Online Love - Soulmate

Because I want to remember...

Meeting you. I felt so much trepidation. There is this element of mystery that surrounds online relationships. When I first talked to you on the phone your deep melodic voice intrigued me, if nothing else I fell in love as we spoke. I imagined that you were tall and thin. Who know's where I got that idea from, some deep subconscious idea about what Indians looked like? I imagined that you were strong. The straight forward, no nonsense way that you approached life made me feel it was so. Especially when it came time to look at my problems in the face, to see them as they really were. You helped me to stop equivocating when it came to doing the right thing. You always have had that effect on me.

Meeting you was a shock. The flesh and blood embodiment of Indian vitality. I found I couldn't speak. I felt all the words stuck somewhere in the back of my throat and we drove in silence as I clung to the Kola toy that you had given me.

What had made me feel so bold that I could leave my home and travel around the world to find you?

But I was there and we ended up parking in the driveway of a house on stilts. Amazing to me was unlocking the chain that went from one side to the next of it.

The house! I will never forget how strange and foreign it seemed. The carpet, recently cleaned, so thin and so seemingly ancient. The furnishings, so sparse. I re-evaluated my conception of wealth, and poverty. What was really needed to live well. I remember coming into your room, the curtain waving in the breeze. Your little stash of books and water in a jug. It was hard to imagine sleeping on that bed, but then you removed the mattress and placed it on the floor. I placed my suitcase next to it and laid down.

Remember that first night? Sleeping intertwined, sleeping deeply, crying out when you left my side. I remember.

The peaceful morning, strawberries and yogurt. Sitting on the porch, sipping tea and watching the people pass on the street. Walking and biking by... hardly anyone in a car. So different from home where passing people in loud impersonal cars is the norm.

Unfinished memories, I will write more some day...

SG

Jealousy

What is jealousy?

Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy.

In some ways it's the perception that someone has what you don't. It's the inner child jumping up and down saying "Notice Me, I am Important!" It's insecurity. Some part of it is sadness at times.

Sadness that life has moved on, circumstance have changed...

I feel it has a bit of regret and frustration built into the mix.

I suppose it has a bit of a diagnostic aspect to it. However it can eat a person inside and out, consume the mind, consume the emotions... and turn one bitter.

Bitterness is a flavor, a flavor that is a part of life... but not a pleasant one to continually taste.

So I'm striving to feel my jealousies, and to move on.

~SG

Interdependence

I usually find myself in front of a blank screen after having many varied thoughts and conversations going on in my head about my life, why I've done certain things and where I want my life to head.

It's difficult to pinpoint sometimes what the desires of my heart are. Perhaps it is the ever aching need for fulfillment that drives me on. I am looking for fulfillment in my pursuits, in my thoughts, study and in love. I feel deep sadness when people that I love move on from my life. When I become irrelevant to their present happiness. I feel frustrated and empty when I cannot fill the same niche. There is an achy place inside that wants to be relevant to others. However I've found that becoming relevant to others is sometimes an infringement upon my own relevancy. I become a model of their expectations and lose the sense of who I am. This paradox is the mysterious source of struggle for me to maintain my identity and to subvert or become part of a larger, more intimate identity, me + someone else.

I'm 34 years old and still do not live with a sense of mutual interdependence with someone else. Is it ever going to be?

Silence and Thoughts

I'm going to attempt to put into writing my thoughts about my life the past couple of years, what has driven me to stay silent when speaking up would have been a good thing, why sometimes silence is a temporary answer to a baffling situation and why speaking up is painful.

I've gone through a transformation, no doubt about that. I've come up from a somewhat difficult childhood to a point in my life where my day to day struggle to function as a responsible adult isn't as difficult as it used to be.

I've written before about my belief that I have been harmed by eating a Standard American Diet (SAD for short). I've written that I believe a large part of that harm was caused through the consumption of wheat products. It's hard to quantify how much of an impact diet played in the decisions that I've made but it's easy for me to see that what I lived with before is different from what I live with now. Though some of the traits I've learned over the years have stuck with me.

Personality wise, I have stayed very similar to what I have always been; determined, studious, kind... perhaps a bit too kind. What has kept my silence has been a desire to be kind.

In a way silence is a form of protection. People make assumptions of their own and if they are good you benefit, if they are wrong you at least know that they are wrong and move forward regardless of how they view you. In a way silence is kind. You refuse to throw peoples faults in their faces, you forebear to speak until they are in a better frame of mind. But in some ways kindness is suffocating and killing. Refusing to speak up means that you swallow the hurt and pain. It requires a certain amount of your soul to forebear and speak later. It can make someone strong, or it can slowly deteriorate and kill a free spirit and independent will.

