A Very Timely Facebook Status

Compliments of Molly Patton via Facebook status:

"Bumper sticker of the day: 'Forgiveness: Giving up all hope of a better past'"

Well said.

Jane Austen Inspires

"Her mind made up on these several points, and her resolution formed, of always judging and acting in future with the greatest good sense, she had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever..."
    -of Catherine, in "Northanger Abbey"

I'd like to live like that.

Heaviness and the Power of the Paper Shredder

Beatrix is napping and I grabbed the chance to clean out a little more from the box I'm working through. I have a lot of spiral notebooks, legal pads, and loose-leaf notebook paper. Throughout most of my life, I have kept a notebook handy (like in my nightstand) where I can journal or do creative writing when the inspiration hits me. The result is usually a lot of angry emotional ranting and some halfway decent starts to short stories. I keep everything I write. Whatever the quality of the writing, I have this unshakable tendency to consider it sacred because it sprang from my pen, my mind.

I did a lot of such writing directly after college in what I consider to be the most difficult time of my life, just after my dad died. This was an extremely volatile time for me emotionally, not only because of the obvious grieving, but because I made terrible choices about how to cope which included a lot of partying and chasing after boys that didn't deserve to be chased after. In the middle of all of this were two central people: my roommate/best friend at the time and Thom (now husband). Both of them were agents for emotional angst.

Believe it or not, Thom and I had a few setbacks before we finally settled into the blissfully happy couple that we are today. (Joking, but not really.) The start of our relationship was kind of rocky with a lot of "does he like me? doesn't he like me?" happening on my side of things. The difficulty of the whole situation was compounded by loyalty to my roommate who was also going through a hard time of life.

I wrote frustrated pages about giving up on Thom, feeling humiliated and tired of trying. I wrote gushy pages about why Thom was the best thing to ever happen to me. I wrote heartbreaking pages on the deterioration of my relationship with my roommate. I wrote hopeful pages on my resolve to love better.

I have always been particularly reluctant to throw out any of my writing from this era because of its emotional significance to me. It was the most dramatic time of my life and therefore the most likely to make a good story someday, or screenplay. (Joking, but not really.) In fact, the subjects of these same pages are the stuff upon which my aforementioned NaNoWriMo novel was based. The writing is extremely raw and vulnerable and revealing; it really captures the severe highs and lows I was experiencing back then. Unfortunately, it does this so well that whenever I stumble upon pages like these, and read them as I am typically drawn to do, I feel the full weight of the old struggles again. It usually leaves me somewhat nauseous.

This is because not everything from those days ended well. Thom and I ended well, but everyone else has a stain on them now, an incredible blemish, marred and blackened by hurtful actions - some unnecessary, some unavoidable. Most of those relationships were shattered and left in pieces in my memory.

I am not even close to letting go of all of the hurt and fear and regret of those days. Those memories are, hands-down, the ones which beat me up the most. I have sought forgiveness and attempted to right what was wrong on several occasions. I have no doubt that God forgives; I am not as optimistic about the willingness of the people I've hurt to do so. Usually, I just end up regretting my attempts to fix things - I can't seem to stop tripping over myself.

But though I have a ways to go before all of this is behind me, today marks a very significant step forward: I decided to get rid of any of the pages that were negative, either sad, angsty, or angry. I have kept only the happy ones - the ones where I discovered I was in love, the ones where I could see God working despite the disasters around me, the ones where I spoke of hope for the future. Perhaps I'm just the tiniest bit closer to no longer condemning myself for my past life. I am free, in some small way; throwing them out means I no longer need those hurtful memories to define me. I will not wear them as a burden or as a badge of honor.

I ripped out the guilty pages from their spirals with enthusiasm, the edges left jagged. And to cap it off, into the shredder they went, their poisonous words gobbled up to be read and digested no more! Hallelujah! Now let's just hope there is no one digging through the dumpster outside with some scotch tape, an aptitude for jigsaw puzzles, and lots of time on his hands.

