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

In the middle ...

This is actually something very hard for me to blog about ... I feel like I am standing naked in front of all of you that read this ... but I had to do it ... I had to share the truth about the past ... and my feelings about the present ... and right now ... I only have like eight people that read my blog on a regular basis anyway .... so maybe that helps?!?! ....


Throughout my marriage I had to deal with a lot of drama with my in-laws ... from the day they found out we were engaged, my sister-out-law was horrible, and my mother-out-law had her issues too ... they made my life, and to some extent my marriage a living hell ... always with their disapproval, always with the pessimism, avoidance, passive-aggressive behavior (like refusing to ever even take a beverage in my house ... none the

Control ...

Control of my own life is something that I have struggled with for a very long time ... and the balance between being a "nice person" and being a "doormat" ... I think I more often fall into the doormat category than I would like to admit ...

Some of the problems in my marriage stemmed from control issues, disagreements and flat out fights about things that really just came down to control ... and things I wanted done, or he wanted done, that just didn't happen ... a feeling from both sides maybe, but from mine for sure, of things not being give and take so much as give and give ... and give ...

I won't pretend that my current relationship doesn't have some of those problems as well, that doormat thing comes with being a perpetual people pleaser ... in essence I don't stand up for myself ... but then in true feminine form I hold resentment, because you know men are supposed to read our minds, and know that we

Embrace the Curse ... Archived From 12/07/2008

So lately, I've spent a lot of time being down and depressed and feeling sorry for myself . . . but many of you know, that in general that is the opposite of who I am . . . I am forever optimistic, eternally smiling and infinitely happy usually in almost any circumstance . . . I've allowed too much to influence things in my life . . . too many people, too much judgment, hypocrisy, and pessimism have affected my natural abilities to be optimistic . . . to see the silver lining . . . to see the open window when the door was slammed in my face . . . I usually cry more happy tears than sad ones . . . that hasn't been true lately . . .  but it needs to be . . . so here I sit in my messy apartment that I've been procrastinating cleaning . . . talking to a couple friends on the computer . . . listening to my child who is on the verge of pneumonia cough behind the mask of her nebulizer . . . wondering how I'm going to pay the electric bill . . . feeling lonelier than I have in a while . . . and yet I'm happy . . . I'm not happy because anything great and wonderful has happened . . . I got a piece of myself back yesterday that I thought was gone . . . let's say I did that through an act of creative expression, for lack of a better way to say it . . . I'm happier than I have been in a while . . . more confident . . . more sure of myself and my decisions and my ability to make decisions . . . there are things in life I can't control . . . no matter what choices I make I will make people mad, people will judge me . . . they'll judge me on my parenting, my ability to make good relationship choices (both friendship and romantic) . . . it is unfortunately human nature to judge . . . but here's the thing . . . until you have lived my life . . . walked in my shoes . . .experienced my experiences . . . you have no right . . . people think they know things . . . they think their opinions, their decisions are the ones that others should follow . . . they are wrong . . . we all live our own lives . . .follow our own paths . . . make our own decisions for the reasons we do . . . we create our own karma . . . our own fate whether designed by destiny, ourselves or God, or the combination there of will be what it is . . . and my fate will be what it is . . . life is a rollercoaster . . . there are ups and downs . . . the trick is to be able to look down from the top of the biggest drop and know that you will reach the bottom alive and although the climb up will be slow you WILL come up . . . embrace your circumstances, regardless of what they are . . . change what needs to be changed when you can, but do it for yourself, not for anyone else . . . something that makes no sense to anyone else can be exactly what you need, exactly what you want, your source of unbelievable happiness . . . embrace yourself . . . whether you like yourself or not . . . no matter the mistakes you've made . . . the choices you regret . . . just try to be happy in your circumstances no matter what they are . . . 

It's me against the world today
And that's fine
It's me against the world

And so I stand
I embrace the curse
I embrace the song
I embrace what I feel
When I feel what's wrong
I embrace the hurt
The hate and what's worse
I embrace what I am
I embrace the curse

Dancing ... Archived from 09/09/2009

So, a while back, someone posted one of those stickers on my bumper sticker board that says "life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain." In the last few weeks, the very deep meaning of that has come to light for me.

