Security and Peace - The search is over

I have spent my life trying to feel safe.  I never felt secure after I lost my mother early on and this drove me to look constantly for security.  I felt like I had lost something and I needed so desperately to find it.

When I found new love the first time I thought "this is it " this was the thing I had been missing.  I gripped it so tightly but as we all know that first love feeling doesn't last.  I was too young to know that then and blamed myself for the failure of those early relationships.  I was not good enough is what I believed. 

I searched next for a different kind of love and found my first addiction relationship. It was a fierce love and the intensity of that love made me feel safe. It was intoxicating and we were the same touching the parts of us that needed to feel safe.  Unfortunately you can't do that for someone else. It only works when the neediness is equal if there is a crisis where one person needs the other person more can bring it all crashing down. I learned in this relationship it was not safe fo me to be needy.

After experiencing that I moved on to loyalty and routine. Another broken person but not so volatile it felt safer a daily routine.  A loved and felt love for awhile and it seemed like a good bet for feeling secure.  I didn't jump in like I had all the other relationships I had been burned and wanted to try something different. It was good for long while but I still felt lonely a lot.  I definitely got the security I thought I wanted but the trade off was that I was alone in a relationship.

When I lost that relationship I turned to God and sought out very intensely the meaning of life.  Spirituality and something greater than myself had always been part of my personal beliefs but at this time I needed it to be more and it replaced that search for someone physical to satisfy me. Just like all intense relationships it didn't sustain me or make me feel safe.

When I step back and see that my life has been spent looking for something that doesn't really exist I feel somehow relieved that I can let go.  There isn't one person or even God that can give me that security the young girl in me wants so badly.  I can be free now to just enjoy everyday life and the miracles that present themselves.

Wanting all the time kept my mind busy and it me exhausted. I can now be content to just be here and be grateful.  I do still rely on the wisdom I got from having a spiritual journey and I do think that collectively those that believe in something greater than themselves are usually happier.

The world on its own isn't a loving place and being with other people that have found some peace is inspiring.  Maybe because we are positive unit a spiritual energy together.  It sounds weird but we are all connected and we can carry peace to others with just our presence every day.

Not wanting something more - freedom

I have been a little apprehensive about writing here because the traffic was coming from an unsavory source.  It appears to have been corrected.

I have returned to my happy self after my trip to see my family.  I hadn't wanted to admit to myself that it was the trip and what I felt while I was there that was making me sad. The girl in me imagined that if I could be a part of my family would make me feel complete.  This is what I have been looking for in every relationship I have had since my mother died. 

I first married someone who was overly protective of me.  Someone that would literally fight for me if I needed them to no one had ever done that for me. Since my dad never even verbally stood up for me after my mother died this was really appealing. I ended up with a raging maniac in the end who wanted to control me every minute. I moved on to the duplicate of dad a relief that felt so familiar and the relationship did help me work through all the indifference I felt with my dad.

The point is that I have always felt something was missing.  I had moments where I felt safe and secure and loved but inevitably history repeated itself and I was left. Rejected just like that girl who left home at sixteen. They wanted me there for my cleaning and babysitting skills because I was reliable as a support staff. This also has been repeated in all of my relationships.

Getting back to the visit with my sister.  I felt invisible there or worse like just another person to manage around all the drama.  When you are given instructions about what not to say or ask about. I just stayed silent most of the time.  I enjoyed having one lunch with my sister just the two of us. We talked about life and her kids.  We are similar in many ways which always surprises us both.

I think what I have been looking for is a rare thing.  I want to feel like I matter to someone when most of the time people are so wrapped up in their own life that they can't even see you most less appreciate you. The next thing I ask myself is "do I appreciate other people?" probably not as much as I should.  My own life circumstances has made me pretty self absorbed and autonomous.

When I lost the idea of who I was 10 years ago I almost didn't recover.  I never imagined that I could be happy just being myself and not wanting something more from someone. A maturity that I didn't think was possible. Today I feel that a kind of freedom that is hard to explain.

