In the middle of my shit storm, I may have met someone, "may" being the operative word. No, it's not Rick, the smart, physicist guy from a week-ish ago. I never heard from that schmuck and, probably, honestly didn't want to. He was cute, smart as hell, older, put together, mostly, and I was intrigued. But, handsome and sail-boat owning as he was, he had thin lips I didn’t imagine kissing, and, then was that curly 1980s type mullet of his. 'Nuf said.
So now, despite my better judgment, in sharing something before there is anything to share, as I only met this fellow yesterday, since I've been out on a limb these days, what do I care? I'm so over my ego. If nothing comes of it, then that. Nothing comes of it. Next.
If something does, here's the meet cute moment, how it went down...
I walked into the post office to retrieve whatever mail I've ignored for the last two weeks, and just as I was about to turn the heavy, copper-ish PO-box key to see what my neglect has collected, I noticed this brown haired, medium built, nice looking fellow talking to the attendant who had helped me sign up for my PO box about 6 months ago.
This is the very same sweet faced, petite and thin, brunette clerk who found me in tears when I explained why I needed a PO box, why I was pissed I was essentially becoming homeless. I, of course, mean that I was losing, and have lost, a place where my heart had been at home, for a very long time, in exchange for a place that doesn't offer my heart a home or any comfort.
So if there are any homeless, non-apple eating chaps out there, who have internet access and are reading this post, and now want to kill me for calling myself homeless, I've got a Swiss army knife with my name engraved on the side you can borrow. Have at it. I’m getting life has pitched me a licking to learn from and even if I die, I've probably done enough learning in this life to come back as Oprah’s other best friend. Oprah will have me star in my own television series and I’ll have enough money to pay people to get my gas for me. (This life for all of us is payment enough.)
I can't recall if I ever mentioned that little mini meltdown at the post office those months ago, but, apparently, I was getting a jump start on what would be, and is now, my post traumatic stress disorder (from moving and changing jobs). There's nothing like consciously/unconsciously intuiting a future unraveling. I highly don't recommend it—even if, for me, I know what will come out on the other side will make me stronger than I’ve ever been.
Sick. That’s what I am. Sick or smart. I am rather glad this is all happening, my storm, SUCKS as it does. I’m getting something from it. Haven’t breezed it all up yet, or connected every dot blowing me in different directions, but the puzzle corners will glide together. (They always do.)
"You're not wearing your sunglasses like usual," I overhead him, the guy, say to her, the clerk.
He's right, I'd thought. She hasn't worn her sunglasses since that first month I'd gotten my PO box. I guess I wasn't the only one wondering what the deal was with this cool-cat chick. Medical eye condition? Laser surgery? Going incognito? Going postal like me—hiding out? What was with the sunglasses?
Then, I think I recognize this guy as the guy Cella and I had met months back, the night Cella had her a bit of fun. I am just about to bust him, and say something like, "Hey. What's your name, again? Didn't my friend and I meet you…?” and, “You never called my friend, you ass…” when I realize it's not him, the guy Cella and I met.
Yet, I'm staring at this guy still, a stranger, with an expression I know to be an I-recognize-you glare, mixed with a physical I’m-ready-for-a-mini-confrontation shoulder-puffing rumble. But what does he know?
He knows I am fixed on him, that’s what. Mid-gaze, amidst my mental reconciliation, of the actual reality of him being him, some stranger, vs. the assumption of him being someone else, we lock eyes. This snaps me to, so I disclose my confusion.
I say, "I'm sorry. I thought you were someone else."Then he says, "Damn. I thought I was about to get hit on."
Seeing how way more cute this guy is, and thinking I'm cool, even while my heart started beating so fast it was punching dents into my left breast trying to beat its way out, I say, "How do you know you’re not getting hit on?"
That's when the sunglasses clerk gets cooler than me and asks me, "What's your name?" Since I thought she somehow psychically knew I not only wanted to check my mail, but also wanted to re-pay my PO box rent for another 6 months, I give her my last name so she can start looking my shit up.
She's hip on me being a dip, though, but doesn't let on. She gracefully requests my name again, specifying that it was my first name she is after. I move closer to her and the stranger.
But I'm still none the wiser to where she is going with her inquiry, as I’m under the assumption she is now taking care of stranger guy and me at the same time and letting me bust ahead, take cuts, in front of the line starting to form. Feeling gently ordered to comply with the right answer, I say, "Oh? Levan. My name is Levan." She's a Federal postal worker, for heaven’s sake. I had to give the right information.
Then she looks at the stranger I mistook for someone else, who we are going to call Post, and says, "Levan, meet Post. Post, meet Levan." She, essentially, was the puppeteer managing our meet-cute moment and facilitated a shake of our hands. Contact.
Yes. I know the name Post is bland. But I’m not shooting for the stars at Love here. I’ve got no feeling one way or the other about this guy. No read. I’m so crazy lately I more feel no than yes on him, but I don't know if that's just because I don’t know my own up from my down right now.
There was something else there about it that was so much like what the psychic described as how I’d meet the One (standing in line, he'd say something funny, I'd laugh, etc.) I’ve dog eared the experience.
Plus, I met him in the Post Office. What can I say? If it goes, I might hate that I chose Post for his name. If it don’t go, it’s just a reference. Besides, whatever happens, a name is just a name. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
The other clerk, all smudgy and bland, in her: I can't even remember what she looked like way, who was just doing her job, and who wasn’t watching Post and I, like the line-O-plenty of Post-Office customer people collecting and on looking while we fumbled our way through a potentially cool-cat guided kismet exchange, broke the connection and called out, "NEXT!" in, what I’m going to remember as, falsely (for effect), a shrill voice.
"Uhm. Yeah. I wanted to pay for the next six months on my PO box," I drizzled out to the smudgy clerk.
As Smudgy checked the records, I readied one of my artist business cards to pass off to Post if I was done before him and had to be the one to do the pass off. Drats! It was.
Ready, set, GO! Act nonchalant in front of the other customers still watching the guy-meets-girl spectacle, which are now about 7-8 people who may as well each have had their own popcorn and an over-sized/over-priced soda pop in hand. Just hand him your card like a porn star who can have any man in the moment.
"The rest is up to you," I said, as I presented him my labeled over, wrong e-mail, artist (too cheap and too tired to buy new business cards) card. He had his card ready for me, too.
His card? Way more professional. And way more fun. He's a tax man, you see, yet something about his card made him look more like a member of The Monkeys, or a cover-band musician, than a bland accountant.
If I hear from him, I'll have to ask him: What's up with the card? I'm sure he's wondering the same from my card and asking: What’s up with the stick-em-on cell number label and the pen crossed-out and corrected e-mail? (Psycho, cheap bitch.) Honestly. Who spends the time putting cell number correction labels on business cards rather than just getting new cards? Sigh... me, the girl who doesn’t want to figure out how to re-format a graphic for printing and doesn't trust what her address will be next.
Now we know I really do love Mother Earth, or I really am OCD or crazy or lazy.
Will I be sad if I don't hear from Post? Probably. But only for a couple of days, which for me, these days, in love at least, is long enough to let go of the what if I used to hang on to for weeks or more. There was a time, with love, I'd cry over what was, and what is, and what hasn't become.
Now, I only cry, not because of love found or lost, but because I get edgy with all that I’ve learned, about everything else, but cannot always accept when it does come to what is, I don’t know how to completely surrender to the other parts of my life. I don’t know how to meditate my way out of stress when it comes to work and home. I can’t stop the inner turmoil from coming out on my body in the form of headaches or stress rashes.
But, and I might still be crazy, most of these tears I cry, while a bit knife turning, are mostly happy. Not ha, ha, ha…yippee my guts are on the carpet again happy. But, shit, I am making progress, and getting to know myself even more, happy.
Knowing how far I've come, not holding on to things and trying to cram them into a "meant to be" idea, but rather trying to un-cram the mental wedgies into acceptance, that’s enough to rejoice over for Now.
And, another reason I am posting about this guy, where nothing may come to fruition, is because it occurred to me that while I've come to accept that I may not meet the One I am supposed to be with any time soon, meeting my One Now would actually be the best time. Not because I am so exhausted I want him to take care of me (but it would be a break before I got tired of it and needed independence again), or because, naturally, the distraction would be nice, and I’d be getting laid again, but because I am so raw and so exposed from the changes in my life right Now that I wouldn't have any energy to put up any walls.
Right Now, I would not be capable of presenting any of the precursory and/or cautionary masks many of us put forth when we're in our best-foot-forward phase of a relationship (personal, professional, or spiritual).
I don't have any best foot left in me. I have no access to my usual, "I'm fine," and "I can take care of myself" shields.
It's just me right now, with all my beautiful flaws and all my messy perfection.
Take it or leave it.
Me? I’m going to take it. I’m going to learn from it. I’m going to do me some more crying. Probably some more resisting. Definitely some more misunderstanding before it all comes clear. But, I’ll take it.
It is what is. I’m going a little postal, but I’m getting, or at least looking for, the messages.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Post Game Highlights
I have showed my toes (done the taking off of shoe and sock upon request) to two different men in a bar scenario only twice in my life. (I’ve showed my toes plenty while in private—za-za-zing—or wearing flip flops, so that’s not where I am going with this.)
