Rejection - Truth - Letting go

I didn't realize we would be closed on Monday for the holiday.  When you are in sales you don't always get those expected holiday.  I is almost 100 today and I just came in from putting the last bag of mulch on the flower bed.  I had to stop a few times to rest or cool off and the last bag I had to drag behind me to get it out there.

I pride myself on my ability to adapt to the heat.  I can't really say I adapt well to anything else. I listened to T.D. Jakes while I was on a heat break.  He was preaching at Lakewood this morning and had a pretty powerful message.  I have to say that history is repeating itself.  My Aunt Ruby use to make fun of my grandmother for watching TV evangelist and then in her own last days that is all she wanted to do.  Now here I am doing the same thing not that it is my last days.

I have found that everything in life that is painful comes from resistance.  When you resist what is then that means you want something else instead.  No matter how hard you wish for something different you are sitting right in the middle of something you don't want.  Whether that is a job or a relationship or a even a sickness you can't change it in the moment.

Today's message was very powerful.  When you are in the dark it means there is an absence of light. Darkness isn't evil or powerful just a place where you just happen to be at the moment.  All growth starts in the darkness and only when it emerges from the ground does it even need the light.

I have had long periods of time where I just wished I was someplace else.  When I headed into the darkest of depression I wanted life itself to be over.  I could not endure not one more minute of the nothingness I felt. I thought about that time when he was speaking this morning.

I can only say it was some sort of grace that saved me. Right now I can remember sitting on the porch when something turned inside of me and a voice said "you are doing this to yourself".  I started thinking about that and wondering if that was true. I felt that I had been rejected so many times by the people that were suppose to love me that there must be something about me that made me unlovable.

This was my core belief and every thought I had about it proved me right.  I am very logical person and looked at all the facts.  I have the kind analytical brain that latched on to these facts and could only come to this one conclusion.   It had to be my fault.  A child raised in a fundamentalist home where you take responsibility for yourself and your actions this was how we thought.  You must do better next time.

I never occurred to me that in life random things happen to everybody all the time.  Even at birth you could be born just about anywhere to anybody.  Anybody can get sick and die.  I should have realized that when my own mother died.  But my child brain decided that if I worked hard and was the best person I could be I could prevent bad things from happening to me. 

Plenty of bad things happened to me from that point on but somehow I just thought I wasn't trying hard enough. This is an exhausting way to live trying to out smart unknown random stuff from happening and blaming myself when it did. 

That day on the porch I just gave up and let go.  I decided to not to blame myself and not even look for an answer to why I ended up where I did.  I rested from the responsibility of my situation and I got better slowly.  I even decided that if I was unlovable there was nothing I could do about it. I was in the darkness for a long time but eventually I got rid of the thoughts that were hurting me.

I am a happy person now and feel sad for that girl inside me that didn't know any better.  I raised myself without a mother and there were things I didn't know.  I am smart and used the spiritual knowledge of others to get where I needed to go.  In the end I had to see it was my own thoughts about myself that hurt me more than being rejected by other people.

You can't always trust you own thoughts about any situation.  For me I had see that it didn't matter whether my thoughts were true or not I had to just let them go and start loving myself.

Rejection - Excited - Horoscopes

I have been very busy.  Has there ever been a time I haven't said that here I guess in truth I like busy.  After the years of depression and recession both mentally and financially I have found a freedom that I really thought was not possible. I feel actually excited about the future instead of indifferent.

What has changed? My analytical mind really wants to spend a lot of time pondering that question. Really a lot has happened.  It has been 10 years.  Don't let that number scare you it is really only 3650 consecutive day give or take a few dozen that may or may not have meaning.  Even though none of the days individually really seemed so significant together they accomplished a transformation.

What I have believed my entire adolescent and adult life is that there was something about me that made me unlovable. This has been the core of my belief.  I have been loved by many actually but in the end I was left for someone else.  Someone better I assumed.  I am a take charge practical person so I thought "I will make myself a better person" and I went on a lifetime journey of improvement.

Where did I get this idea ? After my mother died and left me at eleven I was left to parent myself. I know you guys are probably sick of hearing this but for anyone that loses their mother early they are really messed up.  My dad was left us emotionally and was engaged to two different women and married with in 6 months. "Run Daddy run!"

Lets just say that I was on my own to sort out a lot of things. In my child's mind I was a bad kid with ADD.  I was not medicated and my mother whipped me a lot to try to correct this problem.  They offered my parents medication to solve the problem but the idea of that was rejected. It might hurt me in some way.  Really? When she got sick everything shifted to saving her and the pressure was off.  Subtract two and a half years from ll and you have a person that is eight and a half running the show.

Where did I get advice on how life was suppose to be and how to make good decisions.  I got advice from the person I trusted the most "me".  I was available 24/7 and was always willing to listen to all sides of the story and work it all out. In my teens I relied on Linda Goodmans Sun Signs. In my house this represented the devil and my stepmother found my copy under my mattress and I was put on restriction for a month.

