Taking a moment

I decided to take things a little easier this week sleeping a little later working closer to 40 hours. It felt a little bit like a vacation and I am planning to continue that theme since I am off this weekend. 

This week has been cold for the deep south.  My heat is running continuously. This is a luxury that I couldn't afford in years past and for that I am grateful. I didn't run it no matter how cold it got I would just huddle in my room under the covers with a space heater. 

Since it has turned cold I have been extremely achy at night, I finally realized the heater in my water bed had died. I know how retro is that a water bed but I love it. It is a soft side so you can't tell and is very relaxing. It stayed cool during those hot flash years and it is usually keeps me warm and toasty in the winter. 

I ordered a new heater and it was delivered a few days ago. When I was retrieving the package from the porch a bird flew into the house. I couldn't get it out. It was late and cold and I left the door open with the porch light as long as I could hoping he would go back out. It was in the 30s that night and I gave up figuring he was thinking that indoors was the better choice.

The first day he was here he flew around and was hanging out in some gourds I have on a high shelf but yesterday I couldn't find him. I know what your thinking but I am staying in denial I have lots of experience with that. I am saying that he escaped somehow. I do have a hole at the ceiling where the fan is connected. I hope he got away he could still be in the gourd. So sad.

I thought maybe the bird was a visiting relative or maybe a sign from my mother. I know it is crazy but I like thinking that life is more than what we see. Taking the world a face value is so boring why can't there be more why do we have to explain everything put limits on the possibilities? This is the problem with a active creative mind life as it is is never enough. 

I always want there to be more. I look around and everyone seems pretty satisfied with the way things are and there I am thinking is this all there is? I think sometimes it is a lack a maturity on my part the child in me feels that I should be exempt from the mundane. 

I use to fill my time with task. You could give me a to list and keep me occupied for days even weeks even years. It seems that now, because I living less in my head, I don't enjoy the busy work. Before doing chores gave me time to think. My mind was always obsessed about something or someone the latest crisis and chores could mask this obsessing and I could feel productive and nobody knew about my obsessing.

Today it is not enough. My mind is quiet and wants enrichment not just to something to kill time. I am going to spend some time this weekend thinking about how to make my life fuller. More thinking involved how ironic.  

 

Love - leaving - peace

My mind would like to take this opportunity to slide into the many reasons I am alone this Valentines. I could easily go there an look at the mistakes I have made the reason I have been left so many times but luckily I am too tired to give in to this inclination.

Why do people leave?  The better question is why do they stay? Why did I stay long after the happiness had faded and I felt lonelier than I have ever felt when I was actually alone. These are the questions that use to really put me to the test. I do know know some of the answers now.

First I married young and I thought it was forever. My religious back ground made me think that a commitment was a commitment my parents would have never divorced. I stayed because I didn't want to fail I stayed because I was empty and hurt and this person filled that for me sometimes but they also hurt me. I stayed because love conquers all and I couldn't imagine a life that was any better.

I only knew about hurt up to that point. I expected that life was only about survival because this was my own experience. I blamed myself for not being good enough for people to stay with me. I felt lucky when someone liked me and when fell for someone I worked hard to be who they thought I was. When I did this I lost myself and this ate me up inside. I couldn't show my true self because they would leave. This made me a joy to live with.

They left anyway maybe because they were living with the ghost of someone.  Maybe they left because they did believe that there was more happiness to be found else where.  They had more hope than I did at time.

I had to find myself and face the truth. I had to find a way to prove to myself that I was lovable. In my heart I knew I wasn't because there was no one I felt really did love me. I was alone and reaching out and felt no one was there.

I stayed in this place for what seemed life forever thinking that there was something in me that repelled people that once loved me into leaving me.

Something happened along the way that made realize that true love was unconditional and that you are just loved. Love isn't earned it just is and only you and your god have the ability to give you that kind of love.  I do believe in god and that we have a spirit that lives within us that represents that god and when we trust and love ourselves then we can truly find peace in this world.

Today I can be happy and feel loved even without a valentine. I can know that loving myself is enough.

Just a dream - Facing the anniversaries of my life

I have been off - line this week evidently my cable modem needed to be replaced to enable me to have a higher and faster life. I remedied the situation yesterday and went to the big box electronic store and bought a sensible modem.

I am against the invasion of electronics into every minute of our lives. I do love accessing a wealth of information when I want it but I don't like being assessable to anyone anytime. This does hurt my bottom line at work sometimes but I am willing to make the sacrifice.

While I was in the store yesterday I felt like I was on another planet. I thought I am old but I know even when I was younger I was resistant to whatever everyone else was doing. A rebel at heart I like life on my terms and have always gone against the norm it has been part of my identity.