The first time my little piglets got a theatrical request, and I gave them their bar beseeched debut, it was years ago, during my early twenties, in a crowded sports bar in Colorado. (That seems to be a theme with me, doing everything in my early twenties.) The man asking me to twinkle up a foot for revue was some random dude promising, upon compliance, he’d give up his Colorado Rockies baseball cap. I didn’t want the cap. Not a sports fan. But…challenge a drunk young’n? Sadly, after I presented him naked toes, the fucker shot me down and didn’t give up the cap. Lying bastard. He didn’t deserve my digits.
The second time, I’ve publicly pointed my manicure in a man’s direction, when dared or goaded, that was the other night. His name is Rick. That’s what we’re going to call the guy who peaked my interest enough that when coerced, by both him and Cella (who I was doing a school night evening out with) during the course of a conversation about why I do my own pedicures, and have done so for years (I’m grossed out by going to the salons—with the threat of funguses and all) I surrendered my cherry-red painted ground-bound digits for review.
And, here we are. If Rick gets another crack at showing up in one of my posts, let’s get an overview of him first, before we decide if we like him. Right now, make no mistake, we are interested. Not like, HOLY SHIT! You’re it interested. But, hmmm, you are quite clever and handsome. We should talk more just so I can see.
If we never speak of Rick again, we’ve decided we don’t like him. Or, because of his baggage, or whatever (we’ll get to that) he decided not to call me. That’s where I’ll decide he’s not worth mentioning again.
Cella said, “He’s a diamond in the rough.” She recognized straight away that I was fascinated by this single/separated (ok, probably bad news—even if he’s been separated for 3 years now) brown, curly haired, bearded, fair skinned English man, who said he was a physicist. Yeah (leaning into it), me likes them smart.
Cella also, slyly, traded her seat next to him for mine so I could saddle up nearer him and find out more. Good, good wing woman, that Cella, especially when you consider she started talking to a dented tooth, gray haired man who had no business buying her a rose from the flower/rose pusher lady. (Can’t stand them rose peddlers. Don’t care for bathroom attendants while I am at it.)
Once Rick and I got to talking, that is when I learned he’s got a boat, a real boat. Not a motor boat that is, as Cella joked is an extension of a man’s penis, but a long ass sail boat with a cabin and wood parts and all, that he, himself, artistically, all craftsmen like, refinished the wood parts on.
Can I remember the name of the special, imported-something-a-rather, wood he put his grit into? What do you think? Can you say “Wine”?
But the artist in me has got some muscle sensory memory about him taking pride in creating, restoring, something, thanks. The asshole in me likes using the word “wood” for innuendo sake, even if I am the girl who discounts any man who’d use a sexual innuendo to flirt with me. From early on, I remembered something I learned: A gentleman reflects himself, not the woman he speaks to, and in that way a true gentleman treats every lady like a lady, regardless.
Anyway, somewhere in my conversation with him, I also got that his boat was a sail boat, and his love for working with wood, building something new or restoring something old, was his passion. That’s when my intrigue flagged a page on him.
Rick also said something about Martha’s Vineyard. Everything in my not pretentious spirit, but craving culture lust, shouldered up. I waited to want to gag, but also paused to appreciate the pleasure he took in speaking of things refined. He wasn’t bragging. He was reminiscing enjoyment. There is a difference. Once his use of the “F” word hit the same ground as his mention of the vineyard, the sucker in me, for smarts, culture, and cussing, got reeled in.
I read once that a good writer does not subject their readers to a list. Well, A) Who knows if I am a good writer yet. I’ve just got a voice and some commas, so B) A list is the only way I am going to succinctly get Rick’s highlights on the game map before I tire of him or find out more.
As such, the list commences. I’ve always loved me some dorky, sweet, handsome intelligent breed of a man who knows how to keep the conversation moving. Check. Didn’t expect super-duper firm guns when I did my flirt, and touched his left arm and felt the strength of a fit body scream through a pin-striped, cleaner’s pressed, collared shirt. Superficial? Duh. But who cares? Check! I’m not a physicist, and obviously am an artist, but meeting a man wholly unthreatened by my feminine strength, my need for mental stimulation…check, check, and CHECK.
Is Rick an “it” guy? No clue. He’s got at least 3 more days to get a hold of me before he pisses me off for playing it too cool. Did I have one of the best conversations with Rick, a man who didn’t make me feel like I needed to be younger or hold back age references or intellectual appearances, which makes me want more from him, because it was refreshing and inviting? Definitely.
We’ll see. That’s all I can do, with Rick, with life, with it all…is just see.
The first time my little piglets got a theatrical request, and I gave them their bar beseeched debut, it was years ago, during my early twenties, in a crowded sports bar in Colorado. (That seems to be a theme with me, doing everything in my early twenties.) The man asking me to twinkle up a foot for revue was some random dude promising, upon compliance, he’d give up his Colorado Rockies baseball cap. I didn’t want the cap. Not a sports fan. But…challenge a drunk young’n? Sadly, after I presented him naked toes, the fucker shot me down and didn’t give up the cap. Lying bastard. He didn’t deserve my digits.
The second time, I’ve publicly pointed my manicure in a man’s direction, when dared or goaded, that was the other night. His name is Rick. That’s what we’re going to call the guy who peaked my interest enough that when coerced, by both him and Cella (who I was doing a school night evening out with) during the course of a conversation about why I do my own pedicures, and have done so for years (I’m grossed out by going to the salons—with the threat of funguses and all) I surrendered my cherry-red painted ground-bound digits for review.
And, here we are. If Rick gets another crack at showing up in one of my posts, let’s get an overview of him first, before we decide if we like him. Right now, make no mistake, we are interested. Not like, HOLY SHIT! You’re it interested. But, hmmm, you are quite clever and handsome. We should talk more just so I can see.
If we never speak of Rick again, we’ve decided we don’t like him. Or, because of his baggage, or whatever (we’ll get to that) he decided not to call me. That’s where I’ll decide he’s not worth mentioning again.
Cella said, “He’s a diamond in the rough.” She recognized straight away that I was fascinated by this single/separated (ok, probably bad news—even if he’s been separated for 3 years now) brown, curly haired, bearded, fair skinned English man, who said he was a physicist. Yeah (leaning into it), me likes them smart.
Cella also, slyly, traded her seat next to him for mine so I could saddle up nearer him and find out more. Good, good wing woman, that Cella, especially when you consider she started talking to a dented tooth, gray haired man who had no business buying her a rose from the flower/rose pusher lady. (Can’t stand them rose peddlers. Don’t care for bathroom attendants while I am at it.)
Once Rick and I got to talking, that is when I learned he’s got a boat, a real boat. Not a motor boat that is, as Cella joked is an extension of a man’s penis, but a long ass sail boat with a cabin and wood parts and all, that he, himself, artistically, all craftsmen like, refinished the wood parts on.
Can I remember the name of the special, imported-something-a-rather, wood he put his grit into? What do you think? Can you say “Wine”?
But the artist in me has got some muscle sensory memory about him taking pride in creating, restoring, something, thanks. The asshole in me likes using the word “wood” for innuendo sake, even if I am the girl who discounts any man who’d use a sexual innuendo to flirt with me. From early on, I remembered something I learned: A gentleman reflects himself, not the woman he speaks to, and in that way a true gentleman treats every lady like a lady, regardless.
Anyway, somewhere in my conversation with him, I also got that his boat was a sail boat, and his love for working with wood, building something new or restoring something old, was his passion. That’s when my intrigue flagged a page on him.
Rick also said something about Martha’s Vineyard. Everything in my not pretentious spirit, but craving culture lust, shouldered up. I waited to want to gag, but also paused to appreciate the pleasure he took in speaking of things refined. He wasn’t bragging. He was reminiscing enjoyment. There is a difference. Once his use of the “F” word hit the same ground as his mention of the vineyard, the sucker in me, for smarts, culture, and cussing, got reeled in.
I read once that a good writer does not subject their readers to a list. Well, A) Who knows if I am a good writer yet. I’ve just got a voice and some commas, so B) A list is the only way I am going to succinctly get Rick’s highlights on the game map before I tire of him or find out more.
As such, the list commences. I’ve always loved me some dorky, sweet, handsome intelligent breed of a man who knows how to keep the conversation moving. Check. Didn’t expect super-duper firm guns when I did my flirt, and touched his left arm and felt the strength of a fit body scream through a pin-striped, cleaner’s pressed, collared shirt. Superficial? Duh. But who cares? Check! I’m not a physicist, and obviously am an artist, but meeting a man wholly unthreatened by my feminine strength, my need for mental stimulation…check, check, and CHECK.
Is Rick an “it” guy? No clue. He’s got at least 3 more days to get a hold of me before he pisses me off for playing it too cool. Did I have one of the best conversations with Rick, a man who didn’t make me feel like I needed to be younger or hold back age references or intellectual appearances, which makes me want more from him, because it was refreshing and inviting? Definitely.
We’ll see. That’s all I can do, with Rick, with life, with it all…is just see.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Honored
BTW, I realize that the last post might seem out of the blue. I wrote that email to a friend because that friend had felt regret for sharing with me more than they were comfortable with sharing. It wasn't about that the friend had shared with me, it was about what the friend had shared.
