Evolution - Change - Coping with Chaos

Back to work this week and feeling pretty good.  It was short week of only four days and only a few appointments but plenty of paperwork to do. I did feel by taking a short sabbatical from the day to day  I have lost my drive. The pressure I create for myself day to day doing what I do. Always planting seeds for future and harvesting those planted last month of last year today. 

I thank God that business is good even though it seems to world in a ball rolling down a hill right now.  Half the country holding their breath waiting for January 20th and the other half wishing the fake news was true and their man of the hour isn't out on his ear. The last thing my brother-in-law said to me before left was  "there will be riots in the street when this election is reversed." I said nothing took his gift of mega toilet paper and left.

I understand where they are coming from and why they are attracted to this wild west form of charisma.  We  have been at a stalemate for a long time and then we have a guy that comes in and says "who cares about the rules this is my town and I will do what I want!" It feels refreshing to have a leader who totally throws out everything our democracy is built on. This is also called a dictatorship. 

At this point the momentum has built up and the mob mentality has taken over. We want to believe none of this is real including the virus. We want to live in denial so we follow his lead.  I was there while I was living with alcoholism and it is how I coped with the reality of my life. I wanted to believe this charismatic person who told me not to belief my own eyes. The alternative was to see my dream and future was ending so I went along.  

When dealing with something we just can't bring ourselves to face we can create a world of our own. We won't let any information that might crumble any portion of our fantasy. It is too scary to face the truth. With today's media we can select the truth we want to believe and the algorithms will send us what we want to hear to keep us watching and buying products being advertised there.

After watching the pictures the crowd gathering at the bar on Staten Island I thought those who use alcohol to curb the anxiety of life must be going nuts as seen by these pictures. We don't have great coping skills for the regular problems of life and what we are facing now far exceeds the problems of the past. 

The mind cannot cope and living in a fantasy is how a lot of people are making it day to day. The deaths are just numbers on the screen and if they aren't our loved ones then we can dismiss them as not real. Just like when war casualties are announced it seems faraway. It is our brains way of putting what we feel we can't control aside so we can survive.

It is real for those people who have lost someone in this fight. Losing someone close to you will change your life forever. The death of my own mother to cancer changed the course of my life forever. I have never felt safe in this world. My belief in a God to protect me from harm didn't exist anymore. If my mother was taken after dedicating her life to God then what hope did the rest of us have. 

I am definitely not all doom and gloom and I realize that what we are experiencing now is evolution.  The ups and downs of growth and growth is painful. The old guard is seeing there time passing and they are freaking out. It is uncomfortable to know your time is ending and you have to hold on no matter what. They will morph into something else as we all do when life forces us to change.  

This too shall pass.  One step forward and one step back. This time has shown us what happens when one person decides to not follow protocol established by the wisdom of past leaders. Doing what is decent and right for everyone. Luckily we have laws even if they are being tested everyday and so far they are holding. Embrace change we will make it. 

  

  

 

Making a decision - Stuck - Fantasy

I sometimes wonder if what I am writing here is doing anyone any good at this point. I started writing this blog when it felt like the only way for me to stay alive.  I mean that in a literal sense.  Every word that came out of me helped me to endure just one more day of the emotional excruciating pain I was experiencing at the time.  In my mind my life had been reduced to ashes and I was starting over again and I resisted with every fiber of my being.

Because of my resistance I stayed stuck for a long time.  I also believed this made my body react by rejecting health and my adrenals failed and my thyroid stopped working. I was thin and refused to go to the doctor. In my emotionally and mentally weakened state I wasn't sure there was a solution to my problem or if living was really for me.  I kept going despite what my mind was telling me.

I tried to do the things that worked for me when I was left at 30 by the man of my dreams. Ironically last night I dream about him I was lost in a strange city and the only phone number I had in my phone was his and I called him to come and get me.  He never said yes before we got disconnected.  He is still not there I guess. In my pain it felt hollow to repeat the things that I had done before I was more spiritually mature and it seemed obvious that all the work I had done on myself didn't keep bad things form happening to me. 

The first time I thought I could mold myself into a pillar of spiritual strength and attract only goodness in my life and it worked for awhile anyway but in the end I still wasn't good enough and was left again. I couldn't reconcile the fact I was exactly where I was before.  This conflict cause me to stay stuck for what seemed forever.

