Do you see me? Living in crisis - Taking care of yourself

I slept in way too long which means I have some pretty crazy dreams that usually force me to get up. This week was super busy and I worked a lot of extra hours.  When I do this it feels like I am missing out on the joy every day can bring. 

It takes me back to a time when I missed big chunks of my life focusing on just getting through one crisis after another. I thought this was normal and maybe it is for a lot of people.  For me I remember scenes from these times, usually not happy ones, but I don't really remember actually participating.  

I wonder if I got this from my own mother who stayed busy and never ever really rested. My sister is like this too and has had some serious health scares. I think sometimes we think if we stop running then whatever is chasing us and will eat us alive.  I am not like that now and it feels more natural to be at peace than to be running so fast. Growing up it was one crisis after another and this feels normal to us.

I was telling my hairdresser last weekend that I was writing about my childhood and didn't really remember but one intimate moment with my mother. I also said that I thought we were more like a job to her and of course raising a family is a full time job but I really didn't connect with her unless I was in trouble.   

The moment occurred when she drug me out of church for making too much noise to give me a whipping. We exited through a door between the old sanctuary and the new one and after the whipping we got locked out. We couldn't get in or out and had to wait until church was over which was a long time. She was so mad at first but then she started laughing giving me the signal to laugh too. I remember being big but not too big for her to hold me on her hip. 

My hairdresser said to me "I think I do that. I don't see my girls as little people that I can get to know. I am too busy doing my parenting job to really see them."  I was happy that sharing my experience might change the way she sees her kids. Just like me they want to be seen sometimes when they are not being just managed or in trouble. 

My mother was amazing and dedicated her life to helping other people. She knew when she got sick that she had to prepare us for taking care of ourselves but she also taught us that other people especially family was more important than your own needs or even our health. She was closer with my sister since she was four years older than me and had more time with her. Her story is different than mine.

I have learned the hard way that it is important to take care of yourself first so you have something left for the people you love. It isn't the responsibility of others to see that you need taking care of everyone is too wrapped up in their own problems. 

Today I know when I need to slow it down and after a lifetime I have come to appreciate what I bring to the table. I can now do what I need to do to take care of myself instead of the years I spent exhausted waiting for someone to notice that I had needs too. I am stronger than ever and happier too. I am not too busy to enjoy what everyday brings. 

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Scuppernongs and Letting go

I have been standing in front of my sink for the past half hour eating Scuppernongs that I bought at the farmers market today.  If you don't know what they are they are a type of grape with a thick skin that is not edible and their inside are thick and full of seeds.  So what is to great about them well they have pretty tasty juice and they remind me of my dad.

When I was growing up we lived in the suburbs outside a large southern city. We had a nice little house on a corner lot that sloped from the front of the house to the back. My dad decided one day after eating Scuppernongs that he wanted to plant a grape orchard  on the side of the house and he did.

He dug sixteen holes for sixteen post and strung wire between them and planted Scuppernongs and Muscadime grapes.  This was before my mother got sick.  We already had a big organic garden on the corner that annoyed the neighbors because it blocked the view of on coming cars when they were leaving the subdivision.  They didn't complain too much once the vegetables started coming in.

I think about my dad every time I eat Scuppernongs I think about how after my mom died and he remarried he never planted another thing. Was all the love he put into growing just for her?

I think we give up things when we lose people we love whether they pass away or just leave. A little part of us that relates the activity to a happier time.  We want to erase the memory to forget there was ever that time that the person was part of our lives.

I loved my dad even though he left me behind with the gardening.  Because I am like him and have experienced loss myself I know that letting go of who I was make life a little easier.

Today I am at peace about my dad and about my life and can enjoy the memories of Scuppernongs and my daddy's orchard.

Rantings - Memories - Bat Crazy

I got the hee bee jee bees tonight.  I am restless and need some quiet and my roommate it moving about the house talking on the phone. She is always ranting about some injustice in her life.  This has only happened a dozen times or so but it makes me want to leave the house.

She is new to the program and I met her through my own sponsor and for the most part we are ships passing in the night but not tonight.

I remember when I lived own my soap box about how unfair life had been towards me. How nothing but bad things happened to me and everyone else had it good.  It only takes a few meetings to realize the second part isn't at all true. Even hearing the worst stories didn't phase me in the beginning I was too caught up in the drama of my own story to even acknowledge that other people had problems too.

