I want.

August 31, 2018 / Cassie / Leave a comment

I want to write so many posts, but I never seem to get the motivation at the right time.

I want to write about how I’m trying to rid my life of the negativity I can control and live more gratefully and gracefully.

I want to write about how I am about to start a new teaching year and I don’t even know if I want to be a teacher anymore.

I want to write about how I am trying to change my parenting style and my relationship with my kids and not get to frazzled and controlling all the time.’

I want to write about how I gave up on the marathon, and the half marathon, and I’m sincerely, trying so hard not to give up on myself.

I want to write all of this and more. But I sit down to write and feel like a fake. And like I have no idea what I am talking about.

But I wrote this and that’s a start. Maybe tomorrow I’ll pick more and go with it.

I want to.

Summer is different this year.

June 28, 2018 / Cassie / Leave a comment

I assumed that summer would be different this year.

I’m having a difficult time putting it into words. I’ve written and then immediately erased at least 5 sentences before writing that one. It’s not that I don’t know what to say, it’s simply that I don’t know how to say it. Or maybe, it’s just that I’m too scared to say it.

Scared seems to be an overarching theme these days. I only have the kids 50% of the time during the summer and I thought, at first, I would relish the down time. I’ll have time to read! I’ll have time to go to the pool! But instead I just seem to have a lot of time with my thoughts, which has never meant good things for me. I spend my days overthinking, overanalyzing, and simply being on such a high level of alert and anxiety that my body seems to vibrate constantly.

I’m buying a car, which for someone who has always had money issues, is highly stressful. Can I afford it? Yes. Do I need it? Yes. But I keep hesitating, picking a different car each day, simply so I don’t have to do this thing. Then, I start thinking about what Mike will say if I get a new car. The arguments form themselves in my head seamlessly and without help from me. My rational mind says:

“Who cares what he thinks?”

“He has bought a ton of stuff for himself without consulting or caring what you think.”

“You are separated. You need a car to get to work. All that matters is what you think. The end.”

But it never really is the end. That damn subconscious comes around to rear her ugly head to remind me in no uncertain terms that she is really running the show and it’s stupid for me to think otherwise/

And yet, I am 37 years old and I know this is a problem. The amount I seems to care what other people think is astounding. I have always tried to pride myself on the fact that it only matters what I think and feel, not others. But here I am, with all this time on my hands, CONSTANTLY thinking about it.

I tell myself to write. That this process will help me work out what’s in my mind.

*What if people don’t like what I’ve written.*

*What if they think what I have to say is stupid.*

*What’s the point of writing. No one is even reading it.*

I tell myself to throw myself into my half marathon training and the gym.

*Why? You’re just going to quit again like you always do.*

*Why do you even thinking you can do this when clearly you can’t.*

I tell myself to put down the screens and read, go outside, do anything.

*Right after one more scroll through facebook to see that my friends (and others) are having a way more fun and happy summer than I am having.*

I don’t even know how to write more to this post.

I know I need a break, but I am simply too scared to take it. I know I know I need to find the person I lost over the past couple years, but I just don’t know what to do to find her again.

When I was little I used to run around and smash lightning bugs. Cruel, I know (at least now I do), but when I did that I was never thinking about their death, only thinking about how they would make me sparkle. How, for a brief time, I would shine.

I never imagined that I would have to find a way to make myself sparkle and glow without the help of the lightning bugs. That I would have to do it on my own.

When did I stop believing in myself?

I have no idea. I just know that I have to find a way to begin again.

Nostalgia

January 17, 2018 / Cassie / Leave a comment

Nostalgia is a funny thing. I usually try and shy away from it as it tends to make me sad. I sugar coat the past at times, putting the shiny crystal sheen on things making me think I had it better when, in actuality, I probably didn’t. Charleston, kid free times, college – all things I think back on fondly, wishing I was still there in those moments, never really remembering the times that weren’t so good.

Today, though, was different.

