The last half hour of Halloween in Japan is upon us, and today I have run the gamut of my emotions.
Getting time to chat with my mom in the morning was joyous. Walking with Julia afterward was challenging but good. I did my best. Hiding inside after the cold wind picked up was less fun, but even if reluctant, the rest was good. Julia bouncing off the walls when Tomo came home was exhausting. Dinner was satiating, though not the most appealing in appearance.
Then Tomo brought up Kindergarten.Tomorrow is the day that we have to hand in the forms and, despite this being a basic and pain-free process, it has thrown me for a loop.
Every time one of these basic adult things, these milestones you come to, comes up for me here, I get a gigantic reminder that all those convenient lies I tell myself during the weeks and months between are complete crap. This is not just like America. I have no idea what I am doing. My basic knowledge of the language is utterly inadequate. I can't even have a good conversation with a four year old.
And my daughter suffers for my inabilities. My in-laws have to be involved in almost everything, to the detriment of the other people in their lives. My mother-in-law is accompanying me tomorrow because I am such a dependent fuck up and had to rearrange plans with her father to do it.
Every time something like this comes up I get to remember how incapable I am and I start doubting EVERYTHING. Okay, it usually doesn't get that far. I mean, even this time, the better-trained positive focus in my brain got me to sing part of Bohemian Rhapsody in the shower, so at least at my core something is fighting back.
Winter sucks and getting close to winter sucks. It doesn't help. So while I'm already a bit fragile from that I get to thinking that not studying is my downfall and asking why I don't apply myself to that at all while I apply myself to any one of a thousand other frankly fruitless endeavors. Something I need like Japanese I never do anything about. And then these things happen and I feel useless because I am useless.
That said I did actually read the note my mother-in-law left Saturday. She always gives me a run down of what they do during the day while I'm working, and usually I can't read enough of it to make sense. This week I did it, and understood around 80%. I missed a couple of the kanji but got the bulk of the message. it was a proud moment.
Last week had a lot of those. I built myself up into feeling that this Nano thing was possible, even likely. That I could do it.
Then we filled out the kindergarten form and talked about what happens if there's already a line and we can't get in and blah blah blah. My confidence shriveled.
The problems is that this stuff makes me doubt things I've already worked through and gotten over, like moving to Japan when my mom could have used me at home, like continuing to live so far from the family that doesn't get to hold my kid while she grows up. Like not finding the time to clean, work out, lose weight, and do all the other Japanese housewife things I suck at.
Instead I am fat. I am inept at cleaning. I am bad at Japanese (or at least not as good as I should be after living here 8 years), and I'm not doing anything about it,
I'm afraid I'm never going to be good at the things I am trying to do, and that my stupid youthful refrain of "no one loves me" has some sick truth to it, and that I'm screwing things up for my kid.
All these thoughts flow through me and I start to hyperventilate, but stop to have some tea or coffee or water. And I clear my mind enough to focus on one problem. And I do.
Rosetta Stone is running a special. $20 for a month with all 5 levels of any 1 language on the website.
I paid for it.
Now to see if it works, when I can do it, and get back into that novel writing thing.
Happy Halloween great ghouls, monsters, beasts and folk!