I needed some kind of positive feedback from somewhere.  My stepmother is (still alive) a very critical person and she has cut many people, that she is suppose to love, to the bone. It was worse for me because I was not one of the people she loved. I felt she hated me me. Now I think she didn't give me much thought at all she isn't that deep.  My sister says she has changed but I couldn't detect that the last time I saw her. Sitting next to her at the baby shower I wanted to "Hey.  Did you know your selfishness and lack of maturity really changed the course of my life?"  I left home at 16 the best decision of my life - Still.

So what my point of regurgitating this crap again? My point is that because I had to raise myself it has taken me a long time to see that the way the people that are suppose to love you treat you isn't at all about you.  Yes us Virgos can be critical (mostly of ourselves) but we bring a lot to the table. We take care of things.  We make things run smoothly and taste good.  When we decide something or someone is worthy of our focus we are all in and ask for nothing in return.  We don't don't do it for the accolades we do it because we love you and know we can make any situation better.

In our selflessness we appear invisible which is fine with us. We are under appreciated by even ourselves and no one sees our value until we are gone.  The last part is what I hope anyway.

I been have invested in a lot things and people in my life and have felt really undervalued. I have been left by ever person that I have loved and that I thought loved me. In my mind I am still that ADD girl that made her mother sick because I couldn't act right. I have always been a problem and not worth a long term investment.  This is what the eight year thinks.

I know it isn't true and I argue with her about this when I am sad and lonely.  Our relationship has change over the years and recently I have convinced her that we need to invest in our own happiness for a change and stop thinking we caused the rejection.

Overall we have done a good job parenting ourselves.  We have made mistakes and we have been slow to learn sometimes but we have come out on top. We have loved and have made a difference in the lives we have touched even if we don't exactly how.  This isn't our business. We have done best even if sometimes it wasn't good enough.

I want to thank all those folks writing horoscopes out there.  Sometimes you just need someone to tell you something good about yourself.  Today I look for God's message everywhere I go and from anyone that crosses my path.  I always say " it is the message not the messenger."  Take what you like and leave the rest.

There is healing available no matter what your eight year old might say to you.  You are worth the investment and never give up.   







 

Food - Kurt - The most wonderful time of the year

Here it is upon us once again the season to be jolly. It is 80 degrees today and I have been shopping most of the day.  First for flooring for my kitchen, the first selection looked too pink and then for groceries.

I am fixing a traditional fish taco Christmas eve dinner.  I am sure it is traditional some where but that is what sounded good to me and made with fresh local seafood it will be really good. Avocados were on sell and very ripe for the roasted corn avocado side dish. They are not in big demand for Christmas day I guess.

Tomorrow I am eating with some program friends and we are having hamburgers.  I guess you can tell none of us are much for following traditions. It should be a fine day with a variety of food including a few vegetarian dishes.  I am making lentil salad with roasted red peppers and feta cheese.

Getting past the talk about food and on a more serious note today I watched part of the Kurt Cobain story on HBO and the underlying theme was that he felt his family rejected him. His dad and stepmother with their combined children couldn't meet his expectations of how a real family should be. He turned angry and they decided to send him off to different relatives who rejected him after a short stay and he eventually he ended up back home with his mother. We know how the story ended.

Of course I could relate to the rejection part and I have to admit I do feel the shadows of rejection during the holidays. My family didn't reject me they were indifferent to me and still are. I spoke to my sister last night for over an hour. She told me about all their plans for the holidays. I does hurt that she doesn't even consider wanting to spend the holidays with me.

We have both created lives without each other. I know now some of this is because she lives with addiction and it is just easier to manage everything without an outsider.

For some of us the holidays bring up the lack in our lives even though it is suppose to be "the most wonderful time of the year" according to the song anyway.  I can't help but wish things turned out differently for me and my family but it didn't and come Monday all these feeling of lack with be gone until next year.

I am happy to have the time off we are closed this weekend and I don't have to be back until Tuesday. This will give me time to finish my work around the house and have enough time to recover physically before returning to work.

I am grateful I have my friends to spend tonight and tomorrow with.  I wish for you my blogging friends that you spend this holiday feeling peaceful and wanting nothing which is the same thing. Just knowing if your holiday doesn't resemble the one you pictured in your head that it is just one day of the year and by Monday it will be mostly forgotten.

Merry Christmas.

My story - The end of a journey

I wanted to write tonight and let you know that I have changed.  I can't really explain what has happened to me but it feels like I have reached the end of a long road of searching for something.

Did I find what I was looking for?  I think I found myself it is true that I was here all along but I didn't know it. I thought there was something wrong with me because I have been rejected a lot.

I thought I was rejected because at the core of me I was somehow wrong. I wasn't like anyone else no matter what I did I felt different.  I was always on the outside. Even in my family I just couldn't go along with the program.

I tried hard to find and love what other people seem to think was important but it didn't stick. I could hang in there for a while until something inside of me started to turn sour. I only acknowledged the way I felt by telling myself that something was wrong with me.

