Cognosco

My mother and I haven’t always gotten along.

But we have gotten along more often than not.

We haven’t always agreed with each others’ life choices.

For a long time, I resented her for staying with my father for so long, and only finally leaving him when my brother and I were out of the house.

In the last few years, I have forgiven this. I have forgiven my father for his abuse as well.

In spite of all of our disagreements, my mother has always been there for me when it really came down to it.

When I was 17 years old, I dropped out of college and left the state with a weasel-boy. We headed for "utopia" in Northern California. Never mind that I had scholarships. Never mind that I left other members of my performance ensemble one player short. Never mind that it broke my mother’s heart. Never mind that I was too much of a coward to even tell her I was leaving. My best friend had to tell my mother I was gone. She didn’t speak to me for about a year, but after all these years, she’s still my best friend. I am grateful for her–my soul sister of 18 years–for loving me whether I deserved it or not.

Dropping out of school, leaving everything behind, and heading to an area I’d never seen to live with people I didn’t know in Northern California seemed like a good idea at the time.

I needed to "find myself".

Did I mention that I had been doing A LOT of psychedelic drugs?

I had been in California for about 2 months, when I found out I was pregnant.

My first thought was to put the baby up for adoption, because I was afraid that everyone would hate me if I had an abortion. I, personally, didn’t have a problem with having the abortion, but I was terrified of the judgment, and I was in a situation that would have required the knowledge and help of several others in order to obtain one.

The woman we were living with said that I might want to reconsider. She said, "look at this puppy you’ve had for 8 weeks, and how attached you are to him. Do you really think you could give up your baby?"

She had a point. She also made it clear that there was a place for me there if I carried the pregnancy to term and kept the baby, and that she had no qualms with banning weasel-boy from the property.

But I. did. not. want. a. child. Couldn’t even fathom it. I realized that I had made a huge mistake with my life, and all I wanted was to terminate the pregnancy and go back to school.

I told weasel-boy I was thinking of terminating the pregnancy. He called me a selfish whore.

And I realized that I definitely wanted no ties to that man for the rest of my life.

The next time I was able to get to a pay phone (this was a very rural area), I called my mom, and at the same time asked weasel-boy to get me a snack from the store. 

While he was gone, I whispered to my mom, "I am pregnant. I don’t want this baby. I want an abortion. I need help".

My mother an I had barely spoken for several months, and all she said was that she would be there soon.

She lived in Mayer, AZ at the time. I was just south of Eureka, CA. It’s a 1,000 mile trip.

She was there the next morning. And as we drove home, she told me the story of her abortion, back when you had to sit before a panel of male doctors and justify your choice. She said it was humiliating.

The next few months were rough, but I survived. There were many more times that my mother came to my rescue, and she is doing it again this week.

When the panic attacks and crying jags started. When I couldn’t open my computer without my hands shaking. When I started waking up at 3 in the morning, suddenly, with racing heart, racing mind, and a feeling of doom. When my two-year-old son was up for two hours by himself last week and I didn’t hear him because I was beyond the point of absolute exhaustion (the house was a disaster, but he had only gotten into his toys). When one particular dissertation committee member pushed me over an edge that I have avoided for 32 years. After two years of asking for her help, and not getting it, she finally gave her input, had asked the impossible given the time constraints, but I DID IT. I DID IT! And then, she asked for something else. Something else that meant I had to start the impossible all over again. Because she hadn’t bothered to read my documents. Any of them.

When all of these things happened, my mother said she was coming here as soon as she could.

That same committee member also contributed to the end of one of the friendships I made in graduate school that really mattered to me.

I have survived an abusive upbringing, 26 years of multiple school stressors, two abusive boyfriends, a manipulative ex-husband, a first year of graduate school that involved a divorce, moving 5 times during that first year, and being banned from seeing my stepson of 5 years. I also survived caring for a crippled friend for a year, sitting by the bedside of my father for 6 weeks after a motorcycle accident that we thought had taken away his mind (he was convinced his bed was an airplane), and I even the postpartum period after the birth of my son (I did struggle with anxiety, but it didn’t exceed my coping resources–and my husband encouraged me go stay in a hotel room now and then just to sleep uninterrupted). All of these things I survived, and though I was sometimes emotional, I knew it would get better and I could always get through whatever I needed to do. And yet, this committee member pushed me so far over the edge that I stumbled into campus health crying and asking for help and have now been given a prescription for anti-anxiety medication. It makes me sleepy, but I can actually open my statistics program without feeling like my throat is closing off.

