Of a Lump in My Throat

Hello My Dear One,

I began writing while still hospitalized for a virulent bacterial infection, and although I am now back home safe and sound, I want you to hear what my thoughts were at the time, and what they are now.

I have been sitting here for days, in hospital, battling through a PeriTonsillar Abscess caused by a virulent strain of Strep A that attacked me nearly 2 weeks ago.  I have been pumped full of meds, had 2 CT scans, a procedure done at 10:00pm on a Sunday night with only a few shots of Lidocaine, a needle, a knife, some clamps, and the warning "Don't Move."  I have been on a restricted diet, monitored day and night, and have learned that apparently I don't breathe all of the time while I sleep.  And all of this because of a lump in my throat, a puss filled abscess on the back side of my left tonsil, that grew from 1cm to 2.5cm in less than 48 hours.  I have been subjected to a battery of tests, all because of a lump in my throat.

And all of this has led to a different lump in my throat, not a physical one, but a figurative one that is often described as the way one feels when faced with a sadness that is too great for initial speech.  We even refer to it as "getting choked up" in the U.S., when we are overcome with emotion that might make us cry.  Because here is the U.S. we are not as quick to show our sadness, particularly as men, and more so when in public.  We say that we are "choked up" because we cannot speak the words, or cry the tears when faced with the flood of real emotion in times of sorrow.  This to me is in itself a sadness, however I am just of guilty as this as most of those around me.

Now all of this could well lead into an exploration of cultural norms and mores, how men and women react differently to emotions, and what it means to be a member of a society that prizes violence and heroism over intimacy and relationship.

But I want instead to talk about the lumps in my throat.  I want to explain what has brought me to this place of a physical lump, and to the figurative one as well.  I want to explore the feelings that got me into all of this and also out of this.

I got sick with Strep A nearly 2 weeks ago, and I started a course of antibiotics almost immediately.  I felt a little better, tired, but better, and thought I might even be able to return to work at the end of the week.  But all too quickly I was much sicker, and I was failing fast.  After 2 emergency room visits I was sent to a larger hospital and began a lengthy process of recovery.

But I wondered, why did I grow this crazy puss filled thing in my throat in the first place.  Why me?  I know I have amazing skills at growing cysts, this is at least the 5th in the last 15 years, but really?  An abscess on a tonsil?  One that was growing at an alarming rate, and slowly blocking my airway?  I was literally getting choked up by this growth in my throat.

I knew that from a medical standpoint it was a potential that comes whenever someone has strep throat, and it can happen especially if there is a history of tonsillitis, and/or a weakened immune system, such as mine.  Having diabetes has always been a liability, but sometimes I forget how much of one it can be.  My health is often more at risk than others and I need to protect myself through preventative measures in a more aggressive fashion that I frequently do.

Further, I work in an elementary school and am exposed to all manner of bacteria, viruses, sickly kids, and other environmental health risks.  It can be a highly stressful position, where I never feel like I have enough time to complete everything I want to do in my day.  That sense of unfinished business can be trying at times no matter how much I try to walk away from it when I am not there.  And I never really stop thinking about the kids I work with.  I want to bring them my best self, my most creative ideas, and something that might make learning a little better, a little easier, a little more enjoyable than it has been in the past for them.  I want to engage them and make them lifelong learners too.

But even with all of these factors, I'm not sure I can blame this round of illness on much of any of that.  No, I think deep down that my own emotional conflicts over theological school, call, meeting the needs of my family, and ignoring my own health were the real culprits this time.  My inability to put my own physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual needs ahead of anything else is always detrimental to my body, as it decides to shut the whole system down to keep me from wreaking any more havoc on myself.  Just like the encapsulating cysts that I excel at growing, my body eventually encapsulates me in a cyst so that I too must be drained of the puss that I have accrued within my spirit.

Much like the physical abscess I had blocking my airway, my emotional airway was blocked by an unwillingness on my part to acknowledge that I was doing too much.  I had taken on projects, and work, and commitments I could in no way fulfill, and yet I tried to take on more.  From my innermost self that wants to be loved, I continue to put myself into those vicious circles of offering too much in return for too little.  Over extending myself is not truly a sign of flexibility or the ability to multitask, rather I see in my own life that it is merely a way of running oneself ragged and incapable of doing anything.

