A New Perspective on Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. This is a given. Hopefully we learn from some of them. A thought that came to mind today, and which has surfaced a few times in the past, is that sometimes we’re not the only ones learning from our mistakes.

My kids do not sit back on the hind legs of their chairs. Really, you ask? No, because I told them about the time I did that in the kitchen and fell over backwards, hitting my head on the refrigerator. I also told them about a girl at a school where I once taught who had a fortunately hilarious experience falling backward out of a chair. They are also cautious around the stove and do not play with matches. I have stories about that too.

My girls are still virgins. They are waiting until they are older; not because of any religious reason, but because I taught them to have respect for themselves and be selective of their partners. Choose people who respect you too. Be careful. Be responsible. Wait until you’ve lived your life a little before you have children. Finish your education and make a life for yourself first.

I finished high school, but I got married and had children before I finished college. I was too young. Now I am divorced, have more student debt than I would have had if I had stayed in school and I probably struggle more than I would have if I had waited.

As a result, my oldest doesn’t want to get married at all. She wants to be a doctor and boys and kids will get in the way, she says. My other teenage daughter is going to at least wait until she finishes high school and figures out what she wants to do with her life. My son thinks he’s going to stay at home forever I think. He has a bad case of Peter Pan Syndrome. Thankfully, he has some time.

Experience is a good teacher. I have no desire to ever remarry and my kids are at best cautious about moving too fast in that direction. As I tell them often, there is plenty of time for those things. Be you first.

My mistakes creep up often and sometimes bite me. Up until this point, this blog had been written earlier in the day and, in my opinion, had a positive tone. My evening was not so positive. Rather, it was filled with sadness, regret and a general dedication to kicking myself for my mistakes and a strong desire to escape from it all. We can’t do anything about our mistakes, other than accept them, try to learn from them, hope maybe our kids will learn from them and move on. I guess the Serenity Prayer is most apt in these situations, whether we actually pray or not: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. 

What About Me?

Well, it has been a week and a half since my brother said he would give me money to help with groceries and buying things for my parents to eat for lunch. It has been two weeks since their caregiver has been paid. It has been three months since I had a single day in which I was not responsible for taking care of my parents. My birthday is in a week and one day and the original plan was to go to Santa Barbara, but I cannot afford to do what I would like to do because all of my resources have gone into caring for my three children and my two parents all by myself.

Meanwhile, my brother is living it up on the river, riding a boat, enjoying some R&R. Must be nice.

This is the type of thing that breaks families apart. When you have parents that need constant care as ours do, it is the responsibility of all of the kids to pitch in and see to it that their needs are met. After all, assuming that once had halfway decent parents, they did the same for us at one point. The entire responsibility should not fall upon one person, particularly when that one person is a single mother of three. My brother is not being fair in this matter.

I plan to go to Los Angeles next weekend instead. Santa Barbara has not been cancelled; only postponed. To be fair, I have gone to Santa Barbara for the past three years running. Missing it this year is not the end of the world, and I do like Los Angeles, particularly Little Tokyo and the Arts District. I will have fun there. He will not ruin this for me. I will cut him (j/k).

Follow Your Passion

Back in high school, my dream was to be a professional musician or actress – though I preferred stage work to film. Being an A-List actress is the dream of many, and while this would probably be nice, I would have been on the moon with being a Broadway actress or content as a stage or off-Broadway actress. Being a professional musician would be even better and being both a professional musician and a stage actress would be perfection. I even had Berklee College of Music interested in having me come check out their school. I was so tempted . . . yet, in the end, I decided that I probably would spend the rest of my life hoping for some big break and I would be the quintessential starving artist. I decided to get a B.A. in English and go to law school instead.

This back-up plan might have actually worked, had I actually followed through with it. Instead, however, I decided after a few years of college that I wanted to have a family. This plan works for some too, but not for me apparently. I have my family – and I find myself taking care of this family all by myself because now I’m divorced, like so many others. Except that I didn’t get to take the house, because there wasn’t one to take. I didn’t get to sue him for alimony because I was the so-called breadwinner by virtue of the fact that I was the ONLY breadwinner half of the time. After a while, having a family wasn’t enough; I wanted to finish my education. I was hoping that things would be better if I had more education, except what does one do with an English degree? Whether I would have pursued law school like I had originally planned, or pursued a Master’s degree so I could become a professor (which is the route I chose), or pursued a teaching credential to teach high school English, I still would have been in student debt. I would have had considerably less student debt had I pursued music and / or theater. And maybe, just maybe, that pursuit would have taken me far away from having ever met my ex-husband.

I know my life would be different had that happened. I know that I wouldn’t have my kids, or I’d have different kids. I know I might have still ended up divorced or whatever. My IQ test and my degrees indicate that I am intelligent. When I look at the fact that I will be paying off my student loans for the rest of my life for an education that I am not currently even using to work at a dead-end job, I don’t feel so smart. When I was working as what I went to school for (a professor), I was even worse off. I at least have some of my debts paid off now and a little bit of money in the bank. I am in a better position now than I was four years ago when my ex-husband and I split up. I have to keep reminding myself of that. Things have improved and things can improve still. I may not like my current situation, but it’s better than it was and someone has to be here for my parents.

Additionally, my life is not over yet. I can still do music, even if it never plays on the radio or wins a Grammy. I can still do theater someday. Someday the cares of today will no longer be what troubles me or the excuse that I have for not having time. Someday I will look back on this day just as I am now looking back on my decision in high school to not pursue music or theater and think, “Why the hell not? What truly did you have to lose? Is your life truly better now because you chose the more noble path? Was it indeed a more noble path?” The longer I live, the more I regret not following my passion into whatever abyss it was going to lead me to. I am glad that I have a degree in English. I enjoyed my time as a teacher and a professor. Now I need to find a way to merge that which I am passionate about with that which I have been trained to do. Wish me luck.