A New Year

I'm sitting and listening to random fireworks go on all over the city. I can hear people start to celebrate a new year coming and the ending of the year past. Ringing out the old. 2010 will not be forgotten by me for the rest of my life. I lost my mom this year. I had a short dream the other night and when I woke up, I wanted to cry. I heard her voice. Up until that moment, I realized that I remember my grandmother's smell and her voice more than I remember my mom's.

I remember so many odd things about my mom. In particular, I remember how unique she was. A crazy concoction of impossible to like, impossible to hate, brilliance, defiance, stupidity, tenderness, and love. She was more open-minded than anyone I have ever come into contact with. In my youthful rebellion, I often found myself saying things to shock her and rarely found any fruits of the labor. She was hard to shock, and when you did it was because you hit below the belt and she was more hurt than shocked. She loved people for who they were and even when she didn't agree with what they did.

My mom was a cognitive thinker and had a cognitive humor. She often referred to my sister and I as "snipers" because we hit hard, below the belt and with precision. Well we learned it from her. She was a high speed bullet in conversations and could out-think, out-reason, out-dirty and just plain top anyone she went up against.

So much of that was forgotten or pushed away in these last years of her changing so much. I forgot how much I adored her, loved her, how much she loved us and the fact that she was so damned funny. The fact is, I miss my mother, wish she were here, wish she were around to see me finally accomplish anything real in my life, bear witness to all of my precious moments and wish I could hear her laugh that deeply amused belly laugh she used to let go.

I think that it's been a little harder for me to let go because I have so much guilt associated with her death. And I'm sure some of that is normal. But it still hurts that I did all of those things I did. I'll just leave it at that.

Suffice it to say, I will miss her everyday of my life. I don't ever want to stop missing her because of who she really was, not the person she had become towards the end. I will not, however, miss this year. I have never welcomed the end of a year so much. I am going to celebrate by having a glass of wine and going to bed early.

I wish everyone a very Happy New Year and one filled with all of your wishes and dreams fulfilled.

It was the best of times...

And it's definitely the worst of times. I wrote about my friendship strifes last time. Well apparently there was more to it than I realized with one part of that. A friendship that I've had for over 10 years seems to have ended. At one point in time, she knew me better than anyone in this world did, and fairly often, better than I knew myself. My trip in August seems to have changed that. At the request of others, my trip was not only to enjoy some time with my friends and have a vacation from work, but also to enlighten those I was to be visiting with a fresh perspective (aka, truth-telling sessions in which participants get "told" about themselves). I tend to do these types of things normally,but when it's requested I do take it a little farther. So, admittedly, I was a little taken aback when, with my services rendered while I was there, I have been (basically) shut off from communication from these participants.

I was devastated when this friendship was suddenly jerked from me a year or so ago, and grateful to have it back after a 10-month, non-consentual hiatus. Maybe that time hardened me. Perhaps it was the circumstances under which the communication seems to have ended this time. Maybe it's other factors of my life playing into the situation, seeing as my life has changed rather drastically in the last 8 months or so. Whatever the case, what does it say that I'm not terribly upset that I'm no longer in real contact (other than being on the FB friend's list) with someone who was my platonic soul-mate, my bitch, my heart and my ultimate in best friends? I'm having to fight away that tendency I have to be cold towards the situations I find distasteful. I am only trying to remain warm because we do have such a long and crazy history together.

Don't get me wrong. I do, and will continue to miss what we had. But I've missed it before. This isn't the only friendship that has been jerked away from me, suddenly and without explanation and I'm sure there are more to come. But it gets harder, each time and no matter the person, to remain open to new situations. That constantly hurting, ripping, and shredding of someone you are supposed to care about, whether it's intended to be malicious or not, is akin to betrayal in my eyes. You might as well rob me, kill my cat and then have me arrested. No, that is not an invitation to cause me pain. I do not react well.

I think maybe that between the last time, knowing her and the situation as I do, and the amount of emotional pain I've had to endure this year are enough. I don't think I'm willing to entertain any more than self-inflicted or invited pain until after the new year.

Reject this...