Overlooked Invitation

Weddings were apparently a dangerous direction to go because I believe I have opened the floodgates of regret.

Here's just a short one though:

In the stress and busy-ness of wedding planning, I accidentally overlooked inviting the Magill family who went to church with us to our wedding. My husband and I were becoming friends with the family, whose kids were part of our youth group, and I really wanted them to come, especially since the daughter told me (in an unrelated discussion) that she had never been to a wedding before.

We invited all the youth group kids and their parents, but somehow I missed the Magills. Thom even talked to them one Sunday, learned that they hadn't received an invitation yet, and told me about it, but I, in my extreme confidence in my own organizational abilities, dismissed him because I was sure I had sent them one. Later I saw that they weren't even on the invitation list and I still feel awful about it.

I really cannot undo this no matter how many times I go over it. The regret is absolutely futile so why do I keep it?

A Confession on Thank Yous

Ok, here's another hang-up I have while we're on the topic of wedding thank yous. It's not a memory, but still something I can't seem to let go of (of which I cannot seem to let go...for you English critics out there). When I was growing up, my mom drilled into me and my siblings the necessity of writing thank you notes whenever we received a gift. Now, I agree this is a nice and polite gesture, but I write thank yous even if I received the gift in the company of the person who gave it to me. That's just overkill, as if the words 'thank you' out of your mouth with probably a smile, other cheerful comments, or expressed enthusiasm is not enough - only the written, formal words will do! But despite my arguments against it, I still comply to this day.

Maybe other people's moms did not put the same emphasis on this when they were children. Lucky them. Writing thank you notes can be a big pain especially, say, after you have already had to go through the difficulty of thinking up nice things to say out loud in a shower situation for all the same gifts. Which makes me wonder what I ended up writing in that thank you note for the teddy bear towels...

Do I sound completely ungrateful here? I don't mean to be. I think it is a good thing to be thankful for gifts you receive (especially when they are from God) and I think it is good to make known that thankfulness, but I do not think it is necessarily a good thing to have inflexible rules for social decorum. As if I need any more help in being a judgmental person.

So there it is. Because I had thank you notes so ingrained in me as a child, I cannot let go of the expectation of it now both for myself and for others, which brings me to the point of this post: in the past few years, I have purchased wedding gifts for a few people who never sent me a thank you note and I think about it way more often than I should.

It's not that I consider them to be bad people for it. In fact, they are all still people I esteem, love, and admire. I don't even think they behaved badly. The real problem is that I am concerned that 1) they may never have received the gift that I bought and/or 2) they didn't properly credit me for giving the gift. It would just be so ironic if I was walking around all this time thinking, "Why didn't they write me a thank you note?" when they are walking around thinking, "Why didn't she buy us a wedding gift?" Other people probably don't think thoughts like that though...

So here they are. The gifts that I can't seem to forget about:

Summer 2005 - Cousin's wedding
I purchased a nice set of bedsheets off of their registry at Bed, Bath and Beyond and had them shipped to the address on file (which must have been correct). Later when I tracked the package, I saw that whoever signed for it was not a name I recognized. Perhaps my cousin's wife lived with a roommate at the time or there was an office that received packages for her building. Or maybe it was delivered to the wrong person who promptly hopped into bed for a cozy nap in some Pure Beech Jersey queen-sized sheets.

Summer 2009 - Friend's wedding
[Deleted due to new information coming to light. I am a schmuck.]

Fall 2009 - Friend's wedding
[Deleted due to new information coming to light. Silly me.]

I realize it is ridiculous to keep this list in my head (especially since while writing this I remembered three more birthday presents in the same category). Most likely the gifts were received, with thanks, and the note was forgotten or never part of the plan. I need to be okay with that. Apparently, I have a hard time doing good without acknowledgment. It's a funny thing too because I received a gift for my wedding that had no card attached and still do not know who gave it to us to this day. Someone out there may very well have me on a list in their head. If I am able to let go of holding other people to the thank you note rule, I hope I can let myself off the hook too:

To whoever gave us the gift of various kitchen items including some sort of utensils, I thank you. And I really mean that.

