A new year- thoughts on the future

I picked up a book that I had started reading a few months ago and put down and this is the quote that jumped out at me:

 

“So whatever you do, just do it, without expecting anyone’s help. Don’t spoil your effort by seeking for shelter. Protect your-self and grow upright to the sky; that is all.” Shunryu Suzuki- Not always so

 

It was like slap in the face…the good kind. After I got over the hurt from two years ago, I wanted to escape and after that I wanted someone to fill the hole in my heart. I have been on the spiritual path and through enough therapy to know that this is my work to do but the illusion that another person could help and heal that emptiness is so seductive.

I was certain that I was leaving this town as soon as I could. That this place was nothing more than a lay over to heal my wounds and then move on to the promised land…wherever that might be. But it didn’t happen that way, not because there were not opportunities or because I didn’t try (tip to Portland) but my heart would not buy it.

Then I embarked on the dating distraction. This was highly entertaining but there came a moment when I realized that  I was not willing to risk anything so I stopped pretending. And then I met someone. Of course being me it had to be the most complicated and impossible person to be with. I came to realize slowing that was a large part of the attraction. Don’t get me wrong he had lots of other wonderful qualities but the nature of the whole situation suited my melancholy nature far too well. And in the end it proved to be the impossible situation I was seeking. Minus two points for walking into fire knowingly.

I know your thinking (she’s at it again rambling about god knows what again) but when I read that quote this morning and it was like something broke loose inside me. All this time I have wanted to survive, over come, forget, start over but I never loved myself enough to protect myself.  I put up walls and shut people out but that was only to avoid pain it was not to protect myself.

When I think about how I would begin to do that it seems hard. I am in danger from no one but myself and in many ways it is harder to counter than someone hitting me. My boss complimented me the other day and I shifted the credit to my team and she said “Amanda, take a little credit for your work.” It is so engrained to see myself as pass-able at best that I’m not sure where to begin pause the voices in my head, to protect myself from me.

But…I am going to try. Try to love my life because its mine, just the way it is. This holiday season was particularly hard, mostly because I didn’t make the effort to lie for other people’s comfort. When they asked if I was alone I said yes. When they asked if I was seeing my family I said no. When they asked if I was okay/ happy I mostly told the truth and said I didn’t know. If I had lied they would have gone on their blissful holiday way for the most part. But by telling the truth it gave me the opportunity to look at my feelings and choices. It hurt but it was honest.

As I go forward into this new year, I hope to be kinder and more forgiving to myself. I think it is a lesson I will be learning my whole life: how to love me.

 

 

Thoughts on the Holidays

So life…it’s the holiday season for me. I always want to love this time of year but for the past few years it has been hard not to see all the changes and differences in my life. My family does not do big get togethers. In fact Thanksgiving usually marks the beginning of my father’s “I hate Christmas/ this season in general,” story that I have had to listen to every year.

I last year I just wanted it to pass by but this year I find myself needing a little holiday cheer. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t have my own issues about the holidays. It is hard to listen to other people tell their happy stories and know that more than likely that will not be me. But I’m working on making my life what I want it to be instead.

I spent Thanksgiving with my friends and the weekend with my sister and her family. It was really wonderful. There was no drama, not fighting and I even clocked a few new good memories. Christmas is harder though. I can’t really remember a good one while I was married. We always went to see his family because he didn’t like/ was uncomfortable with mine.  And I have a hard time crashing someone else’s Christmas.  When I was child it was a special day for families (nuclear) and I don’t have one of those. Just me and the cats.

I’ll put up my tree sometimes this week and the boys (cats) will begin the yearly camp out.  I’ll burn candles that make the house smell nice and I’m sure a few batches of cookies as well. But all these things are just things. I miss singing carols with my sister. I miss baking with my mom. I miss having someone to share things with. I know that in part the distance is my choice. But I would rather have an empty Christmas than one that is filled with fighting and guilt.

So I’m off to find my own holiday. Don’t know if I’ll be successful but I’m going to give it a shot.

perspective: changing sides of me

Have you ever looked at yourself and been unsure of the person looking back at you? I find myself in such a state, it’s not bad parse but it is very different from the rest of my life.

I am a person who doesn’t really do labels of most kinds but I realize that this rule -like so many others- was only applied to the people outside of my head. For a long time I wanted to be the “good daughter” I’m not sure I even realized how far that one went until I didn’t want to do that any more. I wanted to be a “good student,” in HS and college. I never sassed my teachers and always did my homework.