Since I didn't know what it was or how to fix it my answer was to stay busy. I found projects, people and problems to solve. This kept the self loathing at bay for awhile but eventually it seeped to the surface and repelled everyone in my path. I drove away the people I loved into the arms of others.

In the end the pain of being me caught up with me and I surrendered and committed to finding out how to change myself. I found the program of Al-Anon. I found a place where everyone was working on changing to become  better people. It felt like a really good investment and l felt like we all had the same goals.

I found a family there and also learned that my beliefs were causing a lot of own pain. I realized my need to manage everything and everyone was a real problem because nothing in life can be managed. The best I can hope for is to manage my thoughts and to try to stay honest with myself.

This was all great and made my life a lot easier but I was still just treating the symptoms. I didn't know that it was the belief I had about myself that caused all the pain. It was the belief that I was unlovable.

The changes I made did make it easier for me to fit in and find someone to love me for awhile. It happened again the self loathing seeped to the surface. I hid it by being compliant going along with what was expected. Living a good life but not enjoying it. I didn't want to be there. I was set free again and it nearly killed me.

I had done everything right but it wasn't enough I wasn't enough. Now what? I had to start over with no clue. All of what I had learned before seemed like empty words to me. No magic cure this time.

I tried returning to what had worked before I even tried to reconnect with my family thinking that I needed to belong but I still didn't. I had to face the truth I was dead in water with no place to go.

I stayed there in that dark place for what seemed like a lifetime. I was alone and the pain was unbearable. With time I accepted that this was what the rest of my life would look like. I stopped resisting and just went through the motions of every day.

I stopped wanting or asking for anything. I let go and I got better everyday. I did anything that gave me comfort I didn't have any expectations of myself.

I started to see I didn't need anything and the darkness lifted. I was all I needed just as I was empty but full of grace. I had taken this journey alone and learned that I was enough and worth saving and I was loved.

A New Table Saw - Rejecting the past

So I bought a new table saw today.  I used to have one in my old life but had to leave it behind along with the relationship.  I use to be quite handy and worked part time as a handy person while getting my design degree.

I left a lot of things behind with that relationship including my self confidence. Today I was driving down the road thinking about how I am making my way back to the person I was more than six years ago. The gratitude of this brought tears to my eyes.

I read once that it should take one month for every year you were in the relationship to get over it. It was a 13 year relationship so unless we are using dog years in reverse I am not normal. I am so grateful to just be interested in life again it doesn't really matter to me now.  

I could blame it on my family maybe a bad grieving gene passed down certainly it would be from my mother's side of the family.  I remember my Grandmother crying for literally years after my mother died. Grief over the death of her youngest child is normal but I think it was more than that it was the death of the dream of how her own life would be that was so devastating. My mothers death changed all our lives.

This last break up for me felt like one day I was basking in the comfort of knowing how my life was going to turn out and boom  it ends and my mind, body and soul was forced into the unknown. The stability I dreamed I had started spiraling out of control and the idea that nothing would ever feel the same again was more than I could take.  I resisted reality with every part of myself and when that didn't work I had a breakdown.

We love the people that leave us in death or through the front door but we do stop missing the real person. We paint a rosy picture of them and forget that they left dirty socks on the floor or said hurtful things.  We keep the idea of them alive with a dream of how our lives would be perfect if they were here now.

This is just our way of staying right where we are until we can accept that they are not coming back and we have to create a new dream for ourselves. We have to get past blaming them for leaving us or for not loving us and we have to get past blaming ourselves for not being enough. It takes as long as it takes.

It isn't true that I am returning to the person I was before that person doesn't exist anymore. I am returning to a secure emotional life based on love and respect for myself instead of leaving that in someone else is hands.

I bought a table saw today so I can help my friend install his laminate floor. This shows me that I am no longer rejecting the part of me that I associate with the past. I can see that I have healed the deepest part of me and I am ready to create a new dream for my life.  

Rejection

We all have faced rejection in our lives. The first time is usually early on in life. I remember the first serious rejection for me was when these two girls in my neighborhood were best friends and when the got into a fight one or the other would want to be my best friend. You can see where this is going, can’t you. Well I wanted to be special and fit in and it always turned out the same way. I did finally figure it out, that it wasn’t about me. This was agonizing for my mom to watch but eventually we both got over it.

I think that those early rejections were pretty painful and made me very sensitive to the pain of rejection. It has made me try to avoid rejecting or being rejected at any cost, not expressing my true feelings accepting mistreatment or even for me the worst just going along without resistance even when I didn’t want to.

Recently I was rejected by a customer. I had worked hard to address some problems they had with my product. In the end they were completely satisfied with the product but decided they didn’t want to work with me on the next project that was even bigger. I was hurt in a way that seemed disproportionate to the situation. After analyzing the situation I realized my pain took me back to other more personal rejections.

I went through the same inventory of my short comings as I did when I was rejected in my personal life. Did I do everything I could? Did I anticipate all their needs? What is it about me that isn’t good enough? It isn’t always personal. Sometimes you can’t be what the other person wants you to be without compromising who you are and sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, things are as they are, regardless.