Shameful Memory #2: The Wedding Shower

For an introvert like me, there is nothing more nerve-wracking then having a shower thrown in your honor. Not only are you made to attend a social function where small talk is prevalent, you are the center of that small talk. Gift-opening is particularly bad because you are being watched by dozens of pairs of eyes while you panic to invent clever new ways of saying how much you like each succeeding item you unwrap. I have had the privilege of having seven showers thrown for me, for wedding and baby.

Today I had a flashback to one of my wedding showers. It was thrown by some very lovely and well-meaning women from my home church at the time. So naturally within minutes, I was severely uncomfortable.

One of the gifts came from a friend of the family, a woman about my mother's age: dish towels. I was literally sweating in my anxiety to sound appropriately grateful for the gifts I had opened thus far, but this one proposed an extra challenge: the dish towels were decorated with teddy bears! My mind went blank, I could not think of a single reason why I might want towels with teddy bears on them. I already had plenty of towels and they were the towels I wanted because I had registered for them.

So what did I do? I said (out loud), "Bears!"

The woman who gave the gift looked at me with a startled expression and asked, "Do you...like...bears?"

I searched my brain wildly: "Do I like bears?" and determined "Of course not!" And then the real conversational genius broke through - I produced as my reply: "I had a bear blanket when I was little!"

Even at the time I knew that was no kind of response, though it was true. I did own a bear blanket. But why couldn't I just say 'thank you' and move on like a normal person? Sorry, Mrs. C_________, for being socially inept.

I later sold the towels at our moving sale.

I Will Never Be a Rockstar

It's fortuitous that my recent resolution to let go of the past has coincided with our move back to the Pacific Northwest from Illinois where my husband and I lived for the last three and a half years. That means that I am now back in close proximity to all my junk, boxes upon boxes of it. I'm a saver.

I am determined to sift through it all now and throw out what is useless, keep only what is meaningful, and scrapbook everything I ever claimed I'd scrapbook. (For the record, I think I'm about 10 scrapbooks behind right now.) It's a slow process, partially because I just had a baby and sorting through boxes isn't my top priority during the day, but mostly because I scrutinize every single scrap of paper. Sometimes it takes me a few passes to determine if something needs to be kept or not. Did I mention I'm a saver?

Well, today I stumbled upon all of my old guitar music. And with this new aim to "let go" in mind, I have ruthlessly dumped the lot.

When I was in high school I decided that I would play the guitar. This was my motivation: I was attracted to guys who played the guitar. Incidentally, this is the same motivation that inspired me to try to learn how to skateboard when I was 22 - bad idea. Somehow I thought that if I was to play the guitar then those guitar-playing males would eventually think I was cool and would ask me out, or at least I'd be a rockstar and have the envy of my peers. I'm glad I never used this logic in my attraction to men's facial hair.

So I learned a lot of chords. I printed dozens of chord sheets and tablature charts off of the internet for songs such as Better Man (Pearl Jam), Crazy on You (Heart), Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Elvis Presley), Waltz #2 (Elliott Smith), Linger (The Cranberries), Spending My Time (Roxette), and What's the Frequency, Kenneth? (REM). I had very eclectic tastes. For most of my college years, I worked steadily at this goal by playing in my free time and entertaining my roommates with folksy sing-alongs. I never had any formal training. It showed.

After college, I met my husband. He wasn't my husband when I first met him; that came later. He played/plays the guitar...a lot better than I do. I haven't even bothered pretending I'm a guitar player since I met him - over six years ago now - which is why I know that I don't need to hold onto these silly little chord progressions sketched out on pink lined stationery with the accompanying lyrics to Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens) and If I Had a Million Dollars (Barenaked Ladies) and The Great Adventure (Steven Curtis Chapman). Besides, I reached my goal: I married a guitarist. And I'm fairly certain it wasn't my self-taught campfire style that clinched it either.