My recent sadness was from realizing that what I want cannot be found with my family or anyone else.  I have been mourning that loss since I got back. I am happy again because I can see that I don't have to keeping trying so hard to make myself a part them. Their indifference to me has nothing to do with me or whether I am worthy of their love.  They are just wrapped up in their own story.

I have decided to stop thinking that I will spend my twilight years with my family and make other plans.  I have also decided that I will make less visits and maybe get my sister to meet me somewhere for a long weekend.  She is growing too and realizing her kids want to manage their lives without her input. She is accepting that she has done her job and they have to find their own way.

I have been working on my house and very busy at work the two things I do love.  I am wrapping up my oil painting class something that makes me feel more balance.  I feel good just being me and not wanting something more. Enjoying each day as it comes.

Don't take anything personally - Family

It feels like I always begin my post with I have had a lot going on and it is always true.  Since my break over the holidays I have been working to try to balance my work and free time a little better but the universe has answered the challenge by amping up the volume at work.

This is never something I will complain about since I work 100 % commission - not something I recommend to the faint at heart.  In the red then in the black you can't take it personally and you can't let the anxiety show through to your customers.  I have been doing it so long I mostly remain unattached to the outcome of any transaction until they are signed.  This keeps my stress levels down.

In the book The Four Agreements one agreement is "don't take anything personally" - if you can do this you can really find happiness but it is really difficult.  It is especially hard because when we are stressed we are always looking for someone to blame.  If you are analytical like me you can really get stuck. I would always look for a solution to make sure next time the outcome would be different. 

This is a trick of the mind and feeds our controlling nature.  It also feeds our ego who wants to believe the world really does revolve around us at all times.  Even thoughts like "it is my fault" sounds very humble but really that just means you have given yourself a lot of power over the situation and you believe it is about you.

I went to visit my family two weekends ago taking my new happy self to celebrate the 1 year birthday of my great nephew.  I haven't seen him ever and when I got a last minute invite I scrambled around to make it work.  It rained and it was cold and everyone was stressed.  Not really that different than anytime I have visited before but I thought since I was different somehow they would be different.

We are a family of survivors wading through one problem after another.  Joy and happiness wasn't really a part of our upbringing and wasn't passed down generation to generation.  You love Jesus because he gets you through the tragedies of life so you can go on to a better place.  I do remember some happy times squeezed between chores and church and sometimes mixed with church in the form of after service homemade ice cream social.

When I visit I have learned when it is time to go and left a day early.  Ironically the sun was shining for the first time but I wanted a day at home to recover before going back to work.  It did take me four days to return to happiness and understand we are products of our upbringing. The survival spirit is deeply grooved in our childs mind and we don't really know any different.

I think this was why I always attracted the fun people in the room mostly those drinking too much.  They seemed happy but it was really the spirits that made them temporarily happy.  Those liquid spirits never worked for me they just made me sad.  While writing rccently about my childhood I realized I was a happy child.  I lived in my own world and managed around my family and used my great imagination to create a world I could live in anytime I wanted.

What does any of this have to do with "The Four Agreements" and "don't take anything personally" well for me it helps me to understand that everyone is experiencing life in their own way and it really isn't about you.  It is the timing and that timing is rarely right when it involves a lot of different people. Try to find what works for you and stick with it.

My nephew and his wife are super stressed about being new parents.  What is new about that? The rain and cold will go away eventually. My sister has lived in survival mode just like me since our mother died.  She doesn't know anything else but with a grandchild she wants things to be different and is making changes to feel more free.  I know she feels strange but she really wants to make the change.

My point is everyone is in a different place emotionally all the time.  It is a miracle we ever sinc up with anyone so relax and just be there in the moment and get out when you can't take anymore.

I have read a million books about life and finding answers -  The Four Agreements was one of the first and it really says it all.  Not taking things personally has changed my life and the expectations I have for others.  We have to know we have no control over where we are or other people and sometimes with relatioships you have to just accept what is and move on.