I’ve been contemplating the idea of accepting my guaranteed entry to the NYC marathon since I dropped out last year. I told myself that maybe this was the year I would *actually* do it if I could just take the first step and get out the door to exercise. Today made three days in a row and I’m pretty damn proud of myself for that.

Today is cold. And snowy. But I managed to get the workout clothes on and out the front door to run/walk/jog/slide for 30 minutes.

As I began navigating the neighbor streets where I now live, the neighborhood streets where I lived years ago when I first began running, the nostalgia was overpowering. This is where it all began…my love for running. The shiny beacon in an otherwise tumultuous time in my life where I could barely stay afloat. And then out of the blue “Summertime Sadness” by Lana Del Rey came on and my heart stopped.

This could be the fall of 2013 when I first started running. That song took me right back to those moments so many years ago. The early mornings and sore legs. The darkness of running pre-dawn. The excitement I felt when I ran down certain streets and crested certain hills and the annoyance I felt with others.

Not only did I fall in love with running on these streets and sidewalks, for the first time I actually fell in love with myself.

This girl.

And this one.

The girl who completed her first Runner’s World Run Streak.

And her first half marathon.

The girl who was happiest and had the biggest smile when completely covered in sweat.

This wasn’t the same kind of nostalgia that I was used to. It wasn’t so much remembering what I had as discovering what I can absolutely have again.

With this short 30 minutes this morning I began to realize that maybe I never lost my love of running or even myself. Maybe it’s always been here. In this neighborhood. On these streets, waiting for me to return. Because this is where I belong.

Non-Fiction

April 22, 2015 / Cassie / Leave a comment

“Outside the windows the day was bright: golden sunshine, blue sky, pleasant wind . . . I wanted to punch the happy day in the face, grab it by the hair, and beat it until it told me what the hell it was so happy about.” ~Ilona Andrews

No fewer than ten people have said to me an amalgamation of the following terms:

“I can’t believe you just had a baby.”
“You look great for just having a baby.”
“You have so much energy! I wish I could have been like that after giving birth.”
“You seem so relaxed like you are on vacation.”
“You make it seem so easy.”

After each one of these observances I smile, laugh a little laugh, and state that it’s just the whole “not being at work that agrees with me”. True, I’ve been walking every day. True, I’ve lost 20 pounds and am actually under my pre-baby weight. True, my baby seems to do a great job for sleeping long stretches at night.

But these are the observations from the Monet point of view. From far away it seems like my life after a newborn is a masterpiece. Rich in color, vibrant in activity, something you can hang on a mantel and then marvel. It seems like by kid #3 I have it figured out and “baby” motherhood, and “mom of three” motherhood is agreeing with me whole-heartedly.

But here’s the trick: go up to that painting and stand so that your nose is almost touching. Now it’s a mess; a bunch of blurred lines, overly textured colors, haphazard in appearance and technique and that is more of a representation of my life these day. When you look up close you’ll see that I’ve been walking everyday because I don’t always have access to a car to pick the kids up from school (luckily we live close) and also because I need running the way some people need prozac, and since I can’t run (and don’t have prozac), I walk. I lost 20 pounds which happens to be all my baby weight and then some because during my pregnancy I was so stressed and had terrible heartburn so I never ate enough and therefor didn’t gain any weight (which, contrary to what some might think, is not a good thing). And the reason my baby sleeps so well? According to her doctor it’s because she’s not eating enough so her body is putting her in a hibernation mode to conserve energy.

So today, I woke my baby up after 3 hours for her 3rd feeding after which she promptly fell asleep and while I should have been cleaning the house, or doing laundry, or any of the other 100 things that needed to get done while the kids were at school, I cried. Or if I’m being really honest I stuffed my face full of Ritz crackers and cried because I felt like a terrible mother (and then I felt terrible for eating the Ritz crackers).

So not only was I feeling terrible, but then both the other littles were having trouble with their “listening ears” and I had to yell which made me feel even more terrible. And the icing on the cake (wait, there’s cake?) was the full on melt down I had at dinner when our rental company called and said they were showing our house tomorrow, which means I had to scrub it clean tonight.