The update for this missed week is that I had record sales last month and worked about 12 days in a row which I am going to try to avoid doing again anytime soon. I also had a few personal anniversaries from the past to deal with.

I wrote a post that couldn't be posted since I was off line at home and too busy or not that motivated to post from work. I would have been married 31 years. Why do we do that? Why do we long for what might have been and waste our nows on these dreams. A side note my ex put the wrong marriage date on our divorce papers so I am sure this date doesn't come up for him.

The reality is that relationships don't end because they are healthy and happy. Mine was emotionally abusive and living with someone drinking and cheating and blaming me for everything and was never going be a dream a nightmare for sure. My self esteem was so low living isolated with this person.

I found new love that worked for a long time. It did end but it was never abusive it ended because we both had changed. There was cheating involved but that was a symptom of something else a catalyst to give one of us the courage to change our minds about being together. I hold no resentments now and I am really grateful at this point. THIS TOOK A LONG TIME.

To embellish the sadness this I watched the last episode of Parenthood. Big family messed up but they held it together and had each other. That is a life I will never have. This does get to me sometimes I am human sometimes.

When my marriage ended and I was thirty there was still a chance of children and the family. I made a conscious decision to not take that route. I knew it would be a push to meet the right person and get things started. I wanted to choose someone for the right reasons.

I was tired and I didn't want to make another plan. I just wanted to let go and see what happened next with out expectations. I met someone three years later who loved me and love me well that was enough for me and I was content with my life. It was 10,000 times better than what I had experienced before.

So here I am alone again and six years have passed since that relationship ended. I am happier than I have ever been before. I am a whole person for the first time and not looking for something outside myself to solve my pain.

I want another relationship but I know that it won't complete me I don't need to be completed. It would enhance my life and make me a little less selfish but it isn't a solution. I have spent 23 years in committed relationships or at least I was committed and I know that alone or with someone else life is the same with one you just have a little more time for yourself.

I expect that I will find love again and I do expect that stories about big happy families will always make me feel a little sad around my would be anniversary. The dream of what could have been, lets face it, is just that a dream.

Food - Life and Extremes

I have been doing nothing but working twelve days straight now. I have plugged back into the matrix and feeling a little guilty but also grateful that I am still able to manage this kind of work load.

What to do next I am not sure I don't want work to be my whole life. Today my only free day I am relaxing and doing things around the house. I have decided to take better care of myself with these the long hours by planning my meals ahead and taking breakfast lunch and dinner with snacks to the office.

This is a new development for me because I have had an off and on love affair with food all my life. and lately it has been off.

The love of food started as a kid I was raised by health nuts we ate organics and my parents juiced their food way back in the 70's.  I do have to say that the recent wave organics is amusing to me like this is a new idea. It is a good one if you can afford it.

I never really left those organic roots and have prepared all my food from scratch since I left home. It only seemed natural that I would married a chef the first time and played the sou chef to him. We cooked for crowds and at one point did some catering. His food made me fat which he regularly pointed out to me.

When he left I stopped eating and mostly watched chefs cook on tv. When I got my life back together and had new love in my life I started cooking again. I really loved cooking and worked on perfecting every possible technique but eventually I got tired of cooking all the time but I didn't know how to break out of the routine I didn't want to disappoint everyone.

When the relationship ended I divorced food again. For the past six years I have survived on protein bars and eating out. I even cooked for my dog but not for myself.

So here I am embracing food again and cooking for myself. I guess I am an all or nothing kind of person. I can admit I do like extremes or at least I like them until they exhaust me and then I have to find some center point.

Today I made a lamb stew with sweet potatoes and dried apricots. It will make for a few good lunches next week. So I guess I am back in love with food.

Finding what has been lost - Grace

With life you get hurt. Sometimes it is just little things said to you by people that say they love you other times it hard hurts where you feel like you have been gutted and left for dead. You think you will never be the same and that is true but what can you do but keep moving.

You know you have lost small chunks and big chunks of yourself but you learn to function as this new person you have become.  You get use to feeling less than the person you were and eventually you accept that this is the person you are and then the memory of who you were fades all together. 

This is the point of acceptance and it feels pretty god to give up or give in. You can stop trying so hard and spend your time doing something besides thinking about trying to get back to the person you were. I feels like freedom.

You get on with it you do what is required of you everyday. People look at you the same they don't know that there has been a shift within you. You don't know this yourself except you have more energy you feel a little lighter and a lot less emotional.

Finally one day out of the blue something happens that makes you laugh. It feels peculiar but it starts to happen more often and then there is the singing in the shower.

Many months later you realize that without explanation you have returned to yourself. You are not the same but actually better. You know that something extraordinary has happened and you accept the grace that has been given to you. Once again.

