A Small Life

This post has been sitting around as a draft for over almost a week.  I had intended to talk about the photo above, which is the view from my balcony after a dusting of snow.  I had intended to make some snarky observations about a few Facebook acquaintances who have done little else but talk about how much it’s snowing back in Virginia.  Every day their status updates have been about whether it’s snowing, how much it’s snowed, whether the roads are clear, how much ice is on the tree branches. . . .it’s as if nothing else is going on in their lives.

The main reason why I haven’t been posting is that my sister talked me into watching the TV show Bones.  I don’t typically watch police shows because I hate the ambiguity–good cops that go bad, letting some criminals go free in order to catch their bosses, and so on.  I prefer the black and white morality of medical shows.  No matter who shows up at the hospital, the goal of every character is to save lives.  Rarely is there a TV doctor who isn’t devoted to his or her profession.  I’m not sure what I find so compelling about Bones, whether it’s the handsome star, David Boreanaz, or the mix of comedy and science.  Whatever it is, I have spent about $30 at $1.99 per episode to watch key episodes from the last 5 seasons on Amazon Video on Demand, referring to the Wikipedia entries on the characters to tell me which episodes highlight the sexual tension between the leads or mention crucial details about the characters’ backgrounds.  I’ve watched these episodes, along with whatever reruns appear on TV, for the last 3 or 4 days.

The characters on the show are well educated and intelligent.  They have multiple scientific degrees and numerous accomplishments.  They are dedicated to their work, spending long hours at the lab not because it’s required but because their work fascinates and defines them.  Rarely have I seen a character at home relaxing; more often they’re relaxing in a gathering place of some kind at the workplace or sitting in a nearby diner.  They are all dedicated to solving crimes, seeing justice done for the victims, and keeping people safe.  They are willing to risk their own lives for this cause and to keep their friends and colleagues safe.

Today about noon, I finished watching an episode and found myself in tears.  I had just finished the episode in which Hodgins (a supporting character) talked about how the female lead, Brennan, had longed for a big life and had finally found it working with the FBI agent, Booth.  It was at that moment that it became clear to me what’s wrong with my life.  It’s small.

There may have been a time, when I was very young, when I could have chosen a big life.  I was smart enough to have gone to college and earned a degree in any discipline I wanted, when I could have chosen lofty goals to pursue, when I could have worked hard and become the best at something, when I could have done something significant, something that made a difference in the world.

I didn’t do it, and I’m not sure why.  Did I make the conscious choice not to take the more difficult path, to live a small life because it was easier, to accept less rather than work for more?  Or had I just not been aware of what my choices were?  Sometimes I think that it was someone’s job–my school counselors, my teachers, my parents–to let me know that I didn’t have to settle for a small life, but they failed me.  Did they not feel I was worth the time and effort?  Did they look at me and decide that I was destined to be insignificant?

How many of my current difficulties, how much of my despair can be traced to a childhood incident that still haunts me, the day when a neighbor called my family white trash?  Sometimes it seems that those words struck a fatal blow to my self esteem, that I’ve spent my life trying to convince myself that they weren’t true.  How many times did I have a chance to do something great, but didn’t do it because some part of me believes that I’m not worthy of it?

And so here I am, up late on a Sunday night, thinking about starting the week fresh, but knowing I can’t because I’ve spent the weekend sitting around, watching TV, wishing I had a different life, crying, wondering if it’s too late for me.

Is it too late for me to find that big life?  Is 47 too late to start?  If not, then what should I do?  I haven’t the slightest idea.  All I know is that I want it to be big, and I don’t know if I can bear it if it’s not.

I hate you, Joyce Smith.

Pictures of Home

I’m almost completely settled in (I still need to hang curtains) and taking care of the little things now, things that are hardly crucial but just “off” enough to keep me from being totally at ease in my new apartment.  What I’m finding is that it’s not the things themselves that need to change as much as my thinking about them.

For instance, I like to have a clear shower curtain.  Not only does a clear curtain keep Norman Bates from attacking me with a chef’s knife as I shower, but it lets in more light.  I hate a dark shower.  I also like an S-shaped shower curtain hook.  The round ones that snap together annoy me, because they require that I spend a lot of time with my arms over my head, hanging my curtain after cleaning it.  The S-shaped ones let me attach them to the curtain and then hang them on the rod.  The problem is that when I’m opening or closing the curtain, a hook or two frequently falls off the rod, and I have to take a moment to hang them again.  It’s annoying.  What am I doing wrong? I’ve been thinking.

