stuck my head out the window into the dark night. Then I dialed the sheriff's department to complain about the "party" that it turns out was coming from behind me. From the teenagers romping around in those inflatable Moonwalk get-ups. I felt a twinge of guilt as I hung up the phone and heard the neighbor yell that the kids were being too loud. But it is now thirty minutes later, and they are still noisy. And I want to go to bed. In my bed which is maybe 500 feet from their reverie. It's also the only place to sleep here becau...

Please forgive me. I feel the need to get a little socio-political today. The big news headline in southwest Florida yesterday was "Washington Group Finds the FCAT Flawed." FCAT opponents across the state cheered and shook their finger at the Department of Education at this news. Unfortunately, the actual story resembled the headline like I resemble my brother-in-law's Cuban family. (I'm a bottle brunette.) The Washington group actually found a problem not with the 10th grade FCAT test itself, but in the fact that a high school student needs to pass this test for graduation, thereby proving that he or she is able to work at a 10th grade level. The group recommended students take a test at an 11th or 12th grade level like many other states. At this point, all those cheering people should be hiding right now. But they're not, and the misinformation about standardized tests continues to be passed around like a bad case of the flu. I cry in moments like this because i...

Four years ago today I received a phone call from my cousin, Rachel, who sobbed into the phone, "Grandpa's dead." He had been sick for a few years, and we knew this day was inevitable, but it still sent shock waves through my soul. I'd love to tell the story of his funeral, and perhaps I will sometime this week, but for now I just want to share some of my memories of this remarkable man. He was a big man with a gruff voice that scared me when I was younger. I never wanted to make him angry for fear of what he would sound like. And yet, I can also still see him standing next to me in church singing worship songs in that baritone. I can also still hear his voice blessing Sunday and holiday dinners. The year before he died, we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning on the front p orch swing. He told me war stories about Navy ships and German torpedoes and how isolated and frightening the South Pacific is in the middle of the night. I also remember wondering that ni...

A lifetime ago I was at Cooper's Rock in West Virginia. The view of the tree covered Appalachian Mountains was stunning. I stood there overwhelmed and dumbstruck. Being outside in the mountains or a forest or the beach leaves me feeling connected to God in a way that a church has never been able to mimic. In this hallowed moment of personal worship, someone uttered the most ridiculous statement I think I've ever heard. "When I look at that, I think to myself, 'Wow, that's a lot of trees.'" We all laughed. This statement still pops into my head from time to time, and it did the other night as I listened to a talk radio show. (I'm addicted to talk radio the way some people are addicted to reality t.v.) The host was talking about some study that found a formula for unhappiness. Basically, we are unhappy when our idea of what our life should be is different from it's reality. Okay, so it was another "that's a lot of trees" statement, but...