Alright, if we’re doing this, if this is me blogging as my life unfolds, and I don’t get to make crap up and work in a quicker conclusion that ends with me getting sexed up by some guy so much bigger than me that it makes my head spin, then I guess I should tie up one of the loose ends I’ve got dangling out there. (Oh, and get your mind out of the gutter if you are just coming to my blog. Bigger has nothing to do with penis size. The previous blog entry: Live BIG, will explain what bigger means.)
Anyway, I found out what the hold up with Mr. Fix Up has been and there’s really not much more to report except, at least for now, we’re done with that. If that one crops back up again, that’s not up to me. That’s up to the universe, and up to all that divine planning and/or all those coincidences I’ve not been given an advanced copy of.
I’m not going to give you the specific details on what the hold up/dead stop was/is, because it doesn’t feel right for me to share something about someone I never met. Yeah, yeah. That’s boring. I know. But there’s that whole he-gets-his privacy thing, especially since I don’t know him, and even if you don’t know his name, my reference of him, in any fashion, is enough to send energy his way (Remember? We’re all connected.) so I am trying to be respectful.
That said, what’s the short answer? So you have a little something to chew on? Well, let’s just put it in the neighborhood of what I call the wrong-time bag. It’s the wrong time for him.
This wrong time bag? It’s got a lot of things thrown into it. I’m no stranger to this bag. Sometimes it’s been my wrong time. Other times, it’s been the guy’s wrong time. There was this one guy where it was the right time when we started (oh was it, he chased me down) but when his dad became sick with cancer it became the wrong time for him. There was another guy, a different guy, where we met, we went out, just the once, and it was awesome, then his dad died. Wrong, wrong time.
(And don’t ask me what’s up with my luck and guys with sick dads, because I have not one clue.)
So, Mr. Fix Up, this is not the right time for him. It has nothing to do with me and no one died, but when it is the wrong time for a guy it’s as simple as that. It’s the wrong time.
I thought I’d tie up one more loose end and clarify something if it wasn’t already clear. If it seems like I am always very cloak and dagger about people’s identities, and to that end it seems like I am always calling people by some en-dashed-adjective-descriptive-type-name, it’s because I am. Once again, for those in the back, this is ‘my’ blog. This is my truth (which I am still getting my feet wet on, this whole telling the truth in my writing thing, especially when I am traditionally a story weaver), and I have no desire to unveil the identities of others who would no sooner want someone knowing about them than I would want to expose anything about them.
But, if we’re talking about fake names here, and adjectives as names, I wanted to throw it out that Chad and Heather (Jen calls them Cheather), my GOOD neighbors, that’s their real names. They told me not to use fake names for them. They said, “Write what ever the hell you want. We trust you. We’ve got nothing to hide.”
Since they live next to me, are two of my best friends, and have become like family, they’ll show up a lot in my posts, especially because Chad’s funny as hell and there are going to be times I have to share what he says because, well, it’s just good, man.
This brings me to my hormones. (This is going somewhere. I promise.) As I blogged about before, my hormones have been raging. Ever since I gave up birth control to try to deal with my hereditary high blood pressure issue I think my hormones have been causing some off-the-deep-end crying bouts. True, I am dealing with the stress of a shitty job and bad neighbors (not Cheather), but I’ve been unusually emotional. (BTW, the cardio stress test is this Monday. Wish me luck I can go for a run again!!! I need some way to get this pent up… ‘nuf said.)
To that end I was explaining to Chad and Heather that I’m over the whole crying rollercoaster thing that going off the pill has seemed to cause. I told them, “Yeah. I think I need to just go back on the pill.”
Chad’s response? “I think you need to just go back on penis.”
When I told Jen what Chad said, she said, “Tell Chad that penis doesn’t come in a convenient Monday-Sunday mood-leveling package of blue and yellow pills.” Then she thought about it for a second and added, “Wouldn’t that be great, though, if you could go to your doctor and ask for a prescription of the good penis, the kind that won’t mess with your emotions? Why can’t they just have a prescription for that?”
“They don’t need a prescription, Jen. It’s called a vibrator,” I said. Then I told her that Chad was right, I needed to get back on the do-it team. Get out of retirement and just get some exercise.
Sigh. If only man mana could fall from the sky. Or, maybe Shy-Guy could grow a pair over night and ask me out next week. I’m sorry. Was that the sound of an alarm I heard?
Time to wake up.
Ah, well, all things in time. I’d just like a new job and quieter neighbors for now.
One more loose end. That chick who emailed me and asked me if I was sleeping with her boyfriend, well I got an email from her a couple of weeks ago. She said she was still single and not getting back together with him. Good, I thought. Then a couple of days ago I saw that she had no choice. He’d announced his engagement on Facebook, to another girl. Yikes.
There's probably a bit more to it, and more that I could write and ponder, but my pinky hurts. Can't type anymore. So, that’s all for now.
Keep being fabulous.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Live BIG
Have you ever had the experience of seeing something one way, of feeling that you understood something for all that needed to be understood about it, then, years later, someone else says something, or something else happens, and whatever view you thought you had of that thing breaks wide open? That recently happened to me. It was almost magical, this experience. It was like I'd always wanted some water for my mud but didn't know it.
When I was about 22, 23, maybe 24 years old (that was for you, Willa), it was one of my favorite ex-boyfriends, one who I’ve not mentioned in any of my blog posts, until now, who said one of those “somethings” to me that recently became clearer. He said, “You’re big. You are one of the biggest people I will ever know in my lifetime.”
By no means was he trying to infer that I was fat. I was actually quite petite then. Tiny, even. In fact, I was about 25-30 pounds lighter than I am now. I knew he was complimenting me. And, at the time, I thought I knew what he meant. But I now know that I didn’t, not exactly. Not completely.
Perhaps that is why what he said has always resonated in me. Maybe the things that really mean something, the powerful things, are meant to remain within us. Even if we don't know why they are hang'n out, just chill'n inside, they're probably just lingering until we can get a good hold of them.
That would make sense, that we might need to build up steam to catch up with whatever is bigger than we are at the moment those occasions first present themselves in our lives. And, maybe the good stuff, the stuff that is, indeed, wonderful, and stuffed full of meaning, isn't meant to be chewed up in one sitting. It could be that those things are supposed to amplify throughout our lives. They are supposed to become like good friends that we get to know better over time, instead of being like the experience of eating a big, fat steak. The one we get full on right before we get drunk and fall asleep and can’t remember shit.
This ex-boyfriend of mine went on to say, “You’re just different,” and he also said, much later, after we’d broken up but remained friends (neither of us could take the long-distance relationship thing anymore), “Just because we didn’t work in this life doesn’t mean we won’t work another time. We will always be connected. We’ll have another chance,” he promised me.
I would never forget that promise, and I would never forget that he used the word "big" to describe me. More interesting, is how big this guy was. And no, he wasn't fat, either. He was Brad Pitt’s body with a curly, blonde mullet. (Oh, relax on the mullet. It was the early 90s. Michael Bolton look-alikes were hot then.) Yes, this man was so big he was unlike any man I'd ever met, then, or have met, since.
This guy, he knew who he was. Boy oh boy, did he. One time when I asked him why he wasn't going to visit his family when they wanted him to come for the holidays, and when I implied that he was, perhaps, acting selfishly, and went on to insinuate that he should do it for them (make that visit), to that, he said, "Selfish is the last thing I am being. It's not a good time for me right now. I wouldn’t be there. I'd be at work, busy in my mind. But if I go when I can be present, then I'm not visiting just because they want me to. I’ll be visiting because I also want to go. Therefore, I will be there, not somewhere else. It'll be a better visit for everyone."
How novel. The idea of taking care of oneself so that one can better take care of and be present for those they love. Yes, he was a pioneer.
He knew we were going to meet, you know. He told me this on what was, technically to be, our 3rd date. He said he'd had a feeling that when he came to California (on business) that he'd meet someone who would be very special to him. This feeling washed over him while walking on the beach. (In retrospect, it's kinda cool that he was the first guy I had sex on the beach with.) "The instant you spoke to me I knew you were the girl," he said. (I was waiting tables back then and he was a customer in the restaurant I worked at.)
He was not psychic. However, he, like me, was very much in touch with his intuition. He was also very tuned into a great many things spiritual before metaphysics and/or spirituality was fashionable.
What I really loved about him, was that he was an engineer, and he was, in that way, an apposing anomaly to the force of the free and spiritual mind he also was. One of the first spiritual teachers of my life…a numbers man, that’s poetry.
He really was insane smart with numbers and all things engineerish. He could look at one of those math problems, which takes most people two pages to write out/figure out, and could work it out in his head, then go out drinking, a lot, and, hours later, come home and write the solution down as though it was already written on the paper. That used to turn me on to no end, watching his brilliance in that way, and in other ways.
Yes, this man, we'll call him the engineer, remains to be, in my mind and in my heart, so much more than I can imagine most people being and, as such, just having known him, he still adds to me. Imagine having someone see in you things you haven't even grown into yet. That is, well, it's…indescribable. It's big.
I have had dreams about the engineer that do not seem like dreams. We are not making love or doing anything you'd expect someone to do with a hot ex-boyfriend in their dreams. We're just being. He's just there and I am just there. Often we’re talking about what’s gone on in our day or what is on our mind as it pertains to our life. And these dreams, while I feel a little weird to admit it, always feel more like outer-body rendezvous. I've not had one of these dreams in a very long while, years even, but, having written about the engineer, I will likely have one soon.
Anyway, I recently watched a Barbara Walters Oscar special. Sandra Bullock (SB) was on and she was the one who said the something that turned the engineer's words from mud to water. Barbara had asked Sandra about her finally getting married, to Jesse James, when she, Sandra, had before appeared not to want to ever be married. SB had apparently insinuated as much to Barbara in the past. (Remember, I am always paraphrasing my understanding of things/conversations).
And Sandra said, "You know, I'd always had this feeling that if you got married it was like the end of who you were.” I got that. I felt SB was saying that she feared the end of her because of marriage. I even remember one of my best friends, Eve, saying the same thing before she married her husband. It was her worse fear, that she’d lose her self to him or to the union, or worse, to both.
But, while I got what I thought she meant, that’s never been the case for me. I have never feared losing myself. Not to marriage. Not really. Not specifically. I get how fierce the need can be to hold onto oneself and to not want to get lost in the tide that can tow one under when the relationship takes over and the two people in that relationship are no longer themselves but have, instead, become a "couple" a "them". But, that fear, what she said about marriage, what she seemed to fear about marriage, that wasn’t the mud-to-water good smack her words gave me.
It was when Bullock explained why Jesse was the one she did want to marry and said, “I just never met anyone that was bigger than me," that the light went on. That, oh that, um…hello dear clarity! Hello SB succinctly putting into words what I’ve never been able to say and never really knew, consciously, that I didn’t have the words for before.
Somewhere I think I’ve always been trying to explain this concept. Shoot, when I was only 17 years old, and I still cannot believe I said this to my mom (as I was well trained, my generation, not to cuss, speak out, speak up, or anything of the kind, to our elders), I said, "The man who has got bigger balls than me is going to be the man for me."
Really? This was what I chose to say in response to my mother suggesting that I might need to keep my silver tongue at bay, and that my personality, already then a bit of a presence in a room, might need to be reined in a bit so as not to scare men off. Yowza, that says something about me. I couldn’t contain me even when I didn’t know me.
Those words just shot out of my mouth, the balls reference. My mother and I, both stunned by my use of the word “balls”, in any context that meant a man’s balls, did what we were supposed to do. We, riding on the heels of two different generations, a repressed Leave-it-to-Beaver generation, hers, then mine, her generations’ polar opposite, a pot-smoke’n-F!-the-Vietnam-war-make-love generation, acted like it never happened. I never said what I said. I didn’t say balls to my mom. I didn't make it worse by describing the balls as big. Under the rug and out of radar it all went. She asked me if I’d made the salad for dinner yet and we moved on.
But, even at 17, I think I knew it wouldn’t be okay for me to be fine with a life and with a love outlined by society’s black and white definition. I’d felt, even as young, and as seemingly unaware of myself, as I was, liberated by and standing on the giant shoulders of the beautiful women who came before me. Trails had been blazed, and I got that, even if I couldn't say it out loud or describe it yet. Shoot, dolphin shorts and zip-around-the-crotch pants had replaced dresses and kitchen aprons. I would have to have been a corpse not to feel the change in the air.
But, it’s so much more than that, more than that call inside, more than the wanting something beyond the generational template that one has been told to sign up to. It is a big, gigantic deal being lucky enough to be a part of a history, of a time and a generation, that not only says that it is okay to recognize and cherish every part of who you are and where you’ve come from, it is now your duty. The freedom of being able to make your own choices is unmatched. But it goes deeper than understanding that you MUST honor the past, you MUST honor yourself, and you MUST honors others.
True, we don't always honor ourselves. I have some one-night-stands in my early twenties, some past bad choices in friends and in men, and some really shitty jobs I stayed in way too long to prove that. But, so what. We fall. Now and again, sometimes too much, we warble and wonder what is best. We don’t always know the answers.
But enough have gone before us and have suffered so that we don’t have to. Therefore, why not prove that their suffering, our own suffering, that all the mistakes we're supposed to learn from (even if we need to make some of those same mistakes over and over), are worth us evolving?
That’s become my evolution, you know, to take myself seriously enough to be able to look at myself when I need to, and to not take myself so seriously that I’m too hard on myself if I do something that sucks. That’s why it’s always made sense to me that I’ve wanted someone for myself who is just as willing to honor and to protect me in the way I’ve learned to cherish myself. Why wouldn’t I want someone as big as me, if not bigger? And when I say big, I don’t mean bigger in that way big means bigger as better. I mean being big in recognition.
We all need to be seen. As you may recall I’ve said this before, and I have no problem repeating this a thousand times. We need to be seen for everything we are and for everything we cannot see in ourselves. We just do. And when someone is bigger than you, and/or you are bigger than them, that just means that they can see you and you can see them. That’s as big as it gets.
When they treasure all the pieces of you, enough that they’d know how to put you back together if you fell, that’s it. That's so it! I don't mean that they are your net. People are not supposed to be our backbone in place of our own strength. Not for the duration, anyway. But if someone knows how many bones in your back a situation has broken, if they are a mirror of sorts, while you're trying to square your shoulders back up, while you are trying to find your up from your down again, well, that’s meeting someone bigger than you. Knowing what those pieces are in someone else, even the tiniest ones that sometimes seem insignificant (but so terrifically make up the whole), that’s really, magically seeing someone else.
