Not drowning, but not waving either

I'm particularly sad tonight.

It's a long story, so I won't go into it. In fact, I'm not certain I can go into it because it's too complicated to write about. And if I did write about it, I'm not sure it would feel as significant as it does to me right now...that I'd minimize it to some kind of soap opera. And unlike soaps, my tears are real. Let's just say it has to do with friends and how sometimes, after years and years of knowing someone, you realize you don't know them at all. As another friend said, who knows the story, "What do you like about these friends anyway?"

A lot on the one hand. And yet there are a lot of things I've sort of overlooked in the 25 years I've known them. That's because all those things didn't matter and now all of the sudden they seem to matter...not to me, but to them. Well, sort of to me, but they don't matter as much to me as they matter to them.

Complicated.

And I'm not going to go into it.

It's been a long day. On top of everything else, my back upper right side tooth broke off. Another $1200 in dental work. "At least you don't need gum surgery," was the dentist's happy news.

At least, though with this friend matter, I feel as if I'm having gum surgery.

But I'm not going to write about.

Well, not directly. It's odd because when I'm overwhelmed (as I am right now with the remodel, the end of the school year, and now with my friends), I always have the same reoccuring dream that my teeth are falling out. Not whole teeth, but bits and pieces all crumbling into my cupped hands.

Let's just say this whole friendship struggle brings up huge issues for me about being "good enough"...something I never thought I'd have to address when dealing with friends.

Yet, here it is again...am I good enough?

And then the tooth falls out.

And then the dog I've been helping to train has sort of avoided me all day.

My friends are upset with me, my tooth falls out, and the dog won't even let me pet him.

I could read a lot into this and yet I always come back to the same issue -- am I good enough? Am I worthy of friendship, of good teeth, of a dog's affection?

Oh, I know the rational answers to all of these questions, but there are times when rational thinking eludes me and I am left with that hole inside that wonders, questions, agonizes over "am I good enough?"

Every day I work with my students on their friendship issues. My favorite today was a girl who kept killing the spiders on the sidewalk while all of her "friends" screamed at her not to, ran over to the spiders to protect them, only to have the said spider killer push their hands aside and smash the creatures with rocks. "They have no brains, no hearts, no blood...they don't really count," she squealed at me later when we discussed the issue.

Of course, it wasn't about the spiders at all. It was about power and bullying and about who she could get to kill spiders with her.

Meanwhile, another girl is freaking out because, as she told me later, "It really reminded her of how white people treated black people a long time ago."

A long time ago.

I'm thinking, "Not so long. Yesterday, in fact. Most likely even right now."

And here I am with two kids on the extreme sides of emotions -- "kill them all, kill them all," screams one while the other girl wails and moans that "they (the spiders) are living creatures!"

This must be some kind of personal lesson for me...you create your own reality...only my reality is created by the kids I work with whose dramas bleed over into my own life and I must deal with friends who think I kill spiders.

But I would never kill spiders. Ever.

So I mantra-size the whole ordeal..."I am a good person, I am a good person"... I rattle off in my head again and again all the reasons why I am a good person, but nothing can really fill that fist-sized hole in my belly that doubts and worries and spends her nights dreaming that her teeth are falling out only to wake up and find out that they really have.