Essay Page

The Magical World That Is Elizabeth

Essay Page

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Essay #1...Why Faith is Going to Get Me Through

On May 10, 2001, I was trapped until the end of school in a teaching job I knew I wouldn't be returning to in the fall. I had been raising my brother since my mother's death on August 4, 1999. When living in a 3-bedroom 1 1/2 bath house, one can only make $1600 a month go so far, and a lot of times, I had to choose whether I was going to pay for my car, or pay Niagara Mohawk for the power and heat. Or it would be a choice whether to buy groceries when the fridge was empty, or pay Verizon. On that fateful day, May 10, I walked out to go to work, and the car was gone. Repossessed. I thought it was the end of my life.

The next day, I started taking Tylenol PM and didn't stop until I'd taken 24. Then I started to realize that this wasn't the way out.

I still have no car. But somehow I've managed to survive! I took a job three hours north of where I was living, hired a mover to move my stuff (thanks to a trust fund left to us by my mom), and now I'm much happier. I would never have felt like a successful teacher if I had succeeded with that suicide attempt.

When I moved up to Plattsburgh, I was pissed as hell at God. Two of my four older half-sisters had spent the entire summer giving me an earful about how they'd never wanted their father to marry my mother. How they thought Dad and my mom were seeing each other before their mother had passed away. And how even though they had to come to terms with the marriage, they certainly hadn't wanted them to have kids. Furthermore, they said that my mom had slandered their mother's memory by lording it over everyone that she'd been able to give my father a son and their mother never had (this is SO not the case). I was so angry at them...and at God for putting them in a position that they had so much authority in my life (my oldest sister is the trustee for our trust fund and is currently overseeing the sale of my childhood home). They made my depression worse, because they validated my feelings of low self-worth. They found a suicide note that I'd written shortly after the car was repo'd and acted like they cared then, encouraging me to seek counseling, but at that point, I'd been forced to resign from the job and had no medical insurance, and was working in a grocery store, so I had no money to pay for counseling!

Finally, right before Christmas, I went to confession. Fr. O'Brien was wonderful, and I credit him with getting me back into the church. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have started going again. (I only went sporadically following my move to Plattsburgh).

In March, I started going to Spirituality on Tap. This was a series of speakers sponsored by our diocese's Office of Young Adult Ministry. The speakers were great, there was free food (pre-weight loss here), and the camaraderie among the people was AWESOME! It was through that group that I found my current parish, St. Peter's Church.

Coming back to the church has been one thing I do that really makes me feel good about myself, and that is what sparked me to get going on this weight-loss quest. That, and I'm going on a vacation this summer, and I want to have my good habits in place when I go.

Essay #2...About Success

I came across six questions that I'd like to attempt to answer.

1. What does my ultimate picture of success look like?

When I think about being successful, I think about doing what I love to do. What I love to do is play and sing music. I also love to write music. So anything I can do that involves me doing that, all the time, would be success to me.

2. What can I do to feel successful today?

Write some new lyrics, or at least some lyric ideas. Brainstorm possible background musicians for "Home to Kentucky."

3. What can I read, study, ingest that signifies success to me?

My guitar books. Any songwriting materials.

4. What do I need to do to be successful?

I need to be persistent and work hard every day.

5. Who can (really) help me achieve my success?

My friend Courtney in NYC has been invaluable. When I go back to Kentucky, I'll have the support of lots of friends. Knowing I have support from people I trust is the key.

6. What are the first three things I am going to change to start my success process?

First, I'm going to look at each day as a clean slate. Secondly, I'm going to practice every day. And third, I'm going to write something every day, whether it's lyrics or notation.

Essay #3---On Messiness, On Openness, and On Risk

February 21, 2004

So much has changed since the last time I put an essay on this page. I think it might have been over two years!

Let's see...when I moved to Plattsburgh, I was pretty much at rock bottom. I hated myself, I hated my family (except for my brother), and I hated the world. I couldn't figure out why I didn't have any friends. I couldn't figure out how to go and make friends. I couldn't figure out why people at work didn't include me when they were going out.

Yesterday I finally figured it out. And the thing was, I wasn't open to those kinds of experiences.

In January of last year, I was in Friendly's having dinner, and I met a guy named Adam. He was a waiter there. He was gorgeous. I was instantly attracted. But more importantly, he made me feel like I was worth his time. And for some reason, I started to believe that it was possible for there to be love in my life again.

I later found out that Adam had a girlfriend, and tensions between me and her may have caused the eventual demise of Adam's and my friendship, but this isn't about that.

I allowed myself to believe that it was possible for me to make connections again. I had wallowed long enough. I was ready to heal. I was ready to risk healing. I went to Weight Watchers, in an attempt to heal my body. Toward summer, I considered therapy to heal my spirit. I decided I would leave my job, even though I knew that the "powers that be" (in this case, my family) would berate me if they knew that I was leaving my job "just because I hated it."

[A little aside here: In the first episode of Friends, Rachel is all wet, in her wedding dress, in Monica's apartment, on the phone with her dad and she says, "But I don't love him!...Well, it matters to me, Daddy." That's kind of how I feel about how my family would have reacted to my quitting my job because I hated it.]

I applied to grad school at Plattsburgh State, and when I didn't get in, I decided I was moving back to Lexington, and that I was going to try my hand at songwriting.

People said, "What? Shouldn't you move to Nashville for that?" Or "Wouldn't LA be a better place for you to be?"

