Friends, Hope & Isolation ....

Before I turn in tonight I just wanted to take a minute to breathe, to decompress to find a way to get some of these feelings out and make the stress subside ... at least slightly ...

First off, I will tell you all that have been reading my blogs lately ... that I do smile, I do laugh ... I do love my life ... I love my children ... I love my man ... I love my friends ... the three of them together make my world whole ... they keep me going ... they validate my feelings (even the negative ones) ... I am not depressed as a whole ... I am pissed off over a situation ... over living conditions I can't control ... over my parenting being undermined ... my relationship being compromised ... I am pissed off about being treated like a delinquent teenager ... when I have no reason to be ...

I am sad that I am isolated ... sad that I feel like I live in a prison with concrete walls and floors and one solitary, underground window with a grate on it to complete the feeling ... I am sad that my children have to live this way ...

I thrive on my solitude ... I do ... I like love my alone time .... but I came across a quote ... that helps me come to terms with why I love solitude and hate isolation;

“Solitude vivifies; isolation kills”  ... Joseph Roux

For me ... that says it all ... I could go on with other quotes that mean a lot to me right now ....

“Isolation is a dream killer” ... Barbara Sher

                                          or

“Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.” ... Thomas Carlyle

... both of which mean a lot to me as well right now ...


I embrace the negative feelings ... they are as important to human nature as the positive ones ... and I would rather feel amazingly strong negative feelings than not feel anything at all ... I would rather be pissed off than indifferent ... I would rather be depressed than indifferent ... I would rather be in pain than indifferent ....

Indifference is (in my dimestore psychology) a trait of a sociopath ... someone that feels no empathy for others ... indifference ... is almost ... inhuman ....

I embrace my emotions ... throughout the spectrum ... sometimes I am a doormat ... because I am way too empathetic ... but why would I want to change that ... why would I want to scale down the level of empathy I have for others?

I have hope that there will be a brighter future ... I have hope that my children will never have to live like this ... and I have knowledge that if they do ... I will not degrade them or undermine the things they hold most dear ... I do believe I am a victim of circumstance ... a victim of other people making decisions ... a victim of people wanting to help ... and getting frustrated that things aren't moving fast enough and in the end just giving me enough rope to hang myself with ... of digging me a deeper hole ... I have moved twice because I had no choice ... I have left two jobs because I had no choice ... I chose to be a stay at home mom ... which is the only choice that I personally made that left me in this place ... everything else was the result of someone trying to "help" me ... but just because I feel like a victim does not mean I'm moping in a corner not doing anything
about it ... I am trying my damndest to overcome the obstacles that others, and life and a shitty economy has put in front of me ... to beat an obstacle course that even my parents and other biological relatives have no faith in me beating ... I am also pissed off at their hypocrisy ... they borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from their own parents to get by ... they lived in my grandparents' basement ... we ran out of propane ... we had our phones turned off ... because they couldn't pay ... my dad wasted all the family's money on his addictions ... and I somehow am worse than them in their eyes ... the hypocrisy pisses me off more than about anything else does ...

The thing that comes closest is the "ignore it and it will go away" philosophy which is all I have faced in the last few weeks and months ... I would rather fight it out than have her pretend that it doesn't exist ... to completely undermine the validity of my feelings ... of my wants, needs and desires ... to basically say "they don't exist" ... because that's what "ignore it and it will go away" does ... in fact it makes me lash out more ... it makes me keep talking ... keep expressing ... looking for something human to look back at me ... instead of this cold, heartless, indifference that I get ... I would rather see anger ... because to feel indifference for your own child's feelings ... well ... it's just wrong on so many levels ....

This Sunday I will have the opportunity to go out with friends, and my boyfriend ... it will be the first time I have been out like this in a very, very long time ... since well before I moved in to this place ... I have hope that I will probably have the best night of my entire year that night ... that for one night I will get to be me ... not someone controlled by someone else ... not somebody being treated like an out of line twelve year-old ... but I will get to be .... me ... with my friends ... that is my hope ... and it will for one night ... remove this isolation .... and for once I will be able to be myself ....

I'll never find my heart
Behind someone else
I'll never see the light of day
Living in this cell
It's time to make my way
Into the world I knew
Take back all of these times
That I gave in to you

Lately I'm so tired of waiting for you
To say that it's ok, but tell me
Please, would you one time
Let me be myself
So I can shine with my own light
And let me be myself
For a while, if you don't mind
Let me be myself
So i can shine with my own light
Let me be myself

...  "Let Me Be Myself" ... 3 Doors Down