Being yourself - Happiness - Mom

I am still feeling free and happy.  Happy isn't a concept I have had a lot of experience with generally.  I am content and sometimes peaceful but happy has always been pretty elusive. My mind doesn't even want to analyze why I am happy right now except maybe here on these pages.  I feel as though I have been freed from myself. Life doesn't feel like a burden to me anymore just a moment to moment event.

I am busy with work and at home I have been just doing little projects that I have been thinking about a long time but could never get around to them.  This is a side effect of depression I think.  You are not necessarily sad but the things you do each day just to get through takes it all out of you. 

People don't understand that washing dishes can feel like the first steps of a marathon.  I have been cooking for the past few months on this diet.  Actually going to the store weekly and buying fresh food and cooking for just me.  I have never done that before. 

I have always been a survivor and a caretaker of other people. The times when I was recovering I didn't think I deserved the same effort I gave to the other people in my life.  Everyday was something you just made it through.

To care about yourself is to be selfish.  I got that from my mother I think.  She died February 15th 1974 after life had taken everything from her.  The past few weeks I have been organizing the old family photo and in every picture she has the same fake smile except one.  The picture was when she got some award in a high school business club for women.

She was an achiever from the beginning and the life of June Clever did not work for her.  She worked until I was five and we moved to a suburb that our preacher built. All the women were full time moms and she conformed and got sick three years later.

We make choices to be what other people want us to be without even know what it is doing to us. We want to fall in line even if everything in our heart go against that.  Sometimes people push us but I think it is more about our own view of what a nice or normal person looks like.  We hear people say "what kind of person would do something like that to their family?"  A desperately unhappy person is what I think. 

We get trapped by our own need to belong even if we never feel we do belong.  It is a risk to change our lives to better match who we really are and there is no guarantee that we will be happier or that everyone we love will be there with us in the end.  No one wants change but we need it to keep the flow going. 

My mother did a good job with the time she had with us.  From what I remember she ran the family like it was a business.  We had a lot of freedom and she taught us how to be self sufficient.  She held us to high standards based on the Bible and those never wavered.  Everything else was optional. 

I wish I had really known her as a person instead of the snippets of memories I hold on to.  I don't feel she was happy maybe she was mostly peaceful and content like I have been.  I love you mom! If you can hear me. 

Writing -Symbolism - Passion - Spark

I started a new creative writing class at the local college last week.  The teacher was just what you might imagine a writing teacher might look like older heavy set and looking like he probably smokes a pipe and hangs out with other writers too many nights a week at the local pub.  He spent most of the time name dropping about a local famous writer he knows and what they discuss about writing ending the evening telling us the sacrifices we we would have to make to become a good writer.

During the middle of the evening he gave us examples of terrible writing mistakes his students have made and even one that self published and didn't take his advice and the novel flopped. I felt bad for him because it was clear that maybe life hasn't turned out like he imagined it would or maybe it did. 

As an adult and getting a degree at 40 I encountered a lot of unhappy teachers just like when I was in high school some that inspired and some that read the newspaper everyday during class.  A good teacher can inspire you like my high school literature teacher Mrs. Myers she taught me about symbolism.  Being raised by fundamentalist I had know idea that writers could be using symbolism and the stories could mean a lot of different things. We translated Ray Bradbury's - Something Wicked this Way Comes - it was like solving a puzzle.  I still have that same book.

I love that words can make you think and question the truth you have carried in your mind all your life. When I read Scott Pecks - A Road Less Traveled where he talked about the Bible and all the symbolism I decided to take a second look at Christ's teachings.  Before that I had abandoned my childhood religion thinking I would never be able to live up to those strict standards.