And I can sleep.

And my mother will be here on Sunday. It’s not a 24 hour turn-around like when I was 18, but it is impressive nonetheless. She is coming because she has never seen me like this, and she knows what’s it’s like to totally lose your shit. And when she lost hers, no one was there for her.

I am not embarrassed to say that right now, all I want is my mommy.

I am grateful for my mother.

I am also grateful for the psychologist at the counseling center, who recognized the immediacy of the situation, assured me that I can do this, and said that the problem wasn’t me–that I was having a completely normal reaction to an abnormal situation.

I am grateful for my primary adviser, who has referred to my condition as "Academic PTSD" and who has done nothing but stand up for me and call to check on me and give me permission to just walk away for a day. And who has repeatedly assured me that I am not crazy.

I am grateful to my son, whose response to me bursting into tears was to climb onto my lap, take my face in his hands, ask "boo boo?", and give me a big kiss and hug.

I am grateful to the universe for giving me this son. 

I am grateful that today has been a good day.

I am grateful that I will survive. I know I will survive because my mama will be here, and then it will be okay.

It’s been a long day, holed up in my office at school, staring a computer. The rest of the building is empty.

I’ve been here since 1 p.m. and the clock now reads 12:15 a.m.

I am grateful that I finally conquered the problem I was struggling with all day. 

I am grateful that I have a job, and that my work challenges me.

I am grateful that I finally get to go home.

I am even more grateful that I have a home to go to, and food to snack on when I get there.

Not everyone can say that.

I know I am one of the lucky ones.

When I tell people that I am a graduate student, I always dread the follow-up question. Because that question is, what program? and when I say, psychology, or even try to be more specific and say, social psychology, my answer is always misunderstood. People assume that I counsel people or want to counsel people or am learning to diagnose people. They say things like, wow, you should study my crazy family, or uh-oh, are you going to diagnose me? When I try to explain that I don’t do that kind of psychology, it usually gets me nowhere.

Even my own mother has no idea what I do. I was lamenting the fact that jobs in my field are scarce a few months ago. She said that there were lots of jobs in Kentucky (where she lives). I inquired further. She said that yes, there were lots of jobs working as a counselor for this or that and that they started at 60 thousand dollars a year, etc. I said that I don’t do that kind of psychology. She got huffy with me and said, well, I know it’s not your first choice, but I was just suggesting it as a backup plan. What she failed to understand is that I am not even remotely trained to do what most people think of when they hear "psychology". When I say "psychology" they just hear "therapy".

I just stumbled across a blog entry that I think may clear up a few things. I may just have to memorize the url or have cards printed up or something. This entry lists 10 brilliant social psychology experiments. This is the heart of what social psychology is all about. These are the experiments that lit a fire in my mind. This is what I do with my time. Or what I would be doing if I could create experiments this cool.

Truth be told, in the last year, I’ve actually been doing more research that blends social psychology with other branches of psychology, like developmental and clinical. But it’s still research oriented and I still can’t tell you what to do with your life. Well, I guess I can tell you if you ask, but I can’t get paid for it.

Ah, the feeling of completion. I just finished the last thing I had to do for the semester, and am really wishing that I could knock back a few drinks right about now. It has been a tough semester. The coursework and grad work wasn’t particularly hard, but DH and I had a lot of family crises to deal with and that made pretty much everything hard. I am not taking any formal courses next semester, so I feel a tremendous lifting of shoulder-weight.

On another note, I went to interview a pediatrician yesterday. Nice lady. Into homeopathic medicine. Talked a lot. I pretty much liked her and thought to myself, well, she’ll probably be okay. Although she seemed to have some outdated notions about breastfeeding…anyhoo…As I was leaving the office, feeling satisfied and like I had one less thing to worry about before baby’s arrival, I saw some pictures on the exit door between the hallway and the waiting room that caused me to do a double take. They were pictures of dear old George W. Bush and his first lady Laura, and there were at least four of them. And below each picture it said something like, "Dear Dr. whom I will no longer consider as a candidate for my child’s pediatrician, thank you for your steadfast support of the Republican National Committee". After reading this, I mumbled fuck under my breath and chalked the last 90 minutes up as a huge waste of my time. I am sure that I give money to people who give their money to the RNC all the time without realizing it. But I absolutely refuse to give my hard-earned liberal dollars to her knowing that some portion of them well go to him. Thus, I am still looking for a pediatrician. 