Still, it was a difficult decision to some degree. There was a voice in my head saying, "What if you want to play songs for Beatrix someday? You'll probably at least need the '90s praise choruses...and the Christmas music...and the Simon & Garfunkel too. You might need the lyrics for Man on the Moon (REM) for a Trivial Pursuit question." But no! I'm not listening to that voice. If I do, at some point later in my life, decide to take up guitar again or play for my kids, I can very well find all the same chords on the internet then. And if I do forget that I ever knew Leaving on a Jet Plane (Peter, Paul & Mary) forward and backward, what's the harm? So, goodbye, guitar-playing dreams of old...you have been released.

In the same box I found a few of my own songs that I had written. I have not yet been able to throw them away. I'll leave those for another day, another post.

Shameful Memory #1: An Errant Errand

As I said in my first post, I am trying to let go of things that haunt me. There are a set of memories which are particularly bothersome, ones in which I felt humiliated. These are often not memories of my actual wrong-doing; those events I certainly regret, but usually I deal with them more directly (by confessing, asking forgiveness, seeking reconciliation of some sort). The memories I am talking about have no such resolution. Even so, they are very minor incidents...and some of them happened so many years ago that it is a wonder I remember them at all. For anyone else involved, I am sure they were never even thought of twice, but I can't stop thinking about them. I forget what they all are, but they will come up eventually, triggered by something else in life, and then I will replay them in full detail and feel the same shame as they originally evoked. Often, these memories will cause an outward reaction such as cursing aloud, shuddering, groaning, or burying my head in my hands.

The first of these came to mind while enjoying a pleasant walk outside in the sunshine with my daughter. Out of nowhere, there it was. I could feel the familiar sinking, the dread growing inside. The sequential images flashed in my mind and left me, for probably the hundredth time, feeling like the most ridiculous girl on the planet.

I must have been around 17, old enough to drive and living at home. My mom asked me to take a bag of clothes to some friends of ours; the husband was in need of a suit for a formal function and my mom had offered a few of my dad's things to try. She told me - as I remember it - that "L__________ wants to see if any of these will fit D_________," nothing more specific.

I drove the few miles of country back roads to our friends' house with the garbage bag of clothes sitting on the seat. Upon arriving, I brought the bag to the front door and was greeted by L__________ who invited me inside, gushing with hospitality and friendliness as she always does.

A few very specific things about the scene here: L__________ was in a bathrobe and was acting slightly distracted, I inferred that she was in the middle of getting ready for said formal function; the eldest son of our friends was in the living room near the main entryway, lying on the couch, reclining his head on one hand. L_________ chatted with me for a few minutes, the son joined in the conversation too though he did not rise from his position on the couch. Eventually, L_________ made her excuses and said goodbye because she needed to finish getting ready. Courtesies all around.

While L_________ left the room, I turned to the son and shrugged, laughed nervously, then stated, "Looks like it's going to be awhile." You see, I was under the impression that I was supposed to wait around to find out if the clothes fit or not so that I could bring the remaining items back home. I remember taking off my coat - I was wearing overalls and a long sleeved black and yellow striped shirt, my "bee" shirt - and plopping myself down casually on the couch opposite where the son was lying down. I felt cute; for whatever reason, the overalls and bee shirt did that back then.

Now about the son, B________, as he is called, is about 8 years older than me and - at least at the time - was very good looking. When we were littler, my sisters and I all had crushes on him. So picture that: I am roughly 17, he is roughly 25. We are meeting probably for the first time in several years and the last impression that I have of him is of unrequited childhood affection. This was my chance to talk to an attractive guy and to bridge the gap in our ages by establishing myself as grown-up, therefore nullifying any last impression that he may have had of me. And we did talk, though I have no idea what about.

Inwardly, I was congratulating myself for handling the social situation so well - small talk never was one of my strong points. I remember feeling anxious and wondering how long I would have to wait to get those clothes back so I could make the drive home. After a few minutes, L________ came back into the room. She startled at the sight of me. "You're still here!" she said with surprise.