I was in so much denial about how overwhelmed I was that I had even stopped really caring for my diabetes.  I suspect that this a key player in my prolonged illness.  Diabetes is an autoimmune disorder, and when it is improperly managed, the body cannot respond to bacterial or viral attacks with enough strength to properly fight off the illness.  My blood glucose levels had been rising and my overall average was up as well.  I drank coffee laden with sugar, creamers, and sugary syrups.  I ate candy bars, donuts, cakes, cookies, and way to much protein.  I lowered my immunity and suffered the consequences.

But what about those figurative lumps in my throat?  Well, as I sat there, stuck in that bed, I began to see how much I missed my wife and children.  I realized how much I missed my work life.  I realized how much I missed my freedom to go to a grocery store and by some fresh fruit and vegetables.  I realized that I missed my life.  And that, that missing of my own life, was what brought the true lumps to my throat.

For nearly 40 years I have suffered from the belief that my existence was not truly important to the world, or even my own family's.  I didn't feel that my wife really needed me to exist, and of course she doesn't need me to exist per se, but to have a loving and fulfilling life we need each other.  Our existences are dependent upon the love that we create and share as two grown adults in the life altering bond of marriage.  We need each other.  And that emotion was overwhelming enough to bring a lump to my throat.

And so too, being a present, loving, nurturing father to my two magnificent sons.  Likewise my colleagues, my students, my friends, and the people with whom I share my stories of what it means to be intersex and transgender.  I meet each person exactly where they are and allow them the space to share with me their struggles and their triumphs.  What greater importance could there be in life?

And we have all been granted this opportunity.  We are given the gift of our lives to live into and share with others.  We are connected by our experiences, by our comings, and our goings in life.  We are connected by something as simple as a smile, or as profound as a lifelong relationship filled with hardships and joys that push us to be better people than we could have ever imagined.

Yet there is one more element to this magic, G-d.  Because I believe that it is the G-d outside of us, and the G-d within each of us that creates these opportunities to experience this brief flicker of time we have been granted.  And perhaps this brought the biggest lump to my throat.  The knowing that the G-d within me and the G-d within each housekeeping staff member, CNA, nurse, and doctor created a place of care, healing, and recovery for me, for my family, for my work, for my friends, and for the very people who cared for me during my illness became a truth that changed my life.  I mattered.  They mattered.  My existence here and now has meaning and value, and my absence would be a loss.

As a new week begins, I come to it with an appreciation for another day to be.
I am here, and my life has meaning.  Thanks be to G-d.

Thank you for having meaning in my life, in the lives of others, and for choosing to be a part of the lump in my throat.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari

Of a Different Deconstruction; Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Summer Church Camp

Hello My Dear One,

I apologize for my delay in correspondence.  Summer ended, school and teaching duties resumed, and I found myself in the beginning of a new realm of reality that includes re-entering theological school.  Crazy, huh? 

Of course, in the Jewish calendar we have experienced Rosh Hashanah, a nearing of newness with every breath, and as we welcome a new year of new opportunities, we will also be called to look back over the past year and make our atonement, our at-one-ment with G-d, ourselves, and our neighbors.  Yom Kippur will figuratively and literally bring us back in time to see where we slipped away from our connection to G-d, those times when we shoved our relationship with G-d as far away as possible, and those times that we shoved our neighbors as far away from ourselves as possible.  It is the season of letting go of the past and getting ready for what is to come.  

View from camp.

Not surprisingly, I experience this spiritual process more often than just once a year.  In particular, one of the times I experience this is during a family tradition of the past 7 years or so, where we spend the last weekend of summer at a summer camp, owned and operated by the state level organization of our denomination.  Yep, it’s summer church camp.  And it is a place that I first came to when I was 14 years old, the summer that my life first began to break apart.  So, coming here as an adult with my own children who love this place, who dream about it, who experience enormous spiritual joy here, I suffer an intense inner conflict because I am often disappointed and depressed throughout most of the weekend.  I don’t find the peace that they do, and this makes me even more susceptible to the doldrums that I am prone to slogging through.