I get where she is coming from and have to remember baby steps.  I had to finally stop talking about how nothing in my life worked before my life started working. Ask and you shall receive I think that works for good things as well as bad. If you say "nothing good ever happens to me" then some how life tries to make that come true so you will be right.

In the program we say fake it until you make it. This use to totally piss me off. Are you telling me I am suppose to just put on a happy face and pretend that everything is just fine.  I realized that really this just means to not let your emotions control you ever minute. It is okay to just let go and just do something other than dwell on the problems in your life.

I use to be so analytical. I thought I could think myself out of every situation but my best thinking kept me lost in the problem.  I have to admit I have lost big chunks of my life to analyses.  I was drawn to the alcoholic situation because I was a problem solver. It took me down because I couldn't solve it but I kept trying. A little tweak here a little there until I was bat crazy.

I was bat crazy later all by myself not an alcoholic in sight. Life can't be solved by thinking. People can't be solved by poking or tweaking and that includes myself. You have to just sit there and see the moment  for just what it is a moment a moment that will pass. It isn't permanent unless you want to hold on to it in your mind and relive it over and over.

Why do we get stuck on the bad stuff?  I have lived my whole life around the story of my childhood and how I was damaged. This story made me insecure and a slave to my emotions and sometimes to other people. I thought the best I could hope for was to just keep working on myself. This made my life still about the past.

I realized I had to just let go and see that my mind was the real problem.  I had to see that my story had become me and without it I would have felt like nothing. But that wasn't true because without it I could make a new story.

I can't explain how free I feel now without my story. Even in my last post about my parents it was written without the pain of something I didn't get from them or something I lost. It was just a story I put together from my memories I don't need it to be anything more.

These are my rantings for the evening. Thank God she has finally gone to bed it's almost midnight. Sweet dreams.  

Memories and Music

It has been a busy week.  I have mentally been visiting the past with my wedding anniversary this week.  It seems silly that I still think about this date every year.  I use to push it back but when I did I would end up with a sense of melancholy that I just couldn't put my finger on.

I didn't want to acknowledge this date.  To me the marriage represented a failure on my part. I couldn't keep it together. All my plans for the future went out the window when our life together ended.

This week I went to a jazz concert with a friend from the program. The musician was one my husband use to listen to and taught me to love when we first got married.  Because it was a last minute invite I didn't even know who was playing until I got there.

I half expected to run into him there but of course I didn't he probably doesn't even live here anymore. I don't have hurts over the past anymore. I can accept that life is just life and things happen and it is no body's fault.

He was a generous and kind man that taught me a lot about two important things in life food and music. Our relationship was an intimate one and we were rarely apart outside of work.  We lived in an exclusive world just the the two of us and we loved it while it lasted.

When the affects of alcoholism started creeping into our time together I didn't really notice.  I didn't know anything about alcoholism and I blamed myself for the distance between us.  It wasn't just his drinking but the emotional problems he had from being raised in an alcoholic home.

With my own emotional baggage we didn't have much of a chance of surviving. Two emotionally stunted people with no communication skills trying to overcome the impossible without help.  We were emotionally two children without a clue and blamed each other.

We did love each other but sometimes that isn't enough. I can accept that now and I can accept that he was just a part of my journey which led me to where I am today.

When our relationship ended my own recovery began and the journey has led me to understand that I can choose to be free.  I can be free if I can stop blaming myself or someone else for how I feel today. If I can let go of the idea that my life needs to be fixed then I can enjoy this moment.

Tonight I am feeling gratitude for my life in general and for this week of hard work, memories and music.

Rain - Memories - Dafodil

It is raining cats and dogs here and the temperature has dropped 30 degrees from yesterday. I woke up with the song below from my childhood playing in my head.

I sang this sound in the third grade in front of the entire school during a school play.  It was the one and only time I have ever sang in front of an audience. Since then I secretly have always wanted to be a singer who knows maybe in the next life.

The play was about the holidays and the seasons. I can remember sitting in Mrs. Wilds class room and everyone had been ask to sing something. I totally loved Mrs.Wild she looked liked Cher and she wore the grooviest clothes you could image.  I wanted to be her when I grew up.

I was shocked when I got picked and then shocked turned into terrified but I made through. I got the feeling that the play director and some of the other teachers weren't so happy with her choice. Maybe because I was so terrified. There were other stronger singers but she knew I could use the boost and she was right.