I hate advise. But, this would be my advise in life, anyway... Never regret sharing anything with a true friend. You honor that friend by allowing them to know you in every way that is vulnerable and strong, and in letting that friend in, a friend who can be strong for you, that which you beleive makes you weak does not. You, and the friend, indeed, gather strength from the experience of going deeper into the fold.
I beleive this. If this comfort in life is not true, and I am an idiot, I'd like to remain so. Never tell me different and leave me to the bliss of my friendships and ignorance.
I hate advise. But, this would be my advise in life, anyway... Never regret sharing anything with a true friend. You honor that friend by allowing them to know you in every way that is vulnerable and strong, and in letting that friend in, a friend who can be strong for you, that which you beleive makes you weak does not. You, and the friend, indeed, gather strength from the experience of going deeper into the fold.
I beleive this. If this comfort in life is not true, and I am an idiot, I'd like to remain so. Never tell me different and leave me to the bliss of my friendships and ignorance.
Let's ROCK it!!!
I’ve got another post coming I am meaning to get around to, where think I might be putting the sourpuss away for a spell, but until I get around to this post, I thought I’d bring little miss positive out, for a squirt, and share another e-mail I sent to a friend.
Once again I am not going to share what friend, and what the circumstance are/where, because… Shit, we’ve been here. You get the drill. Anonymity is our friend for my friends. But, the meaning of this post is this: Sometimes I fall away, and my friends pick me up, sometimes it’s my turn to pick them up. Either way, friends, my friends, they are manna from above and we, you, ALL rock!!!
My friend...
It's true. You are beautiful to the bone. And, now, you are going to get the more present me, the friend who isn't complaining about her own life and I am going to tell you something...
You are not your actions. You are your core, your Being—the Source. The true you is part of the bigger connection. So, you are me, I am you, and we are everything. Yet, we are both human, too, and, this being human stuff, it means we are flawed and flawless. It is part of our design.
So you, we, are loving, learning, amazing human beings who are more than the love we give, the learning we do, or the mishaps or milestones we encounter along the way.
Listen, I know this!
I've become a different person in the last 10 years. I've lived this. For what it's worth, it's taken me a long time to get to just the stressed-out bitch who sometimes can't handle a shitty boss or un-fulfilling work. I used to be worse than the stress I've been sharing with you lately. (Sadly, it's true. Insert laugh here!)
I blamed myself for years for the things that happened to me from my past. I wanted to be mad at the world. Then I blamed myself for reacting from my humanity. I was mad that I was not perfect, that everything human in me, that needed to shut down, to shut off emotion, to get emotion, to be cared for, to care less, to get attention, to ignore attention, to want this, to not want that, to want control, to lose control, to care, to not care, to love, to hate, did what I’ve done, and will likely do.
I understand how we can hate who we are. I’ve always loved myself, but in the midst of that love there was hate. I have hated who I was. I have hated things I’ve done. I have hated ways I’d become. I have hated what I thought I could never be and who I thought I never had a chance to be. I have hated those who I thought made me hate me. I have hated me and others more because I didn’t know how not to hate.
I didn’t know about balance. I didn’t understand how to tap into the love for myself or for others. Then I forgave myself and I forgave others. Not over night. Not in a day. That forgiveness led me to more love and finding the love I always had but couldn’t reach, and I do not mean the kind of love we all feel is in our hearts, but the kind of love that is Love itself. The kind of love that is who we are. That is our Being.
What I am saying is that just as it took me years to learn some of the wrong lessons life presented, I, personally, needed years to un-think those lessons. I had to relearn and practice better lessons.
(Some learn quickly. Others do not. Whichever the speed, learning is a process, not a destination.)
I guess what I am trying to say to you, and trying to remind myself of (since I have recently let stress rule me instead of Love), is that becoming more conscious, loving our true Beings, it is a process. It is a practice.
It takes time and many reminders to accept and to live in Love. And, forgiveness, for others and for ourselves, like walking in Love, while both may be the most natural things in the world, they aren’t always the easiest to come by because we are human.
That’s the trick: to forgive ourselves along the way when we haven’t made it as far as we’d like to have come in Love. There is magic in letting go instead of hanging on, but if we can accept what is, accept imperfection in our humaneness, perhaps we might find more peace along life’s way.
And on it goes as we go. Yes?
We will live. We will fall. We will get up. We will sing. We will cry. We will dance. We will trip. We will laugh and cry some more. But we will learn. Then we will forget. Then we will learn again. Forget again. Then get some things and perhaps become more conscious.
Then we will die. Our true selves won’t parish. No. Our truth can never cease to exist as the source of us is our ultimate truth. But we will leave behind our human bodies as we continue to exist as divinity.
So what’s there to fear? It all is as it is.
Once again I am not going to share what friend, and what the circumstance are/where, because… Shit, we’ve been here. You get the drill. Anonymity is our friend for my friends. But, the meaning of this post is this: Sometimes I fall away, and my friends pick me up, sometimes it’s my turn to pick them up. Either way, friends, my friends, they are manna from above and we, you, ALL rock!!!
My friend...
It's true. You are beautiful to the bone. And, now, you are going to get the more present me, the friend who isn't complaining about her own life and I am going to tell you something...
You are not your actions. You are your core, your Being—the Source. The true you is part of the bigger connection. So, you are me, I am you, and we are everything. Yet, we are both human, too, and, this being human stuff, it means we are flawed and flawless. It is part of our design.
So you, we, are loving, learning, amazing human beings who are more than the love we give, the learning we do, or the mishaps or milestones we encounter along the way.
Listen, I know this!
I've become a different person in the last 10 years. I've lived this. For what it's worth, it's taken me a long time to get to just the stressed-out bitch who sometimes can't handle a shitty boss or un-fulfilling work. I used to be worse than the stress I've been sharing with you lately. (Sadly, it's true. Insert laugh here!)
I blamed myself for years for the things that happened to me from my past. I wanted to be mad at the world. Then I blamed myself for reacting from my humanity. I was mad that I was not perfect, that everything human in me, that needed to shut down, to shut off emotion, to get emotion, to be cared for, to care less, to get attention, to ignore attention, to want this, to not want that, to want control, to lose control, to care, to not care, to love, to hate, did what I’ve done, and will likely do.
I understand how we can hate who we are. I’ve always loved myself, but in the midst of that love there was hate. I have hated who I was. I have hated things I’ve done. I have hated ways I’d become. I have hated what I thought I could never be and who I thought I never had a chance to be. I have hated those who I thought made me hate me. I have hated me and others more because I didn’t know how not to hate.
I didn’t know about balance. I didn’t understand how to tap into the love for myself or for others. Then I forgave myself and I forgave others. Not over night. Not in a day. That forgiveness led me to more love and finding the love I always had but couldn’t reach, and I do not mean the kind of love we all feel is in our hearts, but the kind of love that is Love itself. The kind of love that is who we are. That is our Being.
What I am saying is that just as it took me years to learn some of the wrong lessons life presented, I, personally, needed years to un-think those lessons. I had to relearn and practice better lessons.
(Some learn quickly. Others do not. Whichever the speed, learning is a process, not a destination.)
I guess what I am trying to say to you, and trying to remind myself of (since I have recently let stress rule me instead of Love), is that becoming more conscious, loving our true Beings, it is a process. It is a practice.
It takes time and many reminders to accept and to live in Love. And, forgiveness, for others and for ourselves, like walking in Love, while both may be the most natural things in the world, they aren’t always the easiest to come by because we are human.
That’s the trick: to forgive ourselves along the way when we haven’t made it as far as we’d like to have come in Love. There is magic in letting go instead of hanging on, but if we can accept what is, accept imperfection in our humaneness, perhaps we might find more peace along life’s way.
And on it goes as we go. Yes?
We will live. We will fall. We will get up. We will sing. We will cry. We will dance. We will trip. We will laugh and cry some more. But we will learn. Then we will forget. Then we will learn again. Forget again. Then get some things and perhaps become more conscious.
Then we will die. Our true selves won’t parish. No. Our truth can never cease to exist as the source of us is our ultimate truth. But we will leave behind our human bodies as we continue to exist as divinity.
So what’s there to fear? It all is as it is.
Monday, October 25, 2010
I am a liar.
There are no doubts, now. I am good at lying.
I figured out something about keeping this blog up after my last post. This is the liar I’ve become, but not the writer I am or have always intended to be.
I’ve been continually apologizing for a bad memory about what I’ve posted, or not. I’m sloppy. I’m going to be sloppy again in this post and don’t seem to have any remorse.
Meaning, I’m not looking back at what I have written nor am I looking at what I am writing. I am only writing forward, recording my life, stuff, posting, as it goes, and I am not even sure I’m making a point each time. I’m like the cafeteria food at a grade school of trying to be a writer. I’m getting close, but the getting by on pizza for breakfast and the French fries, for a vegetable substitute, they count as calories, but they don’t really count as sustenance. (It’s like I’m Twinkies instead of organic vegetables.)
Filler sucks.
I’m sharing enough to share, to connect, but I’m not sharing near what I’d share if I was writing behind a character. I am not giving even half of the honesty I have to give. I admit it. I am living it, this giving of half truths in every blog.
I am so afraid of the repercussion of someone I know, who I wouldn’t divulge half this information to, finding my blog, and thus making my current need for anonymity (as it relates to job security) a thing of the past.
