Listless

Listless. 

It's a funny word because it can mean 'without having a list' OR it could mean 'lacking energy or enthusiasm'. 

You'll never catch me being either of those two definitions. I will always have a list and I will always have energy. Even the combination of group therapy and constant reading up on my cognitive behavioral skills and dialectical skills has not left me listless.

What gets me going in the wrong direction is what I call PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some others call it mental illness, even more generic is the ever popular Bi-Polar diagnosis. Even worse than that is the blame on hormones or PMS or PMDD. 

No matter what you call it, it's counteractive to my situation. 

The constant rumination of previous things that have happened that were traumatic or stressful running through someone's mind like the Ferris Wheel. 

I felt shame and guilt for doing that to my immediate family members. I felt shame and guilt for a lot of things. I always overheard myself being talked about, I was never talked to, it was always screaming disappointment. We used to call that being Irish Catholic.

'Not living up to my potential.' Yuck. That phrase is a trigger for me. It's all I ever heard. The other popular phrase in the household was, 'You can't do that.'

That phrase was nixed from the Ferris Wheel of derogatory phrases in the house of horrors. Especially once it was realized 'You can't do that.' meant I absolutely would do that. 

The snickering question I got irritated with the fastest at family gatherings or nosy neighbors was:

 'Where are you working now, Luce?' 

Since I didn't want to work at the same restaurant or bar for an extended period of time, it was funny. They'd say it with a grin and a glance across the table. They'd say it, not because they cared, but because I was something to talk about. I was a problem. I had problems. I carefully tracked my problems in a Ferris Wheel of mental illness throughout the years, unbeknownst to them. 

It probably didn't 'live up to my potential'. What they didn't know was, it didn't matter where I worked. I could walk through the doors of any bar or restaurant in the city and get a job on the spot. I could start making money within the same week, if not the same day. I wasn't some loser who couldn't stay in one spot because I was forced out the door. It was the exact opposite. No matter where I went I was an excellent bartender and an even better waitress. I could work anywhere in the front of the house and be smooth like butter. I liked bouncing around. I like to sing, but I refused to be a caged bird. 

We call that 'The Dunning-Kruger Effect'.  In short, the less you know, the more confident you might feel, and the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know. 

As Maya Angelou has written with beauty:

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

My point is as I am working through these issues, this 'illness' as they like to refer to it. I still have Ferris Wheel moments. Snapshot memories. PTSD. And I choose to write about it. Maybe the closest people in my life haven't lived up to their potential. 

Maybe I remind them of that. 

Maybe I should.

I have outgrown my bartender days, but oooweee I made the most of them. 

There is still time for potential. And all I've got is time and opportunity.

By definition potential is:

'latent (MEANING CONCEALED) qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success. That is a word I can promise to live up to...not the 'potential' I supposedly wasted by becoming a bartender or not holding a job or not getting that stupid piece of paper from an over-priced college. 

Being evicted from my own house and my own son's life has become somewhat freeing for me. It's free me from the surveillance by the bored, judgemental, looky-loos that lived behind me. It's freed me from providing entertainment of sorts for Bobby and his old, bored friends. I'm certainly free from whatever grotesque scenario living up to one's potential means in the Lake of Erie. 

I'll never get moving forward if I cannot have an outlet of some sort. 

This is it folks. 

Warts and all. 

Welcome to the family.