What I would say to the broken person I was then is that crap happens to everyone and there is no magic bullet to stop it. You can only do so much and then you got to just live and be happy being who you are. We get trapped in the idea of working on ourselves forever when it is suppose to free us to accept ourselves and just live. 

I feel feel whole now for the first time in my life. I am thinking about what am I going to do with the rest of my life. I do want to live deliberately for a change deciding how I want to spend my time instead of just riding things out and waiting for something to happen.

Yesterday I spent 2 1/2 hours on the phone with my sister using face time for the first time.  It was nice we showed each other our planted flowers in the yard. She has a lot things in her world that she can't do anything about right now.  You can't really solve other people's problems they have to be ready to receive help. I am an excellent example of that. She isn't ready to hear that.

We get entrenched in our version of life and only when we are ready to admit that it isn't working can we move on.  We don't want other people poking holes in our fantasy version of life.  Only when the pain becomes too much do we start looking for an answer. Our mind says "I can't do this anymore". 

I have had a great journey here with this blog and I haven't decided to quit writing yet but I feel this is coming to an end for me.  It seems I am getting mostly traffic from some porn site in Italy so it doesn't feel that I am making a difference.  Until next time.

Love Letters - Being Hit - The Promises

Saying goodbye to the past is a life long endeavor or at least it has been for me. I am cleaning up my office soon to be creative space and found a framed copy of  "The Promises" It is the Al anon version.
Number two says "We will not regret the past nor shut the door on it."

While cleaning I also found my copy of "The Power of Now".  This is one of my all time favorite books. It showed me how much time I was spending getting lost in trying to solve my past.  I just wanted to understand my part in what happened to me.  I have lived most of my life staying busy all the time thinking these millions of thoughts about what I could have done differently to change what happen.

I always believed that because I was left there was something wrong with me to the core.  Even recently I have accepted that I am the way I am and if this isn't lovable then so be it.

I have been loved by many people mostly people that have been deeply hurt themselves. I think I represent a safe place to land.  Isn't that what we are all looking for?  Once they feel better and gain some confidence they move on.  I think this means my part in their lives are over and it is time we both move on.

I was watching "The Jane Austin Book Club" last night and they were talking about the writing love letters and how the written word can have a profound impact.  I thought nobody does that today. What a fantasy well today I found about 20 pages of love letters from my high school boyfriend.  I had forgotten about the letters. We went to different schools and worked together at a fast food restaurant at night. He wrote these letters everyday and brought them to me at work.

It was by far the most romantic relationship I have ever had. He actually wrote in one that he knew only girls wrote letters like this but as long as I didn't tell anyone about them it was okay. His dad didn't want us together he knew we were too serious and he wanted him to go to his college and join his fraternity sow those wild oats.  My dad didn't like it because they were Episcopal a far cry from pentecostal.

He ended up breaking up with me because my parents wouldn't let me stay out past 11 on prom night. I begged my dad to change the rules for this one occasion but her wouldn't.  This had his dad written all over it.  I was completely devastated and we still had to work together. Ironically I had moved out by the time prom came around and I stayed out all night whenever I wanted.

Jim went on to marry that same girl.  So dad's plans didn't work.  She went to my same elementary school and I have a picture of  the whole six grade class with her in it.  That is also ironic. Any way I covered my pain well and the first time we worked together I made sure he knew I had a date for that night.  He actually got so mad he hit me.  Not hard but this gave me a good indication of what the future my hold. I laughed out loud when it happened I wanted to make sure he thought it didn't bother me.

I believe life is just life now.  People come and go based on their own needs. We really don't have any control over what other people are doing. I think if your heart it right and you have spiritual guidance then it can work out.  I do think you must always see your part in every situation but sometimes you just have to let go and accept that control of anything and anybody is an illusion and move on.

Not regretting the past can sometimes seem impossible.  I can make the past my own fantasy version reading love letters and thinking things might have turned out better than they would have. Then I have to  remember that he hit me.  The only person ever in my life, besides childhood spankings, that ever hit me.

From time to time I still have regrets about the past and feel each time I should have known better. I always took people at face value living every day in the moment until the bad things snuck up on me. I still think that is better than constantly preparing for disaster and not trusting anyone. Neither one keeps you getting hurt.