The summer that I was 14, the entire year of 1989, really, was a defining one for me and for my family.  I finished junior high school a month after my grandfather had died of complications of Type 2 Diabetes.  I was about to enter high school and the ongoing stress of being transgender and intersex, in a culture that didn’t even have those words in its vocabulary yet, was greater than the weight of the world on my shoulders.  I identified as gay, but I knew that it wasn't who I really was.  But, it was better than trying to convince others and myself that I was a heterosexual female.  Point of note: I did consider myself to be a heterosexual male, I just couldn't figure out how to get other people to see this.  I was also beginning to exhibit the signs and symptoms of Bipolar 1 Disorder, however that diagnosis was another 12 years away.  I saw the tiny fractures in my being, delicate, yet sharp, and there wasn’t anyone or anything that could keep the breakage from spreading that year.  

That summer it was here at this summer camp that the beast of my mental illness made its first real appearance.  Here in the darkness of my own madness, I fell headlong into the pit I didn’t even know was in front of me.  I will always remember that Alice in Wonderland descent, and the strange world I found inside my mind.  

I remember that I had returned to the cabin, the toxic mixture of resentment, anxiety, hormones, gender identity disorder, and a learned coping skill of destructive behaviors mixing violently in my brain.  I sat on my bunk, surrounded by other bunks in a tiny cabin, with teenage girls coming and going, because of course I was “female” back then, and I felt a physical shift within my body.  The beast of my mental illness was struggling its way up and out like a nascent dinosaur breaking out of its hardened shell.  I had severe insomnia, I was paranoid, I was unable to focus, I began to speak abusively, I was anxious, and at the pinnacle of my 1st slip into madness, I threw a flashlight at a girl in my cabin because I felt left out of the plans that she and another girl were making.  This action resulted in my spending a night in the nurse’s cabin, and having some long talks with the adults, and apologizing to a now frightened teenage girl.  

In retrospect, I see why my actions were inappropriate, but at the time I really didn’t understand.  This behavior had been modeled for me for more than 14 years, and I believed that this was the correct response to frustration.  It’s true, having had objects thrown around and at me, my entire life, had desensitized me when it came to using physical violence toward others when I was emotionally dis-regulated.  Simply put, when I was upset, I felt that the best option was to chuck something as hard as possible at whatever was handy.  

The truth of course, is that this is not OK behavior, and it is what I work on with my students on a daily basis, i.e. “Use your words.”  And for as much good as that may do with those youngsters, it is just as likely to elicit the same response as it did from my beast that night, “Go to Hell!!!!”  And, sadly when I have reached that point, I am already in hell, and I am bent on bringing everyone else down with me.  That raw beastly growl from within bursts out like sulphuric lava, spewing every ounce of hatred, depression, and fear from within me.  And the me that I know and that I can make function has been drowned out by the panicked screams of a suddenly freed monster of mental illness.  It is a terrifying feeling, this loss of control, and I suspect, it is an even more terrifying place to be if you are on the outside of it.

So, on the night that the beast and I really met, that night when my hand threw a heavy flashlight into a wall, narrowly missing a girl’s head, a piece of my sanity was replaced by the pain that had exploded out of me.  The beast got its first real taste of freedom that night, and I knew, I felt, that I and the life I had were never going to be the same again.  

Swimming to another side.

As the story of that summer unfolded, my mental illness was swept under the rug, excuses were made by my family, and my need for help was replaced by a new evil that took over our house just a few weeks later.  Yes, it was the same year that my father began a 6 year affair with a woman whom he chose to house in the same home as his wife and child.  It was the beginning of a new familial madness, one that would lead to fires, abuse, broken hearts, broken families, broken relationships, desperation, alcohol and pornography addictions, and a crazy that defied labeling for its unparalleled perversion and sickness.  

The link that I finally find, nearly 25 years later is that this place, this camp, this spiritual center for so many members of my family, is in fact a place of immeasurable sadness and brokenness for me.  It is the epicenter of my first psychological meltdown.  It is also the place that when I finally left my parents to spend a week on my one at the age of 14, that while I was gone, my family fell apart.  As a youngster, a teen, I blamed myself for taking my focus off of my job, keeping our family together, and attempting to meet my own spiritual and reflective needs.  To this day, I carry with me the belief that when I divert my attention from holding everything together, and I actually stop and care for and about myself, that my world will soon fall apart.  It may stem from the grandiosity that accompanies Bipolar Disorder, or it may be a result of the blame that was poured out on me during my life.  With no insane, controlling, violent, abusive, or mentally ill adults to bully me into submission, I am able to meet my own needs.  Ironically, fifteen years later, I am frequently that very same horrid adult bullying myself into submission, making certain that I must suffer for the good of everyone else.