In some ways I'm afraid to speak up, especially when I believe that the other persons reaction to my words will be negative. I'm afraid to lose love, I have lost love and it's painful. But it isn't as painful as having to live with a lie, when it means giving up self-respect and dignity. It isn't as painful as not standing up for my daughter and my sister when I had to... nor is it as painful as what would have happened in Ajey's family and in mine if I had married him. In his case, his sister could have lost a chance to marry well, his parents would have lost their son to America and would have lost his support for their business. Else I would have had to give up my life here in America to move there. My children would have lost home and family and would  have been in a state of confusion. I spoke up and I had to let go of love and friendship.

When I spoke up I did the right thing. There were so many reasons why I wasn't ready to keep going with such a serious and difficult relationship. So many things that I've been able to accomplish for my kids, my home and myself that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Hopefully I will come around to being the person I am meant to be.

Some quotes about "Thoughts"

“Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those.” 
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.” 
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“Sometimes, I sit alone under the stars
and think of the galaxies inside my
heart, and truly wonder if anyone will
ever want to make sense of all that
I am.” 
― Christopher Poindexter

“There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You've ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can't say any of that.” 
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.” 
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The universe doesn’t give you what you ask for with your thoughts - it gives you what you demand with your actions.” 
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.

If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?” 
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure... I'm lonely... I'm a failure... I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.” 
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.” 
― Albert Einstein

“You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.” 
― Hermann Hesse

“I don't know, I don't want to talk as much. (...) It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over.” 
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables


“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.

"Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.” 
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Some thoughts about life and love

I am feeling quite well today. A couple of nights of getting to bed before 12 AM and helpful "Nootropic" herbs have gone a long way towards a feeling of well being.

This is the first day back for a lot of folks in my office from the company shut down, the beginning of the year and an opportunity for change. Over the years I have set goals and I have protested setting goals. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by what I want to change, I write everything down and then shrug my shoulders in despair. I believe that massive change is impossible in the short term, but that smaller changes, made over a longer period of time add up and get you to where you want to be. So in that spirit I am continuing on my health journey, continuing to look for ways to eat well, exercise, sleep better and have better relationships.

To that end I recognize that my personality has been that of a quite observer. I've not always played the most active role in developing my relationships, and I've let other peoples will dominate my own at times. This has been a product of genetics, nutrition and the native home environment that I grew up in.

I'm making a concerted effort to change, to connect with my children, to be a strong guiding factor in their lives. When I had my first child I was 17 years old. I didn't know what I was doing but I did know that I wanted my son to be proud of me, to look up to me. I've grown up in a lot of ways, along side my children. They are wonderful, cheerful and helpful for the most part but I can give them even more to think about now that I have found answers to many puzzling aspects of life that I didn't know before.

One of those puzzles is love. The meaning of Love has developed and changed for me as I have changed and developed. When I was young, I thought love was a burning attraction to someone. That it would overcome all differences, all obstacles, and make everything that was wrong, right. I thought that being devoted to someone meant that they would be devoted to you.

I had heartache from unrequited love but I never realized how much the heart could break. I never realized how much that heartache could teach me, about life and change. I never realized how much death could teach me as well. For you see, love and heartache are like birth and death. The beginning of love is  new hope, new possibilities. So much is expected from love, so much hoped for. Love blossoms and becomes a beautiful thing or else it is poisoned, by pain and circumstances. I never realized how many different levels there are to love. "True love" a phrase uttered in fairy tales as proof that the lovers were meant to be together forever in blissful eternity. True love means something different to me now it is a belief and love of someone else, their essence, yet it is a recognition of circumstance and a refusal to shutter my soul in an attempt to fix someone else. True love means standing fast to the right course of action, letting go when need be, but never forgetting what someone's love has meant to the heart of the loved one.

My early years as a young wife and mother taught me so much. I learned about perseverance through desperate times. I learned about loving through heartache. I leaned about determination and faith. I don't regret loving my husband as I did at that time, I did what I had to do and well. I paid a price for that love, eating into my own reserves and strength to keep going. I have keenly felt the heartache of having to break my marriage off but I remember the day that I was able to grasp myself in a well deserved hug and feel that I was whole again.