The writer I am, while not blogging, would cut a line down my center and expose my core so vividly that every bit of my guts would fall like entrails on the examiner’s table. I’d let every ounce of my mess and the beauty of me lose, to be posted like a check list for all who would read it, allowing them to tick off on the boxes of what they could identify with, or what they could not, and I’d ask an editor if what I’d thrown up for the tally made the list or busted the chase and fell flat. (I’d be a fucking professional with sailor’s mouth and a spell checker.)
I’d not try to spin it happy at every end or always try to be inspirational, like I’ve been doing with these blog posts. I’d just say how it is and then slip into that Polly Anna as I was feeling it, because I am a positive dork along my center line naturally. In other words, I want to feel it not force it.
Regardless, I’m finding that there is a problem with blogging. I’m never going to be totally honest. I am always going to be a bit of liar. I need to hind behind a character, and have characters for the stories of my friends to hide behind. I need to not lie. In a blog, I don’t have that. My friends don’t have that.
I want, want, want the cover that characters allow. I want to let go of all the safety I, and I feel my friends, require. So, from here on out, no matter what I say, continue to consider me to be a liar. I’m telling as much of the truth as I can, but there is so much more I cannot, and will not, share in this forum.
As I alluded to in my last post, I can admit that I am scared shitless that one of my dear friends is potentially suicidal. But I cannot say more about why this friend is in such a bad state, because, again, I cannot and will not give enough details that can ever be traced back to this specific dear friend. (The protection of their identity is paramount to me.)
I can also say that I am stressed, and that Bull #1, and Bull#2, and the Lead, have been/are part of the stress I’ve been enduring in work for the last 2 years, and that they’ve all messed with the security of my lively hood (how I pay for my life), but I cannot say more because they are people, not characters. I can’t slam them in a public forum. Whatever they’ve done to me, something likewise has been done to them and I’m not going to continue their undoing, certainly not publicly.
I’d love to bend them over in a book, though, were I could give them fake names and make up untraceable job titles, and drill down to their every nuance and not hold back. I’d have targets on their backs and drills in their ears in no time. But here, now, in real time, where this is my job, not as a writer, but as a girl who needs health insurance and a roof over her head, and as the girl who needs to make her 9-5 money, I have to be obtuse to protect myself and them.
Likewise, I’d love to say how it’s not just the roaches and the lack of light that are f’n with me with where I live now. I’d like to say how I got sliced on the lease the night before I moved in. But, if I go into those details, on how that person renting to me, who was supposed to be a friend, screwed me, a couple of those details being a move out date of December the 31st, 10:00 am (really? Is this a hotel?), and an agreement to hang no more than 10 pictures on the wall, and a verbal request of not going barefoot, as the oils on one’s feet can soil carpet, then I’d be potentially taking down a real person.
So, none of that happened. I'm lieing about that. There also have not been any inferences or my rent being raised by $400.00 come lease end. And, I wasn't living with this person’s furniture: an amour, a dresser, another dresser, another shelf, a wall hanging, yet another amour, and another smaller dresser, and more, too much to mention, along with my own furniture, up until about a week ago.
I have not been feeling like this place is not my place, but someone else’s entirely. The roaches, they're all a lie, too. Who picks up a roach in their hand? That can't be the truth. The contant water from the golf course and the snails, they aren't destroying my plants either.
Sure, call me an ass for signing the lease, but I didn't get the lease until the night before I moved in. Or did I get it sooner? Which is the truth? Just for fun, here's a question: What would you do if you were leaving your husband of 13 years and being given certain circumstances to accept (via a last minute lease) at 6:45 pm the night before all your things were going to be moved from the husbands place? (You get that my old apartment is my ex-husband now, yeah?)
As a writer, all is fair in life being lived and ink on the page. As a person, getting by, these people, these situations, I feel a responsibility to protect them.
So, every thing I just wrote I is/was a lie or may not be.
The only thing that is the truth is that I am sick of lying and I need an editor. I need to bleed without a tourniquet. I need to feel without a filter. I need to connect without the fear of sabotaging my livelihood. I need to be a writer without boundaries. I need to be able to punctuate without knowing every grammar rule.
What’s fabulous? Finding a way to marry needs, wants, and gots-ta haves.
Ready.
Willing!
I figured out something about keeping this blog up after my last post. This is the liar I’ve become, but not the writer I am or have always intended to be.
I’ve been continually apologizing for a bad memory about what I’ve posted, or not. I’m sloppy. I’m going to be sloppy again in this post and don’t seem to have any remorse.
Meaning, I’m not looking back at what I have written nor am I looking at what I am writing. I am only writing forward, recording my life, stuff, posting, as it goes, and I am not even sure I’m making a point each time. I’m like the cafeteria food at a grade school of trying to be a writer. I’m getting close, but the getting by on pizza for breakfast and the French fries, for a vegetable substitute, they count as calories, but they don’t really count as sustenance. (It’s like I’m Twinkies instead of organic vegetables.)
Filler sucks.
I’m sharing enough to share, to connect, but I’m not sharing near what I’d share if I was writing behind a character. I am not giving even half of the honesty I have to give. I admit it. I am living it, this giving of half truths in every blog.
I am so afraid of the repercussion of someone I know, who I wouldn’t divulge half this information to, finding my blog, and thus making my current need for anonymity (as it relates to job security) a thing of the past.
The writer I am, while not blogging, would cut a line down my center and expose my core so vividly that every bit of my guts would fall like entrails on the examiner’s table. I’d let every ounce of my mess and the beauty of me lose, to be posted like a check list for all who would read it, allowing them to tick off on the boxes of what they could identify with, or what they could not, and I’d ask an editor if what I’d thrown up for the tally made the list or busted the chase and fell flat. (I’d be a fucking professional with sailor’s mouth and a spell checker.)
I’d not try to spin it happy at every end or always try to be inspirational, like I’ve been doing with these blog posts. I’d just say how it is and then slip into that Polly Anna as I was feeling it, because I am a positive dork along my center line naturally. In other words, I want to feel it not force it.
Regardless, I’m finding that there is a problem with blogging. I’m never going to be totally honest. I am always going to be a bit of liar. I need to hind behind a character, and have characters for the stories of my friends to hide behind. I need to not lie. In a blog, I don’t have that. My friends don’t have that.
I want, want, want the cover that characters allow. I want to let go of all the safety I, and I feel my friends, require. So, from here on out, no matter what I say, continue to consider me to be a liar. I’m telling as much of the truth as I can, but there is so much more I cannot, and will not, share in this forum.
As I alluded to in my last post, I can admit that I am scared shitless that one of my dear friends is potentially suicidal. But I cannot say more about why this friend is in such a bad state, because, again, I cannot and will not give enough details that can ever be traced back to this specific dear friend. (The protection of their identity is paramount to me.)
I can also say that I am stressed, and that Bull #1, and Bull#2, and the Lead, have been/are part of the stress I’ve been enduring in work for the last 2 years, and that they’ve all messed with the security of my lively hood (how I pay for my life), but I cannot say more because they are people, not characters. I can’t slam them in a public forum. Whatever they’ve done to me, something likewise has been done to them and I’m not going to continue their undoing, certainly not publicly.
I’d love to bend them over in a book, though, were I could give them fake names and make up untraceable job titles, and drill down to their every nuance and not hold back. I’d have targets on their backs and drills in their ears in no time. But here, now, in real time, where this is my job, not as a writer, but as a girl who needs health insurance and a roof over her head, and as the girl who needs to make her 9-5 money, I have to be obtuse to protect myself and them.
Likewise, I’d love to say how it’s not just the roaches and the lack of light that are f’n with me with where I live now. I’d like to say how I got sliced on the lease the night before I moved in. But, if I go into those details, on how that person renting to me, who was supposed to be a friend, screwed me, a couple of those details being a move out date of December the 31st, 10:00 am (really? Is this a hotel?), and an agreement to hang no more than 10 pictures on the wall, and a verbal request of not going barefoot, as the oils on one’s feet can soil carpet, then I’d be potentially taking down a real person.
So, none of that happened. I'm lieing about that. There also have not been any inferences or my rent being raised by $400.00 come lease end. And, I wasn't living with this person’s furniture: an amour, a dresser, another dresser, another shelf, a wall hanging, yet another amour, and another smaller dresser, and more, too much to mention, along with my own furniture, up until about a week ago.
I have not been feeling like this place is not my place, but someone else’s entirely. The roaches, they're all a lie, too. Who picks up a roach in their hand? That can't be the truth. The contant water from the golf course and the snails, they aren't destroying my plants either.
Sure, call me an ass for signing the lease, but I didn't get the lease until the night before I moved in. Or did I get it sooner? Which is the truth? Just for fun, here's a question: What would you do if you were leaving your husband of 13 years and being given certain circumstances to accept (via a last minute lease) at 6:45 pm the night before all your things were going to be moved from the husbands place? (You get that my old apartment is my ex-husband now, yeah?)
As a writer, all is fair in life being lived and ink on the page. As a person, getting by, these people, these situations, I feel a responsibility to protect them.
So, every thing I just wrote I is/was a lie or may not be.
