Solstice, Almost

 After a 7 hour recording session, performance season has ended. Since the end of April, I've been in back to back opera and choir performances, on top of work stuff, on top of general life stuff, and then last weekend the academic year ended and so did performance season and for the past three days I have been unregulated. It doesn't help that I'm also having my period, which at 49 is both insulting and also deeply unpredictable. After almost 2 decades of barely any period (thanks, birth control, eating disorder and working out too much), it's like I'm 15 again. Anyway. My anxiety ahs been growing steadily since I woke up Monday morning and suddenly had nothing in front of me but a long summer, mostly empty work days, and for the first time since J graduated high school, he's not at home. He's happy--at his apartment, taking online summer courses, not working yet, but I'm unmoored. this is also the time of year that, between 2014 and 2022, was the worst hardest most awful time. Those weekends we'd fly to Michigan and i'd leave him there for two months. Maybe my body also remembers that. And those first few years after were hard too.

Anyway, my anxiety is bad. Or getting bad. Or maybe I just feel it, which is rare these days. After so many years of living like this all the time, it's no wonder my blood pressure was sky high and I was on the R-A train toward a heart attack. Five years ago, I'd be three glasses of wine deep and would pass out and wake up with a headache. Then R and I mostly stopped drinking because I didn't want to end up like my dad. 

But I have felt it creeping in, a knot in my stomach, a general unease, little flames of terror when I think of J, or R aging, or me aging, or being stuck at my job for another 12 years. A few weeks ago I thought to myself god I'm so lucky that's done with. I was mid-stream in performances and rehearsals, and felt wholly and truly myself. I am finally somewhere where I have community and art.  And now that it's on regular normal summer pause I feel unmoored. I know i'll find my footing; I know that when I was teaching and summer vacation rolled around it took a minute to find meaning and purpose in those empty days. 

Summer is for writing! But I can barely think, suddenly. I can't just dive into poems as it just doesn't work that way. A friend, one of my faculty who is also an artist, told me it's similar for him: during the academic year he barely makes art, and it takes a while in the summer to find that space again. This is comforting to hear.

And then today I was thrown into a rage at work--or maybe not a rage, but deep anger and disgust. Not surprise. Two years ago, I was given the arts division on top of the humanities and social science divisions, and this year I was given the business division. All with a promise that I would be given support, or that another dean would eventually be hired. Another male dean was also given a new area, though just one instead of many. When I was hired 13 years ago, my current areas were supervised by three deans: Humanities, Arts and Integrated Media, and Business and Social Science. Also, when i was hired 13 years ago, I barely made it onto the salary schedule, as my experience as an instructor did not count. It has been made very clear to me by the college over the years that more work at the same level is not more work, i.e., absorbing the entire jobs of my colleagues does not mean I get a raise.

However, if I were the male dean, I would have gotten a raise. A $40,000 raise. My boss claims she is a feminist. When "Dave" was given his new areas, his job description was re-written to make the minimum qualifications a doctorate, which he conveniently had (and which is not the minimum qualifications for the rest of the dean jobs, by the way) because he supervises one Bachelor of Applied Science programs. Thus, he didn't take on more work at the same level, but work at a higher level. Clever. Meanwhile, I directly supervise around 140 people (it varies, depending on how many part time folks we have each quarter). And once again, I am one of the two lowest paid deans at the college and I know they will tell me it is not because of our gender, but our experience. It's also worth noting that both male deans have been at the college far less than I have, but both make tens of thousands of dollars more than I do. The other female deans, except one (who everyone gets confused with me, and she's also my best friend) are topped out but they've been there for at least 20 years. Dave has been there 7. I have been there 13. Anyway.I walked out today before noon. It's break week, so I was the only dean on campus anyway because I'm a fucking sucker.

My job description simply says I am the Dean of Humanities. There has been no desire or motivation to rewrite or amend that one, but I suspect if they did it would be to ensure I make less.

