Hopeful Signs
This morning my head feels achy and I have the slightest prick of panic in my chest and arms. I have the sense that there’s something I haven’t done that I should have done, but that’s not necessarily abnormal. I’m a practiced and competent procrastinator.
For the past several days it has occurred to me that I need to curl myself up into a ball of some sort and pray for guidance or fortitude, but that’s very odd because I don’t actually believe in a god who intervenes in our affairs.
But something is pulling. Something is asking for attention. Some notion of “what’s next” or “what now” or “what the fuck” is pulling at the sleeve of my solid green t-shirt today, and it feels more important than any of the tasks anyone else may be waiting on me to complete.
•••
I stopped doing my homework when I was in the fourth grade, or at least that’s how I remember it. I had a teacher who was wicked and gruff. She pronounced Hawaii as “Ha-why-ya” and her preferred form of punishment for talking in class was to have you go stand in the back of the classroom, set your feet wide apart, and reach down and grab your ankles for several minutes. It was 1989, and I had a boyfriend in the same class who spiked his hair and shaved lines in his sideburns and would get in trouble on purpose. My desk was in the back row so when he was called out, he would pick a spot close to me to accept his punishment. He lived a few doors down from me and he had more Nintendo games than I did. I would go visit him and we would play Tetris and Super Mario Brothers 2. On Valentines Day he gave me a giant Hershey Kiss with a neatly folded one dollar bill tucked into the box. All in all, he was killing the fourth-grade romance game.
In the fourth grade, we studied state history, and I learned that the Tennessee state bird is the Mockingbird, and the state insects are the firefly and the ladybug. I learned that there are 95 counties in Tennessee and that Davy Crockett is a state ancestor to be proud of.
In the fourth grade, I had a very best friend. She lived in a small house next to a very big house on a giant farm and she had the Jeopardy Nintendo game which we played so many times we had every single question memorized. That year or the next she got really into Twin Peaks. I watched it with her, and it absolutely warped my mind. I’m pretty sure that’s not why I stopped doing my homework, but it certainly is a clue that my brain started focusing on subjects that were much more complicated than ladybugs and mockingbirds around that time.
Once during one of my countless sleepovers at my best friend’s house, I was swinging on a swing that was made of a board tied to an old, thick tree branch with two pieces of rope. Suddenly while I was swinging, the branch that held the swing broke clear in half. The giant branch grazed my arm as it fell past me to the ground, but the other part of the branch still held the swing and me firmly in place, and I was just fine. It scared me so much that I lost my breath, but I guess the fact that the tree held onto me and my swing is a good enough reason to go on trusting trees.
My best friend remained my best friend for two years until the sixth grade when she moved on like other friends like kids do, but she also formed a club that was all about hating me called “The Monster Mash.” They met every day at lunch and made sure I overheard plans to ransack my locker. I had to go to the guidance counselor to get a new lock to keep out the bandits. I will tell you the truth – it took me literally decades to get over all of that.
I figured out not too long ago in therapy that all the time I spent not doing what “I was supposed to do” growing up, and even into my twenties, was the actual time that I spent energy on more important things like figuring out who I was and what was important to me. I literally did not have time to do my algebra homework because it was up to me to figure myself out and learn how to be happy and love myself. I don’t think I cracked the “love myself” code until my thirties, but still — this realization that all the time I spent judging myself for being lazy and irresponsible was actually time I was prioritizing more appropriately than my teachers and parents were asking me to – It may sound like self-gratifying bullshit, but let me tell you that when I figured this out I exhaled so deeply that I actually felt lighter, and about thirty years worth of shame melted off of my shoulders.
It was wonderful.
I’m not sure what exactly I’ve forgotten to do today that has me feeling the same way I did when I showed up to math class without my homework, but considering the fact that I’ve typically been able to pull myself out of most near-disasters that I’ve landed in due to my procrastinating ways, I’m not actually too worried about it.
I think the real question I have to figure out the answer to is “what do I need to let myself off the hook for right now” and oh my word it could be any number of things.
But I suppose the good news is that someone liked me enough to add that bonus one-dollar bill to my Hershey Kiss , and that the tree didn’t let me go, and that I still feel compelled to pray even though I don’t know who I’m praying to.
All of these things are hopeful signs.