The only thing that is the truth is that I am sick of lying and I need an editor. I need to bleed without a tourniquet. I need to feel without a filter. I need to connect without the fear of sabotaging my livelihood. I need to be a writer without boundaries. I need to be able to punctuate without knowing every grammar rule.
What’s fabulous? Finding a way to marry needs, wants, and gots-ta haves.
Ready.
Willing!
What's next?
This is one of those posts, where I will attempt to be clever, to be profound, and/or to shed some positive insight on something. But, I will probably fail, miserably.
Recently, I went with Chloe, her mom, her sister, and one of her best friends to look for a wedding dress for Chloe. She is getting married next February, about a year to the date of when she met her husband to be. I may have even written about the night my bubbly, light-blue-eyed friend let lose those eyelashes of hers and batted a boy into her charms. But I honestly can’t recall if I did write about it.
That’s still the blow of me being a blogger. Having given up the need for perfection, to just get my writing out there, as a by-product, of not looking back, my memory constantly fails me. Either that, or I’ve dropped my basket completely.
If I did post about their meet-cute night, I’d have bragged about what a great wing woman I am. I would have explained how I got up from the table Chloe and I had been sharing, and how I extricated myself from the conversation, leaving Chloe alone with this good looking, Irish, geek-sheik of a guy who I thought was a good match for her.
I would have gone on to say how I suffered through conversing with a table full of meat heads for as long as what I thought was necessary for the mating ritual to get off the ground for Chloe and this possible prospect of a man. A man who had already been leaning his way into Chloe, leading with that smile of his, one that emanates from his strong and jutting jaw. He’d also been beaming at her, with his own long-lashed light eyes, through retro horn-rimmed glasses. They’d barely noticed I was gone.
It worked, me ditching the table, because here we are now with a wedding in Chloe’s future. Not that I can take credit. That’s not where I was going with this. Where I am going with this is that here we are Now. For the first time in my life I was watching a girlfriend trying on wedding dresses, yet I didn’t feel a tinge of jealousy. Not even a spec.
I’ve been a maid of honor three times and a bride’s maid at least once (I keep thinking there’s someone, or another, I’ve forgotten), but this time I didn’t wish that it was me who was choosing the dress. I wasn’t mopping up silent tears somewhere inside—like I’ve done before in the past—or putting on a brave face and falsely grinning my way through, wondering whether I’d choose lace, beads, or bows for my dress.
I didn’t care, at all, about dress dazzle, about going for a sleeveless number or not for myself (which would depend upon the width of my arms), or if I’d go with a long or a short veil, or if I’d even wear a veil.
If you’re curious, I’d probably choose flip flops, the beach, and a dress I could throw in a wad in the corner as soon as the sex part of the evening was afoot. Along with a tasteful menu, I’d also serve Cheetos at my reception, just so people would wonder: WTF? And, because I’d want them to be faced with making a choice as they went to wipe the orange snack dust off their fingers: just wipe; wipe and suck, then wipe again; or suck the dust off first then wipe (which is really the best method). Being presented with these choices would leave many of my guests with a smirk, reminding them of whose wedding they are at.
Actually, the liar is back. I was putting on a brave face whilst sitting their amongst Chloe’s closest peeps, and there were some tears I was holding back. But it had nothing to do with me coming to another year of my life passing by and me not having found anyone to share my life with. I’m still convinced that’ll come when it does; five minutes or fifty years from now (Well, five minutes would be tough because I’m at home in my pajamas at the moment, so there’d have to be a knock at the door.)
True, you are probably recalling that I thought it might be this year I’d lock my lips on a winner-winner chicken dinner of a man, but, it’s look’n like my intuition might have been wrong on this one. But I am fine with being wrong. Really. And, it feels pretty incredible to be fine with something that used to consume me when I was younger.
Nah, the tears I was holding back were stress tears. Stress, stress, and more stress. Work stress. Home stress. That’s what is consuming me now and I don’t know how to cough it out.
The whole time I was watching Chloe beaming and battling between dress choices, because of cost, style, and because of the opinions from her loving peanut gallery, I was just hoping I wouldn’t dampen her day or spoil the mood with my shit. (I was seriously ready to burst into tears at any moment and call uncle on my stress.)
I was also silently feeling sorry for every girl who goes through the wedding planning ritual, and thinking: Blah, blah, cake, location, wedding dress, blah. Holy screw this!
It’s all so ritualistic and nauseating to me now (and this has nothing to do with Chloe), how it is supposed to play out for women, this wedding business. Societal pressure, religion, family expectations, self-imposed expectations, it all just punctuates the picking-out-the-dress part of it, and the every-other part of it, and makes all the parts of it not seem like me anymore.
I’m getting progressively turned off by the idea of a wedding at all for myself. It’s about the marriage and about the person you are going to be willing to fall in and out of love with for a life time. Once I’ve chosen the right man, eloping would probably do.
What the hell, though?! I was watching my friend trying on wedding dresses, and didn’t even have it in me to feel that normal jealousy any single girl would feel while watching a close friend get to do something she always thought she wanted for herself.
Who am I? How did I become the girl who cares less when and/if she meets the right guy? When did I become the girl who’d choose a great apartment, that feels like a home again, and a new job, that doesn’t feel like hell, over love?
I’ve always been a love conquers all girl. Now I am not? Call the press. Some stressed bitch has taken over my body.
What changed? When did I snap and become incapable of getting my rubber back? When did love become an after thought—something to care little about? Is this earth? Really? Am I going to wake up with an alien probe up my ass? Where did I go?
How have these stresses in life made me so overwhelmed with my experience on earth? The anxiety of a job has never gotten to me like this, to where I feel frayed at every end. Maybe not having the sanctuary of home to retreat to after a day on the battle field is what’s pulling my threads out.
Or, maybe I became this fritzed out, and this frenzied resemblance of a girl, the day my current boss, just a couple weeks ago, pissed all over me in a meeting. Is that it? Have I not bounced back yet?
I’ve never had a tongue lashing before, personally or professionally. I’ve certainly never gotten verbally beaten down within earshot of about 10 people who were just trying to sit quietly inside their cubes and offices to do their work. (I had a feeling I should have closed that conference room door the second I’d walked through it. Damn it! Why didn’t I listen to my intuition that time?)
But how could I know I’d get slammed for having the wrong information, information that was given to me by someone who was supposed to know their shit. How would anyone prepare for a public slaughter? The crowd doesn’t care if you are guilty or not. If someone picks up a rock, like the big boss (we’ll call this boss Bull #2), and throws it at you, for whatever you did or didn’t do, the crowd isn’t trying to discern your guilt or innocence. Mob mentality takes over. Then the buzz begins. “Did you hear? So and so got pummeled in the town square yesterday.”
This brings me to my next question (I have many questions I haven’t been able to answer for myself yet): Am I more concerned about what those 10 folks think, if they think I am failing, or if I think I am failing?
The boss, Bull #2, knew the information I had was crap, and that it wasn’t my fault I was mis-informed. That’s why Bull #2 was so mad. The boss was fumed enough to call five more people into a meeting later that day, including the person who’d mis-guided me, to let everyone know just how wrong we all were. (Go team!)
But the people outside the conference room, they didn’t know everyone got it wrong. They just heard I got something wrong and they just figured out that more people were in a room with me later that day and they could hear Bull #2 doing even more yelling.
Yet, over the years, I’ve learned not to care what others think (mostly). That’s why I am wondering if this is more about my own need to succeed, my own desire to feel good about what I am showing up to do 8 hours a day, then it is about what those other cube/office dwellers think about me.
I think what’s becoming increasingly harder for me to deal with is that I am being set up to fail. I am being treated like spackle, spread so thin and expected to fill so many holes, on so many major projects, that I am too busy trying to learn everything that I am not learning anything effectively. And, while failing at anything is tough, feeling like a failure at something that isn’t, remotely, personally satisfying, that’s weight upon weight. Weight I am not shouldering well.
Sadly, there is no comfort in the fact that I am not the only one feeling stressed by the atmosphere I work within or by the work being given to me by the big boss. Other people in my office, they are just as poised to snap like an uncooked spaghetti noodle. That’s what happens when you all work in the same larger environment and for the same bully of a boss who barks out a billion big-ass projects to be done simultaneously and to be done yesterday. Even those expert in their positions feel like they are drowning, failing.
One person I work with told me that their body went numb, that they had acute chest pain, and they weren’t sure if they were having a panic attack from the stress of work or were having an actual heart attack. They went to the ER just to be safe. That’s not good.
Someone else confided in me that the atmosphere of the office has got them so maxed out they almost passed out at the gym because they were having an anxiety attack while on the tread mill. That’s just as bad.
More worse is that those two people aren’t the only ones who have shared that the build-up of work, and the way Bull #2 manages projects, shifts priorities, and fears people into producing more than what’s realistic, is causing them enough mental anxiety that it is physically manifesting itself.
Well, at least everyone I work with is normal. If they didn’t admit to medicating with alcohol, breaking down in tears, popping aspirin for the headaches, or drinking the pink stuff for the upset stomachs, then I’d really wonder if the aliens had transplanted me to an unusual hell, where people aren’t emotionally and physically affected by stress.
But the absolute worst part, is that while Bull #2 could use a good kick in the soft skills, the big boss I had in the last division was also a bully and also used intimidation to manage (we’ll call that big boss Bull #1).
