Catching up - Life without G & H

I haven't been able write because I have been trying to catch up on the seven years of neglect in my house.  I cleared out my studio and installed cabinets that have been in my garage since I moved here. I save everything that I have some kind of vision for and generally beat myself up for being a pack rat. I am happy that I can finally make use of them.

I also couldn't write because the g and the h of my keyboard went out. A lot words use g and h so my writing looked like a secret code.  I purchased a wireless keyboard and ordered a keyboard replacement yesterday. 

My life has been on hold for a long time and I still feel guilty sometimes that it took me this long to heal. I thought I was healed a few times along the way but I know now that that wasn't true. I could be fooling myself again.

When I heard the words "give up the search" and felt instant happiness I was perplexed. Why would that make me feel happy.  Since then I have mulled this over in my mind.  I understood about giving up the spiritual search but now I think there is more. There is always more isn't there?

It is the wanting that has stopped.  The wanting for the life I lost and the wanting for my life to be replaced with something better. It is acceptance that what I am and what I have is enough. It is the acceptance that it is okay to not want what I have been told is normal and it is okay that other people do want it. 

Nothing outside ourselves makes us truly happy forever which is the part no one wants to own to. We fill our lives with what seems like bliss from the outside and then find ourselves feeling trapped. We think that we have made a mistake and start looking for something else. 

We are seeking a spiritual path to cope with our lives and what we think has gone wrong. We hope to identify the mistakes or flaws in our character that put us in this situation in the first place and to avoid future suffering. My own path did save my life but nothing can keep us from experiencing pain. We can learn that pain inevitable but not personal. The spriritual path is the path to marturity and acepting that everything can't solved and that somethings just are.

I have lived my life wanting something or someone to let me off the hook. I wanted feel for just one moment safe from all my insecurities. I wanted someone to say "there is nothing wrong with you just relax and everything will be okay".  I still want that but it doesn't exist. It does feel like it exist when you first fall in love and meet your first soul mate but no one has power over the future. 

You have to dig deep to find what makes you feel so insecure and the thoughts that instill terror. The kind of terror that wakes you up in the middle of the night. We avoid facing that fear with everything we have. I have spent a lifetime running from what I believed was the truth about myself.. 

For me the fear was that something was wrong me because I was never satisfied with what seemed to make other people happy. I couldn't conform and when I did it felt worse. This wasn't the core of my suffering the core had to do with not being able to change this about myself. I have never felt I really belonged anywhere. I have had times when I was included and I did feel safe but then I could clearly see that the way I thought about things made me an outsider.

I knew that I wasn't going to pretend to be someone I am not so I felt doomed. Being alone was more proof that this is what my life was going to be like. No magic cure for making me more like the world so it all seemed fatal. Until those word "give up the search" 

It gave me permission to do something I had already done but felt guilty about it. I had to admit I found the truth that I am who I am and there is nothing wrong with that. I could stop feeling that I needed to be fixed and set myself free. 

I am starting to feel good most of the time.  I do get lonely when I have a few days to myself and would like some company but I felt like that many times when I was in a relationship. I do fight boredom because my mind is in constant search of something more stimulating than what is offered with everyday life and chores. 

When I don't take myself or my day too seriously then I am content and even happy sometimes. I can find joy just appreciating who I am with all my imperfections. I can give up the search for a better me and  I can accept that the child in me will always want more. . 

 

Fathers - Healing

On the subject of  Father's Day. I loved my father and he loved me. I waited a lifetime for him to reach out to me and make me feel like I deserved to be loved, but it never happened. All of my relationships have been affected by the idea that my father didn't love me.  I felt that if I wasn't enough for him then I would never be enough for anyone.

I wasn't worth him taking the time to pursue me ever. After I left home at 16 he let me go and never looked back. Ironically I can be just like that too. I don't pursue but I wait until I am let go and I never look back.

This was just who my father was and it wasn't directed just towards me.  In recovery I got the courage to ask him why he let me go he said "every body's got to do what they got to do."  I knew at that moment that it wasn't about me.  I really wanted it to be.

It really felt worse because I knew I would never get the hole in my heart filled by the man sitting in front of me. I thought I would be forever broken  I thought he was the only hope I had for feeling normal.

It took another two decades (sorry) to get past that moment today I finally know it was this belief that I was broken that actually held me back. I thought had to accept the idea that nothing could be done about my brokenness and learn to live with it.

This was a big lie I told myself and I had plenty of other people telling me I had a perfect right to feel broken and hurt.  My friends and I were all the same it felt good to find others like me and this became my life's focus trying to make the best of my brokenness. Finding ways to find happiness despite the past.

I had to realize that dwelling on what I thought was missing made me miss the life I was actually living.  I was never 100% there because I was always trying to solve the problem of myself and what I was missing. Living with alcoholism helped because it gave me relief from the problem of me and put it on the problem of someone else.

I thought the best I could hope for was to deal with my feelings of the past.  Now I know I can choose to just think of my past as novel I finished reading yesterday. It is done it can't affect me today unless I want let it.  If I give in it might be because I enjoy identifying with the pain and suffering of the past. To me this was a habit I had done so long it was as natural as breathing. I see it now how stuck I was in my thinking.

When I go out in the world today I can be who I choose to be and if I want I can choose not to be that broken person in my head. Sometimes if I am with those that knew me before it is more difficult because they have their story of me and it hard for them to accept that I have changed. They may be holding tightly to their own story and it makes them uncomfortable that I have moved on.

I have lost some people in my life and I have given up others. I just don't fit with those living in the past or those that need someone to take care of.  I am no longer any one's project.

I am grateful for my past today but I am not going to live there. I am also grateful for my father who although he wasn't an emotional giant he did love me and said so even if i didn't believe him. He did give me the ability to fix all kinds of things and a curious mind.

I do agree with one thing my father said "every body's got to do what they got to do."