The truth - Forgiving ourselves - Self-care

I had to drive north about an hour for an appointment on Thursday. It is a beautiful drive and I decided to put in an old Dixie Chicks CD and while listening tears started running down my face.

I was surprised by this and wondered what was going on. It was the first CD they made after their country music fall from grace.  It has some great come back songs that everyone can relate to but this isn't what moved me.  I bought this CD just before my own life imploded. 

One sound with these words "I love the silence you create for me." I thought I had found the person I would spend the rest of my life with and they understood me. It turns out that this was in my mind only and almost laughable now. We create our reality mostly in our heads and refuse to see the truth mainly because it is just to hard to accept. 

If I had known that my life was about to break open and it would lead me to the darkest times of my life I would have stopped living. 

I lost everything that defined who I thought I was during that time. My relationship, my home my career.  It was so devastating that it sent me into to menopause overnight. Most of my friends ran from me because the person they knew was missing. I knew I was missing too but there was nothing I could do about it.

What happened me I think was caused by my inability to accept the changes being forced on me. I could no longer identify with the person I thought I was up until then. The stress of it all caused my body and mind to start rejecting itself.  I didn't get help because I thought I could handle it myself. 

I shut down and walked through my life like a robot. I showed up when it was absolutely necessary but when it wasn't I sat alone and stared or I walked in the woods alone. Being with other people felt like putting on a sandpaper suit. I had one person who let me just be without expectation. 

I thought about ending my life everyday mainly because I couldn't imagine feeling this empty and uninterested in life forever. What would be the point in continuing was what I was thinking.  I was past grief and sadness and really felt nothing. The more I tried to figure out how I got there the worse I felt.  I finally just quit and just accepted that this is the new me.

I didn't act on my feelings because of some great reverence for life but it required me to do something. I told myself everyday that I could decide again tomorrow. I remember one moment I heard a voice in my head say "you are doing this to yourself." What did that mean?

I sat with that for a long time and realized that I was punishing myself for not being enough. I believed that there was something about me that caused these losses in my life. I thought that I was, at the core, not lovable and I had proof.  I had list of the rejections or blatant indifference from the people who said they loved me.  No one wanted me.

I thought I was a strong person and was happy to take care of other people. I am strong but I also have needs even if I never acknowledged them. I finally turned this self care back to myself and decided to be enough for me first instead of always looking outside myself for proof that I am lovable.  

I know what happened to me was both physical and mental. I was too out of it to care about what was happening to me. When I finally went to the doctor my thyroid was barely working and I was close to Hashimoto's disease. Living in crisis had exhausted my body's ability to function and my brain wasn't working right either. 

My recovery was slow and with time I started to function better. I never have returned to the person I was before and for that I am grateful. I am worthy of the love and care I give myself today. I can't say enough the role that food has played in the way I think. My mind is clear and I am happy.  Our emotions are fueled by the food we eat.

The tears those songs brought to my eyes were tears of gratitude.  I can forgive the past even if I can't always forget it. I can see that I was a child emotionally in that relationship looking for something that no person can give you - unconditional love. 

I can make that drive now and see the beauty in the surrounding marshes and enjoy being alive.  I can forgive myself for being lost so many years missing what was there all along. The gift of today and all it has to offer me.  

 

Reading - Re-inventing myself - Fiction -Spring

Spring has come here in the south and it was particularly beautiful today in the 70's and breezy.  My flowers have been blooming for over a month but not in a good way. It was cool sometimes and rainy and hot other times and they are confused.  Just like we are right now.

This makes me think of an old song with a line that says "should I stay or should I go now?" You can't really keep people cooped up forever and when spring comes it is even less likely to work.  The mind just says "look how beautiful it is it can't be that dangerous. Right?

I have to admit I drove to Lowes today and it was a mob seen so I didn't leave my car.  I did stop at a small Ace and bought all of one kind of plant that matched the ones in my flower bed. I would tell you the name but I don't know. 

I am sure I could have gotten them cheaper but I also could have gotten Covid along with the discount so I think they were a bargain. Besides the Ace stores are independently owned and this one was struggling before the pandemic. They could use the business.

I have started reading again and I am finishing two books a week which is interesting since I haven't read for pleasure in years. I am also listening to Trevor Noah - Born a crime - read by him and it is hilarious and pretty unbelievable his success given his childhood. 

Something he said reminded me of myself. He talked about how if something didn't seem logical he would just refuse to go along with it. He was raised Pentecostal but went to a Catholic school where they wouldn't let him take communion because he wasn't Catholic. 

He explained to the nun that Jesus was not Catholic either and it was his blood and body so that was not acceptable. He felt like an outcast so he stole the bottle of grape juice and bag of wafers and finished them off. When the nuns told his mother she said his argument was perfectly legitimate. He is a pretty smart guy and with his mother's tenacity and guidance he became who his today.

I feel like I am re-inventing myself with reading for pleasure. My whole adult life I have read mostly self help or spiritual books looking for answers. I was trying to figure out what I was doing to cause bad things to happen to me. I turns out that life is pretty random and you can waste a lot time preparing one thing and then something else happens. We have to find peace in the midst of the turmoil and love ourselves and the mistakes we have made. Fill our time with small pleasurable things and let go of our past hurts. 

With reading I have found a lost pleasure. I not a fiction fan because they seem predictable to me but reading memoirs like "Brain on Fire" that I finished this week and "A Year of Bee Keeping" they feel less formulated. When I read Angela's Ashes and "An Education" both were a little to real both long and sad even if they ended well.  It felt like every story of addiction and mental illness I have heard and experienced myself in Al-Anon. How no one matters but the one afflicted good but heavy.  

I need to escape even if I loved to work lately it has taken a toll on me and I feel that I need to see what else is out there with the limitations of the pandemic. The reading has helped me to vacation in my own mind.  I know that one day I will eventually leave work and have to find something else to do with my time.  My coworker that had Covid is home from the hospital and may not come back to work. We are alike in our love of work so it really made me think about what is next.  

How important is it? - Letting go - stress

I am in a better place this week even though work has been even more stressful than it was last week.  When you deal with the public it seems that you have difficult periods where you get caught up in a lot of small problems for me mostly things I cannot solve. At these times it is hard to remember the jobs that went right.

Our company does a great job of fixing whatever the problem is but not a great job of communicating what or when this is going to happen. By the time I find out about it and contact someone they have already sent someone out to take care of it.

It is way more efficient on the back side but it does cause the customer distress because they are not hearing back from anyone. It does really work out in the end. I just tell them that it will magically get taken care of if they give it a day or so. 

It is dysfunctional like a family and either you can hang with it or not. If you have got to know what is going on all the time then this is not the place to work. It isn't my responsibility to change it so I adapt the best I can. 

I am better in my old age at being flexible and not be outraged by the actions of others.  The lack of efficiency and all the time wasted re-working things in the past would have drove me nuts. When I was worked in true corporate america I worked my way up in the company so I could make changes to help make things easier fro everyone.  

My brain is solely interested in making things better whether at home, at work or even when I see problems at a store. I can't help myself but now I can just let it go knowing this is how the world works. One cashier in the garden department on a Saturday with ten people in line waiting for a manager to okay a plant on clearance. 

To be happy in this life you have to let go of everything that you have absolutely no control over.  This is the secret we don't want to accept. I can close my eyes and imagine something different but I have to accept the reality in front of me.  How important is it?  That is one of my favorite slogans from the program. It works if you work it.  That is another one.