It was Bull #1’s threatening ways that caused my previous lead to snap. Guess who took that hit? Me. Wait, so I have been verbally beaten before. (How could I forget that?)
Yeppers, my old lead, who we’ll call Lead, let loose all over me in a meeting, too. I was trying to clarify something for our medium-ranked boss, so the medium boss could take the information back to Bull #1, and Lead’s Asperger ass, getting frustrated that the medium boss wasn’t understanding me, body shaking violently, face reddened profusely, and fists clenched fiercely, unleashed this frustration all over me.
Lead couldn’t have directed this frustration at the medium boss, who often musunderstood things, because that’s not how it’s done. Don’t you know? You always step on a lower rung.
Two of my co-workers, who witnessed Lead’s psychotic break, wanted me to file a grievance against Lead. They’d never seen such a thing. I didn’t file or go to HR. I just wanted peace before departure.
One of my past co-workers is still convinced Lead is a sociopath and I could be in danger. I still just think Lead has Asperger’s syndrome and couldn’t contain, in that moment, the silent rage of being so socially uncomfortable. (We’ll find out if I was wrong if someone finds my dead body in a ditch and Lead has left town.)
The shit really does roll down hill where I work, though. By the time it gets to those who want to do a good job, a lot of times they’ve gotta eat shit to do it. It’s sad, really.
When people are sharing their horror stories about the wildly inappropriate behavior exhibited by the higher ups (leads, department heads, division leaders, VPs, and so on), and they are actually competing over who has had the worst experience with so and so, or with so and other so, and this goes on all over, that tells me that I work in an environment, as a whole, which not only tolerates this behavior, it is considered the cultural norm.
But I'm fine with this bullshit at work, with all the loose ends in my life, with whatever this all means. This is life, right? We’ve all got stuff to learn, our dung to dig away from. And, sometimes, when we thought we made the right choice(s) to make life a little lighter, then we find out that we may not have turned the right corner, we can feel a little stuck. But, again, that’s life. I’m fine. I’m so NOT fine.
So why do we say we’re fine? Because we want to be. We want to be better than fine. We want to be great. Therefore, the best we can do is fake it until we make it. Faking it is part of keeping our inner world from getting gutted.
Is that the beauty of life, that because we gain knowledge more easily than we gather wisdom, we don’t always know what to accept, what to change, and we don’t always have the courage or the wisdom to know the difference or how to make the right change?
Is that how we learn, by failing? Is that how I got to where I am, where I tried to trade up on home and on work but seem to have traded fucked for both? What happens after the failure? What happens when we’re too busy licking the salt out of our wounds, or too exhausted from getting licked by life, that we don’t have much energy left over to re-balance one or more of life’s major stressors: work, finances, relationships, family, health, safety, security, or home. (A complete list of all of life’s stressors, along with batteries, and wine, has not been included.)
But we’re agreed, yes? This journey in life isn’t always gilded in gold. We’ve all been through hard times. Sometimes life’s shifts are easy. Other times, making a shift kinks the mind so much it feels like the very change that’s supposed to be making you stronger is more like taking a lightening bolt to the back of the head.
Then, just when you thought you were going to put the fire out from your latest zap, to keep the rest of you from being scorched entirely, you realize more smoke is coming out of your ears.
By my own making, my fragility and my fortitude have been on display for almost a year now. I’ve gotten better at not needing a character to hide behind in order to be open and share certain truths (or I’ve gotten better at caring less about what others may learn about me), but I’m not getting better at hurdling some of the boulders in my recent path.
Still. I’m a gear shifter. I know this about me, and you’re probably get’n this about me. As one of life’s passengers, one minute I'm riding sunshine. The next minute, I'm farting dark clouds of my ass and complaining. And, while lately, the forecast has been a bit rainy, and something smells funny, I’m still hoping for sunshine. I still believe it’s around the corner.
I hope so; because if one more dark cloud cuts my ass off in traffic I’m afraid I might get so banged up I’ll loose my bumper and won’t be able to take another hit, or, worse, I’ll run out of gas.
Ava, in her infinite wisdom, reminds me that it is all about perspective. Good point. That brings me to my next question. How is it that at first the experience of having taken on so many changes in my life (breaking up with a guy, moving, and getting a new job) made me feel more powerful than I’ve ever felt?
Yet, now, I miss the sanctuary and familiarity of my old apartment of 13 years (even with the butthead’s noise) like a divorcée might miss her pain-in-the-ass ex-husband. Seriously, I continue to mourn the loss of that apartment like the conclusion of a 13 year marriage.
I also find myself wishing for what my old job offered me. Not the management, Bull #1, the medium boss, or Lead (actually, in spite of the incident, Lead was pretty cool to work for). I miss the mind-numbing work vs. the extreme stress of this new position and the beyond stress of working for Bull #2.
Is it always about security and sanctuary? Is that why change is so hard, because it isn’t secure? Is that what I’m feeling? Or, is it that I can embrace change, but the changes I’ve recently made aren’t the right changes, yet?
This is a strange place to be in, where I am at, questioning everything, even my own reserve.
I know I have the reserve, though. I’ll eventually figure it all out. This, too, shall pass.
In fact, I am more worried about and for a dear friend of mine than I am worried for myself. This dear friend, who has gone through tragedy after tragedy in the last six years, sent me a text, than repeated in a conversation, that if it wasn’t for their child, they’d be done.
Yes, this friend meant done-done.
Wow. Ava and I have been talking about the fact that whatever it is, whether it’s this, or something else, we all have to learn to cope with what our current lesson in life is. But to see someone in my life having that overwhelming feeling continue to build, to get worse, so much so that it has gotten to a point for them that if one more thing happens they’ve admitted, they won’t be able to go on, that’s the ultimate loss of perspective.
That’s someone not asking: What’s next? Like, “Let’s go. Ready. Let’s get to the good parts. That’s someone saying: What’s next? “Is it going to be that one last thing that does me in?”
I’ve been left with more questions than answers when it comes to my own humanity, and there have been times in my life where I have felt vacuumed out, but even while I am going through what I am going through Now, I still feel great about where I’ve come to in life.
Under the tarnish of all this stress, I’m still shiny. I’ve had the pleasure of becoming a person who doesn’t want to apologize for loving herself. And I have come to this wonderful place, where I’m grateful, where I want to be me. Period. And, I want to be here, even if here, with work and home, sucks right now.
I know if you don't believe in life's magic, then everything in life becomes tragic. I know what it is to feel like you’re continually fighting to catch your breath, I’ve been there. It feels like you’re being robbed of your magic, your sense of purpose. A place without purpose and magic is a place without hope.
Part of the magic is knowing that in spite of everything we go through, we do, and our life does have a purpose. That’s perspective. That’s the magic.
I know this is a heavy post, but if there is anything fabulous to be gained from this post I would ask that you remind yourself, and everyone you know, especially someone like my dear friend, that because we are all connected, because we are all magic, we have purpose.
Stay fabulous and keep the perspective! Remember that whatever is next, hard or easy, it’s where we’re supposed to be because Now is all we have to get us to where we are going.
(And hey, depending upon what you call hard, getting something hard in your life might not be all bad.)
Recently, I went with Chloe, her mom, her sister, and one of her best friends to look for a wedding dress for Chloe. She is getting married next February, about a year to the date of when she met her husband to be. I may have even written about the night my bubbly, light-blue-eyed friend let lose those eyelashes of hers and batted a boy into her charms. But I honestly can’t recall if I did write about it.
That’s still the blow of me being a blogger. Having given up the need for perfection, to just get my writing out there, as a by-product, of not looking back, my memory constantly fails me. Either that, or I’ve dropped my basket completely.
If I did post about their meet-cute night, I’d have bragged about what a great wing woman I am. I would have explained how I got up from the table Chloe and I had been sharing, and how I extricated myself from the conversation, leaving Chloe alone with this good looking, Irish, geek-sheik of a guy who I thought was a good match for her.
I would have gone on to say how I suffered through conversing with a table full of meat heads for as long as what I thought was necessary for the mating ritual to get off the ground for Chloe and this possible prospect of a man. A man who had already been leaning his way into Chloe, leading with that smile of his, one that emanates from his strong and jutting jaw. He’d also been beaming at her, with his own long-lashed light eyes, through retro horn-rimmed glasses. They’d barely noticed I was gone.
It worked, me ditching the table, because here we are now with a wedding in Chloe’s future. Not that I can take credit. That’s not where I was going with this. Where I am going with this is that here we are Now. For the first time in my life I was watching a girlfriend trying on wedding dresses, yet I didn’t feel a tinge of jealousy. Not even a spec.
I’ve been a maid of honor three times and a bride’s maid at least once (I keep thinking there’s someone, or another, I’ve forgotten), but this time I didn’t wish that it was me who was choosing the dress. I wasn’t mopping up silent tears somewhere inside—like I’ve done before in the past—or putting on a brave face and falsely grinning my way through, wondering whether I’d choose lace, beads, or bows for my dress.
I didn’t care, at all, about dress dazzle, about going for a sleeveless number or not for myself (which would depend upon the width of my arms), or if I’d go with a long or a short veil, or if I’d even wear a veil.