It was my moment in the spotlight and I often remember standing on the stage in my white go go boots, white stockings and cullotte skirt.  It was a proud moment for me and my family. My mother was already sick by then but we it was moments like these that made us seem normal even if only for a moment.


Though April showers 
May come your way, 
They bring the flowers 
That bloom in May; 
And if it's raining, 
Have no regrets; 
Because, it isn't raining rain, you know, 
It's raining violets. 
And when you see clouds 
Upon the hill, 
You soon will see crowds 
Of daffodils; 
So keep on looking for the bluebird, 
And listening for his song, 
Whenever April showers come along. 

Though April showers 
May come your way, 
They bring the flowers 
That bloom in May; 
And if it's raining, 
Have no regrets; 
Because, it isn't raining rain, you know, 
It's raining violets. 
And when you see clouds 
Upon the hill, 
You soon will see crowds 
Of daffodils; 
So keep on looking for the bluebird, 
And listening for his song, 
Whenever April showers come along 


source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/a/aljolsonlyrics/aprilshowerslyrics.html

Amends to the dead - Maturity

I took the day off yesterday and woke up late. I bundled myself up and turned the various heaters on in the house and proceeded with some over due chores. I have felt pretty good lately and a little overwhelmed by the spiritual growth I have been having. I am not sure why but I believe the god of my understanding knows just what I need when I need it and not a minute sooner.

I felt anxious about the day with so many opportunities to work on my to do list. Analysis paralysis I guess you could say so I decided to write for a few moments just to avoid beginning any of those things on the list.

I started with the usual gauging my mood for the day and recapping my thoughts about my post yesterday. Then my thoughts turned to my father and the grief he must have felt when he lost my mother. My recent experience with grief has given me the opportunity to experience what he must have experienced. The death of the dream is what I call it and for me I didn't even want to be in the relationship anymore.

I wrote a story from his perspective the night my mother died. He told us how he sat in the parking garage that night not wanting to face what he knew was ahead of him. He said his legs were like lead and he couldn't move. To know that you are about to lose the most important person in your life must have been devastating. Facing that at that moment.

He fought hard for my mother harder than she did, I think. He took her to every kind of doctor all over the country even when we didn't have the money. He even tried an illegal drug that was made from apricot pits, this combined with a macrobiotic diet. When this didn't work we went to faith healing services. This was our life for two and a half years.

Writing the story from his perspective made me realize just how devastated he must have been. I have been there recently and it if fresh in my mind the debilitating pain that nothing can sooth. Day after day just going through the motions of the bare necessities and even sometimes not even they were taken care of. I am not saying I experienced the same loss but I can have more compassion for him.

This was my father, a man with so much grief he shut down. I remember the morning he woke me up to tell me about my mom, she had gone on to be with Jesus. He couldn't function without her. He stopped paying bills and stopped eating.

All this is familiar to me and for the first time in my life I can really put myself in his place an not looking at it through the lens of a child. I could always say he did the best he could and I realized that long ago but being able to put myself in his shoes has changed me to the core.

I feel I understand as I never did before what it was like to be him. I couldn't have done that without experiencing it myself in my own way. I loved him and he loved me and writing helped me to heal and to say I am sorry for not recognizing his struggle sooner.

He is gone now but this is about my spiritual growth and I felt his presence yesterday while I was writing. I am growing up and once more using what I have learned in the program to find peace with the past.

Nuts from the past

Sometimes the feelings we have have nothing to do with the present circumstances of our life. We store some lost memory and something brings it to the surface and we associate it with the present.

My friend gave me big bag of unshelled pecans a week ago and I had forgotten them until yesterday. As I started to break the shells a memory of my childhood surfaced. The summer that my mother got sick for the first time was during a trip to South Georgia. We were visiting a 2nd cousin and they had a huge pecan grove. It was a fun trip even though there was some sort of tension in their house and later I found out it was alcoholism. Their boys were teenagers and very fun. They talked us into riding horses. It was the first and last time I was ever on a horse. My sister’s horse acted up and she fell off and I decided at that point they were dangerous. It was fun and when we left they gave us a big bag of pecans.

On the way home we shelled and ate pecans until we burst. My mother got so sick when we got back to Atlanta we took her to the hospital. This is when they discovered she had colon cancer. I haven’t thought about that summer in a long time or the association with pecans and my mother’s illness but life is uncertain and memories can be a source of healing.