I randomly find things that are awesome in some form or another and I become inspired to create myself. Not that I actually sit down and create. I am completely lazy about those things. I have always been easily distracted by those things that I don’t require thinking to do (watching tv, playing games, etc). I’m not even so sure that it’s necessarily laziness. Oh, don’t get me wrong, part of it is. I am a lazy human being and I probably always will be. I can talk myself down from a ledge faster than anyone I know and then manage to go blasé about the entire idea of going back up. It’s not fear. It’s lack of concern. It’s really kind of annoying.

Anyway, I do believe I’m beginning to discover that a good chunk of my unwillingness to do these things I want to do so badly is fear. I am already painfully aware of the multitude of things I suck at. These are things that I can’t always fix (at least not in a hurry). I can’t fix my hormones (without medical intervention)or the fact that I’m considered unattractive to the male species (yes, species). I’m attractive to some of them. Unfortunately, the majority of that category are a whole issue unto themselves. But I’m not here to bash them. I’m here for me… as always. I’m not the only sniper with their gun facing backwards, but I’m a clean draw.

I don’t doubt that I could create any of these art pieces that my muse, ever so lovingly, shoves in my head and slams it around until I can’t take it anymore. I found out a few semesters ago that I can, in fact, draw. And that’s great. I still can’t do people, but that may be because I refuse to try after sucking at it a few times. It falls under the same reasoning of why I rarely sing in front of people. It is simply because people have jokes. And I don’t appreciate the ones that only they think are funny. Those types of jokes make me seethingly angry. The simple words, “Don’t quit your day job! ” are enough to cause my blood to boil and the need to want to become severely violent. I suppress those feelings of unwanted anger and the following bewilderment by just not singing in front of anyone that I don’t fully trust with my heart and soul. The few of those people that there are. And so it goes with all of those creative things I really want to do. Laziness and fear. The two, unending and unyielding banes of my existence.

Now why, you might ask, do I let these seemingly trivial things bother me if I can identify them? Because I tire of being constantly criticized. By everyone. All the time. Whether they know they’re doing it or not. Up until recently I thought that my closest friends were the people that I could totally be myself with and not have any repercussions of things I might say or ways I might behave. Sadly, it’s not true. I very recently had two separate friends be offended by me and things I’ve said. And on the one hand, it bothers me that I would have bothered them to that point. On the other, I’m kind of annoyed by the fact that my person or personality has not changed. And when I’m with my friends, I most certainly do not expect their true selves to be hid away to appease me. I’m all about “be who you are and I’m going to like it or I’m not.” So why should I have to do the same to appease certain of my friends who are put off by the same mannerisms I’ve had the whole time I’ve known them? I don’t run around in public (or in private for that matter) screaming violently everything that is personal and private about that person. One did not appreciate being the butt of my jokes in a social setting. The same social setting where everyone, at one point in the night or another is the butt of my joke. Myself more than others. I do understand her point to an extent. The particular social setting in question is one where respect should be upheld between one type of person and another. Blah blah blah…too complicated for this. I know what she means and I appreciate her letting me know that she was bothered by it. But why do I suddenly need to watch how I am with her when I haven’t had to do that in the years I’ve known her. Now I feel like I’m going to be walking on eggshells around her and I don’t like that feeling with anyone I know. The other person in question offended me by being an ass. I can only assume that he decided to act like an ass towards me because he was offended that I told him the truth about himself (which I’ve done since the day I met him, only this time it’s been a couple of years since I’ve had the opportunity). I say I can only assume he is offended because he has chosen to take the opposite road of previous friend and isn’t going to speak to me at all. Granted, it’s just two people in my list of friends, but these two people matter to me.

I’m not sure how I got off on that tangent, and in keeping with tradition, I’m not going to go back and read this before I post it. It’s more cathartic to just put it out there. Although, knowing I’m posting it here leaves a pretty good chance that it won’t get read at all. I’m either ok with that or it sucks.

Back to the creativity thing. I want to make art. I want to make art all the time. I get pictures in my head of things I want to see as art by my own hands and I can’t get them out until I play World of Warcraft or Bejeweled until I can’t remember what they look like. It’s getting to the point of ridiculous. I’m taking the semester off of school and then I’m hoping to go to more of an art school. You’d think I would want to be practicing my ass off in preparation for what I’m sure will be the most critical part of my school career (and a career it is turning out to be). Whatever I decide to do about this particular conundrum needs to be settled quick, fast, and in a hurry. I know I can’t keep going in the direction I am because I’ll never get anything done this way. This 4.5 month funk is turning into a full-out depression and I really am not going to deal well with that.