The engineer, he could see me. He knew that my big laugh was not flamboyant. He told me that, when I tried to hold my laugh back one time. He said, "Don’t do that." He knew that my laugh was then, and still is, a natural tendency in me and, a lot of the time, I can’t put controls on how I laugh, or how I live.
I want, no, I need to eat, drink in, and suck life up. When I breath in life in that way, without a filter, no straw, it comes back out just as robust. Sad or happy. That's why I don’t know how to love small. I don’t know how to laugh little. I don’t know to how passion down or squelch cries and smiles.
Bottom line: I don't know how to eat less life. I'm a hungry girl, man. And, I doubt I'd change that hunger in me even if I could. I won’t lie, it's tough being me sometimes, but I only know how to do me.
He knew that, the engineer, that authenticity would course through my blood with or without me at the pump. Now, that I am older, I know it too. I accept that about me, that life comes to me like a milkshake, a sweet head rush you can’t stop. And, now that Sandra Bullock said it for me, in a way that says it clearly, I know what I’ve been looking for all this time since my last serious relationship. I’ve been holding out for what I’ve already experienced. I’ve been waiting for another man who is bigger than me.
I want someone who knows himself well enough that he’d be capable of seeing me, as I’ve been seen by the engineer, by Mr. Gold Standard, by a few others.
Non of these men were perfect. I wouldn’t have wanted them to be. Neither was I. Nor am I now. But they were willing; they were just as determined as I've always been to work towards understanding—understanding of the relationship, of themselves, and of me.
That matters.
I know we're all fish out of water. But we are made up of so many little and big things that make us so uniquely, opulently us, it is mind blowing. I’d prefer to meet someone who gets this, too. Seriously, I am sometimes awestruck when I think of what true warrior spirits we all have in our beings. I firmly believe that the way our spirits manifest, what allows others to see in us what makes us so heaven dropped, is divine.
Sometimes we have gifts we share with others, a lot of others, like a stunning singing voice that joins the masses together in concert. Other times the way someone can make another person feel like they are the only one in the room is a gift. Whatever makes us uniquely us, makes us big.
We’re so damn BIG!
So the next time someone looks at you with that look, where they are shaking their head at you because you just ‘got’ them, when no one else has, they are feeling seen by you. The next time a friend, or a stranger, compliments you on something, like maybe the color you are wearing…know that it’s not the color they noticed against your skin. They just got a glimpse of who you are because that color brings you out more. You’ve been seen.
Everyday people see the real us. There are a million little ways we connect and someone notices how big we are. But what we are all hoping for, in our friendships, and in love, in all our connections, is for someone to be big enough to see us a little more than most people can. When that happens, that’s huge!
***
Ahh, shit!
Then, what happens? As this post was waiting there to be posted, as I figured: Eh. I’ll get to it in a day or two, or five, I hear on the radio that Jessie cheated on Sandra. Oohf. Talk about needing a new conclusion to a post. Had I posted this entry without mentioning the cheating thing, it would be like this post had a big piece of parsley on its two front teeth.
So, let’s scrape the parsley off. I’ve said it before, and I just said it a couple of paragraphs ago, and everyone knows it: We all make mistakes. None of us are perfect. We weren’t meant to be. It’s how we learn to live with our flaws and what we do after our falls that makes us so beautiful. That’s what our true character is.
However, when a failing in us hurts someone else, when our need to figure out who we are, how to make ourselves bigger, causes someone else pain, we are allowing our journey to make us smaller. We can say Sandra Bullock was a victim of what they call the best actress Oscar curse, where after an actress gets the Oscar their relationship falls apart, but it does not matter how we call this one.
The fact remains that her husband’s need, any man or woman’s need, to fill themselves up with someone outside of their marriage is a misguided attempt to re-cement their identity. Unfortunately, who we really are cannot be answered in the sex of someone else, one’s spouse or one’s extra-marital affair. Who we are is also not because of, in spite of, or proxy to someone else’s success. Whatever someone else is, becomes, or doesn’t, doesn’t make us up.
If I am not being clear enough, what I am trying to say is that there is a difference between seeing someone else and being seen by someone else versus expecting someone else to tell you who you are or you trying to tell someone who they are. If we are looking for someone else to tell us who we are, we’re living small. Again, you have to know who you are in order to be able to see someone else.
So, if you aren’t living big yet, get to know yourself. But, remember, living big never means living, loving, or searching for whatever is big in you at the expense of someone else.
Keep being fabulous!
When I was about 22, 23, maybe 24 years old (that was for you, Willa), it was one of my favorite ex-boyfriends, one who I’ve not mentioned in any of my blog posts, until now, who said one of those “somethings” to me that recently became clearer. He said, “You’re big. You are one of the biggest people I will ever know in my lifetime.”
By no means was he trying to infer that I was fat. I was actually quite petite then. Tiny, even. In fact, I was about 25-30 pounds lighter than I am now. I knew he was complimenting me. And, at the time, I thought I knew what he meant. But I now know that I didn’t, not exactly. Not completely.
Perhaps that is why what he said has always resonated in me. Maybe the things that really mean something, the powerful things, are meant to remain within us. Even if we don't know why they are hang'n out, just chill'n inside, they're probably just lingering until we can get a good hold of them.
That would make sense, that we might need to build up steam to catch up with whatever is bigger than we are at the moment those occasions first present themselves in our lives. And, maybe the good stuff, the stuff that is, indeed, wonderful, and stuffed full of meaning, isn't meant to be chewed up in one sitting. It could be that those things are supposed to amplify throughout our lives. They are supposed to become like good friends that we get to know better over time, instead of being like the experience of eating a big, fat steak. The one we get full on right before we get drunk and fall asleep and can’t remember shit.
This ex-boyfriend of mine went on to say, “You’re just different,” and he also said, much later, after we’d broken up but remained friends (neither of us could take the long-distance relationship thing anymore), “Just because we didn’t work in this life doesn’t mean we won’t work another time. We will always be connected. We’ll have another chance,” he promised me.
I would never forget that promise, and I would never forget that he used the word "big" to describe me. More interesting, is how big this guy was. And no, he wasn't fat, either. He was Brad Pitt’s body with a curly, blonde mullet. (Oh, relax on the mullet. It was the early 90s. Michael Bolton look-alikes were hot then.) Yes, this man was so big he was unlike any man I'd ever met, then, or have met, since.
This guy, he knew who he was. Boy oh boy, did he. One time when I asked him why he wasn't going to visit his family when they wanted him to come for the holidays, and when I implied that he was, perhaps, acting selfishly, and went on to insinuate that he should do it for them (make that visit), to that, he said, "Selfish is the last thing I am being. It's not a good time for me right now. I wouldn’t be there. I'd be at work, busy in my mind. But if I go when I can be present, then I'm not visiting just because they want me to. I’ll be visiting because I also want to go. Therefore, I will be there, not somewhere else. It'll be a better visit for everyone."
How novel. The idea of taking care of oneself so that one can better take care of and be present for those they love. Yes, he was a pioneer.
He knew we were going to meet, you know. He told me this on what was, technically to be, our 3rd date. He said he'd had a feeling that when he came to California (on business) that he'd meet someone who would be very special to him. This feeling washed over him while walking on the beach. (In retrospect, it's kinda cool that he was the first guy I had sex on the beach with.) "The instant you spoke to me I knew you were the girl," he said. (I was waiting tables back then and he was a customer in the restaurant I worked at.)
He was not psychic. However, he, like me, was very much in touch with his intuition. He was also very tuned into a great many things spiritual before metaphysics and/or spirituality was fashionable.
What I really loved about him, was that he was an engineer, and he was, in that way, an apposing anomaly to the force of the free and spiritual mind he also was. One of the first spiritual teachers of my life…a numbers man, that’s poetry.
He really was insane smart with numbers and all things engineerish. He could look at one of those math problems, which takes most people two pages to write out/figure out, and could work it out in his head, then go out drinking, a lot, and, hours later, come home and write the solution down as though it was already written on the paper. That used to turn me on to no end, watching his brilliance in that way, and in other ways.
Yes, this man, we'll call him the engineer, remains to be, in my mind and in my heart, so much more than I can imagine most people being and, as such, just having known him, he still adds to me. Imagine having someone see in you things you haven't even grown into yet. That is, well, it's…indescribable. It's big.
I have had dreams about the engineer that do not seem like dreams. We are not making love or doing anything you'd expect someone to do with a hot ex-boyfriend in their dreams. We're just being. He's just there and I am just there. Often we’re talking about what’s gone on in our day or what is on our mind as it pertains to our life. And these dreams, while I feel a little weird to admit it, always feel more like outer-body rendezvous. I've not had one of these dreams in a very long while, years even, but, having written about the engineer, I will likely have one soon.
Anyway, I recently watched a Barbara Walters Oscar special. Sandra Bullock (SB) was on and she was the one who said the something that turned the engineer's words from mud to water. Barbara had asked Sandra about her finally getting married, to Jesse James, when she, Sandra, had before appeared not to want to ever be married. SB had apparently insinuated as much to Barbara in the past. (Remember, I am always paraphrasing my understanding of things/conversations).
And Sandra said, "You know, I'd always had this feeling that if you got married it was like the end of who you were.” I got that. I felt SB was saying that she feared the end of her because of marriage. I even remember one of my best friends, Eve, saying the same thing before she married her husband. It was her worse fear, that she’d lose her self to him or to the union, or worse, to both.
But, while I got what I thought she meant, that’s never been the case for me. I have never feared losing myself. Not to marriage. Not really. Not specifically. I get how fierce the need can be to hold onto oneself and to not want to get lost in the tide that can tow one under when the relationship takes over and the two people in that relationship are no longer themselves but have, instead, become a "couple" a "them". But, that fear, what she said about marriage, what she seemed to fear about marriage, that wasn’t the mud-to-water good smack her words gave me.
It was when Bullock explained why Jesse was the one she did want to marry and said, “I just never met anyone that was bigger than me," that the light went on. That, oh that, um…hello dear clarity! Hello SB succinctly putting into words what I’ve never been able to say and never really knew, consciously, that I didn’t have the words for before.
Somewhere I think I’ve always been trying to explain this concept. Shoot, when I was only 17 years old, and I still cannot believe I said this to my mom (as I was well trained, my generation, not to cuss, speak out, speak up, or anything of the kind, to our elders), I said, "The man who has got bigger balls than me is going to be the man for me."
Really? This was what I chose to say in response to my mother suggesting that I might need to keep my silver tongue at bay, and that my personality, already then a bit of a presence in a room, might need to be reined in a bit so as not to scare men off. Yowza, that says something about me. I couldn’t contain me even when I didn’t know me.
Those words just shot out of my mouth, the balls reference. My mother and I, both stunned by my use of the word “balls”, in any context that meant a man’s balls, did what we were supposed to do. We, riding on the heels of two different generations, a repressed Leave-it-to-Beaver generation, hers, then mine, her generations’ polar opposite, a pot-smoke’n-F!-the-Vietnam-war-make-love generation, acted like it never happened. I never said what I said. I didn’t say balls to my mom. I didn't make it worse by describing the balls as big. Under the rug and out of radar it all went. She asked me if I’d made the salad for dinner yet and we moved on.
But, even at 17, I think I knew it wouldn’t be okay for me to be fine with a life and with a love outlined by society’s black and white definition. I’d felt, even as young, and as seemingly unaware of myself, as I was, liberated by and standing on the giant shoulders of the beautiful women who came before me. Trails had been blazed, and I got that, even if I couldn't say it out loud or describe it yet. Shoot, dolphin shorts and zip-around-the-crotch pants had replaced dresses and kitchen aprons. I would have to have been a corpse not to feel the change in the air.
But, it’s so much more than that, more than that call inside, more than the wanting something beyond the generational template that one has been told to sign up to. It is a big, gigantic deal being lucky enough to be a part of a history, of a time and a generation, that not only says that it is okay to recognize and cherish every part of who you are and where you’ve come from, it is now your duty. The freedom of being able to make your own choices is unmatched. But it goes deeper than understanding that you MUST honor the past, you MUST honor yourself, and you MUST honors others.
True, we don't always honor ourselves. I have some one-night-stands in my early twenties, some past bad choices in friends and in men, and some really shitty jobs I stayed in way too long to prove that. But, so what. We fall. Now and again, sometimes too much, we warble and wonder what is best. We don’t always know the answers.
But enough have gone before us and have suffered so that we don’t have to. Therefore, why not prove that their suffering, our own suffering, that all the mistakes we're supposed to learn from (even if we need to make some of those same mistakes over and over), are worth us evolving?
That’s become my evolution, you know, to take myself seriously enough to be able to look at myself when I need to, and to not take myself so seriously that I’m too hard on myself if I do something that sucks. That’s why it’s always made sense to me that I’ve wanted someone for myself who is just as willing to honor and to protect me in the way I’ve learned to cherish myself. Why wouldn’t I want someone as big as me, if not bigger? And when I say big, I don’t mean bigger in that way big means bigger as better. I mean being big in recognition.
We all need to be seen. As you may recall I’ve said this before, and I have no problem repeating this a thousand times. We need to be seen for everything we are and for everything we cannot see in ourselves. We just do. And when someone is bigger than you, and/or you are bigger than them, that just means that they can see you and you can see them. That’s as big as it gets.
When they treasure all the pieces of you, enough that they’d know how to put you back together if you fell, that’s it. That's so it! I don't mean that they are your net. People are not supposed to be our backbone in place of our own strength. Not for the duration, anyway. But if someone knows how many bones in your back a situation has broken, if they are a mirror of sorts, while you're trying to square your shoulders back up, while you are trying to find your up from your down again, well, that’s meeting someone bigger than you. Knowing what those pieces are in someone else, even the tiniest ones that sometimes seem insignificant (but so terrifically make up the whole), that’s really, magically seeing someone else.
The engineer, he could see me. He knew that my big laugh was not flamboyant. He told me that, when I tried to hold my laugh back one time. He said, "Don’t do that." He knew that my laugh was then, and still is, a natural tendency in me and, a lot of the time, I can’t put controls on how I laugh, or how I live.
I want, no, I need to eat, drink in, and suck life up. When I breath in life in that way, without a filter, no straw, it comes back out just as robust. Sad or happy. That's why I don’t know how to love small. I don’t know how to laugh little. I don’t know to how passion down or squelch cries and smiles.
Bottom line: I don't know how to eat less life. I'm a hungry girl, man. And, I doubt I'd change that hunger in me even if I could. I won’t lie, it's tough being me sometimes, but I only know how to do me.
