Peace - Cinderella - Finding happiness

I have the real weekend off and have slept in until almost 11 both days.  I haven't done that in a very long time.  I don't feel particularly tired but sleep is the best remedy for most things physical and mental.  The next few weeks will be busy and it is probably good to get it while I can.

We have a big wedding coming up the first of August my nephew is marrying into a pretty prominent family in his town.  There is an event every day for four days leading up to the wedding.  I have had to go out and buy the hopefully appropriate clothes.  My life has been more the life of a monk than a socialite so it is pretty stressful. The women at the first store kept saying "you can't wear that" finally settling on a top for the rehearsal dinner.

I spoke to my sister and she is stressed 10 fold.  We both are wishing we were thinner about now but not enough to jump on the diet path.  She will be in the official pictures and I will not.  She told me she has tried on 30 dresses and her final picks got the thumbs down from her son.

Pieces of my past will be at the table every night.  My step mother will be the honored grandmother. Hopefully it will be a big table and I will be at the other end.  She is the last person that can still stir something in me. If she had been kinder and more loving my life would have been different. I was an obstacle to her something between her and my father.

It was a true Cinderella story with the chores and all.  She didn't reserve her treatment for just me but even her own daughters.  She was an angry women who was left by her first husband the love of her life and she could never accept this rejection.  The "I am not enough story" manifesting it 'self just below the surface. I understand and have compassion for this story now but I don't necessarily want to sit next to her at the dinner table. 

If you believe in God then you have to accept that everything happens for a reason.  Life is laid out in a divine plan and we are exactly where we are suppose to be a nice story.  This thought can keep you going but I now believe that life is just life.  When bad things happen we just find a way to get through it the best we can and when good things happen we just try to enjoy the moment. 

I try my best everyday to just be kind and compassionate.  Realizing that everyone has their own story that they are living and that it has nothing really to do with me.  I can't change them just give them encouragement and if they reject me or love me it isn't something about me it is about them.

When I am at my best I choose to not take it personally.  Sometimes when I want someone to like me or do something I want them to do and they don't I slip away from peace and back to pain and frustration.  Luckily it doesn't last too long and I can return to peace.

When I head out to family central in the next few weeks I will have many opportunities to test my faith and use what I have learned. I am going with an open mind knowing I am healthier spiritually than I have ever been.  I am no longer Cinderella trapped in a bad situation I can't escape.  I escaped without the prince and the story wasn't the fairytale I wished for but I have found my own happily ever after.  

Al-Anon - Cleaning house

I am home for the second day of my weekend.  I didn't even bother to pack up my computer in case I had a work emergency. I have been doing the ordinary things that one does in life like cleaning and laundry.  I have to admit that during my depression I got out of the habit of regular anything most less cleaning.  

When I lived with addiction cleaning was what I did while I waited for my love to have that last drink and come home. I would get calls every hour saying "I am leaving right now" this was before I even knew I was dealing with addiction.  I thought if he loved me he would rather be with me than out drinking with his friends.  I blamed myself for his behavior I was never a happy person in those days I had found my happiness in him and I knew I was losing him which made me so controlling.  

Everything was the same as it had been before but for some reason he was staying away more and more. I tried to be prettier and keep the house clean.  I tried not to nag him about not coming home but I did try to find out what it was about me that was keeping him away.  Desperation is so attractive.

I was so young then in my early twenties trying to create the family I felt I missed out on in my life. I wanted stability and love so I latched on to someone who said they wanted the same thing.  I didn't know the strength of addiction and I had built my self-esteem around the fact that this fabulous person loved me so I must be really special. Everybody did love him all he had to do is enter the room and the sun came out.

I was losing and I blamed myself.  I knew if I tried hard enough I could solve this puzzle and things could go back to the way they were before I just had to keep trying. You know how this ends and for me I was lucky because it ended with a beginning.  I started my spiritual journey in Al-Anon.

I thought I was alone with all those desperate thoughts in my mind.  I thought I was alone with my schemes to control him to make this marriage work. What I found out was that my situation was mild in comparison to what others had suffered.  I cried after my first meeting because I didn't feel so alone anymore I could begin to stop blaming myself for everything.

By then he had left me for someone else so I never had to practice what I had learned with active alcoholism. What I did get to do is see my actual part in the drama of my life.  I could see just how much of my own power I had handed over to this person if they didn't love me then I was unlovable. I wish I could say I haven't repeated this exercise again and again in the years that have passed since then. 

It is okay because I have learned enough not to go there for too long. I have had to learn to love myself whether anyone loves me or not.  I am loved but it is conditionally even my love for myself is conditional.  Only the God of my understanding can offer me anything else. 

Today I am finishing my cleaning for no other reason than to do what needs to be done.  I am a little on the sad side today and I am wishing I had someone to share my life with not just anyone but someone that I could have a healthy relationship with.  Maybe someone to share these chores. Tomorrow I will be back in the thick of things and this day will be a memory. I better get back to my cleaning.  al

Trusting the flow - Paint - A color change

Since I have been resisting my life for so many years it feels really good to just accept things the way they are and just go with the flow.  I have been bringing color into my life first by painting my office a wheat yellow with an accent wall of drizzle blue.  It caused quite a stir with the head designer who prefers everything to be gray.

I have been gray long enough.  She said that it would have to be painted over this was a sad moment for me.  First my ego was like "do you think I can't pick colors?" I let it go and decided to bring the paint home an paint one of my bedroom walls with it.  It feels like the sun is setting behind my bed.

By some miracle the owner got wind of us painting our offices and came down to see for himself.  He said it wasn't his pick but it was nice.  I paid his son to paint the office so it wasn't like nobody knew it was happening.  When I did that it felt like I was committing to the job for the first time. Investing in a place that I have spent on average 10-12 hours a day for three years.

Ironically one of our cabinet companies came out with their new brochure with the exact same two colors.  I, not so secretly, felt vindicated.  

I am on a roll transforming my day to day life with color.  I had my house painted a few weeks ago and it looks awesome.  I was going go for the same wheat color on the front door but it turned out more like banana to me.  I will repaint once the weather gets cooler.  When I presented the colors to our committee I wasn't 100% sure so I picked harvest from the color brochure. Maybe it is a banana harvest not wheat. 

Yesterday I hung ten pictures up the stair way which has been blank since the great room was painted last year.  In my OCD mind I wanted to lay the pictures out neatly on paper an mull over my choices but it never happened. Ultimate the ADD side of me kicks in and I just started hanging pictures  and it looks great. After 12 months in 30 minutes I have an art wall. 

This is the inner battle that I have dealt with all my life.  Analysis paralysis versus just jumping in with no plan exactly.  I have learned to just trust myself and accept that this is who I am and that intuitively I will make the right decision. If I don't life will go on and I will get over it. 

I call it being in the flow especially at work.  With sales you never know who the real customers are or who should get my attention. I only have so many hours in the day so I have to make a decision an go with it. It always works out and I am finally learning to trust that my instincts are right. 

It feels good to let go of the wanting I have carried for so long.  Wanting things to be different than they are today or worse wanting the past to be different than it was.  I have moved back to the doing part of myself instead of the being part or the thinking part. I am finding my own peace painting, cleaning and pulling weeds trusting the flow.