On a side note: guys who say they are interested and really make a girl believe it (for whatever reason they put that kind of effort into it) and then never contact them again…need to suck my dick. Is there hypnotherapy for rejection issues? Cause I’m hauling around the motherload.

Sudden Bursts of Emotion

Grief is such a strange happening. I'm fine most days. I am moving on with my life and working, smiling, laughing, etc. My life is not over, by any means, just because my mom's is. There are days I feel pain about that. I was calling it guilt, but it's not. It was guilt the first week or so and then it was just pain that my mom's quality of life was so low at the time of her death. I still feel that pain. I feel badly that there wasn't more any of us could do to help her with that. She acted as an emotional drain for me so often that we argued more than anything else. I have not gotten into the habit of romanticizing her in death. That's good. But I do miss her. A lot.

As for the other days, and this is one, I'm not exactly fit for company. I got so mad yesterday and said something  about it today and that brought on a fresh onslaught of tears and grief. At the funeral, there were poster boards filled with comments from her students about my mom. And they've been sitting where they were put when we got home from the service. My dad, in his effort to re-vamp the house, just bent them up and threw them in the garbage. I had intended on removing the comments and putting them into a keepsake box. I was so angry. I didn't tell him what I planned to do so he had no way of knowing. I was just SO angry. I still am. I said something to him just now about it but I'm still sitting here crying because of it.

I think it is possible that there is a part of me that needs to be angry with him. I'm not sure the real reason. It could be any number of the following. I needed him to grieve more. I needed someone there for me emotionally. I needed what everyone else was telling me to be true, that he needed me during this time. I needed someone who was a part of my day-to-day life to understand that I am hurting really badly. It's only small portion of the time, but I know I have those thoughts and those feelings about the situation. Otherwise, I'm fine with it. I'm hurting, but I do understand my dad. He's really a good guy. He's just not capable of the emotional side of things. It's awkward for him. And that's ok. I don't expect it really. But living in the same house with someone that should be going through the same thing you are and yet being alone in your grief is ludicrous on some levels. I'm sad and I'm alone and the icing this week was that he through all those memories of my mom from the thing she loved most in her life away without even a thought that one of us might want them.

The one I wrote just before her funeral.

I tried to draw you, but my fingers still shake,

I tried to sing about you, but my voice still cracks,

I tried to describe you, but I still can't do you justice,

I tried to listen to others, but the one you were with me is the special one that I want to keep.

With every day that passes, you will keep forever within my heart

Your image will stay with me as I move on where you cannot.

I will hear your laugh when I find something I know you would love.

My love for you will move, as I do, through the years.

I will draw you in my heart,

I will sing to you with every breath I take,

I will describe you to myself every day

And I will listen to others about you, knowing it will make you stronger in my soul.

I love you, Mom.

I will miss you always

Autumn Hobson 04/07/2010

Mother

Mother
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English moder, from Old English mOdor;aking to Old High German muoter mother, latin mater, Greek mEtEr, Sanskrit mAtr
1 a: a female parent, b: a woman in authority; specifically: the superior of a religious community of women, c: an old or elderly woman
2. Source, Origin mother of invention>
3. Maternal tenderness or affection
4: [short for motherfucker] sometimes vulgar: Motherfucker
5: something that is an extreme or ultimate example of its kind especially in terms of scale

How many definitions do there need to be to describe one person?
Considering that a mother can be an infinite number of things to any one person, I suppose there can be infinite definitions to describe her.

Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. ~Marion C. Garretty, quoted in A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul

My mother has made me more brave than she will ever know. She has let me know, in no uncertain terms, that the road of my life is going to be difficult, that I will fall, but that I will also get back up and keep moving. She made sure that I not only knew how to think for myself, but that I knew how to think. The positive things, that have made me who I am, come from both of my parents, but without my mother I would have been lost. She showed me that you can have a sense of humor when you look at your life, even at its most desperate time and that you can be quite serious if you need be in the funniest situations.