As I reflect further on this I see the lifetime belief of unworthiness, revealing itself in places I never even thought to look.  Taking responsibility for my parents‘ marriage, or taking the blame when they told me they were “staying together” for me.  As if living in a house where adultery, and quite honestly polygamy, were acceptable realities for a 14 year old child, and then to tell the child it is for their benefit.  I was being molded into a warped and unstable individual, I, the very reason for the bitter, screaming, and burning hell that we all lived in.  And I carried that with me for so long, feeling responsible for the scars on my psyche, and my body, that had been caused by "loved ones."  That is a Hell.  And true atonement for those sins comes with my forgiveness, and my letting go of the stranglehold on my own life.  
Those experiences of my past have shaped who I am, but as is so often the case, what humans have done with malice, G-d can use for good.  You see, the pain of what was, has become a gift of true understanding of the horrors that other people experience.  I am not desensitized to the pain, rather I have a shared compassion as someone who has survived the darkness that a tortured soul finds himself or herself in.  As I work with little children, I can honor their brokenness and help them to find their own voice.  I can stand with them in their fear, and I can stand strong for them until they can stand for themselves.  Just as I now can stand for myself, always knowing that is G-d standing with me.    

So, here we are, a new year and I am reaching for my own at-one-ment and I am caught in my interfaith life even more than I once would have supposed was possible.  And ultimately that is exactly where I am supposed to be, living into Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Summer Church Camp, and yes, theological school.  If I truly believe that I am made in G-d's image, then the plurality of my life is inherent.  I have been given an opportunity to live as more than just female or male, more than just sane or crazy, more than just smart or artistic, more than what I have been told I can be.  I have been granted the gift to live as exactly who I actually am.  I have been granted the chance to share my story and be present for those who need to share their stories.  I am a very blessed man. 

Sharing my stories, my songs, and myself.

Thank you for sharing in and being a part of my stories.

Be well, remember to love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari

Of Mental Illness, Accountability, and Adoption

Hello My Dear One,

How are you?  I am busy, and not in that good way when you feel productive after finishing a project.  No, I'm just busy, flitting from task to task, chore to chore, and wondering why everyone thinks that educators have summers "off."  The truth is we continue to work all summer long, prepping, studying, shopping, planning, raising our own kids who have the summer off, and a majority of us take 2nd and 3rd jobs to supplement our incomes.  As an hourly worker, this is especially true for me.  But even the salaried employees frequently take on extra work to support their families.  And, "summer" is not June, July, and August - three glorious months of fun and sun, but really the last 2 weeks of June through the first 3 weeks in August.  If we're lucky that's 10 weeks total.  

At any rate, in the hectic pace of my summer I have been writing a lot, in my head, which although valuable in its own right, fails to share my thoughts as effectively as when I actually write them down.  As I have continued my work in providing parenting for my 2 sons and "sitting" for 2 other boys, while dispersing contents of my mother's home, I have found myself less and less motivated to write.  Which ultimately means that I need to spend even more time writing if I am to save my sanity.  So, here I am, present to the true needs of my life, having survived another brutal heatwave, questioning my often self-defeating behaviors.

I've had many therapy sessions this summer, most of which have been delving into my learned patterns of sacrifice and martyrdom.  It is a vicious cycle that was modeled for me throughout my entire childhood and continues to be utilized by both of my parents to this day.

1) Feeling unworthy of love and/or generalized unworthiness.
2) Attention seeking words and behaviors.
3) Offering myself and my resources to others in unhealthy ways due to fears of rejection.
4) Resentment for being treated poorly or underselling myself.
5) Self inflicted sacrifice of my needs and wants because of feeling unworthy of love.
6) Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

Intellectually I can fully understand this crazy loop and that I ought to be able to find ways to prevent it, stop it mid-cycle, or at the very least stop the sacrificing of my needs and wants when I realize what I've done.  If only it were that simple.  The patterns of these thinking and behavior have been seared into my very being.  It reminds me of trying to merge on or off of a roundabout in Paris, France or Augusta, ME, either you go full bore into it and make the loops until you can actually get off or you freeze before entering and decide that abandoning your car is the safer and easier choice.

