- Mood:
chipper
And while I'm looking how I fall short of what is best for me I was reminded last night that as good of a communicator as I seem to think I am, really I sort of suck. More and more I keep seeing how I tell things out of context, often without even realizing it. Maybe all those times I have felt misunderstood it was really caused by my own misrepresentation of what I thought or felt. Just really going to work on paying much closer attention to what comes out of my mouth before I say it.
- Mood:
thoughtful
- Mood:
REALLY SAD
I can see now that I had to go back and understand who I was up to this point in order to move forward. Really I wanted the next part of my life to be very different. Or maybe what I wanted next was to try out Happy as a state of mind instead of depressed and sad. In order to do that though I had to go through and look at all the stuff that had kept me there. I can't say I was surprised at what I found, but I can't say I was expecting it either. I found that all the stuff that "happened" to me might not have had the greater affect on me when compared to how I "thought" about what happened to me. When I looked at my thoughts and feelings I realized I was caught up in a way of being that no longer served me. It had served me for a very long time, it saved me on more than one occasion and it is how I survived what "happened". But now, it doesn't have the same purpose or use to me anymore. More and more I look at my reactions to things and wonder who just said that or a second later I hear myself think "that's not how I really feel" as old trends release ideas out of my mouth before the real me can catch up.
I think the biggest areas that have been modified are around self image and issues around jealousy and insecurity. When I find my inner voice saying I'm unloved or worse unlovable I have to remind myself that just isn't true and here is all the evidence to prove otherwise. And as afraid as I am to being hurt and wondering if I really can trust anyone because of old hurts, I see now that I tend to hold a lot of folks responsible for things they didn't do. Things that came before and things which occurred because I didn't make different choices. Now when those twinges of jealousy hit my gut I'm more likely to ask myself "What am I afraid of" instead of reacting and letting the little ones act out. And when they do, I"m much quicker to see it and modify their outlook if and when I can. The answers to that question have not been easy to look at. The fear can be HUGE at times. Now though I can more easily see which fears are real and which aren't. One thing is that I know now more than ever exactly how much I am loved. I'm surrounded by it and often immersed in it even when I can't see it. It has come from places I didn't expect and from places I thought were lost. Yes, there are times when the truth is that I want to be loved in ways I am currently not, and that is hard and makes me ache for something more. The difference is that I no longer need to discredit all love just because it wasn't the form I hoped for. What I've found is that it's stronger and more sustainable in many cases than that I wish for could be. And just because someone loves you "differently" doesn't mean they love you "less".
I think one of the most surprising and happy things is that through this process of finding "new" ways to be, what I really found was an "old" me. I've found the me who has an incredible spirit and love for life. I found the person who builds good friendships easily because I'm a good person. I forgot I think that I'm ultimately a good person who wanted to live life so fully and owned that destiny. I got so caught up in myself for many years that I stopped living in many ways. I shut myself off to the outside world in ways that drained my humanity and life force instead of feeding it. I got so focused on who and what could save me I forgot to save myself. I forgot how strong I can be and how resourceful. I forgot to love fully for the sake of loving instead of out of some sense of what I might gain. In many ways I became more normal and lost the parts of me that were special.
Over the year as i've grown and changed and shifted my thoughts and perspectives some have questioned it. I've been accused of playing some sort of game to trick people into feeling a certain way about me. I've been angry and sad and confused about those perspectives on my changes. I've resented those ideas and those people who have thought that, seeing them as unwilling to believe I can be different. I resented those feelings and accusations, sometimes to the point of panic and determination to make them see it's real. I see now though that that's so not the point. This isn't about being anything for anyone other than myself. Because naysayers are naysayers and I have nothing to prove to anyone but me. This is about being proud of myself not accumilating a fan base. Plus the truth is I have a bigger fan base already that I haven't appreciated enough as it is.
So come tomorrow I don't expect myself to suddenly have all the answers or have it all in order. What I do expect of myself is to move forward out of my new knowledge instead of the old. I pose the challenge to answer the question, "What next?". In a lot of ways I never expected myself to live to see 40. Now that I'm here I expect myself to get my ass in gear and be something I can continue to be proud of. No more lame excuses to hold myself back from challenges and risks. I've played safe for several years now. I've been given great gifts and opportunities. It's about time I use them and stop wasting them. I have no idea where I'll be next year at this time, but I expect great things and have everything I need to accomplish them.