But I knew. I knew that this was where I needed to be. Was it a risk to advance confidently in the direction of that dream? Absolutely. But I knew that I had friends here whose support I could count on.

Shortly after I moved, I sank into an incredibly deep depression. I have three friends here who I would say are big reasons that I moved back. One works for financial aid, one works for UK Sports Video, and the third was busy planning his wedding, in addition to work, working on his house, and moving his wife into his house. They didn't have the time for me that I felt like I needed from them, and I didn't know how to tell them that without seeming selfish and awful.

I was calling Adam all the time.

He flamed out on October 1 and couldn't take it anymore, and gave me and my problems the boot. I was a mess.

I went through a period of extreme sadness and depression, a time of hopefulness when my brother told me he'd asked about me, and a period of anger when I truly realized (after a drunken phone call from my brother Thanksgiving weekend) what lengths Adam had gone to in order to assure I wouldn't try to contact him anymore, a period of determination when I was hell-bent on making peace with him for my own sanity, and a period of relief when I spoke with him in January and we were able to bury the hatchet.

There are still times when things occur to me that I know he would find amusing that I would love to send him a card or give him a call but he has asked for my continued non-presence in his life, and I'm trying to respect that.

But yesterday, I was doing my morning pages as part of The Artist's Way, and when I do morning pages, I use the unused parts of notebooks I've started. And I came across a page I had written on.

It was a list of things I'd wanted to tell Adam, but was afraid to. I'd written in last June when I was trying to come up with ideas for a song.

And as I read it, I realized that one of the things I wanted to tell him, but was unsure how to verbalize, was that he'd opened me up to the possibility that love could exist in my life again, and that I was incredibly grateful to him.

If I hadn't opened myself to receive his friendship, I wouldn't have opened myself to the possibility of getting out of that job where I felt trapped.

I wouldn't have opened myself to the possibility of leaving New York, where I felt trapped.

I would still be teaching in Beekmantown instead of tutoring for the athletics department at the University of Kentucky (a job I hate vs. a job I love).

And while a lot of the change and healing has come from within me, I have to give Adam his props. And, somehow, I have to let him know how grateful I am that he was present in my life, even though it turns out we were, as the saying goes, "two ships passing in the night."

Essay #4 For My Dad

on november 8, 1994, the world lost a father of six, a husband to two (not at the same time lol), a bus driver and former ny state trooper, a patriot who served his country for four years in the air force during the korean war.

his name was tom. he was my father.

while he had his faults and a lot of things i disagreed with him on, he was always the one who encouraged me to pursue performance as a career. he took me to every melodies of christmas rehearsal. he would sit outside with a book, listening to us rehearse, and when we would finally get something right, he would pump his fist and whisper, "yes!" i would blush and pretend to be mortally embarrassed (i was in high school after all) but secretly i was proud to have a dad who was so invested in what i was doing, and one that i could go to when i was frustrated when we were having problems in choir and have him understand what the problems we were having were.

he went on every single one of my college auditions with me, and after my final one, at shenandoah conservatory in virginia, about half way to our stopping point in wilkes barre, pa, where we planned to spend the night, he said to me, "you know, ruth, i like kentucky."

i said, "i do, too."

a couple of weeks before he died, i was explaining to him that i'd gone to a faculty recital for a professor who had been born in my hometown. i'd met his parents, and it turned out that his dad and my dad had sung in a community chorus together up home. and my dad said to me, "so when do you get to do one of those recital things?"

i said, "next year, dad. will you come?"

he said, "you bet your sweet bippy i will."

if i hadn't had the girl i was performing with and our accompanist to get me through that recital, i would have lost it.

i marvel that i've been able to make it ten years without him. shortly after he died, i decided that i was going to pursue education rather than performance as my primary career track, and i often worried that he would have been disappointed that i'd sort of given up on our shared dream. i ran into one of the teachers who had taught me language arts and social studies in fourth grade. he had been a good friend of my dad's...they'd sung in many church and community choirs together, and i told george what i was up to teaching-wise, and george said, "wow. your dad would be so proud of you."

shortly after that, george died. at his funeral, i told his brother that i hoped that george had known how much what he'd said had meant to me, and his brother said, "if he didn't he does now."

i'm rambling now. my emotions are all over the page today, so i ask for gentleness from you today.

(i posted this in the message boards over on planetsark.com...i have a few things to add.)

after my grandma died, my aunts and uncles had a tendency to memorialize her in such a way that she was so infallibly perfect that no one was ever allowed to admit that she might possibly have had a flaw.

in an attempt to keep me from going down this unhealthy road after my parents died, my sisters told me a bunch of stuff about the dark sides they thought my parents had.

i respect what they were trying to do and i honor their intentions as good ones. however, i choose to be aware of both the good things they did and the not-so-good ones, and focus my memory on the good.

love, me

Essay #5...My New Business Venture

On October 17, 2005, my thirtieth birthday, I signed an Independent Beauty Consultant Agreement with Mary Kay Cosmetics. And I was looking through the "perfect opportunity" brochure that I'm supposed to give to people when I try to recruit them into the business, and there's a picture of one of the pink Cadillacs in there.

And I'm IN LOVE WITH IT.

And I WANT IT!

This is a multi-faceted dream.

I would have to become an Independent Sales Director. And I would have to reobtain my driver's license.

That scares me and has me biting my nails LOL.

But I'm gonna DO IT ANYWAY!

love, me