holding the tension of the opposites

i am boring myself with my banter.  so i’m sure i’m boring you as well.  but if i can be quite honest- it’s really hard to be back.  the constancy of our days, the ongoing obsession of zoe not wanting help- with anything, the number of times i have to coach her on behavior, the waste of hours on distractibility.  it’s got me down- low down. 

today i told her that in the 45 minutes we spent with her falling to bits over not knowing how to say the number 464,438 (four hundred and sixty four thousand, four hundred and thirty eight), that i could have held a family meeting and really helped an entire group of people come to terms with their loved ones illness.

that in the 20 minutes it took her to change her shirt and come down stairs again, i could have adjusted someone’s morphine dose and significantly improved their pain.

  i’m pretty sure these are not appropriate comments.  nor is “you know you’re making me crazy” or “why did i have children?” although that one i usually  manage to keep under my breath- notice how i said usually- ie: i've said it more than once.

and while i’m saying these things, i’m envisioning being back in Ethiopia with my morning coffee and pastries and lisa and the kids at the orphanage.  and i’m wondering quite honestly what the heck i’m doing. 

i realize that we find what we need to, when we need it.  that life experiences morph together and people and places take on meaning- assigned by something else.  and being alive and happy with out her- gave me meaning, perhaps too much meaning, perhaps it was a window into what is not. and what won’t be.  because this is where i am.  here.  atlanta. most of the time at home with my daughter who struggles to learn, but less than i struggle with helping her learn.  less than i struggle with my own ideas of what i should be doing on a daily basis.

so as  i watch her contort her body into a pretzel of stress while she exclaims her frustration and the energy becomes palpable, all i can think of is how bad these stress hormones must be for her little body and that i’m surely going to end up with an ulcer from watching her and sympathizing.  and i think  “why can’t she just let it go?”, "why can’t she just stop fighting it all the time?”

what? me? why can’t i do that?

exactly.  because really, this is much more about me than her.  i spin my wheels.  i fight against resistance.  i waste emotional energy.  i try on other peoples lives.

but i'm about to get a lot healthier, because i just found a therapist.

she spoke to me about Jung’s idea of ‘holding the tension of the opposites’.  like learning to live in the gray.  between two worlds. not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  that there is truth and value in the extremes of life and the challenge is to hold the tension- rather than letting go of one end and clinging to the other.  that we grow and understand and learn from that straddle.

so that is my lesson for the day.
live it.
hold the tension.
love it because it's making you better.
and be still.