Rejection - Truth - Letting go

I didn't realize we would be closed on Monday for the holiday.  When you are in sales you don't always get those expected holiday.  I is almost 100 today and I just came in from putting the last bag of mulch on the flower bed.  I had to stop a few times to rest or cool off and the last bag I had to drag behind me to get it out there.

I pride myself on my ability to adapt to the heat.  I can't really say I adapt well to anything else. I listened to T.D. Jakes while I was on a heat break.  He was preaching at Lakewood this morning and had a pretty powerful message.  I have to say that history is repeating itself.  My Aunt Ruby use to make fun of my grandmother for watching TV evangelist and then in her own last days that is all she wanted to do.  Now here I am doing the same thing not that it is my last days.

I have found that everything in life that is painful comes from resistance.  When you resist what is then that means you want something else instead.  No matter how hard you wish for something different you are sitting right in the middle of something you don't want.  Whether that is a job or a relationship or a even a sickness you can't change it in the moment.

Today's message was very powerful.  When you are in the dark it means there is an absence of light. Darkness isn't evil or powerful just a place where you just happen to be at the moment.  All growth starts in the darkness and only when it emerges from the ground does it even need the light.

I have had long periods of time where I just wished I was someplace else.  When I headed into the darkest of depression I wanted life itself to be over.  I could not endure not one more minute of the nothingness I felt. I thought about that time when he was speaking this morning.

I can only say it was some sort of grace that saved me. Right now I can remember sitting on the porch when something turned inside of me and a voice said "you are doing this to yourself".  I started thinking about that and wondering if that was true. I felt that I had been rejected so many times by the people that were suppose to love me that there must be something about me that made me unlovable.

This was my core belief and every thought I had about it proved me right.  I am very logical person and looked at all the facts.  I have the kind analytical brain that latched on to these facts and could only come to this one conclusion.   It had to be my fault.  A child raised in a fundamentalist home where you take responsibility for yourself and your actions this was how we thought.  You must do better next time.

I never occurred to me that in life random things happen to everybody all the time.  Even at birth you could be born just about anywhere to anybody.  Anybody can get sick and die.  I should have realized that when my own mother died.  But my child brain decided that if I worked hard and was the best person I could be I could prevent bad things from happening to me. 

Plenty of bad things happened to me from that point on but somehow I just thought I wasn't trying hard enough. This is an exhausting way to live trying to out smart unknown random stuff from happening and blaming myself when it did. 

That day on the porch I just gave up and let go.  I decided to not to blame myself and not even look for an answer to why I ended up where I did.  I rested from the responsibility of my situation and I got better slowly.  I even decided that if I was unlovable there was nothing I could do about it. I was in the darkness for a long time but eventually I got rid of the thoughts that were hurting me.

I am a happy person now and feel sad for that girl inside me that didn't know any better.  I raised myself without a mother and there were things I didn't know.  I am smart and used the spiritual knowledge of others to get where I needed to go.  In the end I had to see it was my own thoughts about myself that hurt me more than being rejected by other people.

You can't always trust you own thoughts about any situation.  For me I had see that it didn't matter whether my thoughts were true or not I had to just let them go and start loving myself.

Ordinary Day - Wishing for future happiness - suffering

Not much has changed here I had a busy six days at work and spent yesterday in the yard.  The front is really finished but I planted some impatiens that were suppose to be sun worthy but were suffering so I moved them yesterday to a more shady spot. I replaced them with bright pink ehinacea plants.

I am glad to have something I am excited about.  This can be an issue when you get older and more peaceful. You have done a lot of things and even the things you haven't done you know that once you do them you will have to find the next thing to fill your time.  Even vacations will be over as the time passes by and when you come home began each day again. 

You could embellish your time away to others or to yourself just to make your normal life more bearable or you could just enjoy your life the way it is and look for the joy it offers each day. Getting away can renew your spirit but it doesn't solve day to day suffering.  In my experience spending concentrated time with people you already have unspoken issues with can make you wish you were back at work.

This sounds sad but it isn't meant to be.  It is just about seizing the day for what it is an not trying to get to some day in the future where things are different. We wish things were different than they are now and know that perfect day is out there somewhere.