- Mood: hopeful
So these are the things I want to do so far. I know I am going to make myself a homemade Red Velvet cake using my southern friend John Blevin's family recipe. Thinking of making cupcakes and filling them with frosting but not sure yet. Might make the group outing something like miniature golf and dinner. I will be making myself a batch of carmel puffcorn (some find it addictive as heroin) with my last bag of imported puffcorn from MN. Need to find out from
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
yohannon when might be a good time for him to spend the night and make all my computer and TIVO stuff run wonderfully, along with a variety of wonderfully naughty things I'm sure. With the final sale of my father's house closing this Sunday I might actually get to also celebrate the end to that saga and the disaster that is my relationship with my sister, including hopefully a check for my half of the sale. And the final piece will hopefully be a trip to Denver at the beginning of July to visit Cindy in her new house and surroundings. It will be my first non-Minnesota vacation in what seems like decades. So this is just a sampling of all the exciting things to come in this upcoming Birthday season. Please make your reservations early, there is bound to be a rush (just a tad delusional maybe).- Mood:
giddy
Let's start with money. As I've paid closer attention to money over the last year of being unemployed and my struggles with Social Security around my disability bennefits I've started to notice a few things. When I'm stressed and worried about money it seems to create crisis. But as I've learned to see where my real strengths and resourses lie I seem to come across abundance. For instance in the last week I have went from being $400 ahead to $950 short to $600 ahead. Don't try to do the math you will just hurt yourself. The point is that it seems that the second I was able to accept that being $950 short did not mean the end of the world or anything close to it, things fell into place and I went back to being ahead. I discovered in myself that trusting that the people who said they loved me and wouldn't let me fall through the cracks opened myself up to being able to support myself more solidly. Somehow taking the risk of asking for help and accepting the help led to not actually needing the monitary help. Accepting that I had abundance seemed to lead to abundance.
This example has made me start to take an even closer look at other areas of my life that seem to be in constant crisis or at the very least disappointment. It all seems to be about surrender and faith. Back about 15 years I remember being at an extremely low place in my life and I having a conversation with my then roommate John Blevins. I remember him telling me how for him the ability to have faith in God gave him the courage to face things and find peace. He then went on to tell me that if he had one wish for me it was for me to be able to have faith in something bigger than me to surrender to. At the time I thought that having faith was a gift given to only some people, and I of course like everything else was not meant to have it. But I was struck so profoundly by how much Faith really seemed to have magical powers for him and I wanted that. What he probably has never known is how much that conversation and that wish he made for me has continued with me through the years. Every time I seem lost I think about that conversation and I think about faith. I think about what it means and I've struggled with where if I did have faith would I put it. And years later even though I've finally found the where and the who in terms of the Goddess and the Universe and Myself, holding on to faith continues to be this greased pig that keeps slipping away.
So I'm once again back on the quest for surrender. For finding the truth inside myself and mixing it with a large dose of Faith to hopefully create a tasty cocktail. Lately I feel caught under a sticky layer of gunk which is making me feel further and further from me. I seem to have forgotten who I am and my place in the universe. For the first time I can feel myself as the one creating the distance between myself and others. I can feel the bites of unworthiness which I seem to have led myself to believe are real. I'm watching love swirl around me and all I can feel is centripetal force pushing me to the outside not allowing me to step inside the circle. All I can see is how other fit and I don't. What I know though is that is illusion caused from not allowing myself to be in it.
From here I guess I sit in it. I let the feelings of worthlessness and disappointment and jealousy and insecurity wash through me and out of me. I replace them with Faith and Belief and watch as the illusions fade to show what is real.
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:Daughtry
- Mood:
amused
I think the hardest part of all of this though is the non-believers. Those who can't seem to trust my changes. Those who I understand have been hurt by the old me, and those who know how essential to my survival this current endeavor of mine is. How do I convince and reassure them? Can I? Or is it in trying to control it that I lose my credibility?
