Mama's head - Making changes

I have always had a love hate relationship with the past and often wonder is the constant reminiscing really helping or hurting me.

When I started my journey first with counseling and then with Al-Anon I constantly spewed my story out to anyone that would listen.  I had kept it in for so long I just really wanted to be heard.  I also wanted to hear myself.  The steps and slogans  simplistic as they are helped me to first hear the thoughts in my head and then decide to change them from negative to positive.

The program slowed me down enough to take an inventory of my own beliefs and where those beliefs came from and whether they applied to me now. In my mind this was a total miracle that I could choose who I wanted to be and that I wasn't just saddled with this broken idea of myself.  Bad genes.

I could see that I was only a victim in my mind.  Sure other people gave me sympathy and love but that also kept me in my story.  I knew at the time that was what I needed and it felt really good to have people acknowledge my pain.  The truth was that I really just wanted the people that hurt me to acknowledge that my feelings even existed and to say they were sorry.

This deep want has stayed with me forever.  It comes from the child in me that is still hurt and is still saying "what about me? don't I matter?"  I didn't miss out on this when I was a child it was just that the sickness and death of my mother ended me being the center of the universe rather abruptly.  Because I became my own parent I didn't know that this would happen to me eventually even if my mother had lived.  I wanted to be seen again and have the loved the way my mother loved me.

I have been writing about my childhood and put together a timeline of the what was happening.  All the really great memories - big Easter egg hunt - giant birthday party with 50 kids - MS - Carnival all happened while my mother was sick the MS carnival five months before she died. My mother trying to show me her love and fulfill all my wishes.

Because my Daddy thought if we all had faith and only said positive things God would heal her. She couldn't say "hey you know I might not get better so lets just spend as much time together as possible."  My daddy was losing the love of his life and his mind could not accept it so we couldn't acknowledge what was right in front of us.

I understand that now maybe more than ever.  While writing about her I am becoming more of an adult about my childhood.  I didn't know the dates of those events were the last year she was alive. She was really sick and weighed less than 90 pounds at her death. How desperate she must have been to give us what she thought we wanted.

I had a dream this weekend that I had just her head.  Not like a gross horror movie but life in the Wizard of Oz when Dorthy was looking at the glass ball.  The head was smiling and talking and I took her to a party with me and everyone freaked out because she didn't have a body. When I woke up I thought "this is my own head" she gave it to me and I can take it wherever I want.

I have always felt like an outsider.  Early in Al-Anon I felt like I belonged until I started to feel like talking about our pain and suffering was really keeping us in our story and stuck.  The story was a habit that can define us.  There has to be a point when we just want joy and we have to put away the idea that without our story we are nothing.

I am not dismissing my story and I am planning on writing a book about it but it doesn't have to define me now.  I want to feel free to pursue joy everyday even if being totally open to a new life feels really uncomfortable. My mind is really freaked out and is constantly looking for a familiar distraction. Just like writing here.

I heard a scientific evaluation of this process. This is my version - You have habits and routines that you create and rely on for some period of time.  Your brain imprints these routines physically and then when you try to make a change it totally freaks and makes you feel unsettled.  We don't like it and are more likely to go back to auto pilot and the thing that we know because it calms us.

I saw this happening today. I have been wanting to visit a church nearby today.  The service didn't start until 11 but something in me did not want to do this and I ended up watching TV church like I have been doing lately. Now here I am writing about doing something new instead of doing something new.

I have had a few breakthroughs this holiday season.  I have been uncomfortable a lot but I didn't run towards anything instead I just sat with it until I had an awakening.  The thing with my mother is a big awakening for me to see that she wanted to grant me any wish I wanted since she knew she would not be there for me. I can appreciate that now.

The moral of the story is that we have the power to change our minds.  We can do this both through reasoning things out and by taking care of ourselves physically. These months without carbs and extra sleep have been astounding to me.  The clarity I have has been really surprising and motivating to me.   Today I am looking for joy.

Changes - Do I make them or let life do that for me?