He knew that, the engineer, that authenticity would course through my blood with or without me at the pump. Now, that I am older, I know it too. I accept that about me, that life comes to me like a milkshake, a sweet head rush you can’t stop. And, now that Sandra Bullock said it for me, in a way that says it clearly, I know what I’ve been looking for all this time since my last serious relationship. I’ve been holding out for what I’ve already experienced. I’ve been waiting for another man who is bigger than me.
I want someone who knows himself well enough that he’d be capable of seeing me, as I’ve been seen by the engineer, by Mr. Gold Standard, by a few others.
Non of these men were perfect. I wouldn’t have wanted them to be. Neither was I. Nor am I now. But they were willing; they were just as determined as I've always been to work towards understanding—understanding of the relationship, of themselves, and of me.
That matters.
I know we're all fish out of water. But we are made up of so many little and big things that make us so uniquely, opulently us, it is mind blowing. I’d prefer to meet someone who gets this, too. Seriously, I am sometimes awestruck when I think of what true warrior spirits we all have in our beings. I firmly believe that the way our spirits manifest, what allows others to see in us what makes us so heaven dropped, is divine.
Sometimes we have gifts we share with others, a lot of others, like a stunning singing voice that joins the masses together in concert. Other times the way someone can make another person feel like they are the only one in the room is a gift. Whatever makes us uniquely us, makes us big.
We’re so damn BIG!
So the next time someone looks at you with that look, where they are shaking their head at you because you just ‘got’ them, when no one else has, they are feeling seen by you. The next time a friend, or a stranger, compliments you on something, like maybe the color you are wearing…know that it’s not the color they noticed against your skin. They just got a glimpse of who you are because that color brings you out more. You’ve been seen.
Everyday people see the real us. There are a million little ways we connect and someone notices how big we are. But what we are all hoping for, in our friendships, and in love, in all our connections, is for someone to be big enough to see us a little more than most people can. When that happens, that’s huge!
***
Ahh, shit!
Then, what happens? As this post was waiting there to be posted, as I figured: Eh. I’ll get to it in a day or two, or five, I hear on the radio that Jessie cheated on Sandra. Oohf. Talk about needing a new conclusion to a post. Had I posted this entry without mentioning the cheating thing, it would be like this post had a big piece of parsley on its two front teeth.
So, let’s scrape the parsley off. I’ve said it before, and I just said it a couple of paragraphs ago, and everyone knows it: We all make mistakes. None of us are perfect. We weren’t meant to be. It’s how we learn to live with our flaws and what we do after our falls that makes us so beautiful. That’s what our true character is.
However, when a failing in us hurts someone else, when our need to figure out who we are, how to make ourselves bigger, causes someone else pain, we are allowing our journey to make us smaller. We can say Sandra Bullock was a victim of what they call the best actress Oscar curse, where after an actress gets the Oscar their relationship falls apart, but it does not matter how we call this one.
The fact remains that her husband’s need, any man or woman’s need, to fill themselves up with someone outside of their marriage is a misguided attempt to re-cement their identity. Unfortunately, who we really are cannot be answered in the sex of someone else, one’s spouse or one’s extra-marital affair. Who we are is also not because of, in spite of, or proxy to someone else’s success. Whatever someone else is, becomes, or doesn’t, doesn’t make us up.
If I am not being clear enough, what I am trying to say is that there is a difference between seeing someone else and being seen by someone else versus expecting someone else to tell you who you are or you trying to tell someone who they are. If we are looking for someone else to tell us who we are, we’re living small. Again, you have to know who you are in order to be able to see someone else.
So, if you aren’t living big yet, get to know yourself. But, remember, living big never means living, loving, or searching for whatever is big in you at the expense of someone else.
Keep being fabulous!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Ahhh...Ode to my GOOD neighbors!!!
Well, it was one of those days again. Got woken up by the bad neighbors, earlier than I wanted to wake up and, soon after, couldn’t take the constant thumping. So, I left my house for the day. I ran errands I didn’t need to run just not to be at home. Then, to stay way longer, I went to a movie with Chloe.
(BTW, thanks, Chloe, for being one of my beautiful diversions, and, yes, we are so going back for the $1.00 tacos next Monday! And thanks Tim Burton for that great version of Alice and Wonderland. Oh, Johnny Depp, you rock, too!)
When I got back home, I was immediately wound up again by the bad neighbors, but thanks to my GOOD neighbors, Heather and Chad, they chilled me back out by getting just outside my house an into a drink. We sat outside on our mutual patio, amongst my 100 plants (mostly succulents) and drank by candlelight. Here again, I can honestly say that wine really is proof that God exists and wants us to find relaxation and happiness. Inside a bulbous, stemmed glass, full of smashed, liquid grapes, awaits lower blood pressure (for me, at least) and GOOD neighbors are so, so, sooo life savers.
Sigh. Now, as the evening closes, I get back to being my boring me, and am on to fending for myself against the noise and will do my best to ignore it by watching a movie. Thankfully, I have at least a half of an hour until the bad neighbors come home and the noise starts again. Hopefully my movie will be more engrossing than the inevitable encroaching noise. Yes, sadly, as I said before, if said neighbors are home or awake there is no peace for me. Thus, I am all too aware of their schedule. They seem to leave most evenings for an hour and a half, between 7:45-9:00 pm, sometimes earlier, or later, for what I can only assume to be their nightly free dinner with one of their family members.
I would assume they have somewhere else they are going at this time, but it’s a natural conclusion it's a free meal. They are obviously as financially challenged as I am, else we wouldn’t have three people living in a one bedroom apartment making enough noise to drive more mad than than the hatter in Alice In Wonderland. (I’m just saying.)
Shoot. I wanted to be better for my next post, I’d said as much. I wanted to be more, well…me. The me not so jacked up on neighbor crap. Not so stressed and whiny, but it looks like March is a wash. My job is getting to me and my home life has been ruined by 25 year old selfish shits. So, no reprieve just yet!
Such is life. There are ups. There are downs. Soon, things will shift and the ups will be upon me again. Now, the downs, the noisy shit, the noisy shits, it’s just what it is until things shift again.
All is time. All is change. All is temporary. This, too, shall past.
But, thanks again Heather and Chad. You, my dear, dear friends and neighbors, have been my champions, my support, and my escape. Without you those crappy neighbors, they'd have already assigned me a straight jacket.
(BTW, thanks, Chloe, for being one of my beautiful diversions, and, yes, we are so going back for the $1.00 tacos next Monday! And thanks Tim Burton for that great version of Alice and Wonderland. Oh, Johnny Depp, you rock, too!)
When I got back home, I was immediately wound up again by the bad neighbors, but thanks to my GOOD neighbors, Heather and Chad, they chilled me back out by getting just outside my house an into a drink. We sat outside on our mutual patio, amongst my 100 plants (mostly succulents) and drank by candlelight. Here again, I can honestly say that wine really is proof that God exists and wants us to find relaxation and happiness. Inside a bulbous, stemmed glass, full of smashed, liquid grapes, awaits lower blood pressure (for me, at least) and GOOD neighbors are so, so, sooo life savers.
Sigh. Now, as the evening closes, I get back to being my boring me, and am on to fending for myself against the noise and will do my best to ignore it by watching a movie. Thankfully, I have at least a half of an hour until the bad neighbors come home and the noise starts again. Hopefully my movie will be more engrossing than the inevitable encroaching noise. Yes, sadly, as I said before, if said neighbors are home or awake there is no peace for me. Thus, I am all too aware of their schedule. They seem to leave most evenings for an hour and a half, between 7:45-9:00 pm, sometimes earlier, or later, for what I can only assume to be their nightly free dinner with one of their family members.
I would assume they have somewhere else they are going at this time, but it’s a natural conclusion it's a free meal. They are obviously as financially challenged as I am, else we wouldn’t have three people living in a one bedroom apartment making enough noise to drive more mad than than the hatter in Alice In Wonderland. (I’m just saying.)
Shoot. I wanted to be better for my next post, I’d said as much. I wanted to be more, well…me. The me not so jacked up on neighbor crap. Not so stressed and whiny, but it looks like March is a wash. My job is getting to me and my home life has been ruined by 25 year old selfish shits. So, no reprieve just yet!
Such is life. There are ups. There are downs. Soon, things will shift and the ups will be upon me again. Now, the downs, the noisy shit, the noisy shits, it’s just what it is until things shift again.
All is time. All is change. All is temporary. This, too, shall past.
But, thanks again Heather and Chad. You, my dear, dear friends and neighbors, have been my champions, my support, and my escape. Without you those crappy neighbors, they'd have already assigned me a straight jacket.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Incidentally, I think I am going to kill myself now.
Not that anyone tuning in isn’t already as sick of me complaining about my butthead neighbors as I am, and not that everyone isn’t probably just as turned off by my recent rant-ish posts, but, nonetheless, here I am, taking on another good rant (hopefully only once more). I apparently find it necessary to share the misery I am enduring and post the fact that the butthead neighbor’s kid is playing ball in the living room on the hardwood floor again. So, no, my butthead neighbors have not yet gotten the promised carpet/dry walls their aunt, the even butthead-er property manager, assured me was to come.
Oh, and thankfully my butthead neighbor’s door is also open, so I can hear the intermittent screams and squeals between thumps and bounces that are being prodded on and awarded by said butthead neighbor parents. Please know, I am not a monster. I get that kids need to be kids. They need to play, and jump, and run, and… I get it. But when you are egging your kid on, to bounce a ball in the living room of your apartment next to the biach (as they call me) that has asked you to keep the noise to a minimum, or at least try, well… Shit. I am really at a loss here. It only looks a little obvious it’s on purpose at this point.
By the way, I’ve only posted this blog as a precautionary method, so everyone knows where to find my dead body. This way, if I don’t show up for work tomorrow, or I stop taking all my personal calls, everyone will know that it’s because I’ve gone crazy and shoved my head in a blender.
Goodbye beautiful word. I just couldn’t take the noise anymore.
Oh, and thankfully my butthead neighbor’s door is also open, so I can hear the intermittent screams and squeals between thumps and bounces that are being prodded on and awarded by said butthead neighbor parents. Please know, I am not a monster. I get that kids need to be kids. They need to play, and jump, and run, and… I get it. But when you are egging your kid on, to bounce a ball in the living room of your apartment next to the biach (as they call me) that has asked you to keep the noise to a minimum, or at least try, well… Shit. I am really at a loss here. It only looks a little obvious it’s on purpose at this point.
By the way, I’ve only posted this blog as a precautionary method, so everyone knows where to find my dead body. This way, if I don’t show up for work tomorrow, or I stop taking all my personal calls, everyone will know that it’s because I’ve gone crazy and shoved my head in a blender.
Goodbye beautiful word. I just couldn’t take the noise anymore.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Ah, crap! I think I hit an iceberg.
First of all, I’m not happy about the fact that my last couple of blog posts have been a bit rant-ish in flavor. But, I guess that’s what happens when you figure out that you’re living in hell and that your home is no longer your retreat. You turn into a grouch.
Before we get to my grouchiness, let’s flash back to me out with Chloe last night and how my outing with her, and some of the events that transpired, helped me to finally figure out that my situation with my neighbors has turned me into a kid looking for toys to smash (that’ll make sense in a minute).
Anyway, Chloe and I were having one last drink at a sport’s bar and after about 20 minutes of chatting amongst ourselves we soon became enfolded by a group of friends, about 15 guys, who had been standing just off to our right. These guys ranged in age somewhere between their early thirties to their late forties and were a mixed bag of Long Beach natives and Hollywood/L.A. livers. They were all out for the evening to help celebrate the birthday of one amongst them.
It was Birthday boy, a single guy, and one of his friends, who was also single and who looked like Taye Diggs, who had run Recon and first engaged Chloe and me. Then, little by little, almost like shift changes, wedding rings on their fingers or not, most of the guys from the group made their way over and joined the conversation. Each time two or three would meander away to get a new drink, a couple more would take their place next to Chloe and me. Then the new place takers would leave to get their new drinks and those who’d already been chatting us up would return.
They were a bunch of very nice guys. Chloe took a liking to the Taye look alike guy. Unfortunately, my beautiful, sweet Chloe was ever so slightly buzzed and had already given Birthday boy her phone number.
But I am a good wing woman, so just as we were about to leave I whispered into Taye guy’s ear and said, “Look. My friend really wants you to have her number. I think you are the one she is interested in.” “Really?” he said, “You think so?” Then I said, “I know so. I didn’t mean to say ‘think’, she said, straight out, ‘I should have given Taye guy my phone number, not Birthday boy. I’m interested in Taye guy.” (Chloe, of course, used their real names.)
Then I held my phone up in plain view for Taye guy to review. I did this so that if any of the guys from the group were to see Taye guy and I with our phones in hand they would surmise that he and I were exchanging phone numbers. Yet, I was scrolling down to Chloe’s number so that Taye guy could put her number directly into his phone. After Taye guy did that, he looked over at Chloe, who was not looking our way or paying any attention to us, and said, “Great. I am calling her cell phone right now so that she’ll have my number and can call me. When she sees the number, tell her it’s me and to call me.”
Whut!? My brain bounced in my head and I thought: Call you? She’s supposed to call you? Dude, I just told you that she’s interested in you and gave you her phone number so YOU could call her, not have her call you back. Would you also like me to call you tomorrow so we can schedule a time for me to come over and help you put your pants on? Be a man. WTF?
By the way, from the beginning Chloe and I didn’t think it would be completely cool for me to give Taye guy Chloe’s number when his friend had already just gotten got her digits, but Chloe and I discussed it, and she wanted Taye guy to have her number. Let’s also keep in mind that I owe Chloe the honor of girl code. I had no code with those dudes. What those dudes do, how they honor their friendships, that’s on them. I was Chloe’s wing-chick so my allegiance and assistance was to her, but for that dude to say, “Great. I am calling her phone right now so that she’ll have my number and can call me.” I thought that was chicken shit.
He’s supposed to be the guy. I could say that maybe he wanted Chloe to call him because it would make him feel better if she initiated the call, given the fact that his friend had already gotten her number, but he’d just accepted and already dialed Chloe’s number with the knowledge that his friend had her number. He doesn’t get to wuss out after that and pretend to have some moral code and leave the ball in her park.
But Chloe didn’t seem to mind. She told me she had no problem with the fact that he wanted her to call him. Then she told me that I am wired different. She didn’t have to say it out loud, but she basically was telling me that I have old fashioned standards like my grandmother. I didn’t take offense. I do have those standards. (Shit. That’s probably part of the reason I am still single.) I think men are supposed to behave like my grandmother told me they should.
