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January 30 Faces come and faces go....Nothing is more frustrating these days than to remember a face and not remember the connection to it. I just sat here for several minutes trying to remember a woman that I worked with and I could even recall that her name was Barbara. But putting a place and time to her connection to me left me cursing this thing called 'fibro fog'.
I doesn't help that I've lived in many places throughout my life and had to change jobs frequently. That is the life of a military wife, and then an ex-wife. I also worked in the same types of places in more than one town, which makes identifying the where and when harder.
These days though I think it's more than just identifying the backdrops to our conversations. It is this confusing in and outs of what used to be called my mind that really gets to me. I open a window to look something up and by the time it opens, I've forgotten what I wanted to research! I sit chewing on it for a while and then go on to something else and bam! It hits me and I'm off on another tangent! By the end of the day I've covered a lot of ground, gone nowhere, but had a great time getting there even if I never found what I was looking for.
It is hard for someone who was known for being able to remember phone numbers from her youth, addresses for all those homes, and where everything was. Some days it crosses my mind that it could be something worse than the fog, but then thngs clear up and I forget having worried about it. Guess it does have some benefits!
Oh, and that face I couldn't place? I worked with her at Ft. Campbell, KY in the Post Exchange. It came to me when the fog lifted.....I believe she worked in the camera department.
January 18 Letting go....Letting go.... wow, the thoughts that inspires! Letting go of hopes, fears, hurts, dreams, and on and on. Yet when we let go, we sometimes find that we gain so much more than we released.
I had someone hurt me very deeply once. I nursed that wound for a long time. Not outwardly but internally I managed to carry that pain for years. It wasn't until someone suggested that I forgive that person, let the pain go, that things started to change for me in my life.
It sure wasn't easy. We had a long relationship that I blindly thought was fine, great even. When it ended I was devastated, to say the least. A gaping hole remained where once my heart beat. To forgive this person meant that I had to let go of the feelings tied to him. It also meant I had to first face all the feelings as I, one by one, let go of them.
As I took inventory, I discovered a lot of negative feelings for myself for not seeing the problems that had been there all along. In the beginning I didn't address those but they were written down on the paper just the same. When I got done with my lists, his and mine, I was shocked to realize that the lists were both the same size.
I did forgive him and today we are friends. We don't live in the same state so maybe it was easier that way to let go of it all. But the hardest part of all this came later, much later.
I found that I was still hurting and at odds with myself. I wandered from thing to thing, never really sticking to anything for long. I worked, raised my kids, and had my friends, but something was still wrong. At first I thought I hadn't really forgiven him or had done it wrong or something and was not getting the full benefit of having 'let go'.
The one day I was cleaning out some of my writing files and ran back across the list. I went back down his side and realized that I had forgiven him. When I looked at my side I realized that I still had the same old feelings about myself.
I had not forgiven myself. That was the problem. The realization crept through my body like a cold wave, leaving me weak and in tears. I'd wasted another ten years of my life angry and upset and the only one who could fix it was me!
Yet part of me still wanted to fight that, didn't want that to be the reason. I had put myself through college. I had been working my way up in my work. I had been successful in my life. So why was this realization so powerful? Why had it affected me so strongly?
It affected me because it was the truth. Letting go only works if you know what it is you have to let go.
I have forgiven myself for most of it, the things that I can. I lost an important relationship, that I can't fix, but I can now forgive myself for it. The rest of it will go in time I'm sure as it's all getting more and more unimportant as I get older. When things crop up now, I just ask myself if it is worth lugging around for ten years or should I just forgive myself now and drop it. I'm proud to say that I drop way more than I lug around now.
If I can pass on one thing in my life I guess I would say that I want it to be to forgive. Forgive those who hurt you. Forgive those who ignore you. Forgive those who malign you. But most importantly of all, forgive yourself because you are the one who has to live with the pain and the guilt and that is a very heavy load. Letting go early is so much easier than letting go of an old wound that you've nursed for so many years. Let go and let life happen.
January 16 Finding myselfHow is it that I can reach this age and still have no idea of who I am? With dozens of books on the shelves on finding your real self, why don't I know?
Yeah, sure I know me, but who is that? I know where I've been and what I think, but I still have no idea what that amounts to. How sad is that?