All of this has its roots in my family of origin and my upbringing.  I could spend pages upon pages concerning incidents that cemented the behaviors I have nurtured and used to torture myself and others, detailing each wrong or hurt that I experienced.  Instead, I will attempt to pull the meaning out of the minutiae, leaving the disturbances behind, in the past where they belong.  And this is what I have spent the most time working on during the past few months, learning to sift through the muck of my past and see where the real accountability needs to be placed.  I am learning to separate my parents' accountability for their actions from their mental illnesses, and subsequently my own negative patterns and the choices I have made and sometimes still make in my daily life.

My parents' influence on me and the molding and shaping that they did from before my birth is the starting place. From the beginning of their marriage they were an unlikely pairing.  They had known each other since the 1st grade, from sunday school and church, and from living in a really small town. The two families were actually related, and my parents' are indeed 5th cousins.  Having gone their separate ways after high school graduation, mom and dad re-met at a Christmas Eve service, both having recently ended relationships.  They were engaged less than a year later.  The wedding itself occurred mostly because my aunt had decided not to marry her fiance at the last minute, and my grandmother was bound and determined that there would be a wedding come hell or high water.  So, my parents married and began a miserable life together, each sacrificing their own wants and needs for the "happiness" of the other.  My mother relinquished her New York City operatic career, and my father left his friends, family, and academic career to move to a tiny beach town next door to his in-laws so that his wife might act "less crazy."  I think that from the outside most anyone could have seen the disaster that was already underway, but from the inside, it must have been harder to visualize.  My father resented the fact he had sacrificed, as did my mother, the marriage itself was a sacrifice for both parties, and my birth was the ultimate sacrifice for both of them.  But one must remember that they both made choices.  This concept has become very important to me as I have dealt with my own struggles.

In the end, I found that I had to ask and then answer some difficult questions.  Does all of their sacrifice mean that they were not accountable for their thoughts, behaviors, and actions?  Because they both suffered from mental illness are they exempt from culpability when it comes to the suffering and pain that I endured?  Do their life choices, because they were made through lenses of borderline personality disorder, anxiety, PTSD, undiagnosed autism spectrum differences, ADD/ADHD, and their own learned behaviors from their parents, grandparents, and other family members excuse what they did to me?  Do their lives trump mine?  Are their beasts of mental illness stronger than mine?  Are their beasts allowed a greater freedom than mine?

In order to answer those questions I realized that I had to turn to my own learned behaviors and how I have enacted them throughout my life journey so far.  Up until recently my preferred method of dealing with emotional conflicts was through passive-aggressive mutters, whines, and rants along with physical isolation, hiding, running away, driving at unsafe speeds, and putting my loved ones and myself in danger.  I reenacted almost all the scenes from my childhood with minor adjustments to fit the situations.  I got stuck in that loop of ugliness and just kept going around and around it until people around me moved farther and father away from my reckless spinning through life.

These frightening revolutions have been devastating to my personal and professional life over the years.  Much the same way as they were for my parents.  That cycle of unworthiness that sometimes seems to ooze right out of my skin has been at the foundation of my sense of self.  I loathe myself, and then I loathe others, and then back to loathing myself.  It is like a tire stuck spinning in mud, sinking deeper with each revolution.  The more you try to gun the engine to move in any direction, the more you are sucked into the mire below you.

It is an ugly truth of my life, the mud I have spun myself around in has led me to abandon those I love for selfish and self-centered reasons.  And in the end it comes down to a single word that I fear more than most, choice.  If I have choices to make and I make poor ones, and I have mental illness, am I accountable for the consequences, and to what degree? Some of my choices have indeed been driven by my beast of mental illness when it was untreated.  But many of my choices have been driven by me.  The hard fact is that I am the one who is ultimately accountable for my beast's actions, because I am the one who can choose to let it run boundless in through my world.  I am also accountable because I can choose to go to therapy, take medications, make healthy living decisions, have a spiritual life, and pay attention to myself and others when my beast tries to raise its wild and flailing self in the middle of my life.  Whether I like it or not,  I have the choice to let the madness take over, or I can choose to keep the madness in check.