But it’s 3 hours later now. All the kids are in bed and asleep. I just ate a lovely chocolate bar and a spoon full of peanut butter. And perspective is starting to creep back in to my subconscious. In a few short hours it will be a new day and I’ll get the chance to start over again.

Sometimes that’s really all we have to hold on to.

The first step is admitting you have a problem…

August 26, 2013 / Cassie / Leave a comment

“Selfish persons are incapable of loving other, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.” ~Erich Fromm

I’ve never considered myself s a selfish person. Actually, to be honest, I tended to be more of a “woe is me” or “nothing good ever happens to me” type of person. So many things have been happening recently that were really making me feel sorry for myself. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get what I wanted and everyone couldn’t cater to me just this once because I never seem to get what I want. It took me a while (until today in fact) for me to realize that this really stems from the fact that I am selfish and want everything my way. And, in reality, get mad and pissed off and downright spiteful when I don’t. I get it, I’m a slow learner. But at the moment that this realization hit me, tears began streaming down my face. I never wanted to be seen as selfish and looking back and analyzing my actions over the past few weeks/months, I couldn’t believe how terrible a person I was to people I truly care about.

Maybe I’ve been selfish my whole life. I don’t know. I think it stems mostly from not ever really being able to think about myself growing up because there was always someone else I needed to be taking care of. Looking back though, especially recently, I have been selfish in past and current relationship and hurt people I really care just because I took my own feelings and desires into account before theirs. I know that there is no consolation I can give that would make it better. For that, I am truly sorry.

I haven’t been fair, and within that, I haven’t been kind. In fact, I’ve been down right mean sometimes. I couldn’t understand why people just couldn’t give me what I wanted and why we couldn’t just want the same thing. I haven’t been generous, mostly with honesty and my emotions. I’ve let people down because what I wanted and what they wanted were two separate things, or maybe, they were the same things but just unattainable at the time.

With my actions and my attitude lately, I’ve made it so easy for people to walk away, and then I sit there and blame them and hate them for doing just that. It’s not fair that I expected everyone to be OK with doing what I wanted and what I needed and not expecting anyone to get hurt. In fact, by trying to ensure that I didn’t get hurt, I hurt others which, in the end, wound up hurting me far more than I ever could have imagined.

I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t. I wish I could go back in time; days, weeks, months, years down the road and change one minuscule detail so that everyone could be on a happier track…but I can’t. The only things I can hope for is to learn from my mistakes and hope that I can avoid hurting anyone else to the best of my ability.

Of course, I’m talking about everyone, no one, and a select few all at the same time. Chance are, though, I’m talking to you. And I’m so sorry I wasn’t a better person…the person you deserve.

Fall down seven times; get up eight

August 9, 2013 / Cassie / Leave a comment

“So I put my faith in something unknown, I’m living on such sweet nothing. But I’m tired of hope with nothing to hold, I’m living on such sweet nothing ~Calvin Harris

I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness lately. More specifically, the things that make us happy and how people come to feel this way. C.S. Lewis once said “Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.” I saw the above quote this morning that really resonated with me. How often do we base our happiness on the actions of others, or moments in time?

Without going into detailed specifics, I’ve had a tough summer, and honestly, I have no one to blame for it but myself. It all started with my dad dying and slowly snowballing out of control from there, to the point that I didn’t even know who I was anymore. And really, I know it started even before that. I saw the warning signs did nothing to stop the avalanche. I was unhappy, moody, sullen and depressed. And when I wasn’t feeling those things, I wasn’t feeling anything at all.

I needed something. I was feeling antsy and itchy. I felt like something was missing that I couldn’t put my finger on. I felt like my skin was too tight and something within me was trying to break free. What it all comes down to was the need to feel alive, or rather the need to feel something other than what I was feeling. I felt like I had been going through the motions for so long thinking that maybe I was happy, when I realized that I was simply complacent. When my dad died, something inside of me changed. It wasn’t that I was devastated or heartbroken, because I wasn’t.