A Better Dream - More letting go

I heard the phrase "a better dream" today and it struck me by the power of these few words. Life for me has been about achieving a dream of emotional happiness. Finding the dream of a life where all the boxes had been checked and in the end would make me feel love and satisfied with my life.

For most of my life I tried many different ways to create the dream that seemed to work for a lot of people. I lived a very conventional life during two long term relationships. The the relationships didn't survive and when the second ended I nearly didn't survive. I had lost my best hope of achieving the dream I had in my mind.

I have been forced to look at what I have done with my time here on earth. Some would say it is just life but I expected better or I expected that it would be easier to to create a life with another person and I expected that it would be permanent.

I have always been a dreamer thinking that everyone finds the kind of love the love we see in the movies or the kind of love my parents had. The kind of love I might add that nearly destroyed my dad when my mother died.  I am have been like him with every relationship lost I have felt devastation. A bit dramatic but it felt like death each time.  I held tight to the dream of living life a certain way experiencing the ups and downs and having someone standing beside me.

I have given up on the pursuit of that one dream for a better dream. The dream of living each day with the expectation of wonderful moments where ever they come from. With some painful maturity under my belt I can admit I have no idea what will make me happy today or any day in the future.

I feels really good to be free from the responsibility of searching for something. I can reclaim all that lost energy and just live my life and that is what I am doing. I can have a better dream one that doesn't have to look a certain way. I can be open and let my life flow towards me instead of chasing an old dream that never really worked for me anyway.

A better dream......

The Three of Me - Living life a new way

I have been a selfish person most of my life. This doesn't mean that I didn't do a lot of things for people or that I didn't make plenty of sacrifices of my time and energy but most of the time the pain in my mind got top billing. I lived despite the circumstances I carried around in my mind.

I have experienced a lot grace throughout the years and have be reborn emotionally many times. At the end different episodes of my painful life I would emerge happy and lighter but in time something else would happen and I would enter a new period of pain and again a rebirth.

The difference for me this time is that I feel like I see myself from outside myself. I can look at how lost I have been and see that this kind of pain and suffering is a selfish pursuit. It couldn't be helped  I was trapped with only my own mind to give me advice and that was a dead end proposition.

But I feel healed in a way I have never felt before. I can see that I have been my only friend and my only enemy all along. I have discovered grace once again and I am feeling extremely grateful today.

I believe we have three parts of us that live inside and we must find harmony within ourselves in order to find peace and happiness. We have our mind of course and then our emotional self and last but not least the spiritual self or our core self.

The mind is easy to explain. Your mind believes you can think yourself out of any problem. Your emotions show up when the mind can't solve the problem usually with a meltdown or a burst of anger. Both are just distractions and provide us with a temporary solutions and we can get caught in a loop that just fills our time.

The harder part to describe is the spiritual self or the real self. It is a part of you that knows what you really want at that moment. The part of you that says ugh when you agree to do something that doesn't truly feed you. It is the part of you that patiently waits until the other two are exhausted before saying just the right words that change your life. It isn't interested in a discussion or how you feel about things it just knows in that moment what you really want.

The trouble is that when life hurls rocks at you starting at an early age it seems our mind or our emotions take control and we spend our lives unbalanced feeling like we are just not right going back and forth between thinking and emotions.

My mind has always controlled me and my emotions played second only emerging in sadness and suffering. My thinking self knew sadness was the logical outcome in certain situations so it was acceptable to let my emotions take center stage for a certain period of time.

It never seemed like a war within. It all seemed normal just part of who I was. I was mostly unhappy and felt sadness even when some my dreams came true.

My awakening came when my mind and emotions were both exhausted and there was no one left to run the show. It was quiet there for a really long time and it was uncomfortable for a really long time. I didn't know what was happening. I had never lived in silence before but I didn't have a choice this time.

One day one moment I heard a voice. Not audible so don't lock me up but a small voice that said "you are doing this to yourself". My mind was so weak at that point it barely had an opinion. I didn't change a thing I was doing but I started to get better. I have always wanted to get better but this time my mind didn't have a plan. This getting better as you know took awhile but I had nothing but time.

My core self is managing my mind and emotions these day. I say managing because my mind isn't always willing to do what is best for me and demands top billing and my emotions don't honestly reflect the reality of the situation or the truth about why I feel the way I do.

My mind and emotions grew from my childhood experiences and it is taking time for them to grow up and see I am no longer a child. My spirit wasn't affected by those experiences because it only lives in the moment. It has been watching and waiting for its turn and that time has come.

With  this balance life feels more like a vacation than a war. I am looking forward to what life has to offer now instead of bracing myself for more of the same. I know there will be ups and downs but now I know I can face them without fear.

Happy New Year.