That awful feeling in the pit of your stomach.

You know it.

That moment when your stomach drops, acidic tears push at your eyes, your breath catches in your throat.

Yeah. That one.

I feel like I constantly have this feeling. I'm constantly holding back tears, holding back emotions, trying to hold it all in.

We're starting to get financial aid information back from colleges and every time I open a letter I get this feeling - to the extreme. Every letter I open seems to push my dreams farther and farther away from me.

In order to go to any of my schools so far, I'd have to take out $15,000 in loans at this point. This is money that I, a Communications/Art/English major, cannot afford.

Let's take Ithaca College for an example. I've been really psyching myself up to go to Ithaca, trying not to think about the fact that Elon won't give me any money so I won't actually be able to go to my dream school. Whatever. Not bitter or anything.

But Ithaca has offered me not only their highest merit scholarship, but also a leadership scholarship and has accepted me into their Honors program.

Okay, I've gotten their highest scholarships and would be one of their top students.

And I still can't afford to go.

I just kick myself every day for being too lazy to apply for more scholarships. For not working my fingers off. For not taking more hours. For not working harder.

If I had actually been committed to applying for scholarships a few years ago, would I be sitting here crying over the fact that I may actually not be able to go to school next year simply because of money?

I don't know. Maybe.

I just don't know what to do. I really, really, really don't want to end up going to University of Illinois - and at this point, I don't even know if I'm going to be able to afford to go there.

It just feels like my dreams are crashing down around me. This is everything I've ever wanted. I know this is a completely whiny post, but I am so scared and lost right now that I just have no idea what to do.

I can't hope anymore. I can't think. Can't breathe.

Life just sucks sometimes, and all I can think of Coldplay's Lost?

Just because I'm losing, doesn't mean I've lost . . .
Just because I'm hurting, doesn't mean I'm hurt.
Doesn't mean I didn't get what I deserved.

Distractions and resolutions.

So, I know we haven't been regularly posting - yes, it was my idea to start a blog and I've been horrible about it.

Ah, well.

So, I've been wanting to do the 365 challenge for a while. If you don't know what that is, it's simply taking a photograph every day and posting it somewhere. I need to start taking more photos and even just bought a macro/fisheye lens to inspire myself to do so.

Since I'm pretty bad at keeping up with challenges, I'm not going to be starting right away, but my mom suggested I practice. So, I'm going to start practicing - taking pictures and posting them here. Hopefully, it'll work out. I want to officially start when I leave for college, since it'll be a "new chapter," you know, and when/if I do so, I'll start my own "photo" blog, since I'll actually be taking pictures.

Ha! We'll see what happens.

On how money, college, and waiting sucks.

"Sure, we can sit around and fantasize all we want about how things are going to be different one day, but this is today and it sucks."

I just came across this on a friend's Tumblr. It's a quote from the movie Easy A (which I still have not seen, despite regular self-notes to do so), and it struck me how relevant it is to me right now.

I'm stuck in limbo. If you know me, you know I'm not an optimist in any sense of the word. I look on the dark side of life, and sometimes it's helpful, but most of the times it's not.

And right now, I'm waiting. And it sucks. Most everyone I know has heard the story, so I won't repeat it here - but in a few words, I didn't get the huge scholarship I need to go to my dream school and now I don't know what's going to happen.

I want to be hopeful. I really do. I want things to work out more than anything in the world.

But the problem is, I don't know what to be hopeful for. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to even go to any of my schools because of money. The problem, at this point, isn't that I won't be able to go to Elon. I'm working on trying to convince myself that isn't going to happen, because, realistically speaking, it's probably not. But what if I don't get enough money to go to my "second" choice? My third? My sixth?

It's really painful when people say things like, "oh, you'll end up where you're supposed to be."

What does that even mean?

I'm "supposed" to be at Elon, is the only thing that runs through my mind. "Everything works out. Everything happens for a reason."

But what if it's a bad reason?

It makes me so jealous when I see people saying, "so, I've decided to go to this school." Well, whoop-de-doo, congratulations that you have a choice. I get to go where I get the most money, whether I like that school or not.

And that just sucks.

Because as much as I want other things to happen, or even as hard as I work, my future is in the hands of someone else right now, and I can't do anything about it.

Sucky Day

Tumor...such a scary word. It is most likely a benign tumor, but you should get it checked out. Well that's a DUH. But worse than the initial statement is not being able to get it checked out for 12 days. You just wait and wonder and google everything you can think of and fill your brain with worse case scenarios. It is not a pretty picture, bone cancer in the face is so rare that it is seldom a primary location. It does get better from there, but my brain is stuck and keeps checking back to that fact. We don't know how long it has been there, well less than two years, and there isn't any sign of it going back 15 years, until the current x-ray. I just wait and dread.

Then to cap off the day my baby failed to be invited into the honors fellowship at the college of her choice, this program brought with it enough scholarship monies to make the small private school doable. She had already been accepted and awarded their presidential scholarship at which point they invited her to apply to the fellows program. I am so sad for her, and haven't written off the school as she has but we need to find some other tuition sources.

So goes my day, I am glad it is over but we still must both deal with some grief and consequences so the house is not so happy at this time, and we are both starting on some stress vitamins.

