There is so much to say, so much I haven’t written, and I don’t know where to start, so I will start by writing.

When I was in graduate school, a mentor once taught me about the concept of “brain dumping” and “writing to clarity.” It is this process where you have so many things in your brain but don’t know how to organize them so you just start writing, and then your organize and cut and cull later.  But you get it all out, when you are holding so much in.

That is not the way I usually blog.

I usually have one clear thing. I start with the title and the picture.  Then I write.  Sometimes I stray from my topic, but generally, I write, in an organized, linear fashion, so that it’s easy to follow. I write for my readers as much as for myself, this imagined audience, since who knows who reads one’s blog? Especially now, when it is such a busy time.

But today is not like usual.

It is the end of a semester that has not been the usual.

I didn’t really teach a class this semester.

I supervised student teachers and a doctoral dissertation. I did a lot of support for masters action research projects.  I helped to facilitate a faculty inquiry group.  I did too much service and traveling.  I started a lot of papers that I’m working on finishing now.  I started my journey to reclaim my heritage language, Mandarin.  I ran two half marathons (#11 & 12). I coordinated a 4-year birthday party. I survived the transition to middle school & teenage years.

I did things, but not the usual things.

I’ll teach again starting next week and a class in the fall. I am still supervising. I am writing. I am running (slowly). I am mothering. I am singing. I am planning to take my second Mandarin class in the fall. I am doing the work that I love and living a life I love. I am returning to the routine.

But I have not been reflecting as much as I’d like.

This semester, there have been things, but not the usual things.

I am currently confronted by my silence, by my deference, by the ease of invisibility, of the discomfort of confrontation.

I am haunted by the demons of “not good enough” of “you will never belong” of “they only like you because you do all the things” — these demons that drive my overwork even when I am exhausted and barely holding on; these demons that tell me that the A in my Mandarin class means nothing since there was never a perfect score, since I still can’t understand the e-mails from my son’s school, since I still can’t have a real conversation in Mandarin; these demons that keep me silent when people push back, even though I know it means that I will be doing more work, work that I choose by not choosing NOT to do it and knowing it has to get done, by choosing not to speak up, by swallowing the words that won’t hurt them but are killing me; these demons that keep me silent because I am afraid of their judgment, afraid to lose another person I love, afraid that someday they will all see through all the things and when they do, they will see that I am just a very lonely middle-aged woman who has made many choices that were probably ill-advised. They will see that I struggle even though I smile.  They will see that the demons were right and that there is no more fight in me.

These demons have become my friends.  They have helped me to survive.  They are a part of my culture and my being and so, even though I know they are lying, and I am trying to fight them, I do not like confronting them either.

Today, I should be happy.  And, in many ways, I am happy.  It is a day of celebration, of commencement, of culmination.

But commencement means the end of one thing and the beginning of a new thing.

Endings and beginnings are hard for me, even when they are celebratory, even when they are planned.

I have not written to clarity.  I do not know what to cut.  I do not know where to end, but it seems that I don’t really have more to say. This is a messy blog, one that perhaps is not good enough, one that does not belong, one that people may not read or like because there is no uplifting ending, but it is honest.  It is where I am at in this moment, and where I need to be so that I can drive to campus, to be with my people, to celebrate them, to be present, to end and begin again.