I had a lot of dreams growing up: getting married, having kids, living happily ever after, but who doesn't? I also had dreams of doing something big, but no real idea of what it was I wanted to chase. I loved sketching and creating things. I also loved when I worked for the Girl Scouts and when I worked with my seniors. I loved going to college later in my life, it was so challenging to learn new things. I love digging for answers. But what do you do with that?
I know I'm a good person, I know that. I know that I believe in people first and distrust them only after they've given me reason. I know that sometimes I trust a little too easily and that's gotten me hurt. But when you don't trust and let yourself open up, you are telling the world you're unapproachable. I'm not stupid, or totally naive, don't get me wrong. Having been burnt has taught me to be wary when certain things start playing out.
Maybe I want to know what it is I want to do now with my life. If I could start over, who would I be? What would I do and how hard would I strive for that? What do I have to do or exchange to get to my goal? If I'm not willing to go there, I need to have a plan to shift gears to adapt or switch lanes on a new path to a new life. So many questions and so few answers just yet. Maybe it starts by examining just what makes me tick, what makes me truly happy.
I just received a book a friend sent me and I'm thinking that between that and starting a journal I might just be able to get a few answers to my questions this year. It may be a year long journey, maybe less, but anything that is so important takes time to figure out, right? This just might be the start of my new journey....
January 08 A turn of the calendar....A turn of the calendar page and a new year begins. Seems so easy but when the new year begins without those we've spent our time with, well, it makes the turn a little less easy to make.
I have a few less friends this year, but I know their last year was not the easiest for them and that at least now they are in a much better place. And while I know this, it is not easy to know just how much their family and friends miss them and are struggling to get along without them. Death is not easy for the dying, yet it is harder for those left behind. As the days draw to a close, so much time is spent with our departing one, as it should be, that it leaves us at loose ends when it ends. How do we fill all those hours that just seemed to pass so quickly just a short time ago and now threatens to loom empty in perpetuity?
Even if we were on the fringes of the final days, we now worry about those caretakers who are struggling to shift their focus to that of survivor. We don't have the words that will comfort and make everything alright. Sometimes all we can do is hang tight and let our silence unite us in our grief. Sometimes being strong means being silent in our words and strong in our deeds. We can celebrate their lives and set the example of the courage, living strong in our lives by helping others.
How many can you touch in your life? Reach out today and commit a random act of kindness. No, wait, make that a regular act of kindness. Make that your loved one's legacy and do regular acts of kindness. No telling the effect you might have someone's life today.
January 06 Clean slatesA friend sent me a picture of her latest storm accumulation. It was a simple picture through her front window that looked out across her front yard and into the fields across the road. Pure pristine path of unblemished snow sparkling under the sun. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.
Now I'm not a big snow fan if I have to live in it. I have things like arthritis and fibromyalgia that makes my bones ache when I'm in the cold so I'm now a sun rat in Florida. But I have to admit that there is something compelling about the pureness of unblemished snow. It is a clean slate. It is a chance to not screw it up with ugly black mush of having car after car drive over it, splashing the banks with wanton disregard for the sharp, crisp lines of the snowdrifts.
When I lived up north, I loved watching the animals in the new snow. Delicate little tri-toed marks of the birds checking out blades of grass peeking out of the snow as it melts. Puppies finding snow for the first time can be an explosion of antics in itself. You have your tentative puppy, delicately touching the snow and testing the depth with the confused demeanor, sometimes shaking it's paw as the snow creeps between it's toes. You have your overjoyed pup who dances and prances like an overzealous dancer in a explosion of music sending it first one way and then another, sometimes plowing through the snow with its nose like it was tracking a burrowing snowbunny.
Then there are the kids who rush headlong into the winter wonderland. Some throwing themselves into the snow, wildly flapping their angel wings and scissoring their legs, and others discovering the actual depths of the snow drifts as they sink up to their waists in the depths. Memories abound with every throw of a snowball and soft plop of getting caught unaware of incoming rounds. I love watching the deep furrows that culminate in the big rolls that eventually don scarves, small tree limbs for arms, a carrot nose, and dark rocks for eyes of this year's snowman, the guardian of small children and animals until the return of the warm spring rains and gently budding trees.
