Reflections on life

Today is one of those rare days where all the stars align; I got a somewhat adequate amount of quality sleep (though I still feel a bit sleepy), my mind is clear, I'm focused, and there is a certain crystalline quality to my feelings, in that there is a lack of muddiness.

It is snowing outside today, it was clear and warm over the past week but I am used to the way that Spring comes limping into being every year. With the snow the familiar subdued sense of beauty pervades the foothills of the mountains that I'm looking out upon.

I would like to sit with this sense of tranquility a while, reflect on my life a bit.

It was once my goal to achieve happiness, I've learned that this is a frustrating goal to seek. I'm now just seeking to live a full life, a life full of decisions that I've proactively made and followed through with, rather than a life shaped primarily through outside forces.

I've found that I've spent most of my life seeking to improve my understanding of the world around me to the exclusion of building solid relationships with others. This skill is one of my biggest weak points.

Early in life I was highly sensitive. I disliked people talking about me, I didn't have a secure sense of self which made it very difficult to receive feedback from others in any way. Direct feedback from peers and teachers and indirect feedback from the teasing of others.

I tried to isolate myself from others as a defense with the hope that if I learned enough about the world then I would no longer have to face disapproving peers and teachers or teasing. I distanced myself from people who also faced the same challenges that I did hoping to avoid teasing based off of my association with them. This has led me to being an unreliable friend, a trait that I am not proud of.

I have to understand and accept that these were qualities built into my personality though, in order for me to begin to understand how to counteract these negative tendencies. I also have to understand that it is OK for me to not associate with people who are toxic to me (because of how they choose to behave).

There is a fine line to walk between loyalty to a friend and loyalty to ones psyche.

During my time as a stay-at-home mom/part time student/wife I went through a metamorphoses of understanding about relationships and love. There was and is a big part of me that was invested in my first husbands story. He was the abandoned baby, who's mother died shortly after childbirth and who's father ran away (or was driven away). He grew up bouncing around to different relatives houses growing up in a culture quite different than ours, a proud and strong culture with alluring, yet sometimes frustrating traditions.

I never quite understood or fit in there, though my acceptance of and familiarity with different things became stronger over time. The point is that I was invested, and that life and my identity grew together over time. It is strange now to see my ex-husband's girlfriend/fiance pick up the identity that I discarded, sympathizing with the abandoned baby that he was and seeking to integrate into that alluring, yet frustrating culture. I feel a sense of loss and emptiness when I think of those parts of my identity.

This morning I was thinking about love and what it has meant to me over the years. Love in some ways was a handcuff, it chained me to someone who pulled my soul through the harsh judgement of a culture I didn't fully understand, who asked me to do certain things with him that I didn't want to do (that repulsed me), who left me feeling isolated and alone, who betrayed me and top of all of this ultimately irreversibly harmed my sister and my daughter.

But that was love as an obligation, love without limits. I thought I had to love unconditionally, I didn't really understand what love was.

Perhaps love can be something that exists outside of obligation and is separate from a choice to remain in a relationship or leave. I believe that it can still exist even if that relationship is severed.

Love is not synonymous with being in a mutually exclusive relationship and can exist in different forms for different people, fading, yet not entirely disappearing from your heart when relationships end.

To love someone new doesn't mean that you are betraying someone else you once loved. It means that you are still alive and growing in human connection and understanding.

In new relationships, old relationships take on new meanings and you choose to focus your attention on building something new rather than maintaining something old. Old loyalties change, your obligations change. The amount of change is determined by each person.

Jealousy points very clearly to the insecurity of the person you are with, outlining the boundaries they wish to define for the relationship. These boundaries are different for different couples and different people. Sometimes these boundaries feel stifling to one or the other partner. Jealousy and boundaries are separate from love.

Loving someone doesn't mean that you have to be with that person and you don't have to be with someone just because they profess to love you.

Love does not overcome all barriers, all things, differences, circumstances and difficulties. It does make it easier to choose to try to overcome these things with the person you love.

You don't fail if you end a relationship that doesn't work and I believe you don't necessarily achieve success by sticking with a relationship that doesn't work for a long time, though you might gain insight into life by sticking things out in a difficult relationship.

Relationships are frustrating, but they can be worth it. Commitment an agreement that is maintained and renewed by those in a relationship on a regular basis. It cannot be coerced and it is invalid if one person is hurting the other, mentally, emotionally, or physically.

It is really hard to leave a relationship, even when it doesn't feel right. Because we are all looking for connection, companionship and love.

A good relationship should be built, with both people having a dedication to help and lift the other. With not just trust but understanding, openness, thoughtfulness and vulnerability. Knowing and accepting that it all might not work out but hoping that things will work out for the best.

SG

We Don’t Always End Up With The Loves Of Our Lives (And That’s Okay)

This is an article written by Heidi Priebe, author of The First New Universe

I got it from THIS link

The original was so chock full of ads though that it's hard to read so I'm posting it here because I believe in her message and I think it's important.

We Don’t Always End Up With The Loves Of Our Lives (And That’s Okay)

I believe in Big Love.

I talk and I date like I don’t.

I don’t have frivolous expectations for romance. I’m not looking to get swept off my feet. I am one of those rare, perhaps slightly jaded individuals who actually likes hookup culture and is happy to live in an age in which monogamy is not necessarily the norm.

But I believe in big love because I’ve had it.

I’ve had that massive love. That all-consuming love. That ‘I can’t believe this exists in the physical realm of this planet’ kind of love.

The kind of love that erupts into an uncontrollable blaze an then simmers down to embers and burns quietly, comfortably, for years. The kind of love they write novels and symphonies about. The kind of love that teaches more than you thought you could ever learn, and gives back infinitely more than it takes.