As far as my teacher goes I am going back tonight with our homework.  This is a list of our strengths number 12 - 1 in our ability to write.  I of course I do not buy into his idea of suffering for the word or for anything else.  You make commitments to things or people you are the most passionate about and sometimes those passions can wane and the excitement just isn't there this is when the commitment keeps you going until something sparks the passion again.

Everything and everyone I love in life started out passionately a feeling that is impossible to maintain.  You can abandon it all and begin again losing the time an energy invested to skip off to something or someone more interesting or you can stick with it until a moment when you feel that spark again.

Sometimes you just have to get away from things or even people you love to get a different perspective.  The holidays gave me an opportunity to step back from my work.  I have to admit I do love it but it has taken over my life.  When I had extra time off I decided to try harder to do things outside of work like taking this class.  I have also been working on a few other projects around the house.  I have been a lot happier and even more inspired at work so it must be working.

I am looking forward to class tonight even though he was a Debbie Downer.  I took the class to force me to spend more time writing.  Wish me luck. 

Denial - Survival - Manipulation

I am happy to be off this weekend.  I am still in the purging mode at my house touching everything I own to make sure I still want to own it.  I came across the family pictures of mostly dead people now some I know and some I don't.  Because I lived in the same city as my Aunt and she was the last surviving sibling on my mother's side I got all the pictures. 

In my constant desire for order when I got the pictures originally I separated them by aunts and uncles and thought that I would put them together and send them off to the kids.  Now with time I don't really know where the kids are or whether anyone would care at this point. 

I also had one file for my grandmother.  I have been writing my story and her character is pretty prominent and a character she was.  By necessity she was one of the most manipulative people you would ever encounter.  Her husband was killed in a sawmill accident when she was 30 leaving her alone with nine kids to support.

Under the circumstances my grandmother became the most resourceful person you can imagine.  She never remarried because she said "I don't want another man disciplining my children."  She was totally immersed in the the Pentecost even though she was raised Baptist. She never joined the church because they wanted her to be re-baptized and she that the first baptism was in the name of the same Jesus so she refused.  Even though the church gave her a piece of land and the materials to build her own house and she did of course.

My grandmother built a very thick wall of denial that rarely was penetrated.  She had her own version of everything.  She was very opinionated about a lot of things and didn't readily accept new people in her inner circle.  She kept  most people in that second ring in case she needed something from them.  She especially like strangers and they loved her because they were the easiest to maneuver and she hadn't exhausted them the way she did her family.

When my mother was alive grandmother would plan her own birthday party and invite all kinds of people. She had this one lady make her a fancy decorated cake every year as a gift.  At my grandmothers funeral the same woman came up to me and said "your grandmother would ask me to do things that even my own mother wouldn't ask me to do." I knew what she meant.

Once my grandmother invited everyone to her party she would call my mother and say "I got 20 people coming for a party at my house tomorrow."  knowing my mother would feel like she needed to make that work.  I felt for my parents because the wants of my grandmother dominated our household but no one stood up to her.  If you said anything she would cry and pout and then quote the Bible about disrespecting your elders. My mother was the youngest and took most of the heat.

I really couldn't understand why she got away with it. Every year we took a trip to visit my aunt in Michigan and up until the last minute she would say she wasn't going. Everyone would beg her to go but she would refuse then at midnight the night before she would call and say she was going.  Sometimes when we got to the house at 10 she would still be in bed not packed.

I can see my dad patiently sitting in the car or on my grandmothers porch while my mother helped her pack.  This was a regular routine.  She did this with her other son in law the day before she was to fly to my wedding and he left her. She manage to get a plane ticket and a neighbor to take her to the airport and got there before my aunt and uncle did.

She loved me almost as much as she loved my mother and after my mothers death and my dad remarried our visits were limited. My dad wouldn't have anything to do with my mother's family after that. Once my uncle stopped by and my dad was cleaning the gutters he never even came down from the ladder.  He loved my mother more than life and I think he only tolerated her family for her sake. Once she was gone he was done.  I don't think there was malice but he had moved on.

