i n • p u r s u i t

I'm sitting here as my children are supposed to be napping, but instead are playing. But they're behind a closed door and they're happy, so I'm letting it be. I'm also sitting here as I should be doing housework. I have a pile of unfolded laundry right in front of me and there are crumbs on the hardwood floor that were painful to trod upon in the dark as I attended to a crying Ruthie last night. I've been thinking lately about the lies I have come to believe lately. The negative things that I tell myself about who I am.  I'm just an unmotivated individual. I used to like to write, but I can't string words together like I used to. I wish I was neat, but I'm a messy person. That's just a few. But there's more. I'm not important. I don't know. I can't figure that out on my own. I don't have a lot to say. I don't have an opinion. Anyway. Right now I'm thinking about the one where I tell to myself...

Throughout my childhood, I was left behind or forgotten. When I was five years old, we lived in Guam. One night, we were at church having a birthday party for our priest, Father Roberto. I went to use the bathroom and when I came back out, my parents were no longer in the big room. So, I remember going to the parking lot to look for them. I have a very clear memory of crying as I watched the tail lights of our conversion van fading into the darkness. What had happened, apparently, was that everyone piled into the van (and apparently a couple of neighbor friends were with us) and before my dad drove off he said, "Is everyone here?" And everyone that was there said, "Yes!" Thankfully, a family friend saw me immediately brought me home. Several years and two moves later, we were living in Iceland. I was in 7th grade at A. T. Mahan high school at NAS Keflavik, Iceland. Our school had a school-wide field trip day and there were four trips you could choose from. M...

Worthless: having no real value or use. When I was a kid I was pretty well behaved and also pretty quiet. Unfortunately, that meant my dad left without me a handful of times.. Relatedly, my mom would pick me up from school and tell me, "If you’re not outside when I’m here to pick you up I’m leaving." Which totally sounds like a mom thing to say and I get it. However, between being forgotten because I was easy to miss and being told I would be left, I grew up feeling worthless. Until recently, I would never have said that word about myself. " Worthless " sounds foreign to me. It sounds big. It sounds just so. so. sad. I don’t feel like that person. I’m beginning to learn that I do have an underlying sense of worthlessness; a feeling that I'm not very important or worth noticing. It is these feelings that have made me feel unloved when I'm not included--whether intentional or not. Maybe someone reading this feels worthless too. Maybe you are de...