And this is where I choose, I choose accountability as a husband and a father, as well as the numerous other titles I use throughout my travels.  Instead of blaming my mental illness for the mistakes I've made, I am learning to own them, to claim them, to grieve the harm I've caused, and to celebrate the ways in which I have helped and can help others in the future because of my experiences.  I am beginning to see that I am responsible for what was, and for how I acted in many situations, and that each one is in the past and I no longer need to dwell there.  I am learning that I can make different choices whenever I want to, in word, in thought, in deed, and even in my perceptions of what is happening around me.  I can be that man, that father, un homme de dieu - a man of G-d - in heart and in vocation.  As I make choices, rather than believing that I have made sacrifices, I am granted control of myself and my beast.  I am finally the one telling my beast what to do rather than allowing it to tell me what to do.   

So, what am I telling my beast to do?  I am telling it that it doesn't need to fear being a father to my sons.  Now, I have been their parent since the day each one was conceived, albeit through extra measures that did not include my DNA.  And when each beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous son was born I was there, laughing, crying, present to the moments of becoming for all of us.  What I wasn't was able to be listed on their birth certificates, because at that point in time my own birth certificate still had the wrong sex listed on it.  I was also not legally married to my wife because gay marriage wasn't legal yet.  When we did legally marry as man and woman, after my birth certificate and driver's license were corrected to say Male, the State of Maine recognized me as my own children's step father.  In the legal analysis we determined that I would have to adopt my sons in order to correct my status as their father and to get new birth certificates for them.  

Now, what does my beast have to do with all of this?  It turns out, that the answer is, everything.  I/it was afraid that my wife would leave me, and take our boys away from me because of my mental illness.  My beast was trying to convince me that it would be less painful if that happened, if I was never legally their father anyway.  My beast and I were terrified of losing two of the greatest joys in my life.  And after much therapy, I saw this for what it was.  It was an excuse to stay in that cycle of unworthiness.  By allowing myself to believe that the worst would happen I was perpetuating the model that I had learned and lived - I am not worthy of love - and would punish myself and others because of this.  

As I cried in therapy, literally for the first time after 2 years with my therapist, I realized how much I do love my sons and that I am accountable for my role as their father.  I saw that I must show them that they are truly worthy of love by my choice to adopt them.  That I am choosing them over my own anxiety, fear, feelings of unworthiness, and my beast.  I can model that they deserve to be people who can receive G-d's love and shine it back out into the world.  That their worth is more valuable and precious than anything else to me.  I can give them exactly what I was not given, unconditional, affirming love from a parent who had to make a conscious effort to do so.  I am stronger than my beast and want them to feel that right down to their very cores.  That is what I am accountable for.


So, as I enter the legal and financial process of making our family whole on paper, I am committed to making our family whole in love.  As I break that vicious cycle of pain, suffering, and deconstruction, I find that I can grow as a man, and that I can then help my sons grow into men as well.  Perhaps this is the greatest gift, to be the father I am called to be and choose to be that man, no matter what.  I thank G-d for being a G-d of second, third, fourth, and even hundredth chances.  I thank G-d for the chance to be a part of a real family, created on a foundation of dignity, respect, and worth.  I thank G-d for calling me into choice.

Thank you for being present to my accountability.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari

Of Progress, of Call, and of Footwashing

Hello Dear One,

As the end of my work year approaches, I am faced with being assessed and of assessing my own performance over the past months of my employment.  Needless to say this is not really my idea of a good time, however I understand it's importance, and that there are incredibly valuable life lessons to be processed and absorbed from the positive and negative experiences I've had.  I'd rather treat my supervisor and myself to ice cream and talk about the crazy stuff that happened, but that's not how public education actually works.  Rather, I must rehash the last six months of my work life, in too often painful ways, and hope that I will do better next time around.  That said, I will continue to repeat my mantra "water off a duck's back" as my "growth points" are highlighted for me.  And I will do my best to hear and incorporate the positive words and reinforcements that I know I will receive as well.

