Warts and all

I'm weird. Quite weird actually. I don't mean weird in that tender-loving idiosyncratic way, I mean weird in that I'm sorry for the way I am. I regret sharing the post about Elliott and his oddities, but at the same time I've always wanted to be completely open (and honest) about this process called "parenthood" and child-rearing. Your kids will do things that make you uncomfortable, and I suppose my effort wasn't to so much to make everyone blush or question our parental skills (which you're more than welcome to do) but to be honest - warts and all. But now its time for me to show my warts, expose part of who I am, the things I try to hide that make me uncomfortable. Sometimes I look at our kids, our house, our cars, the things that surround us, and I wonder how I came to be at this place, this moment -- how I'm 34 years old, married 11 years and have 2 kids -- when I (internally) see myself as this little boy with a nappy nest of hair and oversized glasses peering at the lurking world; waiting for it to throw its stones and call me names. In frantic pace of life the journey from Point A to Point B is a blur, but I still feel like that little boy. One time during a early high school (I think 9th grade) our school was on its annual "camp" time at the beginning of the year. The entire school would go to some camp ground and have this "bonding", "spiritual revival" experience. I wasn't popular, nor was I unpopular. I was a floater. And in a small Christian school, a floater was a scapegoat. My "friends" would default to me in their weakness, to deflect cruelty or meanness that might come their way onto me - because I was neither a stud, nor a nerd and I would take it. I remember walking down a path, back to the cabin and my "friends" started calling me names. I don't remember why. And then they threw rocks. I went to the bathroom stalls and cried. That's what a floater did, they hide and cried and took it. I also forgot things. Small things. Often. Everyday I would wake in dread of what I had forgotten. I'd try to remember. I'd write it down. I'd put it in my bag. But between when the assignment or date was given and when I wrote it down and when I got home, that recollection was long gone -- shuffled in the mess of hours from Point A and Point B. My life was full of anxiety. I could not depend on my friends to be friends from one day to another, nor could I depend on myself to remember things from one day to another. The only way I felt comfort was in the familiar and that comfort is embedded into my subconscious. Over the years I've grown to learn that I have(diagnosed) short term memory problems and that I do have true friends that will be friends from one day to the next. But that little boy is still there lurking, waiting for that comfort to be upturned. For the world to get cruel, and mean and leave me behind and alone and be a floater again. Yesterday I let that inner fear of change erupt in a childish, guttural response. Sonya got her haircut. Very short (for her); something I had not seen nor expected and that child welled up and got upset. The dependability of his life was altered - and not even in a signficant way but it was enough to disrupt something unconscious in me. And I was mean. I said something mean and I went to be alone. I wanted to run away. Internally I felt upturned and unsettled, externally I was frustrated with my dumb reaction that I couldn't seem to control. "It's just a haircut", I knew that. I felt dumb. Mean. I was a jerk. I composed myself and we then talked it over, talked it out, and are fine. But there are blemishes on all of us. We all do things that are embarrassing, and sometimes just mean, or cruel, or dispicable, or explicit, or illegal, or childish. I for one, wish not to hide behind a facade, but take comfort, collectively, in the sin and blemish and maybe find comfort (not excuses or justifications) in our oddities and weirdnss.