Not being enough - Order - Life choices

I have spent most of my life loathing who I am mainly because I am analytical and seemed wired for just looking at every thing that isn't quite the way it should be including myself.  Order has always been a destination for me.  If I can just get things in order I will be ready to tackle the big stuff.

I can sit down in a clean organized space materially and really get something done. At least this is what my more intense OCD part of me would like to believe but it is just not true.  This kind of order doesn't exist in this world.   I did visit a garage recently that looked like an operating room.  You can have the illusion of order but it takes a lot of time and money and doesn't make you happy.

On the spiritual front I think it is another form of control.  It is acceptable and everyone would like to be that neat and orderly but life is messy even if you can eat on your garage floor.

The spouse of the garage owner is a very angry person it felt oppressive to be in their home. It was beautifully decorated and everything was perfect but there was an elephant in the room.  This is when I wish I hadn't taken the red pill like in the Matrix movie. I can see the pain in others so clearly and wish sometimes that I didn't.  In the past I would try to help but people have to find their own way out.  Sometime it has to be a lot of pain to make you move forward.

I have always been able to see the pain in others.  Even as a child I remember questioning the behaviors of others and wondering why they were so unhappy.  Seeing just so clearly their suffering and asking questions that got me in a lot of trouble. My daddy called it the spirit of discernment. 

We all feel trapped in our lives and our pain from time to time.  We really think that we have no choices when it is that we are not ready for the consequences of the choices we need to make.  Staying too long in a marriage or a job.  Living with a controlling verbally abusive person who knows your fears and uses words to keep you from having the courage to move on. This situation can make you think you have no choice.  That was my first marriage.

In my second marriage it was the opposite but sometimes just as painful.  I lived with someone that didn't even see me. As long as I did everything to make things run smoothly and didn't change one thing then it was great. The truth was I was happy to be invisible left alone to entertain myself I was comfortable in that role.  It was the opposite of my relationship the the explosive alcoholic and  my childhood.  In both cases I knew I was less likely to get in trouble if I was invisible. 

I stayed because I imagined that there wasn't anything better and weeks turn into months and months turned into years and I felt like I had invested too much time to leave.  Besides what did I have to complain about ?  I felt safe and I was use to the pain so I just stayed busy to avoid thinking about it. I was happy that someone would have me and worried that I would end up alone.  It felt great compared to my last relationship even if I felt alone most of the time.

Of course I blamed myself for the choices I made but that doesn't help.  I made the choices I made because of where I was at that moment in my life.  I made that choice because I hadn't grown spiritually enough to see that I was repeating the past.  I married my daddy the second time.

A kind peaceful man that emotionally wasn't there ever. He only got attached to his wives and his religion nothing else existed.  He had great wisdom to offer strangers but if you were related to him you had to accept that he wasn't capable of really seeing you.  I loved him so much and before my mother died we were inseparable. When my stepmother came alone I no longer existed.

I guess my point is that we make the choices we make for a reason.  I think it is mostly because the person or the situation seems familiar.  Even if I hadn't married my father the second time it would have been someone that would have been similar.  That relationship felt good for a long time and I got to understand what it would be like to be my mother.

I am not sure how I got here today in the post but I can feel a little healing for myself. I am like my daddy in many ways. Offering hopefully good advice to strangers.  He fell in love with my mother and her religion.  He told me once that when he went to that first prayer meeting that he knew it was what he had been looking for all his life.  I figured he was attracted to the emotional freedom of the Pentecostal church. He grew up in a home where no one was allowed to have feelings except his abusive father.  The kids stayed silent at all cost.

We all have things to understand about ourselves and the choices we have made.  We can't believe there is anything really wrong with us. It important to find out what thoughts we have about ourselves that keep stuck and hurting ourselves.  I am at a place where I know what thoughts have caused me pain and I just want to be happy.

I have reached the end of my spiritual quest. I am glad I have stopped thinking I need to change to be happy I just need to enjoy today and my freedom from not being enough.

Being enough - healing - just someone's opinion

I got to work yesterday and walked in with co worker we were both a little early so I went to my office and started on my mountain of responsibilities.  Hoping if things were slow I would get caught up from my two days off.  After the rest of the crew arrived someone came into my office and said the coworker was crying hysterically in the bathroom.

I went in to find out what was going on and she couldn't talk.  She wouldn't open the door to the stall but after a little prodding finally came out. Evidently she lives with her dad and she was suppose have deep cleaned the house the day before and had to work late and didn't get it done.  She had left him a note that after work she would be home to finish. He called right when we opened and started yelling at her.

The back story to this is that he found out he was sick last week. He is lashing out and made the statement "you are trying to kill me" to her.  I hugged her until the crying stopped and said this isn't about you it is about him.  He is scared and you are the closest and safest person to lash out at. I know him and he is a perfectionist and his standards for himself and everyone else is really high. He takes care of everything and has the energy of 3 people. I feel a growth opportunity ahead.