I think everyone is supposed to behave like my grandmother said they should. Kids are supposed to say please and thank you. Strangers are supposed to help each other lift things into their car at the grocery store. And, people, like the husband of the neighbor butthead duo, shouldn’t spit at people. It’s just plain mean and wrong. (Yup. The jerko spat at me again yesterday as I was coming up the drive.)
And this brings me to my own personal iceberg. I think this butthead neighbor situation is what has been doing a number on me for the last couple of weeks. Ever since this situation erupted I’ve not slept. I’m jumpy. (Wait, I was jumpy before with these buttheads. One tends to be jumpy when loud crashes burst into the air space at least once or twice every hour on the hour between the usual incessant thumpity-thump of the regular intolerable noise.)
I’m getting spit at. The noise has not stopped; it’s getting worse every day. In fact, just tonight it sounded like they had a basketball team shooting hoops in their living room. How could that not drive anyone to become a bit grouchy? Ugh.
And sure, I feel like a relic when it comes to certain boy/girl standard operating procedures, because I know I am old fashioned. I accept that. But in the scheme of things, I know whatever annoyance I had with Taye guy’s cop out, him wanting Chloe to call him, rather than him call her, was disproportionate. Likewise, whatever disenchantment I’ve started to feel with the Mr. Fix Up situation hasn’t been proportionate either.
If I stand back, and look at the Mr. Fix Up situation for what it really is, and not how I am reacting to it because I seemingly need some sort of control in my life and also apparently want to complain about whatever I can because the buttheads have taken my safe home from me and have made me feel like I now have no control, I know whatever happens with this Mr. Fix Up, or does not, isn’t that big of a deal.
I trust my path in life, if Mr. Fix Up becomes part of this path, great, if he does not become part of this path, great. If some other guy becomes part of my path, great. If I end up moving to Mexico and shaking up with a cabana boy instead, also great. But…not so great is continuing to live next to the buttheads.
This brings Freud’s Iceberg Analogy to mind. This analogy is used to illustrate Freud's structure of the human mind. Just as only the tip of an iceberg is visible, while the vast percentage of the iceberg’s bulk is under water, only a fraction of our awareness, of or our conscious mind, is visible/apparent to us. This means that we’re rarely really upset about what we think we are upset by.
It’s kind of like how someone might break a nail and not cry over it, then, when all the shit in their life has hit the fan, a broken nail sends them into uncontrollable tears. Obviously, they’re not crying about the broken nail. The adult’s broken nail is no different than when young kids smash their toys or act out and start hitting. They are not mad at their toy. They don’t really want to hit.
Kids do not have the words to express what’s going inside nor do they understand why they are feeling the emotions they are feeling. Me? I don’t always get my feelings right away or get why I am reacting to something in a way I would not usually react, but when a disproportionate reaction does pops up or when my reactions start to feel strange, even for me, clarity usually makes its way into my understanding. And, I get it now, the stress and exhaustion of this neighbor thing is making me react to things I don’t usually get even slightly puffed over.
True, certain things will always bother me. I’m always going to be old fashioned. I will always think a dude is copping out if he puts the first call on the girl. But getting all buggered out about a guy I don’t even know not wanting details on me, that’s not me.
So when I woke up this morning, correction, when I was woken up this morning by a loud bang, that’s when I figured it out. I realized why little things have seemed to be bigger to me than they normally would be. It’s tough, you know, not having total control over a situation.
Until I know if I am going to get laid off, I cannot make a move away from my butthead neighbors. It would be stupid to plunk down $400.00 more a month on a place I am renting. That’s just too impractical. So, I have to wait. I have to wait to see if I am going to get to keep my job and wait to see if can even afford to move. This feeling of not having total control over my life makes me want to smash a toy that I am not even mad at.
Maybe I just need a stiff one. I need to use a tumbler tonight and pour a strong martini instead of a glass of wine.
Keep being fabulous!
Oh, and remember, if you are smashing your toys… It’s probably not the toy that you’re mad at.
Before we get to my grouchiness, let’s flash back to me out with Chloe last night and how my outing with her, and some of the events that transpired, helped me to finally figure out that my situation with my neighbors has turned me into a kid looking for toys to smash (that’ll make sense in a minute).
Anyway, Chloe and I were having one last drink at a sport’s bar and after about 20 minutes of chatting amongst ourselves we soon became enfolded by a group of friends, about 15 guys, who had been standing just off to our right. These guys ranged in age somewhere between their early thirties to their late forties and were a mixed bag of Long Beach natives and Hollywood/L.A. livers. They were all out for the evening to help celebrate the birthday of one amongst them.
It was Birthday boy, a single guy, and one of his friends, who was also single and who looked like Taye Diggs, who had run Recon and first engaged Chloe and me. Then, little by little, almost like shift changes, wedding rings on their fingers or not, most of the guys from the group made their way over and joined the conversation. Each time two or three would meander away to get a new drink, a couple more would take their place next to Chloe and me. Then the new place takers would leave to get their new drinks and those who’d already been chatting us up would return.
They were a bunch of very nice guys. Chloe took a liking to the Taye look alike guy. Unfortunately, my beautiful, sweet Chloe was ever so slightly buzzed and had already given Birthday boy her phone number.
But I am a good wing woman, so just as we were about to leave I whispered into Taye guy’s ear and said, “Look. My friend really wants you to have her number. I think you are the one she is interested in.” “Really?” he said, “You think so?” Then I said, “I know so. I didn’t mean to say ‘think’, she said, straight out, ‘I should have given Taye guy my phone number, not Birthday boy. I’m interested in Taye guy.” (Chloe, of course, used their real names.)
Then I held my phone up in plain view for Taye guy to review. I did this so that if any of the guys from the group were to see Taye guy and I with our phones in hand they would surmise that he and I were exchanging phone numbers. Yet, I was scrolling down to Chloe’s number so that Taye guy could put her number directly into his phone. After Taye guy did that, he looked over at Chloe, who was not looking our way or paying any attention to us, and said, “Great. I am calling her cell phone right now so that she’ll have my number and can call me. When she sees the number, tell her it’s me and to call me.”
Whut!? My brain bounced in my head and I thought: Call you? She’s supposed to call you? Dude, I just told you that she’s interested in you and gave you her phone number so YOU could call her, not have her call you back. Would you also like me to call you tomorrow so we can schedule a time for me to come over and help you put your pants on? Be a man. WTF?
By the way, from the beginning Chloe and I didn’t think it would be completely cool for me to give Taye guy Chloe’s number when his friend had already just gotten got her digits, but Chloe and I discussed it, and she wanted Taye guy to have her number. Let’s also keep in mind that I owe Chloe the honor of girl code. I had no code with those dudes. What those dudes do, how they honor their friendships, that’s on them. I was Chloe’s wing-chick so my allegiance and assistance was to her, but for that dude to say, “Great. I am calling her phone right now so that she’ll have my number and can call me.” I thought that was chicken shit.
He’s supposed to be the guy. I could say that maybe he wanted Chloe to call him because it would make him feel better if she initiated the call, given the fact that his friend had already gotten her number, but he’d just accepted and already dialed Chloe’s number with the knowledge that his friend had her number. He doesn’t get to wuss out after that and pretend to have some moral code and leave the ball in her park.
But Chloe didn’t seem to mind. She told me she had no problem with the fact that he wanted her to call him. Then she told me that I am wired different. She didn’t have to say it out loud, but she basically was telling me that I have old fashioned standards like my grandmother. I didn’t take offense. I do have those standards. (Shit. That’s probably part of the reason I am still single.) I think men are supposed to behave like my grandmother told me they should.
I think everyone is supposed to behave like my grandmother said they should. Kids are supposed to say please and thank you. Strangers are supposed to help each other lift things into their car at the grocery store. And, people, like the husband of the neighbor butthead duo, shouldn’t spit at people. It’s just plain mean and wrong. (Yup. The jerko spat at me again yesterday as I was coming up the drive.)
And this brings me to my own personal iceberg. I think this butthead neighbor situation is what has been doing a number on me for the last couple of weeks. Ever since this situation erupted I’ve not slept. I’m jumpy. (Wait, I was jumpy before with these buttheads. One tends to be jumpy when loud crashes burst into the air space at least once or twice every hour on the hour between the usual incessant thumpity-thump of the regular intolerable noise.)
I’m getting spit at. The noise has not stopped; it’s getting worse every day. In fact, just tonight it sounded like they had a basketball team shooting hoops in their living room. How could that not drive anyone to become a bit grouchy? Ugh.
And sure, I feel like a relic when it comes to certain boy/girl standard operating procedures, because I know I am old fashioned. I accept that. But in the scheme of things, I know whatever annoyance I had with Taye guy’s cop out, him wanting Chloe to call him, rather than him call her, was disproportionate. Likewise, whatever disenchantment I’ve started to feel with the Mr. Fix Up situation hasn’t been proportionate either.
If I stand back, and look at the Mr. Fix Up situation for what it really is, and not how I am reacting to it because I seemingly need some sort of control in my life and also apparently want to complain about whatever I can because the buttheads have taken my safe home from me and have made me feel like I now have no control, I know whatever happens with this Mr. Fix Up, or does not, isn’t that big of a deal.
I trust my path in life, if Mr. Fix Up becomes part of this path, great, if he does not become part of this path, great. If some other guy becomes part of my path, great. If I end up moving to Mexico and shaking up with a cabana boy instead, also great. But…not so great is continuing to live next to the buttheads.
This brings Freud’s Iceberg Analogy to mind. This analogy is used to illustrate Freud's structure of the human mind. Just as only the tip of an iceberg is visible, while the vast percentage of the iceberg’s bulk is under water, only a fraction of our awareness, of or our conscious mind, is visible/apparent to us. This means that we’re rarely really upset about what we think we are upset by.
It’s kind of like how someone might break a nail and not cry over it, then, when all the shit in their life has hit the fan, a broken nail sends them into uncontrollable tears. Obviously, they’re not crying about the broken nail. The adult’s broken nail is no different than when young kids smash their toys or act out and start hitting. They are not mad at their toy. They don’t really want to hit.
Kids do not have the words to express what’s going inside nor do they understand why they are feeling the emotions they are feeling. Me? I don’t always get my feelings right away or get why I am reacting to something in a way I would not usually react, but when a disproportionate reaction does pops up or when my reactions start to feel strange, even for me, clarity usually makes its way into my understanding. And, I get it now, the stress and exhaustion of this neighbor thing is making me react to things I don’t usually get even slightly puffed over.
True, certain things will always bother me. I’m always going to be old fashioned. I will always think a dude is copping out if he puts the first call on the girl. But getting all buggered out about a guy I don’t even know not wanting details on me, that’s not me.
So when I woke up this morning, correction, when I was woken up this morning by a loud bang, that’s when I figured it out. I realized why little things have seemed to be bigger to me than they normally would be. It’s tough, you know, not having total control over a situation.
Until I know if I am going to get laid off, I cannot make a move away from my butthead neighbors. It would be stupid to plunk down $400.00 more a month on a place I am renting. That’s just too impractical. So, I have to wait. I have to wait to see if I am going to get to keep my job and wait to see if can even afford to move. This feeling of not having total control over my life makes me want to smash a toy that I am not even mad at.
Maybe I just need a stiff one. I need to use a tumbler tonight and pour a strong martini instead of a glass of wine.
Keep being fabulous!
Oh, and remember, if you are smashing your toys… It’s probably not the toy that you’re mad at.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Um… Reeeadyyy. Can we get this party started?
Now that I think about it, you want to know what sucks about all this bad butthead neighbor stuff? Because I have now reached a personal space where I really do want to share my life with someone, while it took me a long time to get here, to want to give up my wonderful single-cocoon space and want to find another butterfly, now that I am here I feel like I want to light a match under the Universe's ass to make it happen. Not because I am not patient or cannot wait a little longer for the right man in the right time. I am patient. Shoot, given my track record, I’m patient alright. I can wait.
But were my man to get here a little sooner than later, I'd be able to stay the night at his house sometimes and thus be able to avoid my butthead neighbors until I can figure out if I am ready to, or can afford to, buy a condo. (The final layoff ax at work drops at the beginning of June. Ugh! Can I really make it that long with living next to these buttheads?)
Yeah, yeah, that’s lame, using a boyfriend for his bed so I can avoid my neighbors. I know. But, first of all, that’s what you do when you have a boyfriend, you have sleep overs. Plus, I doubt he’d mind and I don’t snore. He’d have gotten some before we went to sleep. I’m also pretty good at giving some, at doing that saki-saki thang, so I have been told. So? Where is the problem?
Does this all sound a little crazy? Well, maybe I wasn’t clear enough about just how much my neighbors, with their name calling, their noise, their driveway blocking, their spitting, and their basic F’U attitude, are stressing me out. It is so much so that I’ve now cried twice over it.
Let’s review again. I’m sappy. Way sappy. I’ll cry at a long distance commercial. I’ll cry happy at every good movie ending. I’ll cry for any child in danger. I’ll cry for cruelty to animals. However, I rarely, if ever, cry over situations like this one with my butthead neighbors. I refuse to waste that energy. Nope. I have to get pushed to my breaking point. The fact that it’s taken more than two years for the stress of them, and their inconsideration, to bring me to tears shows how beyond dealing with them I’ve become.
These tears of mine haven’t been invited. They’ve pushed their way out because my frustration and exhaustion has no where else to go. That’s why I think some nights away from the buttheads, and some nights getting laid, might help. (Couldn’t hurt.)
Man, why can’t I just be a who-cares-who-the-guy-is slut!?
What's sad, though, and I think we’ve also covered this before, is that there is rarely a guy that I am interested in. Sure, sure, we all say that and it is true for all of us, but I’m still betting my abstinence track record, which is based on my inability to be with someone who may not be substantial in my life, speaks pretty loud. Thus, my chances of sleeping over at someone else's house in the near future are look’n pretty slim.
It's that whole intuition thing of mine, where I sense a good guy or a bad-guy and then there becomes the whole I-won’t-waste-my-time-with-this dude thing. It is a liability, my intuition, when it comes to just hanging out with any ol' guy.
That’s why much of the time when I go out there aren't many men who interest me, who arouse my intuition. If there were, if I didn’t have a sense in the beginning with some guy that there’s no reason for something to get off the ground, I'd already be sleeping at some guy’s house and not being woken up at various hours of the night with loud thumps from the butthead neighbors.
I’m not kidding. A little relief here, universe? My butthead neighbors suck.