January 05 DifferencesMaybe I'm just dense or something but I can't see what all the fuss is about. One doesn't like this one because he doesn't agree with the other one. It has to be his way or else. The other one doesn't agree with the first one because it isn't what he believes to be true. The truth of the matter is that they are more alike than different!
I think that if we sat down and were only allowed to write down single word descriptors of what we believed, we would find out that we used many of the same words. Take religion for example. Most of us believe in a supreme being that is good and has our best interests at heart. Does it really make a difference what we call that supreme being? A cup still holds water no matter what we call it, doesn't it? A tree is still a tree, right? Shakespeare said it straight when he said "...a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
How many times have we translated something and had it turn out not the same? Some languages don't have exact translations that give you an exact equal meaning. Could this be the reason for several very similar religions with minimal differences? And just how does one choose which is the real interpretation? Why can't one believe what they want and the other believe what they want? Why can't they coexist? Different is not evil.
When did we equate different with evil? Is it our must win at all costs attitudes? No one can win all the time. We have to lose sometimes to remember humility and to learn from our mistakes. We have to learn to grow. If we never grow, we stagnate and stagnation leads to death.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not really all that into death. I enjoy learning about others and growing. I'm just having trouble finding someone who is willing to learn with me.
January 03 Simple inspirationsHave you ever read something that triggered a chain of thoughts that just seemed to keep growing? I just read this:
For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river. Ghalib
Now I'm not a deep thinker, but this just sent my mind to running to all kinds of meanings. I'm not familiar with Ghalib, and maybe I should be, but one direction my mind went in was that I was an awful lot like that raindrop. When you study the life of a raindrop, you see that it begins in water being evaporated into the air, floating along until the water becomes too heavy in the atmosphere to remain aloft, and it settles to the earth as rain eventually returning to the rivers, lakes, or oceans.
I've felt like that. I grew up, took off on my adventures away from home, until life became too heavy with responsibility that I had to take roots somewhere. And where do you choose to take root? With those we feel the most kinship with, or in other words, we return to our 'pool or pond'. Even now in this period of my life when the bonds are not as great, I feel the need to return to the pond of my childhood to be close to those I'm closest. The whole circle of life thing. Another thought, crazy as it sounds, was of Odo from Deep Space Nine. I remember him wanting to go to the Great Link to save his people. It gave him joy to rejoin his people, to blend back in with what was family and comforting. And yet another thought....it is the becoming a part of something larger than ones self, that feeling of becoming one with what is right with the world. We can be good by ourselves, be the best that we can be, yet with others we can move the world one tiny grain of sand at a time. Ahh, the journeys the mind can take when given a few well written words....
January 02 And so it begins....again.I can't believe another year is beginning. Didn't we just celebrate New Year's for 2006?
A new year stretches out before me. Daunting, isn't it? What do I want to see in this new year? I'm not sure really. Definitely a better writing schedule with more finished instead of a whole collection of unfinished works. A clearer idea of what I want to write would be a good idea to work on. I miss the poetry I used to write and the short stories, too. Maybe I'm just a short works writer.
I am a little intrigued right now by a book that a dear friend gave to me for Christmas. It is a book of daily meditations for those with chronic pain and illness. Just a short little blurb with great insight and I like expanding on that for a board that I'm on. Today's was: My priorities do not include convincing skeptics or defending myself. Oh boy, a loaded one for someone with fibromyalgia! The great diagnosis that half the doctors don't believe in....yet. They are coming around but ever so slowly. New information is coming out that proves scientifically that we are in pain, something they can wrap their brains around--technology. Technology says we are in pain, so therefore we must be. But I'm off the subject here.
Maybe I'll just be happy for right now to write on subjects as they come to me, using the news of the day, meditation from the book, or just whatever strikes my fancy that day. I wish I could write like the journal keepers of the past, writing of their life, the weather, and the news of the changing country. Wait a minute....isn't that what I just said?
 Maybe it is just the look and feel of the old leather bound journals, the careful handwritten recounting of the day that calls to me. There is something to the look and feel of a good book as you settle down into your chair to read. It is like stepping into the shoes of someone gone before and seeing things through their eyes and heart, letting you know more about them than even they knew. Hmmm, maybe a trip to the bookstore is called for....for those more private thoughts, of course.So, young fledgling year 2007, look forward to new things, extrordinary things maybe, as we travel through this life of ours. I'm ready for some adventure, aren't you?
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