And I know: I am incredibly lucky to have this job and I make good money and I can support my family and I have health insurance and yet I spent most of the day incredibly angry. Angry at "Dave" the most deeply mediocre of white men that has ever mediocred at whitey manned, at my boss, at the system that absolutely supports this kind of bullshit. And what do I do with it? Bring it up? Again? be told that more work at the same level is not more work and thus I am paid fairly? I have been labeled a "mean girl" and "intimidating" by the President, though if you were to ask my faculty and staff if they believed me to be mean I think they would find it ridiculous. I am well respected and well liked by my staff and faculty which, honestly, is more important than managing upwards and kissing my bosses' collective asses. I hate that I am angry about money (I fucking hate capitlism, and would so much rather be in my garden, doing anything else, baking bread, knitting one more truly unwearable hat (I've cornered the market on this by the way) and yet I know that money is the only thing my work equates with worth and I'm so deeply tired of mediocre white dudes being valued over anyone else

Jesus, this isn't what I wanted to write about. But I guess I'm just glad that I'm writing. I came home and vented at R and went for a run and sweat half my body water out and fiddled with the backyard pond and bought a 10 pound bag of birdseed which exploded in my back seat because I tossed it on my ice scraper and I don't know what to do with myself without rehearsals, without a community. It's also the time of year that my facebook memories are of me and J. flying to Michigan for the summer, and my body is filled with those memories--him being pulled away from me in the airport by his father and not allowed to hug me, collapsing on the airport floor, flying home alone, those weeks and weeks where I'd see his face in a dark bedroom for a brief video call before his father told him to get off the phone, it was bedtime, the terror we both carried in our hearts, our bodies. I spoke to one of his high school teachers at the recording session--he's our sound engineer, and taught J audio engineering which was so important to him in high school. J seemed like he was carrying a lot, the teacher said. He was a good kid but he clearly had a lot of sadness in him. And then those years afterwards, that white flicker of terror that rises in me.

And my body doesn't really know how to shake those years off, though J seems okay now, comes home bi-weekly for dinner and pizza and a walk up Davis hill and talks about books and movies and music and family and life. Are you okay? I kept asking him the other night. Yes, mom, he said. Are you? Today I caught my eyes in the mirror while peeling off my running clothes and it was the face and neck of a middle aged woman, an old lady, and I just sighed and felt myself growing more and more invisible. I lay in bed at night and worry about J and R and what if I never write again and my body feels soft and borderless and I dream of tornadoes. It was so ingrained in me as a child to not get my hopes up. Ever. Always expect the worst. Don't believe in happiness. Don't believe you deserve anything other than this.

 J has a great therapist, has found medication that works for him. Meanwhile, I'm just rawdogging perimenopause over here. It's probably time I found another therapist.

When I was 30 and started blogging, I was desperate to believe that my dumb, ordinary life was worth living and documenting. I'd lived so many years (well, 30 of them honestly) believing that what I was epxeriencing wasn't real, wasn't meaningful, wasn't worth a goddamned thing. I just wanted to think for one moment that I wasn't alone, that I wasn't a loser, that the shame I carried for everything (not living up to my parents/teachers/professors' expectations; not being thin enough; not being ambitious enough; not having a clean enough bedroom; not being compliant enough; being too short; too busty; too soft in the belly; not pornographically sexual enough; not aggressive enough---Jesus Fucking Horatio Christmas, this list could go on for literally FOREVER because I have always believed myself to be a failure at -whatever-because I clearly didn't try enough). ANYWAY!  At 49 I feel somewhat embarrassed. No, ashamed. Shame is the emotion I am most acquainted with, bad Catholic girl that I am)-- I'm supposed to have my shit together! (Spoiler: I don't). Anyway. The best thing I did back then was just start telling the truth and not being ashamed of it. I guess that might also apply now. Here I am, y'all. I'm a fucking mess like the rest of us.

the view in my garden, writing this

Trying to read, but I think my brain is broken