(Revised May 9, 2007)
My name is Jen Zug, and I live near Seattle, WA with my husband, two kids, and a dog named Scout. Recently, within a year’s time I had lost a close family member to cancer, given birth to my second child, plunged into a depression, discovered I had a rage problem, nearly left my husband, and came THIS close to abandoning my children at Walmart.
I also rediscovered my love for writing, which may have saved my sanity.
I once had a friend tell me she was at first intimidated by me because I’m honest, and honest people make her antsy. I think I had just told her how I shook my two year old, I was so mad. Or maybe I told her about the time I broke the high chair tray over my husband’s back, I was so mad.
Well at any rate, I had just told her something that made her antsy.
There isn’t much I won’t talk about. If you get me in a room with the right people I’ll even talk about sex. Ironically, I’m shy and easily embarrassed – but not when I talk about sex, or depression, or anger, or how I have at times hated being a mother. I believe these are the things we need to be talking about, rather than hiding them in the shadows of pleasantries.
It’s been over two years since I started this blog, and at the time it felt like I was standing in a pile of shit without a shovel. Since then I’ve done a bit of lamenting, too much complaining, and a whole lot of navel gazing. I’d like to be able to tell you that I’ve arrived at some kind of nirvana, that I’m cured, or that two years of personal deconstruction has perfected me.
But you already know that’s not possible, don’t you?
Instead, I have found (a relative) peace in the middle, in the undone, in the Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, and The Matrix Reloaded – those pesky second movies in a three part trilogy, the ones where everything is left hanging and nothing is resolved, but you are left with so much hope that your adrenaline rushes, and when the credits begin to roll you stand up in the theater and shout at the screen, “NO, YOU BASTARDS! IT CAN’T BE OVER YET!”
Or was that just me?
There isn’t much that shocks me anymore. We all have a past, we all have sin, we all have baggage. But we also all have access to hope. And so now ‘The Pile I’m Standing In’ is a bit ambiguous. You could say it’s a double entendre, to borrow a fancy word from the French. It could mean anything at any time, depending on _______.
I don’t want to start from the assumption that life is a pile of shit anymore. Of course there will be days, and there will be seasons, and there will always be something to grieve. But I don’t want the muck to be what defines me.
I want to write about the other things I’m sinking into deeply. Welcome to my pile.
(Send any email correspondence to jen (at) zugbot (dot) com.)