This is when it hit me. "I thought I was supposed to wait for the clothes," I stammered, understanding immediately that I was in the wrong and that, of course, this was a drop-off-only errand. I made my apologies in haste, not wanting to look back over at the son (still lounging) to expose my embarrassment, and left.

To them both, it was most likely nothing at all. Perhaps they had a chuckle at my expense when the door closed behind me, or maybe L________ mentioned it to my mom later on and laughed then. At the very worst, maybe the son went away thinking, "Boy, that Gustafson girl is weird." But I doubt it. They're nice people, friends of the family, and it was just an honest mistake. People don't generally hold honest mistakes against you. I hold them against myself. Somehow I think I should be above mistakes.

The reason that this memory continues to make me feel humiliated is not because I still have a crush on the son, but it is because - at such a tender age, when self-confidence is already at a low, and the world of the opposite sex is just opening up - I was a fool. A teensy, tiny, barely noticeable fool. I puffed myself up for a moment, just to look silly the next. My anxiety, contrasted with the extreme of his repose, heightened the embarrassment. Most things are more dramatic when you're 17, disappointments in "love" especially.

I'm now 30 which puts this guy around 38. We're both married, we both have children, and our paths are not likely to cross any time soon, if ever again. Even if they did, this incident would have absolutely no bearing on that hypothetical encounter. There is no reason that one momentary embarrassment should have any lasting effect on me. It really is time to let go.

Besides, writing this out makes me realize how much of nothing it was; I don't even think it makes a good story.

On Blogs and Letting Go

I think I may be developing an addiction for blogs. Not for blogging, mind you, just for creating blogs. This is the fourth one I have started in the last three months and I have ideas for more.

The thing is that it is really doing a number on my creative self-esteem. I spent three days trying to think up a name for this blog and, once I had a few in mind, I found out that most of them had already been taken. I must have gone through about twenty until I came up with "Wide-eyed Redhead" and, to tell you the truth, I'm not too thrilled with it. But what really got to me in the whole process is that whenever I found out that one of my ideas for names was taken I would, of course, go look at the blog to see who should have dared use my name idea before I had it and, nine times out of ten, it was a blog started at least five years ago with one post on it. And always some really pathetic first post too. One that says something like, "So...I decided to start a blog. My name's Heather. I like horses and water-skiing." So then I started to feel bad, like "I've got the same ideas as these people?".

I mean, poor Heather. She never got up the gumption to get back into it and apparently doesn't realize that several years later someone might be stumbling onto her blog and making fun of her for it. I actually came across one ("Ranting Redhead" maybe) where the author wrote about how she was going through a break-up. It was awful. I have to hope that the reason she never got back to blogging was because the next day she met someone amazing and fell swiftly in love. Otherwise, it's just plain depressing to think about.

Anyway, back to me. My other blogs were created for 1) spiritual pondering, 2) political diatribing, and 3) sharing photos of my beautiful baby girl, Beatrix. The last one is the only one that's really being used. The purpose of this blog is, most simply put, to "let go". None of the above blogs offered a space for me to just write about my thoughts on my own life (like a well-edited diary). And I think it might do me some good to do so.

I recently challenged myself to stop being afraid of the past. Because I really am a huge scaredy-cat when it comes to the past. I am haunted by all sorts of old memories. They appear out of nowhere and petrify me or just make me feel worthless. I want to get them out in the open as a way of freeing myself of them. This worked with the novel that was stuck (think constipated) in my head for years. In 2007, I participated in NaNoWriMo and very roughly and horridly plunked out a semi-autobiographical 50,000-word novel on life in Portland, Oregon at the turn of this century among twenty-somethings. I didn't really finish the novel, but I got enough of it out that I no longer needed to keep it rolling around in my brain. Now whenever I have a fleeting thought about writing that story I just think, "Oh, good. It's already written down. I don't need to think about remembering it anymore."

Here's hoping it'll work this time too.