When you are living in a crisis whether that is addiction, sickness or lack you can't wait to get past it.  I get that for sure I have lived with all of those things and I suffered most when I was wanting to be someplace else.  Someplace far in the future where this wasn't happening to me.

Today I am grateful that I can just in enjoy the day I have and not wish for happiness in the future. I will see where I can find joy in this ordinary day.

Changing - Giving up what seems natural

I am in a good space working on my yard.  I feel balance mentally, spiritually and physically.  I am still giving all the credit to the Keto diet.  I don't remember feeling this good except when I was in love.  New love anyway.  How can that be?

Our whole lives are geared towards eating. Maybe the memories we have of our mother's making special meals for us. The relationships that grew over eating meals together.  I have a lot of those first at my Al Anon mother's house in my thirty's.  We had big parties and the two of us worked together alone in the kitchen.  Something I didn't have with my own mother.

I then moved on to my adopted family.  My ex's family and a few of my Al-anon friends that migrated with me.  I cooked with love and after many years finally felt at home.  After ten years I felt relatively safe as long as I kept doing what I was doing.  That was the deal even though never said it was implied that I would continue to take care everything.  I didn't mind I had been doing that all my life and it was the safest I had ever felt.  Of course three years later that life was over basically finished over night a 13 year relationship was over.  We have spoken once since then.

The rest of the story is old and I am sick of it by now. I have recreated myself since then some things intentionally and some changes forced on me.  After all of the work I have done in counseling and in Al-Anon I never even considered addressing my diet and that changing it could change me.

I could say that the way I feel is because all the stars are aligned now and that is why I feel so good.  Maybe that is partially true but my mind is different.  I don't get stuck in the problem loop like I use to dwelling on the past or any particular problem.  I feel whole and excited about what is going to happen next. I have never experienced this as an adult.

The change isn't easy and has stunted my social life for sure.  I have long term relationships built around food.  I am rarely hungry and that makes the reward of eating less interesting to me.  Since I am not that interested in food my love of cooking has mostly disappeared.  I need very little to sustain me each day.  I did order the Flavcity Keto cookbook coming out May 15th.  His food is similar to what I like to eat and not too complicated.

I think I am really happy in a healthy way for the first time.  I feel separate and whole not wanting for anything today.  I have to say a word about Mother's Day.  My own mother even though I didn't have her long did good job preparing me and my sister for her not being around.

She instilled in us that we needed to think for ourselves.  She wasn't controlling and let us fall and suffer sometimes.  We were encouraged to work it out for ourselves even if this meant suffering
for her.   Thanks Mama.

Not change a thing - Holding on

I didn't sleep well last night with radiating pain all over my body.  This happens from time to time so I just try to get up and walk it off in the night.  It feels a little like the flu and is gone by morning.  I feel kind strange today a little gloomy me and the weather.  This morning I have been out in the yard admiring the fruits of my labor over the past few weekends.

It looks great and only needs time and a little mulch to be finished.  Patience is required for gardening especially when you are waiting for perennials to come back from last year.  This is hit or miss in our part of the country.  I think it gets too hot or maybe not cold enough some winters to alert the plants to come back.  My neighbor ask me if I was planning on planting flowers this year.  I guess she couldn't see that I am finished.

Things are changing at work and this has added to my lack of enthusiasm for life in general.  A teammate left and moved to the other side of the country.  A young person with the enthusiasm of someone that has not encountered a lot of disappointments.  That is not really true just a personality that seems to just move on quickly to the next thing. 

I am not built that way but I am working on it.  If life is good I want to hold on to things the way they are not change anything hoping that I can sustain the happiness that I have found.  Life doesn't ever work that way it goes in and out in waves and sometimes you are on the shore and sometimes in the water.  I like to be near the water but never learned to swim so I prefer the shore. When I feel like I am sinking I can start panicking or just float until a wave takes me back to shore.

I watched the Netflix special Knock Down the House.  The story of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her long shot win over the democrat incumbent.  This is what it will take to change the business as usual in our country.  The enthusiasm and youth that we all had at one time to make a difference.  The country is corporate owned and operated.  It makes us feel really helpless to change things.

This is a weird post but just where I am today.  Mostly regrouping after a 6 day work week and feeling less than inspired.