I have been interested in this one guy at work, but him, we'll call him Shy-Guy, that's... Uh. Yeah. Running out of energy on that one. Maybe I’ll explain that one/him later.
Then there is Ava's fix up guy, who I am still very interested in the idea of, but since I have yet to meet Mr. Fix-up, I have no idea if we will connect. The fact that we still have not met is leading me to believe that it will not happen at all.
Again, this has nothing to do with Ava, my fixer-upper. She's given him my digits and email. It appears to be on him. I could have this wrong, but he really does seem to be the hold up. He told Ava that he thought I was cute, and that he wanted to meet me, but he wanted to get more details first. Getting these details has not happened for about a month. Ava has set up coffee dates, and made calls to him, but due to life happening, these multiple coffee dates, and her attempts to call, to give said details, have gotten rained out.
It’s fine that Ava and he have not been able to meet up. In my mind, the meeting in person is not what matters. What matters is that I know that if he wanted the goods on me enough, he would get them over the phone. Hell, if he really wanted them enough, he could get them/ask for them in a phone message or in an email.
Of course Ava would say:
She's brilliant. (Okay, I am smarter than the average bear. Basically, I’m not a dumb-shit.)
She's gorgeous. (Okay, she can say that I am at least better than average looking with a contagious smile.)
She's artistic ('nuf said)
She's spiritual not religious (Alright, that’s a little Match dot com, but it’s true.)
She's funny on good days (on bad days, mildly amusing.)
She doesn't date much because she doesn't like to waste her time with anyone who will not add value to her life.
And, while getting details about me appears to matter to him, which I can respect, getting them any time soon does not appear to matter. Once more, I am only going on how things look to me from the outside, so I could have it all wrong. But, even if Ava tells me he is a patient, patient man, and while patience is a great quality, after almost a month, at this point, I am starting to wonder whether it is his patience or something else entirely that is in play here.
Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something about him. Maybe this guy is not in the same place I am. He may not actually want to meet me, or want to meet anyone at all for that matter. He may not even be conscious that he, perhaps, does not want to meet someone.
After all, the best way to find out about a person, and see if you could be interested in them, is to talk to the source. He’s decided to instead wait to get details on me from Ava. And while I do not take any of this personal, as stuff like this is never personal (he doesn’t even know me) in the general sense this dragging of his feet is becoming a turn off. Just because something isn’t personal doesn’t mean it isn’t possibly a tell tale of who a person might be.
The truth is, I do not have to know him. I know human nature. Not because I am smarter than anyone else, but because I read about it every chance I get. And, every girl likes a man who has enough interest in her that he shows it. The reason is, a man who wants something goes and gets it. Who doesn’t want to be the thing a guy wants?
So, when a guy, if he has not met a girl yet, does not even show that he’s interested in meeting this girl, who could be a girl he might want (if he wants a girl at all) or when a guy appears to be putting off getting the face-to-face thing going, that says something. A month is not really a long time in the scheme of things, but things are so much easier than people make them. A man need only make one call and ask a couple of questions. Or, he need only call the girl himself directly. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Of course it does not break the deal that he’s not shown very much initiative. After all, he’s tall, nice, spiritual, and on and on goes the good stuff Ava has told me about him, so he gets a little more leeway. But, I can admit that if I’d have just met this guy, or if this suggestion to be fixed up with him came from someone who I did not respect as much as I respect Ava, by now, if I didn't know how much she seems to respect him, I might have said, “F’ it. I’m out. This guy doesn’t seem to be into it.”
I know that sounds harsh, and that’s probably why I am still single, but, having been courted by more than a few really great men, through fix ups and other wise, and not having had this experience before, experiencing a guy who doesn’t seem all that keen to get to the part where he’s making the first move so we can get it going or get going in our own directions, is new to me.
That’s why something just seems off. I mean Ava is a totally stand up gal. If he can’t trust that she wouldn’t suggest someone for him who is great, too, if he cannot just go with that, or if he doesn’t want to put himself out there enough to make it happen, and/or work harder to get those details well… I don’t know. I really don’t.
Shit, maybe he got his details and Ava doesn’t have the heart to tell me he’s not interested anymore. That’d be funny. But that would be great. Really. That means my energy could get back to balance again. I have to admit that this situation has jacked with my energy a bit. For the last month I can feel myself more so focused in his direction than being generally open to what may still be coming.
That doesn’t work for me.
That is also what I think I am starting to react to and what is beginning to turn me off. This guy, whether he realizes it or not, and whether he wants to or not, is sharing an energy field with me. Yes, that sounds kooky and granola like, but if you have ever heard about collective energy, it’s along those lines. The point is, because he and I are connected by this situation he is tapped into, as am i, this specific, energy I haven’t been able to shake.
And, until this situation finds a resolution, until it reaches 1 out of 4 of the most natural outcomes: We work together, we don’t work, I find someone else, or he finds someone else, the energy, which is stuck in the beginning cycle, is getting more and more clogged up.
All things have a cycle, hence the life cycle. The life in each cycle is the energy. Energy undergoes transmutation, like the birth to the death cycle. Energy doesn’t die; it changes into another nature, substance, form, or condition. And because all energy forms are either potential or kinetic, and potential energy comes in forms that are stored, one of those forms being gravitational, I feel like the gravitational energy between us is getting weighted down. It’s festering. More simply, rather than making me curious and more interested, this situation is starting to make me feel disenchanted.
Put more clearly, the energy that’s kept me focused on him is clogging up my ability to be generally open to someone else potentially coming into my life. That energy would immediately shift if my man was standing in front of me, which would be awesome. But since my man, if it is not Mr. Fix Up, is not as readily tangible as Mr. Fix Up is, and since my man isn’t standing here right now, whether I like it or not Mr. Fix Up is getting a bunch of my energy.
Put even more succinctly, I want my mojo balance back.
I want to meet Mr. Fix Up. I want to see if he’s my man and move forward with him or I want to move on and meet my man. Or, I want to at least get to the place where I am just “over it” like the place I finally got to with Shy-Guy. At least with Shy-Guy I understand what the problem is.
Shy-Guy is sweet. So sweet. So nice. So kind. So, damn it all, probably not right for me in the end that it’s annoying. But, he has the most amazing energy ever. The kind of energy that reflects such a beautiful, tender soul that it makes me want to curl up in his soul like a warm blanket and start a fire in him that we can sit next to for a very long time. This makes it hard to stop being physically and spiritually attracted to Shy-Guy. (Gawd, who even says things like that? Spiritually attracted?)
But, even while I have not completely given up on Shy-Guy, and cannot stop being attracted to him, I have mostly let go. My energy, at least, isn’t clogged up by him anymore. I’ve figured out that Shy-Guy and I are probably no more right for each other than peanut butter and pickles on toast.
If you are still not getting it, in that P & P on T example I am both the peanut butter and the pickles and he's the toast. Yes, in plain English, my big personality would eat his shy personality alive and he’d probably never bring his light out from underneath his bushel. Hmm. What a shame.
So for the girl who hasn't wanted to open her life up to someone in a long time, but wants to do so very much now, to have blinders on for some guy who doesn’t seem to be in the same place when it comes to meeting someone, has left me with this mis-guided energy.
Good golly, mis-guided energy? That really does sound like a disease. Harrumph. Maybe I will meet my man when I go out with Chloe tonight. That’d be nice.
You should know, I really do appreciate patience in a man, but, one more time, patience is one thing. Courting is another. Too much patience during any courting process is, even in a potential fix up… Well, let’s just say it isn’t a turn on.
Maybe I am different, but now that I am older, and I know who I am, I know I want. I want a man who knows how to show a woman he’s interested. Waiting to get things off the ground doesn’t do that. I fear repeating myself, yet again, but even while a month is not that long, it is long enough for me to start to wonder if Mr. Fix Up even wants a woman in his life right now.
It’s okay if he doesn’t. Remember? It’s not personal. But I’d really like whatever it is that is holding him up to get figured out so that I can get unclogged.
I need wine. Where’s Chloe? It’s time to go out!
I came home early to sleep because my neighbors kept me up and I was so tired I was nauseous, but now that I’ve had a nap, I’m ready to roll! Let's get this party started!
Keep being fabulous!
But were my man to get here a little sooner than later, I'd be able to stay the night at his house sometimes and thus be able to avoid my butthead neighbors until I can figure out if I am ready to, or can afford to, buy a condo. (The final layoff ax at work drops at the beginning of June. Ugh! Can I really make it that long with living next to these buttheads?)
Yeah, yeah, that’s lame, using a boyfriend for his bed so I can avoid my neighbors. I know. But, first of all, that’s what you do when you have a boyfriend, you have sleep overs. Plus, I doubt he’d mind and I don’t snore. He’d have gotten some before we went to sleep. I’m also pretty good at giving some, at doing that saki-saki thang, so I have been told. So? Where is the problem?
Does this all sound a little crazy? Well, maybe I wasn’t clear enough about just how much my neighbors, with their name calling, their noise, their driveway blocking, their spitting, and their basic F’U attitude, are stressing me out. It is so much so that I’ve now cried twice over it.
Let’s review again. I’m sappy. Way sappy. I’ll cry at a long distance commercial. I’ll cry happy at every good movie ending. I’ll cry for any child in danger. I’ll cry for cruelty to animals. However, I rarely, if ever, cry over situations like this one with my butthead neighbors. I refuse to waste that energy. Nope. I have to get pushed to my breaking point. The fact that it’s taken more than two years for the stress of them, and their inconsideration, to bring me to tears shows how beyond dealing with them I’ve become.
These tears of mine haven’t been invited. They’ve pushed their way out because my frustration and exhaustion has no where else to go. That’s why I think some nights away from the buttheads, and some nights getting laid, might help. (Couldn’t hurt.)
Man, why can’t I just be a who-cares-who-the-guy-is slut!?
What's sad, though, and I think we’ve also covered this before, is that there is rarely a guy that I am interested in. Sure, sure, we all say that and it is true for all of us, but I’m still betting my abstinence track record, which is based on my inability to be with someone who may not be substantial in my life, speaks pretty loud. Thus, my chances of sleeping over at someone else's house in the near future are look’n pretty slim.
It's that whole intuition thing of mine, where I sense a good guy or a bad-guy and then there becomes the whole I-won’t-waste-my-time-with-this dude thing. It is a liability, my intuition, when it comes to just hanging out with any ol' guy.
That’s why much of the time when I go out there aren't many men who interest me, who arouse my intuition. If there were, if I didn’t have a sense in the beginning with some guy that there’s no reason for something to get off the ground, I'd already be sleeping at some guy’s house and not being woken up at various hours of the night with loud thumps from the butthead neighbors.
I’m not kidding. A little relief here, universe? My butthead neighbors suck.
I have been interested in this one guy at work, but him, we'll call him Shy-Guy, that's... Uh. Yeah. Running out of energy on that one. Maybe I’ll explain that one/him later.
Then there is Ava's fix up guy, who I am still very interested in the idea of, but since I have yet to meet Mr. Fix-up, I have no idea if we will connect. The fact that we still have not met is leading me to believe that it will not happen at all.
Again, this has nothing to do with Ava, my fixer-upper. She's given him my digits and email. It appears to be on him. I could have this wrong, but he really does seem to be the hold up. He told Ava that he thought I was cute, and that he wanted to meet me, but he wanted to get more details first. Getting these details has not happened for about a month. Ava has set up coffee dates, and made calls to him, but due to life happening, these multiple coffee dates, and her attempts to call, to give said details, have gotten rained out.
It’s fine that Ava and he have not been able to meet up. In my mind, the meeting in person is not what matters. What matters is that I know that if he wanted the goods on me enough, he would get them over the phone. Hell, if he really wanted them enough, he could get them/ask for them in a phone message or in an email.
Of course Ava would say:
She's brilliant. (Okay, I am smarter than the average bear. Basically, I’m not a dumb-shit.)
She's gorgeous. (Okay, she can say that I am at least better than average looking with a contagious smile.)
She's artistic ('nuf said)
She's spiritual not religious (Alright, that’s a little Match dot com, but it’s true.)
She's funny on good days (on bad days, mildly amusing.)
She doesn't date much because she doesn't like to waste her time with anyone who will not add value to her life.
And, while getting details about me appears to matter to him, which I can respect, getting them any time soon does not appear to matter. Once more, I am only going on how things look to me from the outside, so I could have it all wrong. But, even if Ava tells me he is a patient, patient man, and while patience is a great quality, after almost a month, at this point, I am starting to wonder whether it is his patience or something else entirely that is in play here.
Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something about him. Maybe this guy is not in the same place I am. He may not actually want to meet me, or want to meet anyone at all for that matter. He may not even be conscious that he, perhaps, does not want to meet someone.
After all, the best way to find out about a person, and see if you could be interested in them, is to talk to the source. He’s decided to instead wait to get details on me from Ava. And while I do not take any of this personal, as stuff like this is never personal (he doesn’t even know me) in the general sense this dragging of his feet is becoming a turn off. Just because something isn’t personal doesn’t mean it isn’t possibly a tell tale of who a person might be.
The truth is, I do not have to know him. I know human nature. Not because I am smarter than anyone else, but because I read about it every chance I get. And, every girl likes a man who has enough interest in her that he shows it. The reason is, a man who wants something goes and gets it. Who doesn’t want to be the thing a guy wants?
So, when a guy, if he has not met a girl yet, does not even show that he’s interested in meeting this girl, who could be a girl he might want (if he wants a girl at all) or when a guy appears to be putting off getting the face-to-face thing going, that says something. A month is not really a long time in the scheme of things, but things are so much easier than people make them. A man need only make one call and ask a couple of questions. Or, he need only call the girl himself directly. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Of course it does not break the deal that he’s not shown very much initiative. After all, he’s tall, nice, spiritual, and on and on goes the good stuff Ava has told me about him, so he gets a little more leeway. But, I can admit that if I’d have just met this guy, or if this suggestion to be fixed up with him came from someone who I did not respect as much as I respect Ava, by now, if I didn't know how much she seems to respect him, I might have said, “F’ it. I’m out. This guy doesn’t seem to be into it.”
I know that sounds harsh, and that’s probably why I am still single, but, having been courted by more than a few really great men, through fix ups and other wise, and not having had this experience before, experiencing a guy who doesn’t seem all that keen to get to the part where he’s making the first move so we can get it going or get going in our own directions, is new to me.
That’s why something just seems off. I mean Ava is a totally stand up gal. If he can’t trust that she wouldn’t suggest someone for him who is great, too, if he cannot just go with that, or if he doesn’t want to put himself out there enough to make it happen, and/or work harder to get those details well… I don’t know. I really don’t.
