What I should want - Being normal

It is Thanksgiving and I have opted to be alone. This is some scary stuff inside the head because it messes with all those insecurities that our society gathers around holidays. In my mind it says "look what has become of you - your life is a failure - you have nobody".

In the program it has a saying " you mind is like a bad neighborhood never go there alone". If I step back and ask myself am I a failure? The answer is no I am happy to be on my own doing things that I love. My self worth is not tied to making sure I have people around me.

If you have been here before you know I have hosted literally hundreds of group invents over my life and a lot times I have felt alone and more like a caterer than someone participating in a something I was a part of. This is who I am and now that I don't feel like I have to live up to the picture in my head I can relax and appreciate being me.

I got two invitations at the last minute one that surprised me last night a coworker called and offered to let me join her family. The other an old friend that was a part of my life when I first found the 12 steps. I just can't do it anymore be somewhere just to prove to myself that I belong. I have seen her one on one a few times lately and this is what I prefer. A more intimate moment with good conversation.

It doesn't help that I am not food focused anymore.  I don't long for those special dishes that I use to make for other people. Is it wrong to not go because I don't want to be there? Does this make me anti social. Someone at work said they were staying home instead of making the five drive the usually make to be with her husband's family. She can be with her own family this year. Doing things because we have always done them is easy. Our brain loves "the same" it is harder to choose again because it feels awkward. 

I only feel bad about myself when I say "a normal person wouldn't want to be alone on a holiday".  The normal ship has sailed a long time ago. I have spent my whole life trying to figure out where I fit in creating a life the I thought looked like a normal life and being unhappy most of the time. I would tell myself "you should be happy - you have the life that other people would be envious of"  I didn't feel the joy I was suppose to have. 

I find on most days now I am singing out loud. I might not be excited about what is on my to do list but I don't feel trapped anymore. If I am unhappy it isn't because there is some magical place in the future that will eliminate this.  I can just decide what to do next or if I want I can choose to do nothing. 

I am working on my book once again. One day last week I got up and pulled it from a basket and read through it. I was inspired to add to it and work on organizing it. It is difficult because even though it will be fiction it is filled with my own memories. It makes it hard to continue without taking an emotional break.

I am thankful today for having all day to myself to be creative. I once heard a monk say they spent 6 months of the year alone. I could never do that I just want to spend time with people that have good energy.  I feel like I have spent too many holidays having the life drained out of me because I thought I had to because this is what normal people do. 

I think Covid has changed us all to want more meaning in this short life we have on this earth. It make sense to me that the younger generation doesn't want to work so hard. This will work itself out and a balance will be found work can give you joy.  It has taken me a lifetime to do what I want instead of what I think I should want.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Being Alone - We hate change - The holiday

I am use to spending time alone but around the holidays my mind can slip into some sad places if I let it.  I do indulge myself a little here and there wishing things could have been different. I am spending Thanksgiving alone this year at least that is what I am saying now.

I was invited by an old friends house to join her and her normal group of holiday friends to have a vegan dinner plus Turkey.  I use to be part of the center of this group long ago when the world was younger and so was I. It was the only time in my life that I felt like I belonged and didn't have to worry about being myself. Over the years it got complicated.

The actual holiday meal wasn't that great emotionally. It was stressful and included a few non recovering alcoholics. I really don't like big meals with other people even though I catered these events in both my marriages. 

I am naturally and introvert even though I like people but only one on one. I liked putting together events but never enjoyed actually attending the event. So the questions is - Will I go? Maybe an opportunity to go back to my past. Yuck.

I don't believe you can successfully go back to any where in your life.  I prefer to limit this kind of return to a place in my head where my imagination can make it all perfect. I can build the room around my own happiness and all the characters are on their best behavior. 

The last real Thanksgiving I cooked someone said to me "this is bland" since they had just gotten out of the hospital after stomach surgery I thought it was appropriate. That was the end for me after cooking thousands of meals with love and care I quit just like that.

Sounds drastic and it kinda of was but I am like that. I can do something or be someone for a long time and then suddenly I just can't do it anymore. This is probably a bad analogy and I have probably written it before and apologize in advance. In my 30's I ate Lean Cuisine for lunch every day for years. One day I pulled one out of the freezer and I a sick feeling and through it in trash. I have never touched one since. When I am done I am done.

I have a lot of guilt about this being done part it has occurred with people as well a Lean Cuisine. In the words of a counselor "there is a long period of time between this is great and I am out of here."  She was talking about my ex's and their sprints out of my life without every actually talking about being unhappy ever. I guess I have done the same.

