TAGGED

Well my good friend Bicky tagged me and I hate that but since I hardly ever see them even though they literally live 5 minutes from me and because I don't want to write a paper on Narrative therapy or anything else on my to do list (yes I actually made a hard copy list) I am going to shock Bicky and go with this tagging. (don't worry I AM NOT tagging anyone!!!)

10 years ago:

lets see that would be March of 1998 - yep while the exact dates are probably off I am assuming it was spring break and I am overlooking the Grand Canyon with my friend C.Jaye. Yes I was still in college and I would post some pictures of our grand trip except that back then we still had to take the film to Wal-Mart and get the pictures printed out. My parents took me and C. Jaye to Sedona and Grand Canyon and some forest and crater (I'm not a detailed person you know) and it was a BLAST. Now as we are both somewhat hyperactive we were constantly in trouble because my mom is a "by the rules" and so when we took off up the hills ignoring the "do not pass this sign due to Rattle Snakes" sign and when we took off on the red rocks in Sedona without waiting on my parents, and I'm sure a ton of other things that perturbed my mom. It was so fun!!! Remember Ceej?

Now also I should state that internet and email were new concepts in my life which I didn't need to be a part of as well as cell phones. I still communicated with my professors by lan lines or going to there office and I communicated with my friends in person and not on AOL or Facebook or text messaging. Wow and that was only 10 years ago!!!

Things on my to-do list today:

Funny since I actually have a to do list today.
1. Narrative Paper
2. Sex Research Powerpoint
3. Resume and find some places to send it
4. Find some divorce books for Gretchen
5. Think about learning some Brazilian (I mean Portuguese) by making flash cards

That is as far as I got but one of the biggest to do lists I have ever had. Now if we go to all of my to dos in my head...well lets just say lets not go there.

What would I do if I suddenly became a billionaire?

Well I would pay off my debt and then travel, probably buy a house. Seriously I cannot even comprehend this but I would probably give to a lot of things I think are worthwhile. In fact I would probably open up counseling centers for lower income people so that they can afford therapy even when they can't afford it. Who knows what else would pop into my mind.

Three of my bad habits:

Well 3 that I am willing to admit to
1. Diet Dr. Pepper!!!
2. Procrastination
3. Obsession with the Office, Arrested Development, and Friends because they all make me die laughing!!!

Jobs I've had:

1. First job hoeing weeds for my dad
2. Potwasher, Cook, Counselor, Assistant Cook at Camp Blue Haven
3. Some random retail job in college at Heart and Soul store (like a Hallmark store) yeah not a job I loved but good money) - did it for like 3 years and my boss was well NOT NICE!!
4. Ernst & Young (accounting)
5. Davis Kinard (accounting)
6. H&R Block - where they made me be a secretary even though I am a CPA and knew more about taxes than their tax people. Then they would just ask me all their questions. Needless to say I do not reccomend them to my friends!!!
7. Graduate Assistant for my MFT professor

Five things many people don't know about me:

Now if you don't know it about me do you think I'm going to tell you on a blog?
NOPE you'll just have to keep guessing!!!

I'm tagging NO ONE!!!

Who is really poor?

I often have clients that don't know where their next meal is going to come from. Mothers who aren't sure that their children will have clothes to wear to school or a coat to put on when it is cold. Clients that call and cancel their session because they can't pay their $2.50 fee. I have found myself on more than one occasion walking out to my nice car at night with a friend and talking about how privledged, spoiled, and unappreciative we; well no I am. I think about my Compassion child I sponsor (see earlier post) and how she took a birthday gift and bought milk and eggs for her family; things that often sit in my refrigerator so long they go bad.

I have never known NEED although I worry plenty enough for all of us about retirement funds and paychecks and how I will pay my student loans off. I'm too proud to take jobs that some of my clients would be thrilled to even be able to submit an application for. I talk about how my heart goes out to these people a lot but then I start my car, go to my nice house with heat, cook me a nice meal, open a Diet Dr. Pepper (also known to some of my colleagues as Texas Coke), turn on my TV and get absorbed in The Office or American Idol and my middle class comfortable life and forget the oppression that my clients face everyday.

Last fall in gender and ethnicty class we watched a video on Mother Teresa. There are no words to explain or describe my feelings as we watched this compassionate saint pour her heart out to people. In my class on Monday we watched this video again. I forgot the raw emotion I felt from this, the humbleness, the feelings of how naive and how much lack of awarness I have. The questions keep nagging me what can I do? What am I supposed to do? I'm not no Mother Teresa. One of her quotes in the video has stuck with me (hopefully this is close to what the quote was) "to understand poverty we must become poverty".

What does this mean? That I go and sell everything and live on the streets. I think that each of us have to answer that question in our own means but it has really consumed my thoughts this week. I try to force my clients that have little to nothing into my mold of middle class. If they don't have a job I come up with all the simple ways it is for me to get a job and push my goals for them upon them. I am beginning to understand this more and to find a balance here but it is so hard to understand a lifestyle, a way of life that we have never had to live. A way of life with stresses that aren't about writing papers, reading for class, getting our oil changed, or where we are going to eat our next meal; but a lifestyle with one goal: survival.

So I asked one of my the people I know that has lived multiple times on the streets, that often doesn't know if they will be able to see me because they doesn't have bus fare to get to where I am, that doesn't know if they are going to eat tonight much less tomorrow; I saw this person this week and asked them what they would do if I gave them a $100? Not much money to us in the grand scheme of things, a fortune for them. What they said brought me to tears. They said they would take it and give it to this lady that lives on the corner that has a three year old. It brings me to tears again to think about this. This person has NOTHING. It is freezing outside today and they are here in torn sweats and a t-shirt with a light jacket and are living on the streets and in shelters when they are available which is far from every night. Yet they would give a fortune away. They did not hesitate in this answer either. No thoughts of well I would buy myself a meal, and my friend a meal, and maybe some clothes but simple expression of love I would give to those even less fortunate than me (someone that I see as less fortunate). Ok maybe not everybody would do this; crap I wouldn't do it; I would pocket that $100 and think of what I would buy that I probably wouldn't have bought otherwise.