If you’re curious, I’d probably choose flip flops, the beach, and a dress I could throw in a wad in the corner as soon as the sex part of the evening was afoot. Along with a tasteful menu, I’d also serve Cheetos at my reception, just so people would wonder: WTF? And, because I’d want them to be faced with making a choice as they went to wipe the orange snack dust off their fingers: just wipe; wipe and suck, then wipe again; or suck the dust off first then wipe (which is really the best method). Being presented with these choices would leave many of my guests with a smirk, reminding them of whose wedding they are at.
Actually, the liar is back. I was putting on a brave face whilst sitting their amongst Chloe’s closest peeps, and there were some tears I was holding back. But it had nothing to do with me coming to another year of my life passing by and me not having found anyone to share my life with. I’m still convinced that’ll come when it does; five minutes or fifty years from now (Well, five minutes would be tough because I’m at home in my pajamas at the moment, so there’d have to be a knock at the door.)
True, you are probably recalling that I thought it might be this year I’d lock my lips on a winner-winner chicken dinner of a man, but, it’s look’n like my intuition might have been wrong on this one. But I am fine with being wrong. Really. And, it feels pretty incredible to be fine with something that used to consume me when I was younger.
Nah, the tears I was holding back were stress tears. Stress, stress, and more stress. Work stress. Home stress. That’s what is consuming me now and I don’t know how to cough it out.
The whole time I was watching Chloe beaming and battling between dress choices, because of cost, style, and because of the opinions from her loving peanut gallery, I was just hoping I wouldn’t dampen her day or spoil the mood with my shit. (I was seriously ready to burst into tears at any moment and call uncle on my stress.)
I was also silently feeling sorry for every girl who goes through the wedding planning ritual, and thinking: Blah, blah, cake, location, wedding dress, blah. Holy screw this!
It’s all so ritualistic and nauseating to me now (and this has nothing to do with Chloe), how it is supposed to play out for women, this wedding business. Societal pressure, religion, family expectations, self-imposed expectations, it all just punctuates the picking-out-the-dress part of it, and the every-other part of it, and makes all the parts of it not seem like me anymore.
I’m getting progressively turned off by the idea of a wedding at all for myself. It’s about the marriage and about the person you are going to be willing to fall in and out of love with for a life time. Once I’ve chosen the right man, eloping would probably do.
What the hell, though?! I was watching my friend trying on wedding dresses, and didn’t even have it in me to feel that normal jealousy any single girl would feel while watching a close friend get to do something she always thought she wanted for herself.
Who am I? How did I become the girl who cares less when and/if she meets the right guy? When did I become the girl who’d choose a great apartment, that feels like a home again, and a new job, that doesn’t feel like hell, over love?
I’ve always been a love conquers all girl. Now I am not? Call the press. Some stressed bitch has taken over my body.
What changed? When did I snap and become incapable of getting my rubber back? When did love become an after thought—something to care little about? Is this earth? Really? Am I going to wake up with an alien probe up my ass? Where did I go?
How have these stresses in life made me so overwhelmed with my experience on earth? The anxiety of a job has never gotten to me like this, to where I feel frayed at every end. Maybe not having the sanctuary of home to retreat to after a day on the battle field is what’s pulling my threads out.
Or, maybe I became this fritzed out, and this frenzied resemblance of a girl, the day my current boss, just a couple weeks ago, pissed all over me in a meeting. Is that it? Have I not bounced back yet?
I’ve never had a tongue lashing before, personally or professionally. I’ve certainly never gotten verbally beaten down within earshot of about 10 people who were just trying to sit quietly inside their cubes and offices to do their work. (I had a feeling I should have closed that conference room door the second I’d walked through it. Damn it! Why didn’t I listen to my intuition that time?)
But how could I know I’d get slammed for having the wrong information, information that was given to me by someone who was supposed to know their shit. How would anyone prepare for a public slaughter? The crowd doesn’t care if you are guilty or not. If someone picks up a rock, like the big boss (we’ll call this boss Bull #2), and throws it at you, for whatever you did or didn’t do, the crowd isn’t trying to discern your guilt or innocence. Mob mentality takes over. Then the buzz begins. “Did you hear? So and so got pummeled in the town square yesterday.”
This brings me to my next question (I have many questions I haven’t been able to answer for myself yet): Am I more concerned about what those 10 folks think, if they think I am failing, or if I think I am failing?
The boss, Bull #2, knew the information I had was crap, and that it wasn’t my fault I was mis-informed. That’s why Bull #2 was so mad. The boss was fumed enough to call five more people into a meeting later that day, including the person who’d mis-guided me, to let everyone know just how wrong we all were. (Go team!)
But the people outside the conference room, they didn’t know everyone got it wrong. They just heard I got something wrong and they just figured out that more people were in a room with me later that day and they could hear Bull #2 doing even more yelling.
Yet, over the years, I’ve learned not to care what others think (mostly). That’s why I am wondering if this is more about my own need to succeed, my own desire to feel good about what I am showing up to do 8 hours a day, then it is about what those other cube/office dwellers think about me.
I think what’s becoming increasingly harder for me to deal with is that I am being set up to fail. I am being treated like spackle, spread so thin and expected to fill so many holes, on so many major projects, that I am too busy trying to learn everything that I am not learning anything effectively. And, while failing at anything is tough, feeling like a failure at something that isn’t, remotely, personally satisfying, that’s weight upon weight. Weight I am not shouldering well.
Sadly, there is no comfort in the fact that I am not the only one feeling stressed by the atmosphere I work within or by the work being given to me by the big boss. Other people in my office, they are just as poised to snap like an uncooked spaghetti noodle. That’s what happens when you all work in the same larger environment and for the same bully of a boss who barks out a billion big-ass projects to be done simultaneously and to be done yesterday. Even those expert in their positions feel like they are drowning, failing.
One person I work with told me that their body went numb, that they had acute chest pain, and they weren’t sure if they were having a panic attack from the stress of work or were having an actual heart attack. They went to the ER just to be safe. That’s not good.
Someone else confided in me that the atmosphere of the office has got them so maxed out they almost passed out at the gym because they were having an anxiety attack while on the tread mill. That’s just as bad.
More worse is that those two people aren’t the only ones who have shared that the build-up of work, and the way Bull #2 manages projects, shifts priorities, and fears people into producing more than what’s realistic, is causing them enough mental anxiety that it is physically manifesting itself.
Well, at least everyone I work with is normal. If they didn’t admit to medicating with alcohol, breaking down in tears, popping aspirin for the headaches, or drinking the pink stuff for the upset stomachs, then I’d really wonder if the aliens had transplanted me to an unusual hell, where people aren’t emotionally and physically affected by stress.
But the absolute worst part, is that while Bull #2 could use a good kick in the soft skills, the big boss I had in the last division was also a bully and also used intimidation to manage (we’ll call that big boss Bull #1).
It was Bull #1’s threatening ways that caused my previous lead to snap. Guess who took that hit? Me. Wait, so I have been verbally beaten before. (How could I forget that?)
Yeppers, my old lead, who we’ll call Lead, let loose all over me in a meeting, too. I was trying to clarify something for our medium-ranked boss, so the medium boss could take the information back to Bull #1, and Lead’s Asperger ass, getting frustrated that the medium boss wasn’t understanding me, body shaking violently, face reddened profusely, and fists clenched fiercely, unleashed this frustration all over me.
Lead couldn’t have directed this frustration at the medium boss, who often musunderstood things, because that’s not how it’s done. Don’t you know? You always step on a lower rung.
Two of my co-workers, who witnessed Lead’s psychotic break, wanted me to file a grievance against Lead. They’d never seen such a thing. I didn’t file or go to HR. I just wanted peace before departure.
One of my past co-workers is still convinced Lead is a sociopath and I could be in danger. I still just think Lead has Asperger’s syndrome and couldn’t contain, in that moment, the silent rage of being so socially uncomfortable. (We’ll find out if I was wrong if someone finds my dead body in a ditch and Lead has left town.)
The shit really does roll down hill where I work, though. By the time it gets to those who want to do a good job, a lot of times they’ve gotta eat shit to do it. It’s sad, really.
When people are sharing their horror stories about the wildly inappropriate behavior exhibited by the higher ups (leads, department heads, division leaders, VPs, and so on), and they are actually competing over who has had the worst experience with so and so, or with so and other so, and this goes on all over, that tells me that I work in an environment, as a whole, which not only tolerates this behavior, it is considered the cultural norm.
But I'm fine with this bullshit at work, with all the loose ends in my life, with whatever this all means. This is life, right? We’ve all got stuff to learn, our dung to dig away from. And, sometimes, when we thought we made the right choice(s) to make life a little lighter, then we find out that we may not have turned the right corner, we can feel a little stuck. But, again, that’s life. I’m fine. I’m so NOT fine.
So why do we say we’re fine? Because we want to be. We want to be better than fine. We want to be great. Therefore, the best we can do is fake it until we make it. Faking it is part of keeping our inner world from getting gutted.
Is that the beauty of life, that because we gain knowledge more easily than we gather wisdom, we don’t always know what to accept, what to change, and we don’t always have the courage or the wisdom to know the difference or how to make the right change?