- Mood: contemplative
- Location:my cave
- Mood: crappy
My new theme here on LJ has several penguins looking up at the Aurora Borealiss (sp) which is perfect for me in so many ways. But today it got a new feature. On both my journal page and my friends page there is not a little penguin looking up at the front of each entries title. If you don't understand, you should ckeck it out because it is too cute. Have I told you all before that I sort of like penguins?
- Mood:
bouncy
So someone explain it to me. How is it that my belief system allows me to believe that asking the Universe for guidence and help is an option. That I thank the Goddess when good things happen, especially those things I have made a special request of. Yet when I've given something I ask for, but if the thing I am asking for isn't pretty I am supposed to suspend my belief? I'm supposed to write it off as coincidence? What kind of logic is that? Can anyone explain that to me?
I have so much to work through regarding both of them. So much I can't bare to look at. Things they did, things they didn't do, the countless contridictions that were my childhood and young adulthood. The way they would torture me one minute and do nice things the next.
Yet I loved my mother a great deal. That's the hard part. Plus what about the little ones? What about them? Their sadness wells up inside me like it just happened yesterday. I'm so lost inside these feelings. Yesterday I slept and watched TV and tried to hide from it all. Today, I'm not doing so good. I feel like if only I could scream loud enough to make the hard shell of the emotions that are crowding me spirit break away I could deal. I don't know.
- Mood: distressed
| There's a 52% Chance You've Been Abducted By Aliens |
 Maybe you've really been abducted by aliens... but probably not. Let's face it. You're just a little weirder than most people. |
- Mood: goofy
I have been extremely depressed for a while now again. I've trying to not accept it, but there it is. The easiest thing I had to blame it on was a new relationship that has been a little wobbly to say the least. I think I turned to that because I didn't know how else to explain it. I wanted a reason for the depression, seems a little easier to accept when there is a specific cause that if you just fix means the depression will go away. Problem is my depression is seldom incident specific entirely. But if it is chemical shouldn't the drugs be making it better? They do, they make it better than it would be if I wasn't on them. I'm not suicidal or even that tempted to cut. I'm just devastatingly sad and depressed and I just want to sleep and cry. In some ways when you think about it and compare it to other cycles of this I have had it's relatively mild. It doesn't feel mild though. For like two weeks now I haven't been able to focus on anything at work. I can't concentrate, I'm irritable and antsy. I feel resigned to what happens to me. I feel like my fight has drained out of me.
Thing is this will pass. The episode will do it's thing and eventually I will feel more and more stable for longer periods of time again and I'll go back to being semi-sane until the next round. I can't though ever seem to give myself permission to treat it like any other episodic chronic disease. I'm not in complete control of it. I can lessen the severity of the episodes and work to keep them at a minimum. But can I stop them or make them go away entirely? No, and yet each time I have one I do everything to do just that. I don't give myself permission to feel bad when I feel bad and feel good when I feel good. I don't take advantage of the times I feel good as much as I could and I beat myself up when I feel bad for feeling bad. Needless to say this gets me into a cycle that is often worse and more destructive than the depression itself. I think some day I will have a better grasp on this, but until then I have to just keep working at it.
The depression is real. I can't just snap out of it. I can though continue to have faith in myself to handle it. I know a lot about it now. For instance I know the episodes don't last forever the way they feel they will. I know that at this point in the cycle I am either hitting the bottom most point or am starting to move back up. Usually when I can finally own it for what it is it means I am close to being on the upswing. Someday I will know how to recognize it from the beginning and will learn how to shorten the cycles. I already have shortened them, I just don't know exactly how I am doing it yet. It's not in complete consciousness yet, but it will get there. It's a journey, a long sick and twisted journey like everything else in life.
Last night I check my horoscope at Free Will Astrology and this is what it said for this week:
Here's Caroline Myss' explanation of faith: "Faith is the power to stand up to the madness and chaos of the physical world while holding the position that nothing external has any authority over what heaven has in mind for you." If you don't like the word "heaven" in Myss' statement, Gemini, substitute a term that works for you, like "your higher self" or "your destiny" or "your soul's code." Modify anything else in there that's not quite right for your needs, as well. When you're finished tinkering, I hope you'll have created a definition of faith that motivates you with as much primal power as you feel when you're in love.