Shit, maybe he got his details and Ava doesn’t have the heart to tell me he’s not interested anymore. That’d be funny. But that would be great. Really. That means my energy could get back to balance again. I have to admit that this situation has jacked with my energy a bit. For the last month I can feel myself more so focused in his direction than being generally open to what may still be coming.
That doesn’t work for me.
That is also what I think I am starting to react to and what is beginning to turn me off. This guy, whether he realizes it or not, and whether he wants to or not, is sharing an energy field with me. Yes, that sounds kooky and granola like, but if you have ever heard about collective energy, it’s along those lines. The point is, because he and I are connected by this situation he is tapped into, as am i, this specific, energy I haven’t been able to shake.
And, until this situation finds a resolution, until it reaches 1 out of 4 of the most natural outcomes: We work together, we don’t work, I find someone else, or he finds someone else, the energy, which is stuck in the beginning cycle, is getting more and more clogged up.
All things have a cycle, hence the life cycle. The life in each cycle is the energy. Energy undergoes transmutation, like the birth to the death cycle. Energy doesn’t die; it changes into another nature, substance, form, or condition. And because all energy forms are either potential or kinetic, and potential energy comes in forms that are stored, one of those forms being gravitational, I feel like the gravitational energy between us is getting weighted down. It’s festering. More simply, rather than making me curious and more interested, this situation is starting to make me feel disenchanted.
Put more clearly, the energy that’s kept me focused on him is clogging up my ability to be generally open to someone else potentially coming into my life. That energy would immediately shift if my man was standing in front of me, which would be awesome. But since my man, if it is not Mr. Fix Up, is not as readily tangible as Mr. Fix Up is, and since my man isn’t standing here right now, whether I like it or not Mr. Fix Up is getting a bunch of my energy.
Put even more succinctly, I want my mojo balance back.
I want to meet Mr. Fix Up. I want to see if he’s my man and move forward with him or I want to move on and meet my man. Or, I want to at least get to the place where I am just “over it” like the place I finally got to with Shy-Guy. At least with Shy-Guy I understand what the problem is.
Shy-Guy is sweet. So sweet. So nice. So kind. So, damn it all, probably not right for me in the end that it’s annoying. But, he has the most amazing energy ever. The kind of energy that reflects such a beautiful, tender soul that it makes me want to curl up in his soul like a warm blanket and start a fire in him that we can sit next to for a very long time. This makes it hard to stop being physically and spiritually attracted to Shy-Guy. (Gawd, who even says things like that? Spiritually attracted?)
But, even while I have not completely given up on Shy-Guy, and cannot stop being attracted to him, I have mostly let go. My energy, at least, isn’t clogged up by him anymore. I’ve figured out that Shy-Guy and I are probably no more right for each other than peanut butter and pickles on toast.
If you are still not getting it, in that P & P on T example I am both the peanut butter and the pickles and he's the toast. Yes, in plain English, my big personality would eat his shy personality alive and he’d probably never bring his light out from underneath his bushel. Hmm. What a shame.
So for the girl who hasn't wanted to open her life up to someone in a long time, but wants to do so very much now, to have blinders on for some guy who doesn’t seem to be in the same place when it comes to meeting someone, has left me with this mis-guided energy.
Good golly, mis-guided energy? That really does sound like a disease. Harrumph. Maybe I will meet my man when I go out with Chloe tonight. That’d be nice.
You should know, I really do appreciate patience in a man, but, one more time, patience is one thing. Courting is another. Too much patience during any courting process is, even in a potential fix up… Well, let’s just say it isn’t a turn on.
Maybe I am different, but now that I am older, and I know who I am, I know I want. I want a man who knows how to show a woman he’s interested. Waiting to get things off the ground doesn’t do that. I fear repeating myself, yet again, but even while a month is not that long, it is long enough for me to start to wonder if Mr. Fix Up even wants a woman in his life right now.
It’s okay if he doesn’t. Remember? It’s not personal. But I’d really like whatever it is that is holding him up to get figured out so that I can get unclogged.
I need wine. Where’s Chloe? It’s time to go out!
I came home early to sleep because my neighbors kept me up and I was so tired I was nauseous, but now that I’ve had a nap, I’m ready to roll! Let's get this party started!
Keep being fabulous!
Bad neighbors suck. Good neighbors ROCK!
I do not have the energy right now to get completely into why the neighbors who share a wall with me are the suck-iest most horrible neighbors ever, but I'll do my best to let some of the annoyances that have built up over two years slip on out. (One hint. And, only one part of the problem: Noisy, noisy, noisy. Constantly noisy.)
When I got home yesterday evening, and was already beaten up by the work day, the last thing I needed was a butthead neighbor run in, but I got one. The husband of the wife (the wife who is also the niece of the property manager for the apartments) decided to not look at me as I was coming up the drive in my car, that his car was blocking, yet again, but decided to, instead, blatantly spit into the cement where I was just about to drive. And there it is, on top of everything they’ve already done to make my living situation uncomfortable and bordering on unbearable, he spat at me? Who F’n does that? Really? That’s not only low and dirty; it’s passive violence, just like passive aggressive. But spitting isn't trying to hide something like passive aggression. It's out there. There is no misinterpreting that one.
Yes, folks, I have the delight of living next door to a family of three sharing a one-bedroom apartment with hard wood floors and no carpet who, because they are the family members of the property management, could care less about me. No, sir. They call me the quiet bitch who needs to get a life and who needs to quit complaining about others. You see, their pea-sized brains cannot seem to comprehend the fact that I've had 7 other neighbors living next to me in their apartment, yet I've never heard such noise before and have never before, in my 22 years of apartment living, complained about any neighbor. That says something, but they cannot seem to figure out what that is. I can. Quit F'n making me live next door to noise that sounds like constant construction! And, quit calling me a bitch when I ask you nicely to try to keep it down.
Now my other neighbors, on the other side, who share not a wall but a patio with me, they totally rock. They found me crying, unfortunately for the second time, because of these butthead neighbors. (My armor is getting more and more cracks in it and I do not know how much more I can take. It's just been too much.) I held it all in whilst I locked my car doors and passed by the Butthead-Neighbor-Husband, but once I got back to my kitchen door, which is within the patio I share with the neighbors who rock, the tears started rolling. I'm telling you, so, so, so much more has happened with the butthead neighbors beyond this snip-it. The short of it? Because of them my home is no longer my haven. It’s turning into my hell.
Anyway, right in the middle of crying, having my emotions taxed beyond that which I wanted to consent to, Heather and Chad, the great neighbors, upon seeing/overhearing that I was a total broken down and overwrought girl crying in her kitchen (dealing with this bull-S situation), said, “Come with us! Go to the bar with us. Yes, it’s a work night. We know. We know. But we’d recommend it. You need it. Just come!”
So, I did. It was a great recommendation. Once I got to the bar with them, even before the first sip of wine, I began to feel more relaxed than I have in a couple of weeks. Seriously, damn if I didn’t need that.
So… Thanks, great neighbors and great friends! Without you I think I’d be going a little more crazy dealing with the other butthead/A-hole neighbors. Oh, and thank you red wine. You might make me fat in the long run, but you make me A-okay in the my-neighbors-suck-please-help-me-deal-with-it short run. No, I do not advocate alcoholism. But we're talking about me here, and everyone who knows me has heard me say that wine is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Therefore, also thanks cocktail napkin, which is where I read that divine wisdom.
But no thanks to the butthead neighbors who will never read this blog, but if they ever do all I can say to them is: YOU SUCK! HARD! No, really, you are the dirt on the bottom of my shoe in your inconsideration and nastiness.
Oohf! That was a load. I told myself I’d never use my blog to vent, but guess what? The bad neighbors, yeah, they are that bad!!! So, that's that.
Keep being fabulous! And, be a good neighbor!
When I got home yesterday evening, and was already beaten up by the work day, the last thing I needed was a butthead neighbor run in, but I got one. The husband of the wife (the wife who is also the niece of the property manager for the apartments) decided to not look at me as I was coming up the drive in my car, that his car was blocking, yet again, but decided to, instead, blatantly spit into the cement where I was just about to drive. And there it is, on top of everything they’ve already done to make my living situation uncomfortable and bordering on unbearable, he spat at me? Who F’n does that? Really? That’s not only low and dirty; it’s passive violence, just like passive aggressive. But spitting isn't trying to hide something like passive aggression. It's out there. There is no misinterpreting that one.
Yes, folks, I have the delight of living next door to a family of three sharing a one-bedroom apartment with hard wood floors and no carpet who, because they are the family members of the property management, could care less about me. No, sir. They call me the quiet bitch who needs to get a life and who needs to quit complaining about others. You see, their pea-sized brains cannot seem to comprehend the fact that I've had 7 other neighbors living next to me in their apartment, yet I've never heard such noise before and have never before, in my 22 years of apartment living, complained about any neighbor. That says something, but they cannot seem to figure out what that is. I can. Quit F'n making me live next door to noise that sounds like constant construction! And, quit calling me a bitch when I ask you nicely to try to keep it down.
Now my other neighbors, on the other side, who share not a wall but a patio with me, they totally rock. They found me crying, unfortunately for the second time, because of these butthead neighbors. (My armor is getting more and more cracks in it and I do not know how much more I can take. It's just been too much.) I held it all in whilst I locked my car doors and passed by the Butthead-Neighbor-Husband, but once I got back to my kitchen door, which is within the patio I share with the neighbors who rock, the tears started rolling. I'm telling you, so, so, so much more has happened with the butthead neighbors beyond this snip-it. The short of it? Because of them my home is no longer my haven. It’s turning into my hell.
Anyway, right in the middle of crying, having my emotions taxed beyond that which I wanted to consent to, Heather and Chad, the great neighbors, upon seeing/overhearing that I was a total broken down and overwrought girl crying in her kitchen (dealing with this bull-S situation), said, “Come with us! Go to the bar with us. Yes, it’s a work night. We know. We know. But we’d recommend it. You need it. Just come!”
So, I did. It was a great recommendation. Once I got to the bar with them, even before the first sip of wine, I began to feel more relaxed than I have in a couple of weeks. Seriously, damn if I didn’t need that.
So… Thanks, great neighbors and great friends! Without you I think I’d be going a little more crazy dealing with the other butthead/A-hole neighbors. Oh, and thank you red wine. You might make me fat in the long run, but you make me A-okay in the my-neighbors-suck-please-help-me-deal-with-it short run. No, I do not advocate alcoholism. But we're talking about me here, and everyone who knows me has heard me say that wine is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Therefore, also thanks cocktail napkin, which is where I read that divine wisdom.
But no thanks to the butthead neighbors who will never read this blog, but if they ever do all I can say to them is: YOU SUCK! HARD! No, really, you are the dirt on the bottom of my shoe in your inconsideration and nastiness.
Oohf! That was a load. I told myself I’d never use my blog to vent, but guess what? The bad neighbors, yeah, they are that bad!!! So, that's that.
Keep being fabulous! And, be a good neighbor!
Monday, March 1, 2010
Had a feeling that was going to happen. Was it intuition?
I tell people that I have great intuition. I don't tell them that I think I'm psychic, because I don't think that I am. I wouldn't want to be psychic. I had what might be considered a premonition when I was younger. I never want to experience that again. Whatever it was, it was too freaky.
But, I have no problem telling people when I’ve got a feeling about something. Why not? These feelings usually turn out to be pretty right on. Sometimes, when I tell people I think I have great intuition they look at me weird. Fortunately, these reactions are usually from people who I am not close with. The people who know me? They’ve seen one of these “feelings” in action, so they don’t think I’m weird.
What does having good intuition even mean? Well, considering that most people have intuition, but they just don’t listen to it, having good (or great) intuition means that you DO listen to that voice inside—the voice that, while it may not always speak to you in clear sentences, does communicate pretty strong messages if you are paying attention.
My intuition, when it’s good, ranges from sensing the nature of a person's character, like if they have a generally good energy or basically bad energy about them, to getting a more specific sense about something, about a situation, or about a someone. For instance, I almost always know when I am being lied to.
This is probably why I do not lie. (Well, mostly never.) Once I grew up, past five, six, seven years old, and realized I could not convince my mom that I was NOT the one who had made such a mess of my bedroom, when, of course, I was, I think I didn't see the point in lying. My young brain figured that lying was futile because everyone was probably equipped with a fantastic lie-o-meter like my mother’s. If my mom knew a tall tale was about to come out of my mouth, before my lips even parted, everyone must know when others aren't being honest.
It didn’t matter what fib I told my mom. She knew. Oh, she knew. There was that time I told my mother that it wasn’t me who stuck her fingers in the cake frosting, even though there were little-girl-sized swipe-dents all the way around the bottom edge of the chocolate-frosted pound cake. There was that other time I held my position, firm, that it wasn’t me who broke the big owl statue in the hallway. So what if there were pieces of broken-owl-statue plaster in my sock drawer. “I didn’t do it”, I told my mom. Sometimes I would even tell me mother that I had, indeed, washed my hands before dinner when, clearly, I hadn’t.
As time went on, I figured out that the crap I made up, and felt way guiltier for lying about than most kids, was just normal kid stuff. I also learned, as I got older, that a lot of people do, in fact, get away with lying.
But, my mom taught me not to lie. She taught me how it made others feel when they were lied to. Shoot, everyone can remember being a kid and seeing that look on their mother's face when she asked, even though she already knew the answer, "Are you lying to me?" And then we, rather than tell the truth, lied again.
We might as well have put a dagger straight into our mother’s bellies. We could see the disappointment we’d caused curling the corners of our mother’s eyebrows inward and up. In that moment we had experienced for ourselves, in our own stomachs, how thick the air had become with our untruth. But, because we were kids, we would lie again and then lie about lying. We knew not the gravity of the lesson that our mothers, and life, were trying to hand us. But, man-o-man, did we ever know, in that icky-feeling part of us, that that lesson sucked. Oh, what a tortuous, difficult rite of passage we all went through in our young lives, learning the value of integrity and telling the truth.
Why’d we lie in the first place? Why do we lie now? I think that when we were kids our brains weren’t developed enough to choose between the fight/flight protection mode and the reasoning (and/or lack thereof) that we were developing and/or have now developed. (Well, most of us have developed a moral compass that keeps us on track.) We only knew that the lie, the thing that didn’t feel comfortable but felt like it was going to save our tooshies (we reverted to instinct), was the way we should go. Go figure. Then, as we got older, even while we’d acquired the ability to understand how certain lies can damage everyone involved, the truth is still scary enough (to many folks) that the lie somehow feels better.
