by Jennifer Paros
July 2016
When our oldest son was in elementary school, the principal told me he was a “square peg” struggling in, apparently, a round hole of an environment. Her suggestion: find him a square hole. I knew my son wasn’t always the most cooperative or conforming, but I was also not convinced her perception was fully accurate or useful.
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May 2016
My youngest son was diagnosed as autistic years ago. There’s no blood test or scans for autism; the conclusion is behaviorally based. A person is observed and if he exhibits enough patterns that are considered markers of the condition, we give him the label. Early on, his neurologist was frustrated when other professionals inferred our son was autistic.
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April 2016
There is a well-worn phrase: “Hang in there!” It’s meant as encouragement for those of us encountering difficult times. Sometimes it’s even accompanied by a picture of a kitten hanging from a branch. Though the intention is encouragement, the expression doesn’t provide much information.
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March 2016
Years ago, a friend told me she felt nervous driving on highways, and so had eradicated them from her navigational plans. Though she seemed satisfied with her solution, I was wary of it.
My first year in college, I was uncomfortable leaving campus alone, and fell to always arranging grocery shopping or mall trips with friends.
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February 2016
The Inner Critic is psychology shorthand for all the crappy things you think about yourself – a discouraging imaginary figure with a penchant for diminishing commentary. Though we created this idea and even named it, we have not bothered to imagine its opposite.
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January 2016
I had just gone grocery shopping and, at the request of my teenage son, bought a new kind of cereal. When I returned home, I mentioned it to my husband, showed him the box, and put it away. But by evening I could not find the cereal. I searched everywhere, including neighboring cabinets and places that didn’t make sense.
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December 2015
When I was eight I had a hard time transitioning to a new school. I walked there each morning with a vacated spirit – absent before they’d called my name, absent once they did. I sent my body on to do what I was supposed to while I remained observing from a distance. That was the first time I can remember the distress of mentally pulling away from the moment.
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October 2015
From the time they were small, both my sons ran around the backyard in deep self-conversation, exploring ideas, acting out scenes. If they had a thought that excited them, they could always be found outside, running back and forth, thinking. Eventually, their unconscious, repetitive thought movements wore a track in our lawn.
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September 2015
The day after my birthday, I went on Facebook to find only a few notices from friends wishing me a happy day. A wave of un-lovability, rejection, and no one cares filled my mind. Simultaneously, I found my entanglement with this needy kind of thinking disappointing and embarrassing. I like to consider myself further along in my evolution and ability to maintain equanimity – but you know....
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August 2015
In my art school days, I decided to take a sculpture class. I had no desire to take it, but had heard that students should be exposed to all media. So, I signed up. It started out and ended up a bad fit, which included a strained relationship with my professor. My clarity and confidence went out the window. When I finally completed something, his critique was fair enough, but also brutally unconstructive.
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July 2015
When I was a little kid, my friend Wendy and I discovered the first floor of her family’s carriage house – an outbuilding behind their main house. The upper floor had been renovated and was being rented. But the ground level room had become a dumping ground. The space was crowded and filthy – filled with old furniture, a refrigerator, pieces of wood, and all kinds of odds and ends.
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June 2015
Years ago, while working on the final pen and ink drawings for my children’s book, I leaned in to draw a face and my hand began to shake. The more I strove to hold myself steady, the more impossible it seemed. Maxwell Maltz, doctor and self-help writer, once described this dynamic as “purpose tremors.” When someone has a specific purpose, goes towards it with great intensity, and tries very hard not to make an error, he shakes.
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May 2015
When I was nineteen, I cried my way to one of the worst headaches of my life. It was the night before I was to start a full time art class – a program called Studio Project. I had been uncertain about signing up, having always doubted my ability to draw (though still enthusiastic to create). Beyond attending various types of classes and critiques, students were required to spend at least four hours a day working in the studio.
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April 2015
When my youngest son was three years old, at the suggestion of his concerned preschool teacher, we agreed to a state assessment of his “needs.” But after the evaluation, the specialist’s observations sounded like a scientific field log – as though she’d been in the bushes with binoculars. The subject thumped his chest repeatedly and ran back and forth.The more she shared, the clearer it was that the observed facts were only leading her further from understanding him.
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March 2015
The other day, I rewatched one of my father’s favorite movies – the 1965 film A Thousand Clowns. It stars Jason Robards as nonconformist, anti-establishment television writer, Murray Burns, who has recently quit his job at The Chuckles the Chipmunk Show.
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February 2015
I’ve never given a lot of thought to the ol’ show, don’t tell directive in writing because I thought it was easily grasped. Instead of saying “She was sad,” I should describe my character staring out the window with tears in her eyes. Instead of writing “The dog was frantic,” the dog could be shown running in circles barking. But recently, my sixteen year-old son put another spin on it.
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January 2015
Recently, I had a second opportunity to watch the Oscar-winning film, Slumdog Millionaire. For the first twenty minutes I questioned whether I’d paid any attention at all during the first viewing. It seemed my memory had been erased of all the difficult, dark parts; all I’d been left with was the good feeling at the end.
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December 2014
In autoimmune disorders, the immune system gets confused and attacks things within the body’s own system. The white blood cells produce antibodies against the body’s tissues – basically, attacking their home. What should be treated as a friend is misidentified as an enemy.
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November 2014
We often reassure each other that nothing’s perfect. There’s supposed to be some sort of comfort in that, a bit of release from the trap of striving for the unachievable or judging what we have as not good enough. It’s supposed to, I think, help us accept the “eh” aspect—the aspect of our experience that’s not quite what we want.
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October 2014
Around the age of eight I had a dream in which I am captured and brought to a large indoor swimming pool filled with oil - where I am to be boiled alive. That's a nightmare. But what really makes a nightmare a nightmare? Surprisingly it’s not the threat of being boiled, shot, hung, hunted, or eaten; it's the sense of being unable to change the situation, of having no power.
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