Mother - that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries. ~T. DeWitt Talmage

I have never had the chance to fell that I was unloved or unwanted. She never allowed that. My mother was not only someone that I could and did look up to, but she was the person that all the kids I knew looked up to. Every student she has taught and every person she's known has loved my mother just for being herself. 

If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden. ~Attributed to Claudia Ghandi

As I walk through the streets of my life

As I listen to he music that surrounds me

When I look into the starts

Anytime I drive past a red convertible

When I'm confronted with 

Strange rock formations, pyrite and quartz

You will forever be in my mind

Your influence on me has been great

And I shall always be a better person

For having been raised by you.

I love you, Mah!

Happy Mother's Day

Autumn Hobson 05/10/07

So I am taking the summer and next semester off of school. I need to work full time and work on my finances so that I can get my own place. I've missed my freedom. Granted, I would rather not have it at the hands of the situation I was dealt. But it is what it is. There is nothing I can say or do to bring her back. So I move foreward, however reluctantly that may be.

I may start baking. Perhaps for money. I'm not sure how all of that will pan out yet. I suppose as long as I keep the prices under the local bakeries, I can make some money. Not at first, but eventually. I have also been considering doing a number of other creative things on the side, like learning to weld and doing metal sculpturing. Or jewelry and knitting...whichever. I have the need to be creative and productive, I am just not sure where to start. Anyone want to be my guinea pig taste tester? I can take requests. You tell me what you want made and I'll attempt it. :)

Anyway, I'm avoiding homework and school right this minute to write this. That's ok. I only have 2 more weeks of school left. And then no more until Spring. I need the break anyway. I have been so lethargic about the work and that was before my mom died. You can imagine how I feel now. I finally found the things I had written my mom that I read at the funeral. I'll post them separately in the next blog. This is a short one and I'm hoping to actually use this thing more for cathartic purposes.

My mom's Obituary

Joanne “Jo” Madelyn Kaupp Hobson passed away on April 3, 2010. She would have been 55 on April 12. Joanne had a passion for science and her ability to make others understand it contributed greatly to her success as a teacher. She was extremely proud of her years spent at St. Tammany Jr. High, Chalmette and Salmen High, and Slidell Jr. High. She received Teacher-of-the-Year twice and numerous awards throughout her career. She was beloved by the thousands of students that passed through her hands over her 20 years in the classroom. She had a Bachelor’s degree in Biology Education from the University of New Orleans but her passion from childhood was in Geology and Space sciences. Her love and interest for the NASA space program resulted in a long-standing relationship with Rocketdyne that allowed her to broaden the minds even further of those she taught. Her love for it and the humor she used in and out of the classroom were contagious and these things made her unforgettable. Her death leaves a black hole in the hearts of many and a vast empty space, difficult to fill, for any who knew her. She will be greatly missed.

Joanne was preceded in death by her parents, Gerard and Ruth Kaupp. She is survived by her husband, Jim Hobson, her children, Jesse and Wendy Hobson, Autumn Hobson, and Holly and Dale Goodman, and her grandchildren, Tyler, Joey, and Arianna Hobson and Carlin and Ella Goodman. She is also survived by her siblings, Tom and Cindy Kaupp, Jeri Ann and Tom Barron, Kathy and Gerard Gambino and Gerard Kaupp, Jr. She will also be missed by a host of nieces and nephews. Her family expresses regret that they are not able to fulfill her final wishes of being shot into space on the next shuttle mission, so they will be having an open wake and service for all those that wish to pay their respects. The wake will be held at Honaker-Forest Lawn Cemetary in Slidell on Thursday from 6-9pm with a service at 7:30.

Self Importance and Other Issues

I think that mental illness is less hereditary than it is a problem with familiarity. I am beginning to recognize, in myself, the fact that I become various degrees of unstable depending on my proximity to those that are unstable or mentally ill. The only thing I can think of to compare it to is that of an animal charging. If you see a bull coming at you, nostrils flaring, and you can't manage to get out of the way in time, you instinctively prepare yourself for the impact. Your body curls into a standing fetal position, trying to cover sensitive organs, etc. In that respect, I think that crazy tends to be challenged with crazy. If someone begins a behavior around you suddenly, like screaming incoherently, most people tend to react by retreating, grabbing the person trying to make them focus, or, more commonly, screaming back. This really doesn't accomplish much, but I can see it as some form of emotional block to what the brain perceives as danger.