I think people forget that lies can rob a person of their basic need to be honored, to be respected. I don’t think people mean to patronize or degrade others. (Yes, I know that is a Pollyanna view, but that’s me). After all, most folks, whether we’re a kid or an adult, we just want to eat that friggen cake frosting without repercussion, man.
Plus, we all learn that there is a rhyme to the reasoning behind some lies. Gosh, even while my mother’s disappointment ‘look’ was friggen intense, and while it left me never wanting to be the person that someone knew was lying to them, I have learned that all lies aren’t bad. I have recognized the value of the white lies which can spare someone’s feelings. (No, that S.O.F.A: Shirt Over Fat Ass that you are wearing isn’t obvious.) I had no problem embracing the professional lies that people use/write to get a great job when I was 25 yrs old. (My resume was padded until I was 31years old.) And, I take every opportunity to throw out three cheers for the everyday lies that we tell ourselves.
Yes. I’d rather lie to myself a little than be hard on myself for “whatever” it is. Um…GO lie! in that situation. We spent a childhood, and most of our young adult lives, being told what is wrong with us by our parents, by teachers, and by society. They all said, “Do this. Don’t do that. You are in trouble. You can’t do that right. Do it this way. It’s the law. Because I said so.” So you better believe I am going to tell those mental weights to get stuffed. I have no desire to spend the rest of my life feeling burned and flawed by that microscope.
Anyway, once I started to get a sense about others, and listen to that voice inside, that’s when I began to know when someone was lying to me. That’s also when my ability to lie developed a switch. A very cut and dry “can” or “can’t” lie switch which depends upon my relationship to a person or a situation. What this means is, because I treat others how I want to be treated, I am incapable of lying to anyone I love.
It’s the golden rule. I learned this in Brownies and again in Girl Scouts. I always say Karma is the only religion for me.
This is not a joke. I have no ability to put one over on anyone that I adore. But, have no fear, if I do not respect a person, if I do not hold their value in my heart or feel valued by them in the same way, or if I feel threatened by them (like how one might feel threatened by a bad boss who holds the control of their salary over them) make no mistake, I can lie my way into an academy award.
So, as idiosyncratic as this is, this lie switch thing, this is how I live. The minute I feel myself trying to hide something, even if I am embarrassed about it and I do not want someone to know about the thing I am trying to disguise, I just can’t hide it or lie about it from someone I love. I simply cannot. The truth just comes out. This happens without my consent. It’s like I have truth turrets syndrome.
But, I am okay with this. I figure it adds to my charm, that I am a sort of truthful rambler of sorts. Gawd, I hope this is the case, that my telling the truth all the time makes me more charming. If not, I won’t be able to lie to myself that it’s okay. Then, I’ll probably go crazy and end up on the streets homeless. I will be like a blurting schizophrenic. People will want to offer me apples. I’ll decline the damn apples. Duh. What homeless/toothless person wants a friggen apple? (Yes. If I am going to be homeless I’ll have to lose my teeth, too.) Who offers apples to the homeless anyway? That’s just stupid.
But, and this is where it gets a little personally funky for me, and where I attempt to pull this whole ‘lying’ tangent/intuition thing back around… I've lied to myself for a very long time about how intuitive I am. So, here’s me being honest: my intuition sometimes trips me out.
Why? Let’s go back to that premonition thing I was talking about earlier. Now, imagine, if you will, flashing on a digital clock in your sister's boyfriend's car and seeing the time (in bright-red digital-clock numbers) not as the time it actually is, but as a time that is an hour and several minutes later. Then imagine hearing yourself talking into a telephone receiver and telling your father that you, your brother, your sister and your sister's boyfriend, are all going to be late coming home from the family reunion because you have all just been in a car accident. Then, next, imagine seeing yourself sitting in the front seat of a police car filling out an accident report.
Now imagine that everything you imagined, which you do not know why you imagined it in the first place, because that’s just strange (thinking you are going to get into a car accident), happens as you imagined it. You experience a car side-swiping the car you, your brother, your sister and your sister's boyfriend (who was driving) are all in. You see the digital clock of your sister's boyfriend's car read out as the time you'd imagined. It is now that time.
A half of an hour later you are, indeed, sitting in the front seat of a police car and you are filling out an accident report. You are trying to explain to the policeman how this other car, a truck, was chasing your car down. You tell the police man that this car-chasing man came from the gas station that you were all just at. “Yes, officer. He rammed us off the road,” you say.
BTW, I hadn't imagined that getting rammed-off-the-road part before. No one thinks that a run-of-the-mill trip to the gas station is going to result in some guy (a dude Jeff Foxworthy would describe as a “you might be a redneck if” type) running you off the road. Sure, this mullet-wearing Neanderthal was making unwelcome advances towards my older sister inside the gas station mini-mart. But none of us had suspected that he’d threaten my sister’s boyfriend and then come after us to chase us all down. It’s just not reasonable to think that some inbred freak, with his big, 1980's, overblown 4x4 truck, is going to purposely bulldoze his truck into the car you are in and thus propel it into a tailspin which shatters all the car’s windows, upon impact, when it hits the curb.
Likewise, no one imagines that the peculiar thought that they have, that they might be late getting back to their grandmother’s house after a family reunion because of a car accident, is going to turn out to be what actually happens. It felt like déjà vu when I called my dad to let him know we’d be late. It felt worse, incomprehensible, that so many of the moments I had experienced had been part of what I’d already imagined.
That’s why, since I was about 16 years old (I might have been 14 or 15. I don’t totally remember.), and since I had an experience like that, which felt like more than good intuition, I learned to lie to myself. It was too much. So, I told myself it never happened like that. I told myself, which is the truth, that I didn't really know it was going to happen. But, I did have a feeling. I just had a feeling. That’s all.
I’ve not had something happen like that since, where I imagined something, thought it was weird, and then it happened. But I do get feelings all the time that I think are weird when they just pop into my head and they seem like they are the truth. Those are the feelings I call my intuition.
However, even though I am now a little more willing to admit that my intuition is pretty decent, there is a lot I still don’t say. I rarely tell people, who are not close to me, about the feelings I get about others, or about a situation. No matter how obvious something seems, I don’t say much, even if most of the time these things turn out to be right. These are, after all, just feelings. Seriously, again, I am not psychic.
Still, what happened last week at work was kinda freaky. It was just so clear, and so blatant, that what I was sensing played itself out. It wasn’t exact, and I didn’t imagine anything. It was just a feeling. But it was close enough, that even I couldn’t lie to myself and pretend that I don’t have good intuition.
Here is what happened that was a little freaky-deaky... I took a break at work around 3ish p.m. in the afternoon. Even though I’d already called Jen in the a.m. to wish her happy birthday, I called her a second time to see how her birthday was going. Then, just after I had gotten off of the phone with her, about 30 seconds later, maybe it was a minute afterwards, I happened upon this girl.
This girl was about 18-20 years old with long black hair and big, beautiful eyes. Upon seeing her, my thoughts were, as best as I can remember, what is written just below. It should be noted that I remember these thoughts so clearly because I felt weird that I was thinking some of these thoughts in the first place.
My thoughts:
Hmmm, she's pretty—really pretty. Gosh, she looks exotic. (Stop. People.This is not the weird part yet. This is not a lesbian fantasy.) I wonder what nationality she is. She must be waiting for someone to pick her up for a ride. Why is she standing there? She’s standing in a weird place. (She was out in the road/parking lot a bit and not on the sidewalk.) That really is a weird place for her to wait for a ride. She seems lost. She doesn’t look lost, but she seems lost. Man... Why do I want to give her a hug so bad? She seems like she could use a hug. That would be weird if I asked her if she needed a hug. WTF? Why do I feel so compelled to ask her if she needs a hug? That’s just weird. Shit. She’d look at me like a freak. Still, she really seems like she needs a hug. Man, why does it feel like she’s lost. She’s not lost. She’s fine. These are weird thoughts.
Then, as I continued to walk towards her, and before I had my next thought, this girl looked at me and said, "Hi."
It was a meager "Hi." I'd be pushing it if I said her "Hi" seemed lost, because those thoughts I’d had of her being lost were instantly lost once she spoke. I just thought that her “Hi” seemed meager. I also thought that it was queer that she’d say hello to me because there was nothing about her energy that made her appear to be the kind of girl that goes around saying "Hi" to strangers.
Me? Oh, I'll tell a caterpillar hello. I’ll say hi to the pope and ask him to dinner, even though I am not Catholic, and I’ll tell him I’m serving spaghetti and meatballs and that he needs to bring the parmesan cheese and wine. I’m a G-dang dolphin in the human kingdom. Threaten me with a stranger, and I’m there making friends and saving sailors.
But, her? It just seemed unnatural for her to engage me, a stranger, even if I am that girl people like to chat up and who likes to chat them up. Again, people sense I am friendly. It’s been that way my whole life. I like people. But, she didn’t seem to be tapping into my energy like that. (Maybe she was.) Regardless, I gave her a hearty hello back, and asked, "How are you today?" That's when she said, "I don't know how I got here."
This response struck me, like OMIGOSH. Is she okay? What was spooky about it is that she’d honestly not looked weirded-out to me before. She just didn’t. That is why I felt weird for having the thoughts I’d had about her being lost and needing a hug. Her expression was pretty relaxed and casual, actually.
“What do you mean?” I asked her. "
I don't know how I got here," she said. "I ended up here. All of the sudden I am here… And, here you are. But I do not know how I got here."
Whoa. Whut?! I did not see that coming. My gray matter turned a bit shadowy with that one.
“Are you okay? Do you know where you are? Did you have a black out?” I asked her.
“Yeah. Yes. I know where I am. I am okay. I just don’t know how I got here. I just ended up here and I don’t know how I got here. This has never happened to me before.”
What was denting my brain more was that this girl did not seem scared. She was confused. Yes. But, she didn’t seem afraid. She just could not comprehend how she’d gotten from point A to point B. That is what was unsettling for her.
“Do you need me to take you somewhere? Are you afraid of what has just happened? What can I do for you?” I asked. “No. No. I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just confused. I know where I am. I know where I need to go now. I just…this has never happened.”
And, she did seem fine. She seemed off, but fine. Who wouldn’t be off? It was like she’d experienced that thing where you turn off of the freeway on an exit that is too soon or too late from where you are supposed to exit, but because this is your usual commute, your auto pilot has jacked you up. The next thing you know, you are in Compton. You see the 405 freeway in sight, so you know where you are and you know how to turn your car around, but you still can’t figure out how you made the wrong turn in the first place. That confusion, that “how’d I F’n get here” feeling, is the feeling I think she was experiencing…on crack.
Even though she looked calm, I didn’t want to scare her more than she might have already been side socked by the experience. Seeing her cell phone in her hand, I made a suggestion. “You know what I would do if was in your shoes and felt like how you might feel right now? I’d call a friend or a family member and tell them, ‘Hey, I just had something weird happen to me. I might have blacked out. I’m fine, but I want you to know where I am and where I am going so that you can call me in 5-10 minutes to make sure that I’m fine in case it happens again.’ Then you should ask them to keep tabs on you until you are with someone else and until you are in someone’s company long enough to know this was an isolated incident.”
She now looked dazed, as if the shock of what had happened was starting to hit her. “Yes. Okay. Thank you. I will do that.” She really did seem like she’d be fine, but I had to ask, “Are you sure you are okay? I can walk you somewhere or I can call someone. Really, I can.”
“Yes. I’m fine. I am.” Then, just as she was about to walk away from me she turned to me and said, “I know this sounds strange, but can I have a hug? I really need a hug?”
“Of course,” I said.
Man, did I ever feel good to be able to give this girl a hug and to realize why I’d had that thought. She needed a hug, damn it. Who wouldn’t after blacking out, if that is what happened to her.
What I am trying to say is that it was weird, but really cool, that I sensed this girl was lost and needed a hug. I haven’t had intuition like that, that was so pound for pound, in a long time. But, I think we can all do that, listen to our inner voice. We’re all so, so capable of it and already doing it.
Let’s not deny that part anymore that is such a natural part of all of us. If we’re all connected, why wouldn’t we be able to sense what’s going on in others? Why not tap into that? That inner voice, whether it’s a gnawing at us to keep our kids safe (even when we think we’re being silly) or an alarm that it is time to change jobs (okay, that one is easy), or even a nudge in our gut that we can help a stranger (better yet, a family member or friend) it’s telling us something.
That voice is our inner knowing keeping us connected to each other. We know what is hollering at us from deep within. Let’s answer that call. It is time to wake up and take notice of that strange part of us that isn’t so strange. It’s time to stand up and follow that path we’ve estranged ourselves from. Be it fear, or whatever, that’s kept us from it, it’s time we hear it, see it, smell it, touch it, and taste it for what it is… It’s our intuition and we need to listen.
Everyone should let their intuition sit at their dinner table more often. We are so much smarter and way more amazing than we give ourselves credit for!!!
Keep being fabulous!
But, I have no problem telling people when I’ve got a feeling about something. Why not? These feelings usually turn out to be pretty right on. Sometimes, when I tell people I think I have great intuition they look at me weird. Fortunately, these reactions are usually from people who I am not close with. The people who know me? They’ve seen one of these “feelings” in action, so they don’t think I’m weird.
What does having good intuition even mean? Well, considering that most people have intuition, but they just don’t listen to it, having good (or great) intuition means that you DO listen to that voice inside—the voice that, while it may not always speak to you in clear sentences, does communicate pretty strong messages if you are paying attention.
My intuition, when it’s good, ranges from sensing the nature of a person's character, like if they have a generally good energy or basically bad energy about them, to getting a more specific sense about something, about a situation, or about a someone. For instance, I almost always know when I am being lied to.
This is probably why I do not lie. (Well, mostly never.) Once I grew up, past five, six, seven years old, and realized I could not convince my mom that I was NOT the one who had made such a mess of my bedroom, when, of course, I was, I think I didn't see the point in lying. My young brain figured that lying was futile because everyone was probably equipped with a fantastic lie-o-meter like my mother’s. If my mom knew a tall tale was about to come out of my mouth, before my lips even parted, everyone must know when others aren't being honest.
It didn’t matter what fib I told my mom. She knew. Oh, she knew. There was that time I told my mother that it wasn’t me who stuck her fingers in the cake frosting, even though there were little-girl-sized swipe-dents all the way around the bottom edge of the chocolate-frosted pound cake. There was that other time I held my position, firm, that it wasn’t me who broke the big owl statue in the hallway. So what if there were pieces of broken-owl-statue plaster in my sock drawer. “I didn’t do it”, I told my mom. Sometimes I would even tell me mother that I had, indeed, washed my hands before dinner when, clearly, I hadn’t.