Loving someone from a distance was different and required different reserves of strength. I was taxed mentally, emotionally and culturally trying to maintain a connection with someone millions of miles away. It was hard to tell people I was in a relationship when I couldn't grasp my lovers hand and go out on a date with him. It felt duplicitous in a way. When I visited him in Australia it was a different story. I felt parts of my spirit and personality that had been hiding away since I was a teenager blossom as we interacted each day. Getting back to my distant and busy life disrupted that feeling though and it was hard to hold onto. I let it slip away.

Such is life and such is love...

SG

Why I no longer need to know everything... and why it's hard to let go

When I was little, maybe 10 or 11, I decided that the reason I didn't fit in with the other kids was because I didn't know what they knew.

I didn't feel comfortable at school with the swirling masses of people passing me by in the hallway, bumping into me, coming close to me, pricking me with barbs of derision at times. I knew that I wasn't the girl in the shiny clogging shoes confidently showing off her skills, I wasn't the little girl with ribbons in her hair and perfect panache in dress and speech. I wasn't the girl on stage giving a glorious rendition of Johnny Appleseeds mother.

I was the girl that didn't understand what was going on most of the time. I knew I should not draw attention to myself as my cousin Joe did. He bore more teasing and derision than any other kid in the classroom because of his outspoken way of making outlandish statements and smartaleck remarks during class.

I didn't know why there were some kids that naturally had a lot of friends and why I didn't have any. I always tried to be nice... being nice didn't work.

So, at some point in about the 3rd or 4th grade I decided that I needed to know everything so that I would know what to say in any given situation and then I would have friends.

It probably started when I was being pressured into giving the bully girls the answers to my math homework. I hated it and didn't know how to handle them so I decided that the only way to get away from them was to do all of the work in the book and request to be allowed to go up a level in math.

I went home and sat at my desk in my room, I had a pile of notebook paper and my math book. I sharpened some pencils and got down to work. I decided that I would have to do all of the problems for each chapter, because I didn't know if the teacher would assign even or odd questions for us to complete, a daunting task. I read each chapter trying to learn what I should do, then I worked on the problems. I would get up only to go use the bathroom and to eat something then went back to work. Eventually, I finished up the whole book, it probably took me the whole weekend to finish it. I remember going to class with my pile of completed work and handing it to the teacher... I can't quite recall what happened after that.

I do recall siting amongst the books in my parents basement, making piles of books to complete, trying to arrange them in a logical order from easier to harder in the subject.

Because I thought, I can do this, I can learn all of these subjects and I will be set free.

The thought never quite went past the organization phase of things.

But I did learn that determination could accomplish great things, even really hard and seemingly impossible things.

Throughout my life I've only had enough energy to put that determination to use on a very few selective goals. With stacks of other goals on the side that never quite got the benefit of my attention.

I can see now that I was somewhere on the autistic spectrum while growing up. I can see now that my obsessions with gathering together all of the relevant information I can on any given subject (most recently health and nutrition) has it's roots in the mindset that I grew up with.

To my benefit I focused on the right subject. Health and nutrition. I found answers to the questions that no one could answer for me. How to make friends, how to relate to people... hopefully someday how to set emotional boundaries and to follow through...

But I don't need to know everything, I no longer feel that if I don't read every book on my shelves, or in my parents basement that I will have failed. I no longer carry the burdens (as much) of compulsive organizing of books and data.

Sometimes it's hard to let go. Part of my mad passion for knowledge has dissipated, part of me doesn't need it because it's easier now to grasp what I need to know. But still I feel a vacancy there, emptiness where I felt mad desire for knowing.

I've learned some restraint, and it's a good thing, but sometimes I miss the madness. I don't know how to function without it. I'm still functioning, at some level, the same as I always have... each day I'm working towards moving past what was in some ways an organizational structure, but in other ways a disorganized framework for learning. Because it separated me from the subject that I wanted to learn. Now I'm engaging more with my subject, and learning more... but feeling slightly unnerved at the change.

I am a kid again. Taking steps in the dark. Pushing towards the future that I want.

Developing a Mindset of Inner Self Worth

I'm developing a mindset of inner self worth and it stays in tact even when buffeted. It is based on my understanding of who I am, what I like, what I want to learn and become... however sometimes buffeting can disturb my inner tranquility.

For instance, at work; I am sometimes at odds at work with my most passionate interests. I would rather read up on nutrition and health than book orders... and I've had moments where I haven't been able to concentrate from disinterest and/or illness. So I'm not keeping pace with some of the other people on my team and make mistakes at times.