This isn't totally true I have tried to have the discussion that this isn't working with many people but let's be honest.  We want to believe in the fantasy we have created around the people in our lives and we want to believe everyone is happy and nothing will every change. It takes courage to speak up. People don't want you to burst their bubble and no one wants to believe you don't love them just the way they are. 

Even if you do love them sometimes it ends up from afar because you aren't getting what you need. You have had the life sucked out of you and  you just runaway as fast as you can. I have been run from and I ran when it felt like - What is the point ? - No one is listening. 

It is like - "You can't change the rules now after all this time!" This is when things end or people find away to be happy either with someone else or something that fills the void. Couples who brag about their long relationships that literally do nothing together unless it is for a public event. This isn't conscious it is just no one thinks anything will ever change.

I will be alone this Thanksgiving and I feel grateful for that. I don't want to just go through the motions of showing up to be able to say I had some place to go. Most people don't really get my life but I have been mostly happy alone the past few years. I am writing - painting - drawing and of course working and it feels satisfying. It is only during the holidays I feel awkward when people find out I will be alone. I only say when I am asked.

I am not a hermit because I love the complexity of the stories people have about their lives but I feel comfortable with who I have become and will spend the extra time off creating. 

I will probably write again before the holiday but if not - Happy Thanksgiving.

Poker Face - Cold as ice - wasting time

Every time I write here I think I should stop.  I started this blog during the great recession when I spent six days a week in a shop alone waiting for customers to come in.  They did come in once every couple of of weeks.  I had hours upon hours to kill and I was suffering from a mental breakdown that I didn't know about. Brought on by the stress of my relationship ending - having to move - menopause - and ultimately Hashimoto's disease. 

People just mostly thought I was nuts.  I didn't have insurance or money so I did not go to the doctor until the worst of it was over. I am stubborn and self sufficient and can seem others put together on the outside when I am falling apart on the inside. The catch phrase "never let them see you sweat" is my motto. Ask my ex's they will say I am cold as ice but only when I am losing everything and there is nothing I can do to stop it. 

I didn't want their pity or guilt even though with both endings it was followed by emotional breakdowns I held my poker face until they weren't watching and then dissolved into my grief. Hey "If you don't want me then I want to make sure you think I don't need you". Sick I know but this is how I have battled the storms of my life. 

I cry at sappy commercials and can't watch parts of movies where I know someone is about to get emotionally hurt. This is why I watch movies over and over because I know how things are going to turn out. 

This blog has helped me to stay alive when I wasn't sure it was really worth it. It has helped me to have compassion for the actors in my story and to have compassion for the me the person who helped write the story. I have done my best with the skills life gave me even if I hurt other people and myself along the way. 

I have built my life around the circumstances of my childhood.  I believed the words of other mere mortals and took them as gospel and lived my life thinking something was wrong with me. This sounds crazy to me now so I guess I am making progress.

Getting older - something I was sure would never happen to me - makes see how much time I have wasted trying to sort this out. This meaning "what is wrong with me?" 

My life is pretty empty now pulling away from the relationships that don't really support me. I feel more free than I ever have but in the back of my mind I sometimes I think "you have no one".  This a disturbing thought but not disturbing enough put myself out there.

About this blog - If you are interested in the words I put here - let me know. 

Do I want to be a star? Repeating the past

Things have slowed down in my life.  At work there isn't any critical work to be done so it has given me the opportunity to focus on other things. I wonder for myself is this a good thing or does this give me time to hash over the past yet another time.

I did some writing today and a few things surprised me first that I admitted my own lack of respect for my ex.  In relationships sometimes the other person becomes a non person. Like just a cast member in the play of your life. I think we all do that with relationships that last a long time where the other person doesn't seem to really participate. 

This came to me while describing my daddy's relationship with my stepmother. He was there to make her life as pleasant as possible. He wasn't seen as someone with wants, needs and desires because he never expressed those to anyone. This was a product of his upbringing you are in the supporting role and never the star - be invisible. 

With relationships the roles are established early on and unlikely and almost impossible to change once chosen. The star is the star and no one would dare try to take that role. We all want to be the star but sometimes the responsibility of the the success or failure of that role is too much pressure. I have played both roles in most of my relationships being forced to make things happen and also sitting on the sidelines while someone else took the spot light. Making things happen from behind the scenes.