I needed to read this. This is a great definition of faith and is one I so believe in. It's also something good to remember when I am losing faith in myself and everything else for that matter. I'm strong and can hold on to all that is good in my life. There is a lot of it. It won't ever cure the depression completely, but it helps a hell of a lot.
- Mood: sad
Most people would probably like to be told that they are "the girl of their dreams." I on the other hand have learned to fear these words. It seems like the more a guy really, really likes me, the more likely they are to run from me and leave me feeling like nothing. I should have learned the first time or even the second, but now that it has happened again not sure exactly what to feel. Sometimes love sucks.
- Mood:
confused
| You are 22% High-Maintenance! | |||
| You aren't high-maintenance at all. You seem to be a pretty relaxed and easygoing person, and you don't expect others to cater to your whims. | |||
 |  | ||
 | |||
| 'How High-Maintenance are You?' at QuizGalaxy.com | |||
- Mood: cheerful
| What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Science/Math Nerd (Absolute Insane Laughter as you pour toxic chemicals into a foaming tub of death!) | |
| Literature Nerd | |
| Social Nerd | |
| Drama Nerd | |
| Artistic Nerd | |
| Gamer/Computer Nerd | |
| Musician | |
| Anime Nerd | |
| What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace | |
- Mood:
nerdy
I have been having incredible sex again and again lately. Like some amazing creature has taken over my body for the soul purpose of having amazing sex and it's me. Last year during my annual birthday debauchery, I had what I was convinced the best sex of my life. In the last nine months I have had that same experience on several occasions. In fact last week we had sex which to me seemed to defy the laws of physics. After we had finished, we lay together in the same position we had just had sex in. His was on top of me, his head nestled between my breasts and our bodies intertwined in an extremely intricate and surprisingly comfortable position. As we just sat there for a while, I wished more than anything that someone else had been there to take a picture because I was having a serious "How did we get like this?" moment. It was so awesome. it felt free, not bound by our physical bodies at all. In fact at one point it sort of felt to me like the energy was causing us to levitate off the bed. It was awesome. You have got to love that.
- Mood: bouncy
So Today, in her memory move your body. Dance and sing and celebrate life. Make love and fuck and celebrate your body. Then do it again tomorrow and the next. That is the best way we can honor this amazing woman's fight and work and everything she lived for.
- Mood: sad
I know I have been extremely quiet except for the ocassional meme that I just couldn't resist. I did though want to post a bit about my holiday. I fought for Friday off of work, finally having to use the religion card which I hated to do, and spent the day eating Thai food and doing last minute gift buying with Erika. Also with her arrival I received my first pressie which was an adorable soft fuzzy penguin stocking filled with white chocolate treats (two of my favorite things...penguins and white chocolate) and a variation of the Super Sex Sling seen here. Got to love a friend that gives you restraint and positioning toys for gifts.
On Saturday Yo, Roni and I went to see the Kinsey Sicks perform their traditional Holiday show of "Oy Vey in the Manger". As ususal it was hilarious and fun. Who doesn't love Rachel when she toments some poor audience member with "Where the Goys Are". This year though the victim volunteer almost stole the act from Rachel. And if you have ever seen them perform, it is not suggested to upstage any of them, but especially Rachel. We then listened to the CD of the show on the way home. You have too much Kinsey during the Holidaze.
Christmas Eve on Sunday was supposed to be spent down in Watsonville with my ex-roommate and his boyfriend but James got the flu so we decided to do it sometime in January when things aren't so chaotic. So instead I spent the day at home doing laundry in what felt like forever. I had intended to clean my house too, but due to a certain point of being really upset I decided it wasn't that important. I really need to do that tonight.
Christmas day I spent with my favorite Skunk and Ladybug. I got lots of really cool stuff. Including a Mumbles from the Build-A-Bear store. Even though he is a penguin and not a bear. But Roni even got him penguin jammies and a red plaid robe. He is so awesome. Emmitt was a little jealous when I brought him home, but he is ok now. The food was yummy as was the company.
Must admit that I am sort of glad it is over for another year. It has been a tough one. But now I have lots of new penguin stuff and get to go to celebrate another year with those I love.
- Mood:
calm
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