Surprise, surprise when a coworker in another department made a list of mistakes I had made and sent it over to my managers, manager. He gave my manager the task of reviewing the list with me. I was not happy, I was tightly infuriated through the whole meeting. I tried to make positive suggestions about what I could do to improve and to not let my anger show but it slipped through... and I knew that it is advisable to take other peoples suggestions as a chance to improve... plus I knew that it was someone elses opinion of me and my work... they couldn't see all of the little ways that I had actually improved and that I recognized the mistakes and had already taken action to fix them. I was quite defensive at the moment...

My manager, his manager and presumably his manager are all focused on errors. I understand, errors can cause our customers frustration and anger. As well as our people. Errors can cause us to lose a lot of money.

The focus on errors though, the myopic focus, can lead to overlooking the great strengths of individuals. It can shut down discussion of solutions and lead to discontent with a job where the value of the employee is measured in the amount of errors made or not.

I came from a previous position where we were also looking for continuous improvement, and admittedly trying to avoid errors. But my manager sought our opinions, she sought to help us find ways to improve and train. It was a team effort of solution finding. I thrived off of it! Too bad I ever left.

So now I'm in somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place. That's where I find myself and I'm making the best of things.

It doesn't mean that I'm giving up on my dreams. In fact, my thoughts on seeking for the best are these.

A compromise doesn't mean that the lesser good is the better good, or that you believe it to be so, it's just that the better good is just out of reach at the moment.

I would like to have a nice garden that I could pick my own fresh vegetables from. Right now I don't have the skills, space or the time, so I buy what I can from the store. I can read up on gardening, listen to lectures, observe, and participate when I can... eventually I will get to where I want to be.

The same applies to exercise. I am currently pressed for time. I get sick sometimes, and I intuitively know that I shouldn't push myself... so I walk when I can, do squats up the stairs, skip when no one is watching... sometimes do Yoga, and watch You-Tube videos, read books, and check out information on fitness programs. Eventually I will be able to put what I want to do into action.

This is the method that I've taken with getting healthy.

I read up about different things, try things out, do the best that I can... the point is that I always have had that goal in my mind. It's not going away and it has taken me this far. Eventually it will become less pressing to me because I will have mastered much of what I needed to know. But at the moment I do what I can, buy nutricuticals when I think something will help, discard it if it doesn't. Buy food and cook as much as possible... it's all part of the journey. Just because I ruined one dish (or crock of pickles), doesn't mean I should give up, it just means that I wipe the slate clean and try again.

~SG

On a similar note I ran across this article from listening to "The Latest in Paleo" podcast.

Dissolving Stress With The Higher Mind

"You have a story of past challenges, that are in truth linked to a specific strength and purpose in your life. The ability of your Higher Mind is to connect the healing dots of cause and effect in your life and access a fulfilling and powerful force lying dormant within you. It is liberating and empowering to find the gifts hidden within your greatest challenges."

"Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours." ~ Noela Evans

 

Orthodoxia

I've spent a lot of time analyzing my past, trying to make sense of my mixed up past, feeling a lot of guilt over my mistakes... and feeling unworthy at some level of future happiness.

I used to take things so personally, still do sometimes. I get paranoid when my hormonal level is out of whack.

There was an article I read the other day about "Orthodoxia," I believe, which was to be hyper focused on some aspect of doing everything right. Eating exactly right, exercising exactly on schedule... meditating regularly, having a perfectly clean house... etc. or at least being so wrapped up in those kinds of things that you become isolated from others. I become wrapped up in my hobbies at times. Hyper focused, trying to do it all right and I isolate myself.

I'm trying to be chill, but sometimes it is hard...

SG

Quote from Anne of Green Gables

"Nothing very dreadful. I was just trying to write out some of my thoughts, as Professor Hamilton advised me, but I couldn't get them to please me. They seem so still and foolish directly they're written down on white paper with black ink. Fancies are like shadows. . . you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things. But perhaps I'll learn the secret some day if I keep on trying. I haven't a great many spare moments, you know. By the time I finish correcting school exercises and compositions, I don't always feel like writing any of my own."

Everyday Life

I always know when my youngest Son is home, he comes up the walk singing a song, or making some other type of noise. It's fun, and somewhat annoying at times.

I've spent my day home sick, and working on my blogs. Basically rearranging them, making it easier for me to communicate, plan and share what interests me.

Hopefully I will wake up tomorrow, Sans dizziness, and can go to work.