I felt sad for her and it reminded me of my riff with my dad. It seems sometimes parents don't see their kids as separate adults with feelings. At least that is my experience with my family. They thought I was a tool to make their lives a little easier.  I owed it to them because they were paying my way. This was totally my dad. He was raised on a farm where you hoped for as many boys as possible to keep things going. He was the oldest and ended raising his three younger brothers and two sisters while his mother worked at a mill.

People that we love and that are suppose to love us we just can't see each other as fully formed. They are a version of our imagination a story we have about each other from the past instead of who we are now. He said to her "you have a terrible work ethic" after she spent time off work last week taking him to the doctor. This isn't the first time I have been a part one of the incidences. She wants so bad to to please a man that cannot be pleased.

I wanted to call him and say "you know your daughter can walk out of your life and never come back." This is what I did only after I could not take the emotional abuse from my stepmother. I was never enough for her and my dad never stood up for me. It didn't matter how carefully I cleaned the house to her specifications or the errands I ran or even when I gave her flowers. I was invisible unless I wasn't meeting her standards.

I was just a young girl who had lost her mother looking for someone to let me know that I mattered. When I left they didn't even try to stop me this re-in forced what I already knew. I was not loved or cherished.  At least this is what I took with me that day.

I do know now that this wasn't personal. My dad and my stepmother were not the adults in the room that day. They were stuck and not capable of giving more and would never be. My sister and I spoke about this during my visit. She was going on about how my dad had said he was sorry about not being there for her.  The girl in me said " did he say anything about me" still longing for evidence that I meant something to him.

I recently heard Joel's message called "The blessing" it was how important dads are in their daughter's lives.  How they are the first example of how men treat women. How girls can repeat that relationship over and  over.  I really get that I have repeated the relationship of indifference over and over my whole life. At work at home and even with my friends. These relationships feel familiar to me and I know how to play my part.  Joel's final word was the God can be the father you wanted.

I have been a little weepy today gathering my thoughts. I cried yesterday hugging my co-worker and hoping she can somehow understand she is enough no matter what her dad thinks. It is just his opinion and she has the power to decide whether to let it control her life.

 My father did love me in his limited way and I could have made more of an effort to bring us together but my own pain and immaturity kept me from doing that.  When he died we were on good terms and I have made peace with both our limitations. I guess today I am still healing.

Fear - Gut reaction - I could get a dog

It seems that with my own life I have had and underlying fear that I somehow the way I am is not good enough. Evidenced by the number of people that have left me or dismissed what I thought were significant contributions in my work life.  Even though intellectually I feel I have over come this fear sometimes my gut reaction to a situation shows me something different.

This week at work they hired someone new and put her in my office (our office). At first I took this very personally even though I have the only extra desk in my office in the whole company.  This wasn't a shock because the owner called me into his office last week to give me the news.  I was told weeks ago by my manager that this would not happen.

On Tuesday there was a big flurry of activity on that side of the office. My introverted senses felt overwhelmed and I wanted to flee.  I did leave for an appointment and it took me an hour to calm my nerves.  She has made it quite clear that she is loud and proud and wanted to know if she could bring a radio into the office. Also she said I should get some head phones. I was dumb struck at first but then said absolutely not to the radio.

I immediately felt that they were trying to run me. In the words of the owner "she is our new great white hope" as all new hires are.  I told him so was Stephanie the last person that shared my office. He said he didn't even remember her.  I said "you loved her and even trained her personally and now you don't even remember her".  I could see the fact that he didn't remember her was disturbing to him.

I know I probably shouldn't have said all that but I knew this was my only chance to say my peace. Sometimes I am so over being afraid.  He said he would consider some of the suggestions I made about space but I knew it was lip service. He had made up his mind without informing my manager I was lucky he even bothered to tell me.

There is a misconception about me. People think because I am an introvert content to listen instead of talk that this means I am passive. This is far from the truth and I have been know to say things when no one else will. I no longer feel the need to fight other peoples battles but I can stand up for myself when I need to and don't feel any human is superior to another.

I was near tears on Tuesday but mainly because I believed this action was take to push me out.  This is the past fears rising up to try to relive the groove in my brain that says "I am not enough".

I do prefer to go to the office to work because there is a clear separation between work hours and home hours. I have been rethinking this since Tuesday and worked at home on Friday.  I do have a lovely unused office at home and a docking station and computer screen provided by the company.

The new person is on the other team which means that she should be on opposite days from me. I am getting use to the idea of being more independent.  No one cares whether you come to the office or not as long as you are closing deals. I just like being in a building with people even if I don't actually want to interact with them. I am already alone a lot at home so more of that isn't that appealing.

(side note) I could get a dog.

I am going to not take it personally and remember everything isn't about me. Besides the last person was only there two weeks. My team members have said I am the only person that has ever stayed. I couldn't decide it that is a good or bad thing. It is a tough place to work because there is no support but with sales that just goes with the territory.

You have to be independent and fearless to survive. I try to work my job as consciously as possible and I like being able to decide how I want to run my work load.  Looking not just at the bottom line but whether spiritually the customer or project is the right fit for me.

Today things are changing and I am accepting those changes as gracefully as possible.  Tomorrow I am back in the office and we shall see how I feel about it. Wish me luck.