The reason that I did not consider the free-standing birth center in our area as a possibility between homebirth and hospital birth is because the head doctor of said birth center is on the board of Crisis Pregnancy Centers of AZ. If you do not know much about these little offices masquerading as medical clinics, suffice it to say that they offer free pregnancy tests, prey on young women, and lie their asses off. They claim to provide options, but the only info you will get about the abortion option is a lengthy gruesome video while you wait 40 minutes for your 5 minute free pregnancy test. And they will tell you an abortion will give you breast cancer, which is total bullshit. And if you’ve already had an abortion in the past, look out, becuase they will try to convince you that really, you must have lurking guilt and trauma about the whole eperience. DH and I have often chatted about investing in a large number of pregnancy tests and standing out in the parking lot of these places saying "here, here’s your free test, and here’s a little flyer that actually has information about all of your options". We have yet to actually do this, but I think it would be a hoot. I would also raise all sorts of hell if I was actually banished or arrested from their property, because the protesters over at Planned Parenthood are there every week and are allowed to do continue to do so. Suffice it to say, I could not stomach giving money to a birth center that claims to give women choices, where the lead doctor (despite all of his choice rhetoric) is actually on a board of an organization that blatantly lies to women.

If you would like to know more about Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), click here

I am currently working on (or perhaps, not working on) a paper for a "Child Language and Drawing" course. It is the last thing that I need to finish for the semester, and so rather than pay it any attention in the last three days, I am of course starting the paper now. The course was really interesting and much more challenging that I had anticipated. A lot of debates about different theories of language and how children begin to recognize words as distinct meaningful units of sound and such. One of the things we talked about was that for a long time, a lot of researchers thought you had to talk directly to an infant/toddler and emphasize a word for the child to learn and understand the word. More recent studies show that even if the toddler is just present for a conversation and seemingly not paying attention, the toddler learns the new word. Well, duh. How many times have you heard a story about a precious 18 month old using their new favorite word, fuck, or its equivalent. I’m quite certain that most parents don’t devote a lot of time to making sure their kids learn how to swear, but magically, they learn to do it on their own.

So, my project is looking at cross-cultural differences in children’s drawings. I was hoping to find studies that would maybe show whether or not there are certain universals that children do in different cultures before their drawings take on culture-specific images and properties. Alas, I have had no such luck. So now I am sitting here with a pile of largely unrelated articles trying to brainstorm about how they fit together. Or that is what I was doing before I started procrastinating here. 

Went to meet with a midwife yesterday. I am interviewing another tomorrow. I was completely blown away with the difference in the "office" of this midwife versus any doctor I had been to. It was more like a home. I wish I had known sooner how big the difference really was. 

A good friend of mine blew through town yesterday. We were good friends in junior high and high school. Then, adulthood happened, and we sort of lost track of one another. Finally got in touch last spring and emailed a decade’s worth of stories to each other. Funny how with some people, it really seems like no time has passed. I went to stay with her overnight in Yuma last summer, and it was so comfortable. I really missed that feeling. We did a whole bunch of tequila shots that night. Here’s a tip. Get yourself some orange wedges and cinnamon sugar. Lick it, slam it, suck it, just like if you had salt and lime. It is soooo tasty. It might seem gross, but seriously, it is the only way I can do tequila shooters, and it makes a fantastic holiday-time shooter. We did those shots Friday night and stayed up all night talking. When my hangover lasted until Sunday (and we didn’t drink that much), I decided to take another pregnancy test. I had taken one the previous Thursday. In my impatience, I didn’t wait the full time on the Sunday test, and just went, "oh, of course not, whatever". When the hangover then lasted until Monday, I took another one (this was becoming an expensive habit…). It was positive. I dug Sunday’s out of the trash, and there I saw a very, very faint little line that I would have noticed had I waited the full five minutes. Oops. Needless to say, that was the last time I did shooters…and I have craved citrus constantly through the pregnancy. The way I see it, little babe was probably implanting that night…hope s/he likes oranges.

So I hadn’t seen my friend again until yesterday, when she was on her way home from the Prescott area. She stopped to see the new house (hubbie and I bought our first house a few months ago) and we had a cozy little breakfast and it was really nice to see her. I have asked her to come up for the birth, even though I have other girlfriends, she’s the one that I most want to be here with me. I never would have thought that when we met (oh my god) 16 years ago that she would some day see the birth of my baby.

Okay, back to work.