Guilt

I feel compelled to write but have nothing of value to discuss. The Newberys will be announced in two weeks and I haven't read enough to make predictions. I have to teach two classes beginning on Monday and should be doing some prep. My babies are turning 14 today. Girl Scout cookie sales begin today, I know this because one of my hats is that of Cookie Mom. I get to go to a brunch today, without my children. I need to finish my Christmas thank you notes, this week. I keep unfinished projects around even thought I know they create more guilt, and seldom get finished. I really should make some resolutions for the year but finally know better.

OK, that is a post, I am once again current.

Shower Revelations

I do some of my best thinking in the shower. This stems from years of having this be the only spot in the house where I could be alone. They will come into the bathroom but not the shower. It is quiet and calming, and most days they leave me alone now. Water soothes all sorts of ills and as my mind relaxes new ideas emerge,

Water saved me regularly when the kiddos were small. Most frantic days could be smoothed out with the addition of water. A bucket to paint on the sidewalk, a kiddie pool in the back yard, a day at the water park, an afternoon bath that lasts till dinnertime. Something about water puts smiles back on faces, brings an end to fighting, and refreshes the body as well as the soul, all at the same time. So I shouldn't be surprised that shower time offers more than cleansing.

My most recent revelation involves my twin girls. Twins do not have normal sibling relationships, if you have siblings and then have twins you can easily see the differences very early in the twins lives. These children are linked in a most intimate fashion, the need to please Mama, when young, is overshadowed by the need to please your twin. Joint permission is a given, you say yes to one, they assume both have permission. They support, admire, share, encourage, nurture, correct, defend, the list is endless, each other all the time. So why are my twin girls daily ready to throw their best friend out the window?

I got it, in the shower, my answer. Adolescence is a time when a child has the job of separating from her parents and establishing herself as a young adult, this means developing self awareness, setting personal life goals, standing ultimately on your own two feet. Normally this involves some struggles in the parent child relationship as the child pushes for independence and autonomy and the parent relinquishes control over the child. Well, remember that atypical twin relationship...that's it, that's why they are trying to kill one another, they don't have to push us their parents away, they are moving away from each other.

And they are in anguish, a twin is someone who you require in your life, but you also know you can't really have them like you did in the past. Yet this is someone who knows your soul, who knows your most intimate secrets, who has shared your life since before you were born. They want to be free and independent but letting go is almost impossible, the turmoil is evident in our house. But at least I have a plan. We are working to assist them on the road to alone, by encouraging individual activities, and pointing out those successes, healing the hurts they inflict on each other, reassuring them that their twin will always be an important person in their life, someone they can lean on even when they don't live in the same house or state or even country.

Hopefully the struggles will taper off as confidence grows. In the mean time at least I have an inkling as to the root of the daily frustrations and can better negotiate the minefield these twins have created.

Ignorance is Bliss

This too shall pass. That has to be my mantra.

Adolescence is rearing it's obstinate head, in stereo, in my home. At times it seems a battle to the death is our only option. It is so difficult to remain the adult amid the hailstorm. Yet I know that there is hope, as I have survived this once before. Somehow, 13 stormed through and the delightful 17 year old who now resides where I live makes me forget that war zone. Could it be that this is another "childbirth" experience?

You remember, or do you, the day your darling was born? Both the birth days of my daughters are shrouded in fog. There are fragments of the day, waffles for breakfast, walking hospital hallways, a dark quiet room, a brightly lit OR, I think there was some pushing... Then all is clear again a tiny kitten cry and a baby whisked to intensive care, or second time around two babies to hold and nurse and snuggle until they insisted I move to another room. The moments most available for recall all have babies outside of me.

This must be a protection device to insure the survival of our species, the entire childbirth experience is almost forgotten as you hold your new born. This insures we will do it all again. I am beginning to believe that surviving the rearing of offspring through puberty is a similar experience. Of course you have had years to bond with the child, this too helps in their ultimate survival, but if one truly remembered it all I am not sure you would keep future children. Your own need for preservation would force you to sell to the first interested buyer, and may be even be willing to offer monies to cart them away. As a group we might have even come up with institutions to house the unruly lot and let them take on each other instead of keeping them individually.

But nature sees fit to protect us, and when my 17 year old apologized for past sins as a 13 year old I struggled to remember anything that merited an apology or forgiveness. My brain has tucked those memories into corners so obscure that they fail to register. Just like my first airplane ride. I remember being so excited at 16 I was flying to Washington DC with my youth group for a national convention, and chatting with my dad and mentioned it was my first flight. "No it isn't" he said.
Yes it is, I've never flown before," I responded.
"Don't you remember flying home from grandpa's funeral? You were 9 or so..." He went on to explain it was a very rough flight we apparently flew through a tornado on the way home.

Now I have total recall of the events leading up to said flight. My grandfather had a heart attack and died while visiting my family in Oklahoma, their home was in Minnesota. So my father, brother, grandmother, and I all traveled together by car back to Minnesota for the funeral. I even remember the funeral procession to the burial and playing with all the buttons in the back of the limousine. Thinking about it, I realized that we had driven my grandparent's car on that road trip and had to have gotten home somehow, but try as I might there are no available memories. No airport, no flight, no nothing. According to my father it was one of the worst flights he ever experienced, my brother was sick for most of the trip. The old brain pulls a fast one hiding all.

Good thing for the 13 year olds.