Is that how we learn, by failing? Is that how I got to where I am, where I tried to trade up on home and on work but seem to have traded fucked for both? What happens after the failure? What happens when we’re too busy licking the salt out of our wounds, or too exhausted from getting licked by life, that we don’t have much energy left over to re-balance one or more of life’s major stressors: work, finances, relationships, family, health, safety, security, or home. (A complete list of all of life’s stressors, along with batteries, and wine, has not been included.)
But we’re agreed, yes? This journey in life isn’t always gilded in gold. We’ve all been through hard times. Sometimes life’s shifts are easy. Other times, making a shift kinks the mind so much it feels like the very change that’s supposed to be making you stronger is more like taking a lightening bolt to the back of the head.
Then, just when you thought you were going to put the fire out from your latest zap, to keep the rest of you from being scorched entirely, you realize more smoke is coming out of your ears.
By my own making, my fragility and my fortitude have been on display for almost a year now. I’ve gotten better at not needing a character to hide behind in order to be open and share certain truths (or I’ve gotten better at caring less about what others may learn about me), but I’m not getting better at hurdling some of the boulders in my recent path.
Still. I’m a gear shifter. I know this about me, and you’re probably get’n this about me. As one of life’s passengers, one minute I'm riding sunshine. The next minute, I'm farting dark clouds of my ass and complaining. And, while lately, the forecast has been a bit rainy, and something smells funny, I’m still hoping for sunshine. I still believe it’s around the corner.
I hope so; because if one more dark cloud cuts my ass off in traffic I’m afraid I might get so banged up I’ll loose my bumper and won’t be able to take another hit, or, worse, I’ll run out of gas.
Ava, in her infinite wisdom, reminds me that it is all about perspective. Good point. That brings me to my next question. How is it that at first the experience of having taken on so many changes in my life (breaking up with a guy, moving, and getting a new job) made me feel more powerful than I’ve ever felt?
Yet, now, I miss the sanctuary and familiarity of my old apartment of 13 years (even with the butthead’s noise) like a divorcée might miss her pain-in-the-ass ex-husband. Seriously, I continue to mourn the loss of that apartment like the conclusion of a 13 year marriage.
I also find myself wishing for what my old job offered me. Not the management, Bull #1, the medium boss, or Lead (actually, in spite of the incident, Lead was pretty cool to work for). I miss the mind-numbing work vs. the extreme stress of this new position and the beyond stress of working for Bull #2.
Is it always about security and sanctuary? Is that why change is so hard, because it isn’t secure? Is that what I’m feeling? Or, is it that I can embrace change, but the changes I’ve recently made aren’t the right changes, yet?
This is a strange place to be in, where I am at, questioning everything, even my own reserve.
I know I have the reserve, though. I’ll eventually figure it all out. This, too, shall pass.
In fact, I am more worried about and for a dear friend of mine than I am worried for myself. This dear friend, who has gone through tragedy after tragedy in the last six years, sent me a text, than repeated in a conversation, that if it wasn’t for their child, they’d be done.
Yes, this friend meant done-done.
Wow. Ava and I have been talking about the fact that whatever it is, whether it’s this, or something else, we all have to learn to cope with what our current lesson in life is. But to see someone in my life having that overwhelming feeling continue to build, to get worse, so much so that it has gotten to a point for them that if one more thing happens they’ve admitted, they won’t be able to go on, that’s the ultimate loss of perspective.
That’s someone not asking: What’s next? Like, “Let’s go. Ready. Let’s get to the good parts. That’s someone saying: What’s next? “Is it going to be that one last thing that does me in?”
I’ve been left with more questions than answers when it comes to my own humanity, and there have been times in my life where I have felt vacuumed out, but even while I am going through what I am going through Now, I still feel great about where I’ve come to in life.
Under the tarnish of all this stress, I’m still shiny. I’ve had the pleasure of becoming a person who doesn’t want to apologize for loving herself. And I have come to this wonderful place, where I’m grateful, where I want to be me. Period. And, I want to be here, even if here, with work and home, sucks right now.
I know if you don't believe in life's magic, then everything in life becomes tragic. I know what it is to feel like you’re continually fighting to catch your breath, I’ve been there. It feels like you’re being robbed of your magic, your sense of purpose. A place without purpose and magic is a place without hope.
Part of the magic is knowing that in spite of everything we go through, we do, and our life does have a purpose. That’s perspective. That’s the magic.
I know this is a heavy post, but if there is anything fabulous to be gained from this post I would ask that you remind yourself, and everyone you know, especially someone like my dear friend, that because we are all connected, because we are all magic, we have purpose.
Stay fabulous and keep the perspective! Remember that whatever is next, hard or easy, it’s where we’re supposed to be because Now is all we have to get us to where we are going.
(And hey, depending upon what you call hard, getting something hard in your life might not be all bad.)
Monday, October 18, 2010
Grateful, while exhausted...
So, I've been working on this whole post (which may or may not make it to public), where I am trying to be smart, and clever, and figure out, and then share, what I am to learn from all that is stressing me out from work and home, and I haven't figure it out yet.
All I know, in the mean time, is that I am stressed out enough that I am losing my appetite over it all (work and home).
I've only lost my appetite (where food is concerned) once before in life. It was over love. So, this recent loss, for my love of food, sucks.
When I lost that heart love before, my lust for tuning out by filling up on food I love, a Mexican pizza from Taco Bell, or turning off, by overloading on fries and a cheese burger from In-N-Out, it was the devastation of the heart break that did me in.
But, then, my heart cracked in half and all, I only lost my need to eat my way through misery for 3 days. Essentially, that mind-numbing bliss and comfort of fatty foods, and filling up on those digestive boggers, to bug out, was short lived. I was 25 years old and heart broken.
Then, that three days later, I bounced back. I found the refrigerator. Isn't that what everyone does? Fill it up over here so we can avoid it over there?
So, this appetite loss, here, Now, that's been going on for almost a month, because of work and home, yikes. This might be big, Batman.
But, I still know how lucky I am in other ways. I just sent an email to Ava, and while I had not planned to post about it, after I hit send, I decided to do so.
I wanted to post what I just wrote to her because as I sent it, I realized there is that part of me that gets to be, needs to be, and still is, all sun-shiney.
I DO need that.
I always mean to have a light spot in my posts, even when I am in the middle of a shit storm. So, while I've not felt a lot of light lately, I just got a bit of light in knowing, remembering, I still am luckier than most when it comes to the people in my life.
Light spot=good, and great, friends.
Friends are IT!!!
So, now I share what I sent to Ava:
I know I've been a fine little mess, lately, and I've been complaining, annoyed, stressed, and, by proximity, you've gotten a bus load of what I am going through. But, while we all, as friends to each other, feel uniquely honored that someone would choose us to share...still, we're take'n a hit, taking in a lot for a friend.
You've been take'n in a lot of my hits, lately. And, you've done it with a grace and a spirituality that I, often strive for. So I want you to know, it's not lost on me, how valuable you are and how much I've leaned on you since I've known you.
You are pretty awesome. So, if in anyway I've leveraged your awesomeness beyond capacity, my apologies. But, I gotta say, even with all my work/home stress, I know where I am blessed. Tag! U're it!
U rock!!!
Thanks for being YOU!
All I know, in the mean time, is that I am stressed out enough that I am losing my appetite over it all (work and home).
I've only lost my appetite (where food is concerned) once before in life. It was over love. So, this recent loss, for my love of food, sucks.
When I lost that heart love before, my lust for tuning out by filling up on food I love, a Mexican pizza from Taco Bell, or turning off, by overloading on fries and a cheese burger from In-N-Out, it was the devastation of the heart break that did me in.
But, then, my heart cracked in half and all, I only lost my need to eat my way through misery for 3 days. Essentially, that mind-numbing bliss and comfort of fatty foods, and filling up on those digestive boggers, to bug out, was short lived. I was 25 years old and heart broken.
Then, that three days later, I bounced back. I found the refrigerator. Isn't that what everyone does? Fill it up over here so we can avoid it over there?
So, this appetite loss, here, Now, that's been going on for almost a month, because of work and home, yikes. This might be big, Batman.
But, I still know how lucky I am in other ways. I just sent an email to Ava, and while I had not planned to post about it, after I hit send, I decided to do so.
I wanted to post what I just wrote to her because as I sent it, I realized there is that part of me that gets to be, needs to be, and still is, all sun-shiney.
I DO need that.
I always mean to have a light spot in my posts, even when I am in the middle of a shit storm. So, while I've not felt a lot of light lately, I just got a bit of light in knowing, remembering, I still am luckier than most when it comes to the people in my life.
Light spot=good, and great, friends.
Friends are IT!!!
So, now I share what I sent to Ava:
I know I've been a fine little mess, lately, and I've been complaining, annoyed, stressed, and, by proximity, you've gotten a bus load of what I am going through. But, while we all, as friends to each other, feel uniquely honored that someone would choose us to share...still, we're take'n a hit, taking in a lot for a friend.
You've been take'n in a lot of my hits, lately. And, you've done it with a grace and a spirituality that I, often strive for. So I want you to know, it's not lost on me, how valuable you are and how much I've leaned on you since I've known you.
You are pretty awesome. So, if in anyway I've leveraged your awesomeness beyond capacity, my apologies. But, I gotta say, even with all my work/home stress, I know where I am blessed. Tag! U're it!
U rock!!!
Thanks for being YOU!
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