As time went on, I figured out that the crap I made up, and felt way guiltier for lying about than most kids, was just normal kid stuff. I also learned, as I got older, that a lot of people do, in fact, get away with lying.
But, my mom taught me not to lie. She taught me how it made others feel when they were lied to. Shoot, everyone can remember being a kid and seeing that look on their mother's face when she asked, even though she already knew the answer, "Are you lying to me?" And then we, rather than tell the truth, lied again.
We might as well have put a dagger straight into our mother’s bellies. We could see the disappointment we’d caused curling the corners of our mother’s eyebrows inward and up. In that moment we had experienced for ourselves, in our own stomachs, how thick the air had become with our untruth. But, because we were kids, we would lie again and then lie about lying. We knew not the gravity of the lesson that our mothers, and life, were trying to hand us. But, man-o-man, did we ever know, in that icky-feeling part of us, that that lesson sucked. Oh, what a tortuous, difficult rite of passage we all went through in our young lives, learning the value of integrity and telling the truth.
Why’d we lie in the first place? Why do we lie now? I think that when we were kids our brains weren’t developed enough to choose between the fight/flight protection mode and the reasoning (and/or lack thereof) that we were developing and/or have now developed. (Well, most of us have developed a moral compass that keeps us on track.) We only knew that the lie, the thing that didn’t feel comfortable but felt like it was going to save our tooshies (we reverted to instinct), was the way we should go. Go figure. Then, as we got older, even while we’d acquired the ability to understand how certain lies can damage everyone involved, the truth is still scary enough (to many folks) that the lie somehow feels better.
I think people forget that lies can rob a person of their basic need to be honored, to be respected. I don’t think people mean to patronize or degrade others. (Yes, I know that is a Pollyanna view, but that’s me). After all, most folks, whether we’re a kid or an adult, we just want to eat that friggen cake frosting without repercussion, man.
Plus, we all learn that there is a rhyme to the reasoning behind some lies. Gosh, even while my mother’s disappointment ‘look’ was friggen intense, and while it left me never wanting to be the person that someone knew was lying to them, I have learned that all lies aren’t bad. I have recognized the value of the white lies which can spare someone’s feelings. (No, that S.O.F.A: Shirt Over Fat Ass that you are wearing isn’t obvious.) I had no problem embracing the professional lies that people use/write to get a great job when I was 25 yrs old. (My resume was padded until I was 31years old.) And, I take every opportunity to throw out three cheers for the everyday lies that we tell ourselves.
Yes. I’d rather lie to myself a little than be hard on myself for “whatever” it is. Um…GO lie! in that situation. We spent a childhood, and most of our young adult lives, being told what is wrong with us by our parents, by teachers, and by society. They all said, “Do this. Don’t do that. You are in trouble. You can’t do that right. Do it this way. It’s the law. Because I said so.” So you better believe I am going to tell those mental weights to get stuffed. I have no desire to spend the rest of my life feeling burned and flawed by that microscope.
Anyway, once I started to get a sense about others, and listen to that voice inside, that’s when I began to know when someone was lying to me. That’s also when my ability to lie developed a switch. A very cut and dry “can” or “can’t” lie switch which depends upon my relationship to a person or a situation. What this means is, because I treat others how I want to be treated, I am incapable of lying to anyone I love.
It’s the golden rule. I learned this in Brownies and again in Girl Scouts. I always say Karma is the only religion for me.
This is not a joke. I have no ability to put one over on anyone that I adore. But, have no fear, if I do not respect a person, if I do not hold their value in my heart or feel valued by them in the same way, or if I feel threatened by them (like how one might feel threatened by a bad boss who holds the control of their salary over them) make no mistake, I can lie my way into an academy award.
So, as idiosyncratic as this is, this lie switch thing, this is how I live. The minute I feel myself trying to hide something, even if I am embarrassed about it and I do not want someone to know about the thing I am trying to disguise, I just can’t hide it or lie about it from someone I love. I simply cannot. The truth just comes out. This happens without my consent. It’s like I have truth turrets syndrome.
But, I am okay with this. I figure it adds to my charm, that I am a sort of truthful rambler of sorts. Gawd, I hope this is the case, that my telling the truth all the time makes me more charming. If not, I won’t be able to lie to myself that it’s okay. Then, I’ll probably go crazy and end up on the streets homeless. I will be like a blurting schizophrenic. People will want to offer me apples. I’ll decline the damn apples. Duh. What homeless/toothless person wants a friggen apple? (Yes. If I am going to be homeless I’ll have to lose my teeth, too.) Who offers apples to the homeless anyway? That’s just stupid.
But, and this is where it gets a little personally funky for me, and where I attempt to pull this whole ‘lying’ tangent/intuition thing back around… I've lied to myself for a very long time about how intuitive I am. So, here’s me being honest: my intuition sometimes trips me out.
Why? Let’s go back to that premonition thing I was talking about earlier. Now, imagine, if you will, flashing on a digital clock in your sister's boyfriend's car and seeing the time (in bright-red digital-clock numbers) not as the time it actually is, but as a time that is an hour and several minutes later. Then imagine hearing yourself talking into a telephone receiver and telling your father that you, your brother, your sister and your sister's boyfriend, are all going to be late coming home from the family reunion because you have all just been in a car accident. Then, next, imagine seeing yourself sitting in the front seat of a police car filling out an accident report.
Now imagine that everything you imagined, which you do not know why you imagined it in the first place, because that’s just strange (thinking you are going to get into a car accident), happens as you imagined it. You experience a car side-swiping the car you, your brother, your sister and your sister's boyfriend (who was driving) are all in. You see the digital clock of your sister's boyfriend's car read out as the time you'd imagined. It is now that time.
A half of an hour later you are, indeed, sitting in the front seat of a police car and you are filling out an accident report. You are trying to explain to the policeman how this other car, a truck, was chasing your car down. You tell the police man that this car-chasing man came from the gas station that you were all just at. “Yes, officer. He rammed us off the road,” you say.
BTW, I hadn't imagined that getting rammed-off-the-road part before. No one thinks that a run-of-the-mill trip to the gas station is going to result in some guy (a dude Jeff Foxworthy would describe as a “you might be a redneck if” type) running you off the road. Sure, this mullet-wearing Neanderthal was making unwelcome advances towards my older sister inside the gas station mini-mart. But none of us had suspected that he’d threaten my sister’s boyfriend and then come after us to chase us all down. It’s just not reasonable to think that some inbred freak, with his big, 1980's, overblown 4x4 truck, is going to purposely bulldoze his truck into the car you are in and thus propel it into a tailspin which shatters all the car’s windows, upon impact, when it hits the curb.
Likewise, no one imagines that the peculiar thought that they have, that they might be late getting back to their grandmother’s house after a family reunion because of a car accident, is going to turn out to be what actually happens. It felt like déjà vu when I called my dad to let him know we’d be late. It felt worse, incomprehensible, that so many of the moments I had experienced had been part of what I’d already imagined.
That’s why, since I was about 16 years old (I might have been 14 or 15. I don’t totally remember.), and since I had an experience like that, which felt like more than good intuition, I learned to lie to myself. It was too much. So, I told myself it never happened like that. I told myself, which is the truth, that I didn't really know it was going to happen. But, I did have a feeling. I just had a feeling. That’s all.
I’ve not had something happen like that since, where I imagined something, thought it was weird, and then it happened. But I do get feelings all the time that I think are weird when they just pop into my head and they seem like they are the truth. Those are the feelings I call my intuition.
However, even though I am now a little more willing to admit that my intuition is pretty decent, there is a lot I still don’t say. I rarely tell people, who are not close to me, about the feelings I get about others, or about a situation. No matter how obvious something seems, I don’t say much, even if most of the time these things turn out to be right. These are, after all, just feelings. Seriously, again, I am not psychic.
Still, what happened last week at work was kinda freaky. It was just so clear, and so blatant, that what I was sensing played itself out. It wasn’t exact, and I didn’t imagine anything. It was just a feeling. But it was close enough, that even I couldn’t lie to myself and pretend that I don’t have good intuition.
Here is what happened that was a little freaky-deaky... I took a break at work around 3ish p.m. in the afternoon. Even though I’d already called Jen in the a.m. to wish her happy birthday, I called her a second time to see how her birthday was going. Then, just after I had gotten off of the phone with her, about 30 seconds later, maybe it was a minute afterwards, I happened upon this girl.
This girl was about 18-20 years old with long black hair and big, beautiful eyes. Upon seeing her, my thoughts were, as best as I can remember, what is written just below. It should be noted that I remember these thoughts so clearly because I felt weird that I was thinking some of these thoughts in the first place.
My thoughts:
Hmmm, she's pretty—really pretty. Gosh, she looks exotic. (Stop. People.This is not the weird part yet. This is not a lesbian fantasy.) I wonder what nationality she is. She must be waiting for someone to pick her up for a ride. Why is she standing there? She’s standing in a weird place. (She was out in the road/parking lot a bit and not on the sidewalk.) That really is a weird place for her to wait for a ride. She seems lost. She doesn’t look lost, but she seems lost. Man... Why do I want to give her a hug so bad? She seems like she could use a hug. That would be weird if I asked her if she needed a hug. WTF? Why do I feel so compelled to ask her if she needs a hug? That’s just weird. Shit. She’d look at me like a freak. Still, she really seems like she needs a hug. Man, why does it feel like she’s lost. She’s not lost. She’s fine. These are weird thoughts.
Then, as I continued to walk towards her, and before I had my next thought, this girl looked at me and said, "Hi."
It was a meager "Hi." I'd be pushing it if I said her "Hi" seemed lost, because those thoughts I’d had of her being lost were instantly lost once she spoke. I just thought that her “Hi” seemed meager. I also thought that it was queer that she’d say hello to me because there was nothing about her energy that made her appear to be the kind of girl that goes around saying "Hi" to strangers.
Me? Oh, I'll tell a caterpillar hello. I’ll say hi to the pope and ask him to dinner, even though I am not Catholic, and I’ll tell him I’m serving spaghetti and meatballs and that he needs to bring the parmesan cheese and wine. I’m a G-dang dolphin in the human kingdom. Threaten me with a stranger, and I’m there making friends and saving sailors.
But, her? It just seemed unnatural for her to engage me, a stranger, even if I am that girl people like to chat up and who likes to chat them up. Again, people sense I am friendly. It’s been that way my whole life. I like people. But, she didn’t seem to be tapping into my energy like that. (Maybe she was.) Regardless, I gave her a hearty hello back, and asked, "How are you today?" That's when she said, "I don't know how I got here."
This response struck me, like OMIGOSH. Is she okay? What was spooky about it is that she’d honestly not looked weirded-out to me before. She just didn’t. That is why I felt weird for having the thoughts I’d had about her being lost and needing a hug. Her expression was pretty relaxed and casual, actually.
“What do you mean?” I asked her. "
I don't know how I got here," she said. "I ended up here. All of the sudden I am here… And, here you are. But I do not know how I got here."
Whoa. Whut?! I did not see that coming. My gray matter turned a bit shadowy with that one.
“Are you okay? Do you know where you are? Did you have a black out?” I asked her.
“Yeah. Yes. I know where I am. I am okay. I just don’t know how I got here. I just ended up here and I don’t know how I got here. This has never happened to me before.”
What was denting my brain more was that this girl did not seem scared. She was confused. Yes. But, she didn’t seem afraid. She just could not comprehend how she’d gotten from point A to point B. That is what was unsettling for her.
“Do you need me to take you somewhere? Are you afraid of what has just happened? What can I do for you?” I asked. “No. No. I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just confused. I know where I am. I know where I need to go now. I just…this has never happened.”
And, she did seem fine. She seemed off, but fine. Who wouldn’t be off? It was like she’d experienced that thing where you turn off of the freeway on an exit that is too soon or too late from where you are supposed to exit, but because this is your usual commute, your auto pilot has jacked you up. The next thing you know, you are in Compton. You see the 405 freeway in sight, so you know where you are and you know how to turn your car around, but you still can’t figure out how you made the wrong turn in the first place. That confusion, that “how’d I F’n get here” feeling, is the feeling I think she was experiencing…on crack.
Even though she looked calm, I didn’t want to scare her more than she might have already been side socked by the experience. Seeing her cell phone in her hand, I made a suggestion. “You know what I would do if was in your shoes and felt like how you might feel right now? I’d call a friend or a family member and tell them, ‘Hey, I just had something weird happen to me. I might have blacked out. I’m fine, but I want you to know where I am and where I am going so that you can call me in 5-10 minutes to make sure that I’m fine in case it happens again.’ Then you should ask them to keep tabs on you until you are with someone else and until you are in someone’s company long enough to know this was an isolated incident.”
She now looked dazed, as if the shock of what had happened was starting to hit her. “Yes. Okay. Thank you. I will do that.” She really did seem like she’d be fine, but I had to ask, “Are you sure you are okay? I can walk you somewhere or I can call someone. Really, I can.”
“Yes. I’m fine. I am.” Then, just as she was about to walk away from me she turned to me and said, “I know this sounds strange, but can I have a hug? I really need a hug?”
“Of course,” I said.
Man, did I ever feel good to be able to give this girl a hug and to realize why I’d had that thought. She needed a hug, damn it. Who wouldn’t after blacking out, if that is what happened to her.
What I am trying to say is that it was weird, but really cool, that I sensed this girl was lost and needed a hug. I haven’t had intuition like that, that was so pound for pound, in a long time. But, I think we can all do that, listen to our inner voice. We’re all so, so capable of it and already doing it.
Let’s not deny that part anymore that is such a natural part of all of us. If we’re all connected, why wouldn’t we be able to sense what’s going on in others? Why not tap into that? That inner voice, whether it’s a gnawing at us to keep our kids safe (even when we think we’re being silly) or an alarm that it is time to change jobs (okay, that one is easy), or even a nudge in our gut that we can help a stranger (better yet, a family member or friend) it’s telling us something.
That voice is our inner knowing keeping us connected to each other. We know what is hollering at us from deep within. Let’s answer that call. It is time to wake up and take notice of that strange part of us that isn’t so strange. It’s time to stand up and follow that path we’ve estranged ourselves from. Be it fear, or whatever, that’s kept us from it, it’s time we hear it, see it, smell it, touch it, and taste it for what it is… It’s our intuition and we need to listen.
Everyone should let their intuition sit at their dinner table more often. We are so much smarter and way more amazing than we give ourselves credit for!!!
Keep being fabulous!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