It is the ‘Love of your life’ kind of love.

And believe it works like this:

If you’re lucky, you get to meet the love of your life. You get to be with them, to learn from them, to give the whole of yourself over to them and allow their influence to change you in unfathomable measures. It’s an experience like nothing else we have on this earth.

But here is what the fairytales won’t tell you – sometimes we meet the loves of our lives, but we do not get to keep them.

We do not get to marry them, to pass our years alongside them, to hold their hands on their deathbeds after a life lived well and together.

We do not always get to hold onto the loves of our lives, because in the real world, love doesn’t conquer all. It doesn’t resolve irreparable differences, it doesn’t triumph over illness and disease, it doesn’t bridge religious rifts or save us from ourselves when we’re corrupting.

We don’t always get to hold onto the loves of our lives because sometimes love is not all that there is. Sometimes you want a tiny country home with three kids and they want a bustling career in the city. Sometimes you have a whole, wide world to go explore and they are scared to venture out of their backyard. Sometimes you have bigger dreams than one another.

Sometimes the biggest, most loving move you can possibly make is to let each other go.

Other times you don’t get a choice.

But here’s another thing they won’t tell you about finding the love of your life: not ending up with them doesn’t disqualify their significance.

Some people can love you more in a year than others could love you in fifty. Some people can teach you more within a single day than others could teach you over the entire course of a lifetime.

Some people come into our lives only for a particular period of time, but make an impact that no one else can ever quite match or replace.

And who are we to call those people anything but the loves of our lives?

Who are we to downplay their significance, to rewrite their memories, to alter the ways in which they changed us for the better, simply because our paths diverged? Who are we to decide that we desperately need to replace them – to find a bigger, better, stronger, more passionate love that we can hold onto for a lifetime?

Maybe we just ought to be grateful that we got to meet these people at all.

That we got to love them. That we got to learn from them. That we got to have our lives expand and flourish as a result of having known them.

Meeting and letting go of the love of your life doesn’t have to be your life’s single greatest tragedy.

If you let it, it can be your greatest blessing.

After all, some people never get to meet them at all.

By Heidi Priebe, author of The First New Universe

Sources: Thought Catalog & Quote Catalog via Huffington Post

A Bit of Venting

Tonight I'm in an in-between mood. Nothing's terribly wrong, there's just a little feeling of being down. I guess that's OK, life's not always lollipops and roses.

I went to my daughter's junior high registration night and was confronted with the long time issue that I've had with immunizations. My kids are immunized... all except for my youngest. I was really mis-trustful of the medical community at the time she was due for immunizations and that was mostly because I was so sick and no doctor was able to explain why. Sick, depressed, anxious and the answers led to a shocking discovery that the American model of health and wellness was not as trustworthy as I thought it was. But that's a different story.

I decided that I would let my daughter choose what she wanted to do when she got old enough and she wanted to get immunized so I signed her up. Since she's never had any immunizations (except the one they give them as babies) they decided to give her 3. She sat down and they gave her the shots. Then she went into a bit of shock because she had watched the needles go in and got weirded out by them. She had to lay down and put her feet up, they gave her some juice. I sat down with her and put her head in my lap. We stayed that way for a while, me thinking about her growing up, she thinking about what had just happened.

We then found out that I need to do something at her elementary school to get her records over to the Jr. High, so I've got to take care of that tomorrow.

Seems like there are several things I've been avoiding or putting off. Changing jobs is one of them. I'm in a holding pattern, not progressing at work... but I'm earning just enough money and I've got medical coverage so that makes me not want to make a move. But I know it's not good for me. I'm getting bored. I need to do something. Instead of making a change I've been figuring out the type of training that I want to do. I keep doing that, organizing things rather than actually doing things.

It seems that something keeps pulling me back to the idea of writing for a living. This is an area that I could be really good at if I put time into actually doing it. One problem is that it's easy for others to see me working on the computer and assume that I'm wasting my time or ignoring them. That's not the impression I want to give them, and I acquiesce. Giving up my space and time to do what they want, this is why having a job is important... at least they see that as legitimate and don't question the time I put into it.

I'm suffocating. Living in-between. I wish the bills could just be taken care of without me having to work (including medical). Hell I don't really care for many material things, it'd be cool to fix up my place but really I just want freedom. Yes I'm suffocating, that's the feeling. I should sleep, but I'll not find respite, tomorrow will be another day or work and expectations. Failing in small ways to live the life I want to live every single day. God that's morose.

Anyway I am grateful for all I've got, grateful for my kids and what I've achieved in my life. When I told my father I was pregnant he shook his head and said "you've ruined your life. You'll never be able to finish high school, let alone college!" Well... that was part of my impetus for continuing to get my education, including my MBA. He gave me the choice to keep the baby and marry the father or give the baby up for adoption. That was messed up, couldn't I have just kept my baby and raised him by myself? Guess not. That's not how my life story was to play out.

It's weird. There's a new guy at work who is the baby brother of a girl I knew when I was growing up. I remember him, climbing up to the table in their kitchen. Somehow this connection is reminding me of how I felt in that neighborhood. My cousin and I were semi-friendly with his sister. She was nice sometimes and at others she was mean, bragging about getting to swim at her other friend's pool. I've got pictures of her at my house, playing with my Christmas presents. We were not really that great of friends. It's never been easy for me to make friends. I have friends now as an adult but it's hard to really make those relationships into deep friendships. I just live in my own world.

Again going off into ramblings.

I wish I could take a look at all the things that are little hurts and fix them somehow. Maybe therapy would help.

Anyhow, I suppose I'll be able to sleep now that I've vented a bit. I'm reminded of a nice morose quote to go along with my morose mood.

"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."

Aeschylus

Goodnight

SG