I have tried and will continue to be a “good friend” though I know I get too caught up in my own stuff sometimes. When I was married  I desperately wanted to be a “good wife.” And I became another person to try to pull it off. I knew that I was a “good teacher, bad writer and someone who loved to sing and make art.”

But now precious few of these way of identifying myself feel real or wanted. And the terms I find myself thinking in feel different; sometimes comforting and others threatening. So many of the labels I had hurt to try to retain. I know there is something taking that space but I don’t know what it is. There are so many things I could do and I could be. And I know that the “you must have a purpose” part of me would love to just latch on to anything to keep from being a void. But that is where I am.

I have met a lot of interesting people lately that have caused me to think of myself in different lights and for that I am grateful. I have a strong inclination that the person I used to be is fading away. I am uncertain of the person I am becoming but I trust change. Some seeds take fire to sprout.

 

Gravity- Sara Baeilles

People often ask me what my marriage was like and why it ended, this song is so close to the way I felt during and at the end of it that I got chills the first time I heard it.

Ponderings: the moment between

It has been a while. In fact I have seriously contemplated taking down my blog b/c of lack of motivation to write about anything of real substance or meaning. Not that those things are not happening but I know that when I do not write-journals or anything- I am avoiding my thoughts and feelings.

I find something interesting and flashy: a project, new dedication to my job ect and intentionally forget about the rest. It is hard for me to define what it is that I am running from other than failure in general.  I am a person who perseveres, who survives but I wonder often, “at the cost of what?” What I mean is that for every choice we make we say yes or no to something. And I have the increasing feeling that the more I “survive” the less I really live. To live one has to be willing to fail, to try and inevitably lose sometimes. To survive one must only breath and keep going. I know that this is a mellow-dramatic and perhaps overly dark assessment of things but it is how my heart feels.

My latest distraction has been “trying” to date. Please pause for a moment while I laugh at myself. Though I did learn a few interesting things about myself, my nature and dating in your 30’s; most of what I learned was that my heart is not in it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an adrenalin and pheromone junkie like everyone else on that planet but the moment that I was at risk, I had to give anything, I shut it down. And that is just unfair to good people with different intentions.

So here I am smack in the middle of self assessment again. There is a part of me that feels like I should go back to counseling. There is a part of me that will not do that and there is another part of me that wonders when I will love/believe in myself enough to know I can make it and cut myself a break. But that feels very hard.

It is hard to look at the people I love in and out of my family and wonder if I only get the chance I lost. If I really don’t want kids or if I’m so scared they’ll be like me that I will not do that to my nonexistent spawn. I am so sick of listening to the same stories in my head but I don’t know how to change them. I’m so tired of being Alice giving very good advice and seldom following it.

What is the point to this self-pity rant you ask? That is if you are still reading. I’m in the moment between breaths. My old life is finally out of my lungs and I am happy for that. But I have no idea what the intake of new air will bring. So I hold my breath foolishly like a child, knowing that my body will make me breathe again, just like it made me live again.

I wish I were wiser and less afraid. I wish I had more compassion for my heart and what if feels. I wish I could accept that if I never fall in love again, get a “better” job or leave the state of Georgia that I will be fine, that I could even be happy, but I don’t believe it.

There is some deep place in me that keeps shouting it’s not good enough, it’s not safe enough and I am running out of time. The perspective part of me knows that most of what I just wrote is total BS. I have done amazing things and will do more and those accomplishments are mine. Many of them I did without the benefit of the life experiences that I have now and make me even better than before. But my heart doesn’t hear any of that. It only hurts when I don’t expect it, like tonight.

I know that my life will work itself out and I will be okay with it again. But it feels like it has been a long time since I felt that way. In January I will have lived here for two years and been divorced for one. It feels like such little progress, though I know the precious ground I have earned. I fear the first real steps on my own, I only see land mines hidden beneath the flowers of possibility.

Trust: poem

When did I first learn not to trust you?

Was it an unanswered cry in infancy?

A tearful, childish night I was sent back to bed without a hand to hold?

Or was it the nights I listened to stories yelled through the walls,

Shattering my illusions of home?

Was it the first time you doubted my judgment?

Pointed out how my “methods” needed improvement,

How different I am from you?

Or was it when you decided I wasn’t worth the sacrifice of anything to be in your life?

Was it when I realized that little girl still lived inside me?

That I had not managed to kill her with my rationals and coping mechanisms?

When you still loved those that failed to take care of you?

When you loved someone who could not love you in return?

I don’t remember. I only know that I want to try again.

Amanda C 2012