Looking at the pictures of my grandmother mostly on her birthday or Mothers Day always wearing a corsage and usually a hat I see a pretty happy person living a life that only existed in her mind. My mothers death did break denial for a few years.  She cried forever until she said God ask her to stop. 

When she was afraid or sad she wrote scriptures on random pieces of paper.  I have dozens of those writings that I saved.  Her faith was unbelievable and kept her going until the end.  She died at 85 in 1984 of bone cancer.  I can't say I remember too many specifics I was newly married living with active alcoholism and maintaining my own world of denial.   My plate was full and couldn't face the loss of the last person who I knew loved me for sure. 

It is weird how denial works it protects us from the things we can't bare to see for as long as it takes.  Why own up to a life that isn't living up to what we had hoped for? My own life of denial kept me in places far longer than I needed to be there because if I acknowledged the truth I thought it would kill me.

The problem with denial is that no one can reach you and you miss out on real connections. You can avoid immediate grief but it is still there underneath sucking the life of you so you don't feel anything.

I think the research I have been doing on my family has helped me to acknowledge a different reality than the story I have been telling myself. It got too real a couple of times and I to take a break.

I loved my grandmother and I understand the denial that she lived in most of the time.  The reality of her many losses was too much for her. She had to survive and take care of her family so in her mind she created her version of reality.  She loved me even though I called her out on her manipulating tactics and I can see eyes now behind those glasses with a little grin on her face.  She knew that knew.

Getting out of a rut - Baby steps

It is so weird to feel joy and excitement about life.  I thought I would have to settle for contentment since it was better than apathy and much better than depression.  My analytical mind is trying to figure out what is different and how can we maintain this level of happiness.  This of course takes away from actually enjoying happiness.

I have made a number of changes over the past six months that really helped.  First the diet which I already hyped on in my last post also I have changed my routine ever so slightly and it has gotten me out of a rut.  I have to admit being off a lot from work really made me look at everything very closely. Once I got over the shock and fear of no business and the question "will I ever have another customer?" I could see the possibilities that free time can give you.

Silly I know but anyone that had a commission based job during the recession understands where I am coming from.  I have to admit for a few days I felt gripped with fear but then I remembered that I made it through that time regardless of the situation and that I would be taken care of even though I don't know exactly how at this moment.

Once I got over the fear I could see once again my part in being stuck and where like the program says "If you always do what you have always done then you will always get what you always got."  When I was sick with depression and thyroid meltdown I lived in survival mode and got use to just making it.  I only had the energy to do what had to be done and was willing to just maintain. I got use to not wanting for more and accepting that feeling okay was really good enough. Bad habits were formed.

This kind of thinking and acting is just a habit and something your mind gets accustomed to and tries to pull you back to in the event you want to make a change. Making changes is not only uncomfortable but also goes against our primal genetic code or lizard brain. So when you are making changes the voice inside is like "I don't like this. I would rather have a bag of tortilla chips."  Who can fight that? 

For me I just negotiate with that voice - telling it not to worry we will go back to the chips one day if we really want to.  Sounds crazy but let's face it the voice is not our friend when we are scared to do something different. The chips in my case represent the millions of good times I have had at Mexican restaurants with friends and it was the first food I bought when I left home a sixteen.  Doritos.

What if life will never be as good as those memories?  What if the future holds better times than those?  I think I have accepted that happiness isn't consistency but finding joy in today knowing that tomorrow we will face whatever comes.  We have to do that anyway so why ruin today.

I am back to being busy at work and missing that freedom I found from being caught up and having to use my imagination to fill my days.  I had forgotten what that was like and hadn't experience it since I was in school for design and off for the summer.  Being busy again I can appreciate both work and the security it gives me and also the ability to have a life outside of work.

If you want to get out of a rut start by changing just one thing.  It can be as small as taking a different route to work or eating lunch at a different time.  You brain will hate it but you will feel a little inspired.  Baby steps at least that is what worked for me.