This person went on to say something else that made me full out cry in their pressense, "you have given me much more than $100 because you have sat here and listened to me and loved me for who I am and for all the stupid sh** I have done ......" What I didn't tell you is this is one of my most frustrating people and I absolutely dread it when I see them. Talk about being humbled. I'm still realing. What if I really showed them compassion and empathy out of love instead of obligation?

Now don't get me wrong I am in no way minimizing lower class or promoting upper class or minimizing the struggles of physical poverty but think about these quotes from Mother Teresa:

"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. "
"The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved."

This pretty much describes all of my clients. Often describes me. Describes the ISP kids I see at the Y. Describes some of my friends. Desribes probably a huge percentage of the American upper class. So what am I supposed to do? I so often am so concentrated on seeing poverty as simply not having what I have from a material stance that I don't even consider the emotional poverty that is rampant in our lives, in our nation, in our friends, the poverty that is not spoken about, the poverty that is ignored and even often inflicted upon others by myself; it is this poverty that tears us down. My person I was talking about above tonight said that they would live on the streets the rest of their lives and be happy if they knew they had someone that cared about them and then they asked if I had to graduate and leave Abilene. That doesn't give me the credit; it is what any human should do but I also know those thoughts of not wanting to meet with them are now very distant from my mind. I think I will stop pushing my goals for middle class lifestyles on them and start listening to their life stories and learning from them.

No wander Jesus says we will always have the poor among us. I think I better understand my mission in life so much clearer. I hope I can remember this lesson I learned tonight the next time I think: man I have to go up to the clinic again, or here goes another Sunday night to Celebrate Recovery, or man I am tired of this friend calling me with the same problem all the time, or these kids at the Y are driving me crazy, or I don't like that person, they annoy the crap out of me. I hope that I take away that "most terrible poverty" every single day for someone who is steeped there. After all this is all I want in my life is to be rid of emotional poverty. What a calling!!

OSCARS

Last night was the 2nd annual Academy Awards without a party at Rebekah's house. Last year I at least was up to date on what was nominated and watched and was excited; this year I hardly knew what was nominated and totally forgot they were on until I got home and turned the TV on to catch the 10 o'clock news and behold Best Actor award. I guess I saw the important stuff best actor, director, and picture huh? What is really ironic is that I have seen about five movies in the theatre this year and 3 of them were nominated (There Will Be Blood, Atonement, and Juno) and I recommend all 3 of those but you know I sometimes like wierd movies. If Knocked Up and 27 Dresses had been nominated then Wah Lah I would have seen all 5 and I would have to say they should hire me on the nominating committee!!! I guess I am going to have to go see No Country For Old Men now. Its not that I don't want to its that 1) I live in Abilene where I no longer have the artsy theatre right down the street from me like in Austin and 2) I live in the clinic so I guess I'll go add that to my Netflix wish list now and 3) I prefer to watch in the confines of my home or a friends where I can get up and move around. Has anybody seen it? If of all this movie talk you haven't seen Juno that is the one you should rush out and see very whitty, funny, and good; not to mention full of Arrested Development stars. So I guess my Oscar obsession may be dying with my old age but I will still continue to like good movies (especially if they are short!!!).

Masks

I have noticed without the benefits of social research class or further research (that I hate by the way) that there is a direct correlation between when I blog and when I can't sleep; maybe writing is how I make myself fall back to sleep and probably why half of this doesn't make any sense who knows....
Anyway, something I've been thinking about lately is how many masks we wear as we go through this adventure called life. My freshman year in highschool I opted for the creative english route where we read Of Mice and Men instead of Phantom of the Opera. The less creative class however, got to do something really cool with their reading of Phantom - they got to make a mask as it represented one of the masks they wear. Funny I was jealous of this project and they all hated it and would have preferred to have written the literary critique on Mice and Men I had to write and I was supposed to be in the creative class - I'm not bitter still at all!!!!!
Funny though I was at the YMCA where me and another girl do our externship with jr. high and high school teens (as society or the schools term "at risk" teens) anyway we had them asking each other those hard questions and one thing I realized is they know what the right things are but they put on these masks to be cool or popular or accepted or sometimes to survive because they don't have the encouragement and sometimes the opportunity to be real.
Realness is something that is so important to me in my friendships and probably one of the reasons I don't trust people because of all the masks we wear; yet I think about all the masks I wear. And I think about how EXHAUSTING!!! it is. Why do we do this to ourselves? Part of it I think is the societal expectations we, others, our family, our culture puts on us but part of it I think is us trying to cover up our own hurts and insecurities. We all want to be accepted and so as that means so many different things in so many crowds we have to switch masks as we think appropriate.
Now I'm not talking about switching behaviors or emotions like being funny or serious or loud or quiet at appropriate times; I'm talking about the things we do that aren't really who we are but we do to cover up who we really are. Those deep seated or sometimes shallow things we hide or try to become someone else by switching our masks. Some call it leading a double life. Its sad and I wander what the world would be like if we destroyed all of these masks and were just real with each other. I might not have a future job then though because ironically these masks we use to cover up our insecurities and hurts are the same masks we so long to expose and rid ourselves of in therapy and in our true friendships because of the hurt they cause.
So think about it - how exhausting does changing masks make you? Then why do we keep doing it?