I feel unstable and out of my normally logical state of mind when I'm closer to crazy. But, like with anything I do, this realization came on me like a shower. That among a few other things this week. I am a random thinker. That is not to say that I'm spacey. Every one of my thoughts tends to originate somewhere perfectly logical. But my mind is the greatest player of the word/identity association game. For example, if I'm thinking about Fruit Leather, I have the tendency to be almost instantly hungry for either white rice and Japanese chicken or Thai food. And if I'm not hungry and I'm thinking about Fruit Leather, I can be almost instantly reminded to take the medicine for my diabetes. The reasons for this are random associations in my head that happen within fractions of a second but of which I remember every link. I first learned about Fruit Leather in Colorado at the office. The girl who introduced them was named Kelly. She was a girl who was totally into hiking. She also worked with Somer, who was from down here. Somer talked me into trying Thai food from a local place once when I was attempting to stray from the normal Taco Bell and Quiznos. The first time wasn't good, but then I found a couple flavors I liked and a place I loved and I was a Thai food junkie. When I'm not hungry, I remember a conversation had with a bunch of us, including Kelly, about the various medical problems that women suffer and hormones. That led me to my own issues, reasons, all the medical problems that go along with my hormone problems, the reason I now have diabetes and voila! my medicine. So that's a small taste of how my brain functions, but the links are not always that closely related. Here are a couple more of the revelations I've come up with this week.

Last semester I was referred to as a kiss ass because one of my professors hit on a nerve that I'm just really good at. Come to think of it, that probably has something to do with the aforementioned way that my brain functions. Anyway, we were researching a 7-page play. We had to present a book on that play as if were were going to film it. Character and story boards, script break down, and reference material to the time and place. The play was J.M. Synge's "Riders to the Sea." Well I was able to find all sorts of really interesting information that tied in to the time frame, what Synge had in mind when he wrote it, the personal influences for the play itself as well as what the characters would really have worn and the origins of the lines in the script. My did my association trick with keywords in Google. It worked, I got an A in the class. This semester, I'm already at it. The first day of classes, I managed to score a job with my previous professor to be the design assistant for the two upcoming plays at UNO. That is part of my class credit. I feel important. Something that tends to lack most of the time in my life. I will end up working my ass off in this venture and in this class where I will lack in others that my importance is no more, or less, than others there. This annoys me about myself, but it's still the truth. I like the feeling that it gives me when someone is visibly impressed with something I've done. Like the rest of humanity, I'm constantly in search of approval on one level or another.

The other thing came to me yesterday. And it started from the word, "sorry." Romance for me is not something I think about often. I repell advances when I get them and I really don't get them often, for obvious reasons. That aside, the idea of romance in normal society is one that sounds pretty and can be very beautiful. But it ends up being annoying because it is so generalized. I suppose you could consider it commercialized romance. A rose, a teddy bear, dinner, holding a door, etc. Tripping it up from time to time helps break the monotony. Too much of it can get to be just as bothersome as having none and a lack of emotion in a relationship.

I have actually stopped dating guys that I would consider to be classically romantic. They are the "nice" guy that I will only end up hurting because I know they will get on my nerves. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of comeback from that. As with anything I write, I thought about this only randomly and analyzed it minimally until I suddenly hit on the subject from a random tangent thought. I whispered "sorry" to someone in class yesterday morning and almost right after, my muse hit me upside the head with the realization.

I like dangerous romance.

To me, romance is less about puppy dogs and flowers and more about menace. Artistic and beautiful menace. Even in minute doses. Being in a large crowd and being whispered to by him. Even something simple as "I can't wait until we're alone." A dark, mysterious look from across the room. Being made to feel utterly feminine solely because of the overwhelming maleness of my counterpart. These are all menacing and dangerous feelings. Let's leave aside that I like to play the historically classic female role in a relationship (women's lib people beware...). That is, I play that role without compromising who I am and my own thoughts and mind. I still want the romance, but I can only take the sweet stuff in small doses.

I don't really have an ending to all of these thoughts. I suppose I hope I never do. As long as I'm still finding out about myself, I'm still alive. In the meantime if any of this information ends up useful to me in a meaningful way, then I'll have accomplished something.