So, what have I experienced over the past six months?  As a student replied to me not long ago, when asked how many monkeys were dangling above the plastic barrel, "A lot."  And although the answer was correct, I happened to be going for a specific number value, and I suspect that my supervisor will be doing the same thing.  And yet, I also suspect that my supervisor will be looking at the "a lot" just as much as at the numbers.  You see, in public education, specifically special education, there is much that we cannot quantify with numbers or letter grades, despite the efforts of legislators, governors, and other elected officials.  The fact that I have been able to foster a relationship built upon trust, consistency, and genuine concern for the well-being of another person who desperately needed and desired this, simply cannot be summed up by any written symbol.  This remarkable evolution between two people is beyond the scope of ratings systems.  It is quite frankly beyond a great many people's comprehension.

More importantly, it is something that neither individual in this situation is expected to be able to do, based upon medical and/or psychological diagnoses.  Though I will never violate the confidentiality of my students, I can discuss my own struggles with making friends and forming appropriate relationships with other people.  I can and have discussed some of my past trials in education and the traumatic ways that it shaped me.  I was bullied as a child because of my "differentness" and I continue to work to build my self esteem and believe people when they compliment my efforts and my work.  Having learning disabilities, being on the autism spectrum, having a mental illness, having a parent with mental illness, living with the secret of gender identity issues, living with the secrets of intersex condition symptoms, and just plain being quirky have all shaped the man I am today.  And they were all reasons to bully, separate, harm, ostracize, exclude, and hurt me as well, most often by peers.  I did not have many friends growing up and my students rarely do either.  We are often just a little too different to be able to make, keep, and sustain traditional friendships, largely because our brains are not wired that way.  

So, the dorky, nerdy, geeky, dweeby, etc. kids eventually become friends with each other and find kindred spirits.  Sometimes they go on to wreak havoc in the world, committing crimes, seemingly senseless acts of violence, endangering others, and not "living up to their potential."  Sometimes, though, they turn out to be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Dr. Temple Grandin, Albert Einstein, or an Ed Tech in an elementary school working with kids diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  As the old joke goes, "It's either Jail or Yale..."

It is a great irony that is not lost on me that I hated, truly hated, going to school as a child.  And now, I get up every day excited and enthusiastic about going to work, in a school.  Yep, I have chosen to go to the very place that had a stranglehold on my young psyche, a place that I believed that I would never succeed in, no matter how hard I tried.  And G-d knows I tried.  By the time I was in high school I spent 3 times as long on homework and reading assignments as my classmates did, and although I was considered "smart" I struggled with written exams and being able to express my thoughts on paper.  My only real successes came in playing tuba in the marching band and being involved with the behind-the-scenes work of theater.  School was simply a nightmare for me.  I never imagined that someday I would find myself right in the middle of that environment by choice.  And yet, here I am, loving every minute of the educational team and practices that I am in.

And as I look back over the past 6 months I see other things that I have learned and incorporated into my life as well.  First and foremost I have learned to remove myself, or more specifically, my ego, from many situations.  I have learned that when something is bothering someone it is better to find out what is going on with them, rather than assuming that it has something to do with me.  Because as it turns out, very little of what the people around me are concerned with has to do with me in any shape, form, or matter.  Most people are focused on themselves and spend far more time and energy thinking about what they are doing and almost no time on the people around them.  So, I've learned to step back, breathe, repeat my mantra "Water off a duck's back," and wait.  Just wait, and find out what that person needs, if anything at all, from me.  I don't have to have all the answers.  I don't have to have any of the answers.  My job is to wait, to listen, and to do what is asked of me.  I have learned how to do that more successfully over the past 6 months than in any other setting in my life.

Second on the list is that I have learned to let things play out, to unfold as they will without my intervention, and if necessary to let the system itself fail.  Sometimes in life we believe that we know the answer, or we have the best solution, or that we are right and the other person is wrong when it comes to a particular challenge.  And in fact, sometimes we do.  Sometimes we are right about an outcome and could have altered the result to something more productive.  At the same time we cannot deny someone else the opportunity to fail, or the system that this individual is working within to fail.  Rarely do we learn from our successes that came without trial and many errors.  It is a vital life lesson to learn how to fail and be able to recover.  Each time I do not accomplish a certain goal I am able to reflect on why it didn't happen and what I can do differently in the future.  So for all those individuals who say that "failure is not an option" I believe that sometimes failure is the best option and it will lead us into greater triumphs if we are willing to follow the new direction we are offered.