A first I felt relieved that all his suffering was over. And then I began to worry…about myself. My dad spent most of his life depressed and angry which caused him to alienate every single person in his life. Most days, he was downright mean. And I could really see myself heading down the same path and it scared me.

I needed to shake things up and feel something just to prove I was nothing like him. I needed to be reckless and downright irresponsible. And I was. I put my needs for “aliveness” ahead of the the needs of so many people around me. I felt conflicted but I also felt alive…knowing I should change the situation, but also unable to do it at the same time.

I now realize that a lot of it had to do with me looking outside of myself for some form of happiness and thought certain situations were going to make me happier. And they did…and they didn’t. I spent most of my summer in complete turmoil, wrestling with feelings I thought I had, with feelings I actually had, with feelings I was supposed to be having, all while trying to wear the mask of normalcy around my children and friends.

And then just as quickly and spontaneously as the “aliveness” started, it was over. I have let myself think and analyze for a week. Its almost as if I was grieving. I don’t know, though, what exactly I was grieving for. Was it for what I lost, or was is simply because I now knew I was going to go back to feeling nothing in my daily life?

I still haven’t figured it out, but what I do knows that it’s time to take a breath and move on and start figuring out how to be again. And maybe if I can figure out how to simply exist without all this sadness and anger, I can also figure out how to be happy.

I have to try, I have to try, I have to try. My life depends on it.

(Past), Present, and Future

May 28, 2013 / Cassie / Leave a comment

“The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditations on the past.” ~Andre MauroisI

This post started out in a funny way. All day I had been thinking about writing something pertaining to my constant focus on the past rather then on the present or future. As usual, I had trouble starting my post. I really didn’t know what I wanted to say, or maybe, I knew what I wanted to say, but really had no idea how to say it in a clever way.

So what did I do? I looked back at past things I wrote trying to find some witty analogy to start with…and it hit me. I do this constantly when trying to figure out how to solve a problem. I look to the past hoping that it’s already been solved. That way I don’t actually have to do any work at all.

I seem to have an obsession with the past. I am always looking back thinking the grass was greener or I was happier then than I am now. It is really happiness or is it simply nostalgia? What is it about an event being in the past that makes it seem sweeter or kinder to us than it was before? For some reason I feel that the present and future can never measure up when, in reality, I’m not really giving them a chance.

What it really boils down to, in the simplest terms, is that I am a giant scaredy cat. I fear making decisions specifically because I don’t want to be wrong. I look back at the past and think, “I was happier then so I should do this” or even “I made the wrong decision that time, lets take the other road now.”

I finally got a haircut yesterday after weeks and weeks of saying that I was going to. Why did it take me so long? Because I was so scared that once it was done I was going to regret the decision. Not only was I scared about the amount of regret I would have, but what would other peopler think? Some people told me not to get my hair cut. Should I listen to them or do what i want? I know this is a pretty insignificant example, but if I freak out this much about a hair cut, think about what happens when I have to make real life decisions.

Do I look back to the past and pick decisions based on how receptive they were by my friends and family (and even strangers) and try to repeat the ones that were the most agreeable to others in my life? Is that why the past is so important to me, because it holds the acceptance of others?

The bigger question is how honest am I being with myself? Do I make decisions based on what I want, or based on what other people might think about the decisions I am making. I’m constantly joking with one of my friends that I am 32 years old and really don’t have time for drama in my life anymore. Even as I say those words I realize I am a big, fat hypocrite. Even when I’m being honest here, I’m not being completely honest. I have secrets like everyone else. Things I can’t put in print or even talk about for fear of being judged.

Am I doomed to constantly look towards the past or will I ever be able to just accept my present and future, judgement and all?

Here’s me in the moment. Judge away.

Grace Before Perfection

Mom. Teacher. Wanna-be most things. Lover of almost everything except talking on the phone. Oh, and I read a lot of books. Like an unhealthy amount.

truth