What I’ve been doing wrong, I realized over the weekend, is that I haven’t put enough weight on the hooks.  The clear vinyl curtain alone isn’t heavy enough to hold the hooks down.  So I went to Target and found a decorative curtain that still lets in plenty of light (and still lets me see Norman approaching) and hung it along with the clear curtain, as if the clear curtain were a liner.  Now my hooks never come off the rod.

I have to adjust my thinking about Denver too.  It still feels like  a place I’m staying, not my home.  For the first time in my life, I’m not living near the water.  I was in San Antonio, Texas for about six months when I was in basic training and technical school and Osan AB in Korea for a year, but neither place was home.  When I was growing up, home was Corpus Christi.  When I think of that city, I remember the postcard images of the Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge and the Tee Heads.  For a while I lived in Fort Walton Beach, Florida and again I picture a bridge, this time the Brooks Bridge crossing the Santa Rosa Sound with the white sand beach beyond it and the tourist shops of the Miracle Strip in the foreground.  Hampton makes me think of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, which connected it to Norfolk.

Denver, though, is a long way from the coast.  The iconic picture is of the skyline against the backdrop of the Rocky mountains, something I’ve seen many times already because I live on the east side of city just minutes from downtown.  Do I really live in a landlocked state?  Do I really live in a large city, near mountains instead of beaches?  Who am I if not a woman who knows the feel of sand under her feet, the taste of salt water, the sound of waves, the sight of seagulls?  I realize, just as I’m writing this, that the nearest seagulls are in Utah.  I never would have thought that I’d miss seagulls.

I can’t sit and brainstorm about this problem the way I did about my shower curtain.  I can’t run out and buy a feeling of belonging here, of being a Coloradan.  How long before my driver’s license doesn’t look strange, before I cease to be a little surprised at the green and white license plates on my truck?

I was a Texan for 19 years before first moving to Virginia.  At what point did I start to think of Hampton as home?  How long until I began to think of myself as a Virginian?  When will I become a Coloradan?  Will it happen at all or will I always be a “come here?”

Maybe there is something I can do, a change in thinking that I can make.  This is the first place I’ve chosen to be.  I didn’t decide to live in Corpus Christi–my parents did that.  The Air Force chose where I would live until I left the military in 1992, then I stayed in Hampton because that’s where Hal worked.  It was never something I was able to chose.

Yes, my sister asked me to move closer to her family.  She was the one who found this neighborhood.  However, the decision to move to Denver and not to Colorado Springs, to move to Colorado rather than  Texas or northern California or southern Florida or New York or Belize (all places I considered), was mine.  For the first time since I decided to enlist in the Air Force in 1980, my life is completely under my control.  All the choices are my own, at least for now.

Is it terrifying or exhilarating?  This is also something I get to choose.  For today, at least, I’m going to choose the latter.

Can’t Sleep

I can’t sleep.  Actually, I was asleep, but I awoke after less than an hour feeling anxious.  I don’t want to take another Lorazepam; I’m afraid I’ll start to get dependent on them.  I can’t stay in bed, so instead I’m sitting up making a list of possible reasons why I can’t sleep:

1.  I was chatting online with a friend back in Virginia who unexpectedly finds himself unemployed.  He was leaving one job to take a better one and ran into a snag.  It’s possible that I’m anxious knowing that he’s anxious.

2.  I’m still adjusting to the altitude.

3.  I have sleep apnea.  (The thought of having to sleep with one of those C-PAP machines on my face is enough to provoke a fresh anxiety attack.)

4.  I listen to the radio at a low volume all night to combat my tinnitus, and someone on the radio said something that triggered my anxiety.

5.  Deep down, I know what I’m doing in Denver is a mistake.  I’m wasting Hal’s life insurance money chasing this dream of becoming a writer when what I should be doing–what I should have done starting back in 2007–is finding a job and using the money to supplement my income while I establish a new career path.

All I know is that I suddenly awoke with the thought that I’m going to lose everything I have.  I’m so damned afraid.