Through out my life I have let life make decisions for me.  My fear of change stalled me out until what I feared the most came upon me. I spent a lot of time paralysed not wanting to make a move for fear that things would change and I would lose the stability I cherished. In the end the __it hit the fan I was left behind to rebuild my life.

Every time I was shocked and bewildered and each time I had less and less energy to start again.  I think it was because I thought it was possible to keep change from happening. In the old days I thought my expert ability to control every situation would give me the upper hand and at the very least I would be prepared when change came a knocking.

I also thought I was alone in cycle (self absorption).  I can see now that this has been a real problem. I thought there was something wrong with me that caused these things to happen to me and therefore I could just make the necessary changes and that would guarantee it wouldn't happen again.

When it happen again and again I ran out of ways to improve myself and believed at the core of me that I was flawed in some big way. I had adhered to every self-help program or idea and it was still happening. I was the best person I could be and that was not enough for the people that left me.

I used these relationships to prove that I was lovable and when they ended it proved that I wasn't.

I believe now that the reason for experiencing the loss over and over was to show me that the love I have for myself is reflected by the people in this world. When your in a relationship and it isn't working the person that loves themselves more gets out first. We call them selfish and we get to play the victim.  I love that part.

How brutal is that? Wow that really hurts to even write that. I am not saying that you can't have two people equally vested in a relationship that can work out their differences long term. I think in my case looking back they were both terrible communicators  looking for a quick solutions that required little or no work or communication.  I was also a terrible communicator.

If  I could have been honest with myself and admitted just how miserable I was then I might have been the one to address the problems but instead I stayed really busy.  This kept me from admitting I felt trapped and bored but too afraid to lose the stability that being in  relationship gave me.

I think I have gotten off track here.  I really wanted to focus on accepting change not closing your eyes to what is staring you in the face and being proactive.  Deciding how things can be different and making changes that you want instead of waiting for life to force you to make the change.

Right now I am looking at my life with some objectivity.  I am seeing that in loving myself I want to make some changes. What do I really want for my future and how am I going to get there?  I don't want it to feel too forced I just want to make every decision based on that picture of the future and I know what that looks like now.  All will be revealed in future post.

Changes - Death and Love

My roommate is moving out at the end of the month.  I am not sure whether I wrote about this or not.  Her mother sold her house and they are renting a house together.  It is funny when she moved in they could hardly stand each other but she says they have both changed.

It is true she isn't the same person she is was eight months ago. She been working her program and seems more comfortable in her own skin and less angry. I am sure it won't be easy living with her mom day in and day out at least they will have a chance to iron out any final issues.

I haven't been overly friendly with her I have had my own issues to deal with.  With the new job I haven't been home much and when I was I needed to cocoon to recover. I have provided a nice home and tried to be a good roommate.

The timing seems right for me to have my house to myself again. My life is flowing and I am making plans and it feels really good. I will be open to another roommate when the right person comes along.

My best friend bought a house in my neighborhood and is moving in tomorrow. He did live across the street from another one of our friends that has Parkinson's. Her daughter who lives in California was pretty upset about him moving I guess she was depending on him to watch after her mother. She has decided she needs to move back here to look after her mom herself.

We are a little worried for our friend her daughter is a pretty big personality. When she visits our friend seems to disappear. Her daughter and her husband are both in recovery and have been four years clean and sober.  Since my friends house is vacant we are hoping to convince her to rent his house.  This way maybe our friend can keep some of her independence. Maybe this was all a part of a greater plan.

For me I am working way too many hours despite my resolution to take my life back. I haven't seen the light of day since I wrote that post. I am enjoying myself and as long as I get to my art class once a week I can keep up this pace for a while longer.  I do love what I do most of the time and for that I feel grateful.

This weekend a lot of world will be acknowledging Easter. I happy time for the kids and a time for reflection for us adults. Even if you aren't a believer I feel we can all relate in some way to the experience of death and resurrection.

In my own life I have experienced many losses that felt like deaths. Where the loss was so great I thought I would never feel alive again but in time I did heal. A resurrection of my own spirit each time.

I didn't willing experience the deaths in my own life like in the Easter story. To give ones life so selflessly is to rise above human limitations and show the world what real love looks like which I think is the point.