Life will let you down, people will let you down, things will happen that you never dreamed would. You will find out that people you thought you knew aren't the people you thought they were, or maybe even your instincts and bad feelings about people or situations were right, and things you hoped weren't true, will turn out to be true. You will lose your car keys, your kids will do things like color on the couch ... random people will try to make you feel bad, to feel sad, to make you cry ... because apparently nobody ever taught them the basics of the golden rule and respect ... there are times in life you will feel used, you will feel like a doormat ... there are times in life you will feel like a failure ... that you will feel that you are not worthy of love or friendship ... there will be times you need  a hug and nobody will be there to give you one ... there will be times when all you need is to hear a friendly voice .... and nobody answers their phone ...

You will have times where you feel like it is too much ... where when it rains, it pours, the roof leaks, you don't have the money to fix the roof, so everything special to you is ruined by the rain ...

The thing is ... all of these things only have as much power as you let them have ... and none of them need to affect who you are ... how you are ... you must learn to dance in the rain ... not sit and mope and hope it goes away ... some of us choose to stay in our own personal thunderstorms completely conscious of the fact that we are doing it ... some may think that's crazy ... but we all have our reasons ... I have been much happier in the last few weeks than I have been in a long time ... because I've been trying to appreciate what I have ... not what I wish I had ... and accept things as they are ... last night I let people get to me ... over something that should never affect me in that way ... I let myself cry... let myself be hurt ... and today ... I am learning to dance again ... I can only be the best me I can be ... I cannot control other people or the way they hurt or betray me ... in the end I am very aware that if they don't want to hold their spots in my life ...if I decide they're toxic and walk away ... it is their loss ... not mine .... most of them will never even realize what they lost ... they could have chosen to smile with me, to laugh with me, to dance with me ... but they chose not to ... that is out of my hands ... out of my control ... all I can do is keep on dancing ... and fill my life with people who are willing to dance with me ....

Defensiveness

Here is the definition from Webster online for Defensive;

De`fen´sive
a. 1. Serving to defend or protect; proper for defense; opposed to offensive; as, defensive armor.
A moat defensive to a house.
- Shak.
2. Carried on by resisting attack or aggression; - opposed to offensive; as, defensive war.
3. In a state or posture of defense.
n. 1. That which defends; a safeguard.
Wars preventive, upon just fears, are true defensives.
- Bacon.
To be on the defensive
to be or stand in a state or posture of defense or resistance, in opposition to aggression or attack.

So exactly when did this become a negative word? When did defending what one thinks is right become a bad thing?

When I was a teenager I had the typical "think I know everything" attitude, I would defend positions vigilantly. However, as I've gotten older and less black and white in my thinking, adding more areas of gray, I STILL am the kind of person that will defend against unwarranted attacks not only against myself, but those I love as well.

There are certain situations, certain places, such as the workplace, where I virtually become a doormat. I don't defend at all, I just go with what is expected of me, what they tell me.

Recently in a forum for our raiding group in WoW someone said that a thread was turning into the "typical defensive thread" basically saying that about me. I am very active in our forums, etc., however when someone is attacking our guild, our raiding group, our leadership, who not only do I respect in game, but in this particular raiding group, consider all the officers (there are 4 of us plus an adviser) to be real life friends. The only one I don't know in real life I have spent hours talking to online about real life and we have a ton in common.

My father also likes to blow off anything I say as being "defensive."

Again, I ask when did defending what one believes is right, or defending against offensive attacks and aggression become a bad thing? And since when does being "defensive" mean that what you say has no value; that what you say can be blown off as "just being defensive" rather than actually listening to the words you say.

Defending ourselves, our friends & loved ones, what we believe in, protecting what is right, protecting those that are innocent, and aren't there to defend themselves should be an act of nobility and should be revered by people ...

I've decided that people "blow me off" as just being "defensive" when they don't have a defensible position themselves ... people use it as a way to stop an argument sometimes, but it does seem whenever I make a very valid point and make it clear that I'm not backing down from that point, that is when I most hear people say, "oh, you're just being defensive."

I guess to them, I'm supposed to just sit back and take whatever they can dish out, and not stand up for myself or those I care about.

Yeah, that makes sense ...