Saturday June 13/2020

Had a strange dream on Thursday night. I was walking somewhere with both my parents and I was walking behind them. It was my birthday and they had forgotten. When my mom was alive she would remember and send my dad out to buy a card and put $20 in it. That was it. No fanfare. No celebration. No fuss. After my mom died my dad never remembered my birthday. It came and went without acknowledgement. If it weren't for facebook reminding fb friends, no one would remember. I don't remember it ever being a special day. Not even on traditional milestones like Sweet 16. Somewhere along the line my birthday was celebrated though, because there is a photograph of me at about four years of age, at a table with a cake and other children. This would have been in England. I have no recollection of the event.

Last year my friend Bev remembered my birthday and surprised me at a show we were doing. She had organized the team to put together a decorative box filled with gift cards for various stores, and brought a cake for us all to enjoy. It was such a nice gesture and the first time in many years that my birthday was remembered outside of facebook land.

My birthday is next week and I'm feeling the waves of depression sweeping over me. My cousin invited me to get together of a picnic at our favourite luncheon spot, which has been closed due to covid 19. Our monthly rendezvous have been on hold due to the pandemic. But now that the weather is nice, an outdoor socially distanced get together is doable. So the plan is to sit outside in the park beside the restaurant (The Boathouse Tearoom in Guelph) and have a picnic. The day chosen happens to be my birthday but it wasn't mentioned as a b-day get together, so I'm not sure if my cousin is aware. I'm fairly sure that there is no one, not even family, who knows when my birthday is without a facebook friend reminder. To be fair though, I don't know everyone's birthdays either , although I did know the people I lived with and/or who I'm close to.

Birthday Update  >  my cousin was aware that her day off (from work) coincided with my birthday.  We had a lovely picnic and she gave me a card with a lovely necklace and earrings.

Starting to Sleep Longer Hours

Recently I've started to sleep in longer cycles. The past six nights have seen better sleep patterns. Each night starts with the short sleep sets followed by the longer sessions. Rather than list the entire sleep log, I'll just chronicle the longer sleep sets. Anything more than two hours is significant for me.

• Last Sunday I slept for 3hrs/50min, from 5:12am until 9am.
• On Monday night I slept for 4hrs/40min, from 4:38am to 9:10am.
• Tuesday saw two longer sleep cycles ... almost 3hrs from 2:53am until 5:48am, followed by a two and a half hour stint between 6:39am until 9:13am.
• Wednesday also saw two longer sessions. One from 3:13am until 6:23am for 3hrs/10min; and a second from 6:23am to 9:12am for 2hrs/50min.
• Thursday brought the longest sleep cycle .... 4hrs/55min between the hours of 6:12am and 10:07am
• And last night, after many hours of insomnia, I finally fell asleep for 3hrs between 7am and 10am
  

I'm assuming that starting to sleep in longer cycles is a good thing and means I'm on the road to more normal sleep patterns after so many years of poor quality sleep.

Devalued

In her book, Becoming, Michelle Obama says that, “kids know at a very young age when they are being devalued, when adults aren't invested enough to help them learn”. Wow. That hit home. My parents were not invested in helping us to learn. Not schoolwork. Or about life. My mothers only investment was in dance and even then it was not to help me learn, but to control the direction my life took, and affect how people perceived her. There were no teaching moments to help us learn about how to navigate life, love, relationships, conflict, loss. No interest in what interested us ..... only in what interested her & was projected onto us. And school wasn't much different. Our teachers were nuns who I'm fairly sure did not receive any education about being teachers. They mostly only paid attention to the smart kids who picked stuff up easily. If you didn't understand something ..... oh well .... too bad. The nuns 'devalued' students by either ignoring them or humiliating them, but were never invested in “helping” students to learn. They didn't have the passion to shape young minds. They were simply doing the job assigned to them and for which they were ill equipped to execute.

I knew at a very young age that I was being devalued. I had no adults in my life who were passionate about helping me learn ..... anything. My parents were not invested in helping me. My teachers were not invested in helping me. My dance teachers were not invested in helping me. Even at times when the adults around me “should have” noticed that I was a child in distress and in need of help, no one stepped forward. I lived a life filled with fear and anxiety. Always feeling out of place. Always struggling to learn and understand things. And no adult to guide me. I wasn't smart enough, outgoing enough, likeable enough, to warrant their time and attention. I knew from a very young age that I was not important.