I have lived with someone who refused to participate unless they had a list of what they were suppose to do. I have lived with someone who just did what they wanted as if I didn't even exist in the relationship. This was when I was living with active alcoholism and the drink along with the star personality over shadowed everything.

The problem with being the supporting staff you don't know you are unhappy until there is a break in your endless responsibilities. With my daddy my mother was forced to make all the decisions even if she included him in every decision. He would just say "whatever your mother says" This was my last relationship and I felt like everything was dependent on me. The happiness of the relationship depended on me. When I ask for input or responsibility I was met with sulking. It was exhausting.

When my daddy met my step mother she was only too glad to call the shots and he was happy to fall back into his comfortable supporting role. He did what he was told and was invisible.

This isn't anyone's fault we choose the people that feel familiar to us. The pattern of our choices are usually some version of where we have been before. If we are growing we pick a little bit better version than the previous. No one can convince us that this is true because often after meeting someone it is too late we are already in love. The dopamine of new love has flooded us and we are unable to stop ourselves.

I met someone shortly after my last relationship ended. A healthier version of my ex-husband and it was bad news. I remember my counselor saying "this is the same relationship"  I said I know but it is too later for me.  Luckily I came to my senses and decide to stop things where they were. More pain on top of my already broken heart.

I have created my own play and when I am alone sometimes I look back and wish things had been different mostly that I had been different. I wish I had been less committed to sticking things out when I wasn't happy. I wish that I could have admitted to myself that I wanted and deserved something more instead of waiting for the other person make that decision for me by leaving.

Is reflection on life a good thing or is it just wallowing in the past. I think both sometimes it give me insight into to my part of the past but it also makes me feel like - where do I go from here?  When I am not busy killing time with life's responsibilities I can see that it is short and I want to make the best of the time I have left. What do I want my play to be about?

I see dead people - The past looking back at me

I am dedicating 4-5 hours on my days off to draw.  I spent the past two days drawing myself in the mirror the only live model available.  It is really better to draw from real life if you can but nowadays who can do that?  I use to see all these self portraits and think "how self absorbed artist must be"  Funny the judgments you make. Looking at myself I kept thinking I have seen those lips before - Who's lips are those in the mirror?

I realized that they belonged to my Uncle Gene. I take after my mother's side of the family not like my sister who takes after my daddy's side of the family. I know this because I spent hours last week drawing my sister.  She was always prettier than me in a more classical way. I did get my mothers blue eyes but she got the olive skin and the symmetrical more petite features. Okay I have a big nose or at least bigger than her.

When you look at someone's face for hours even your own you really see them. Drawing people from my past or present really feels like a form a meditation. I feel like I can feel their spirit and I have been practicing sending healing towards them or for some people forgiveness  especially today towards myself.

My mother's side of family was plagued with alcoholism from my mother's granddaddy who died in a bar brawl to all of my uncle's except Gene. He was the only one of the four boys who went to college briefly.  He got a scholarship to a christian college but really got interested and all religions and was told he had to choose between his trunk of books on different kinds of religion or the way of the Pentecostals. He left immediately with his trunk.

He was a hard man and worked for the sheriffs department his entire adult life. He liked driving fast and carrying a gun. He liked making people behave too working as a bouncer at night for extra money. He worked all the time because he married a woman with five boys.

She was Mormon and all the boys were under twelve.  She was a clerk at the courthouse and they hit it off.  She was only 4' 8" and none of her boys ever grew any taller than that. She wanted to be married in the Mormon church but he refused.  They were married for 15 years and divorced then later after he retired got back together again. They did get married the second time in the Mormon church and he spent is last years working in the temple in Utah every day.

When I realized where I had seen those lips I went a retrieved a picture I think from their second wedding.  I know he loved his family but he was hard on them because that was who he was. To us he was just our funny uncle who was really smart and read non stop. 

The death of my mother devastated him and he said that he stop believing in God for awhile but in the end he ended up doing God's work in one of the largest denominations in the world. In the end you go back to the beginning to what you learned early and in his case that was trusting God.

I come from some really strong stock on both sides of my family. They both were hard working stubborn principled people. That generation lived through things I can't imagine. My grandmother, after the death of her husband, had to raise nine kids on her own. She said she never remarried because she didn't want someone else treating her kids badly. 

I meditated on my uncle's life today and for every life he touched. He meant well and hopefully did more good than harm overall.  We all do our best even if it isn't that great sometimes.