The last major item on the list of what I have learned is that I have at last found my calling, and have been granted the human and the Divine approval that I need and deserve for reaching this place on the journey.  It has come in many forms to me that I am called to a life of behavioral and mental health ministry within the context of public education.  I am acutely aware and in support of the separation of church and state, particularly in the elementary schools of the United States of America, as ours is a pluralistic nation that has not been able to embrace a universal moral code of ethics to truly guide it.  There are a multitude of religious options available to the people who choose to live in the U.S., yet there is a distinct lack of tolerance and acceptance for the many options and for those who choose options that are not what is considered to be the "right" one(s).  Yet all of that does not alter my own understanding of a call to ministry within a secular setting.  

I have heard the words that came from Dr. Temple Grandin after I had shared with her about my choice to work rather than collect disability payments.  She replied, "That made my day.  Even if I have to miss my plane, that made my day."  She asked me what I did for work and I told her that I teach young children who have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  "And I bet you love it," she stated.  Yes, I answered emphatically, I love my job. "Good." spoke Dr. Grandin.  That was the Divine approval I had needed.  I was able to hear that I was following G-d's call for me.

I later found myself in the middle of a Mother's Day project in school.  The classroom teacher painted the hands and feet of the 19 children who then pressed them on to large sheets of paper to make flowers with great leaves surrounding them as pictures for their mothers.  As she applied the green paint with a brush that tickled their feet, she would then place them on the paper, imprints of fleeting childhood preserved as a reminder of the impermanence of these precious years.  And as I knelt beside her I washed each child's feet in the bucket of soapy water in front of me.  I was on my knees, cleaning away the paint, the dirt, and whatever else was on those little feet and toes, and I felt that Divine approval again.  I knew that I was serving.  It was my job to help these children do something they couldn't physically do themselves yet, particularly in a classroom setting.  Yes, the metaphor, the christian imagery, the religious nature of the experience was blatant, but the meaning was far deeper.  I knelt there smiling, happy, relaxed, comfortable, and comforted that I was able to do this and be myself at the same time.  Mr. Hilton was washing kindergarteners' feet.  I was there for them and not myself.   

Awhile ago I had a conversation about faith and religion with a colleague of mine.  She ascribes to a far more fundamentalist and evangelical brand of faith than I do, still she made an excellent point in stating that she didn't have to talk about G-d in school to keep G-d in her heart and share that love with her students.  

And recently while in a room with her during an incident I was reminded of her belief, and consequently my own.  I sat in a room watching another human being, a very young one at that, suffering from the sometimes beast of autism, learned behaviors, quirky wiring, confusion, fear, frustration, and pain that was physically spilling out of this little body and permeating all of us as well.  I sat feeling discouraged that I had not been able to intervene in a meaningful way.  I felt sad that it had come to this point.  I was unsure of my own abilities and what I was feeling as I witnessed it all.  And then I saw my colleague kneeling as she held the child's feet to prevent kicking, and I knew that my role at that moment was to pray.  And I prayed deeply from within myself.  I prayed from within my heart, the room already too crowded with distress, my prayers were silent to all except G-d.  I asked G-d to show all the love, comfort, support, and mercy that is G-d, to this child.  I prayed for safety for the child.  I prayed that the child would feel the love and support from G-d and from us.  I prayed for this child of G-d.  And in what felt like a few heartbeats, the calm, still, small voice of G-d breathed fresh air into that tiny room.  In a matter of moments the meltdown was over and it took less than 4 minutes.  It was a moment of true grace.

All of these things and so many more have been the beacon lights in my journey over the past 6 months and I know within myself how important, valid, and real my call to teaching is.  

21st century java!

And as for the human approval, well, I was nominated multiple times for "Making A Difference" Awards, and I recently "won" and got to choose a prize out of the goody bag.  It's a travel coffee mug with a warming base that plugs into a laptop.  Coffee and geeky.  Great combination.  




In fact, that very differentness, weirdness, otherness that set me apart from peers when I was young, now sets me apart from my peers in a brilliant, rather than in a tragic way.  I understand what my students are living through and I can help them all the more because of it.  I know what the hell feels like.  I understand being on the outside.  I understand being disliked.  I understand not being understood.  I don't have to try to put myself in their shoes, I already am.  And just knowing that is the best progress I can ask for from myself or my students.

Thank you for continuing to journey with me as we walk with the feet we've been given.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari

Listening for the Call