MATTERS OF THE HEART AND OTHER FAIRYTALES AND QUANDARIES

Often times little girls are misdirected into believing love is supposed to be some once upon a time fairytale just waiting to happen.  They read about love, dream about love and expect love to happen just as it's written. So what happens when those little girls get disillusioned and suffer from a broken heart? Some of them learn how to cope with real life while others become maniacal bitches who nag, manipulate and feel like they have to beg a man for his attention. They become willing to do anything just to be loved.  Yes, sometimes their lives become a scene right out of the movie, Fatal Attraction and when confronted with reality, they get insulted that anyone might think their behavior is erratic, illogical and just down right mean or insane at times. A snake has more warmth than a spurned woman and its bite is a lot less venomous. Doesn't the old saying go something like, "hell has no fury like a woman's scorn?"

What happened the first time you had mind-blowing sex with someone and they never called again? Hopefully, everyone is saying to themselves, "I don't have an answer to that question because I've never had a one night stand."  Hopefully, each one of you has had mind-blowing sex followed by years of unadulterated bliss with the same person or you haven't suffered the slings and arrows of unrequited love. Unfortunately, for some of us that doesn't happen.  Unfortunately, some of us have mind blowing sex and if anything follows at best, it might be a mind-blowing abusive relationship. Yep! Some of us allow ourselves to believe that we can conquer or fix anything and everything and each time we allow ourselves to remain oblivious to the writing on the wall, we get repeatedly hurt  Being blinded by false love only gives the green light for more abuse to occur.  Sure, we're afraid to walk away because we have a fear of the unknown. Because of that fear we allow our self-worth to be so badly beaten down that sometimes it becomes non-existent.  For the lucky ones when enough abuse occurs, our survival instinct finally kicks in and we get the hell out of Dodge quickly with our suitcase and what's left of our dignity in hand! But a crucial lesson we all have to learn is not to piss and moan continually about the Neanderthal we live with unless we're ready to stand up and do something about our situation.  Until we have the strength to help ourselves, we really can't expect people to support our decisions and to give us the empathy we need. Before then it's just another sad soap opera playing out and we are the drama queen extraordinaires.

Yep, I've been through it myself...looked down the barrel of a loaded gun more than once. Been tied up for a sessions of sexual fun and games only to end up having my breast used as an ashtray. The scar makes me shake my head and wonder what the hell I was thinking then...obviously I wasn't thinking and didn't have much self-respect or self-worth.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly with the expectation of a different result. Well, quite a long time ago I decided to get off that roller coaster ride and walk on flat ground again.  It was then I decided that the insanity I was living really wasn't appealing and I deserved a better life even if that better life meant being alone and as I always say being alone is a much better place to be than being with the wrong person...and a much safer place! Finding the courage to admit that and then actually removing myself from the game long enough for me to reevaluate my priorities and needs wasn't easy to do, but I did it because I knew I was long overdue for a change.  The insanity, the drama, the turmoil and the negativity had to stop!  Now, after 9 long years of being out of the relationship/dating game, I'm slowly getting to know someone again that I knew when I was a young girl before all the madness began.  Time will tell what happens, but until then at least now I know what I do and don't want and need and I have the courage to walk away if I see any red flags.  The hardest thing for me right now isn't telling myself that I'm worthy of getting to know.  It's believing it!

Repost from June 24, 2014

UPDATE: Here it is January 9, 2023, I'm still floating free in the cosmos amongst the other galactic matter...

TO MILDRED FROM MILDRED

There are few absolutes in life. With the exception of birth, death and taxes everything else falls in a hazy gray area subject to loopholes, pitfalls and mediocrity. There is however one other thing I can say with 100% certainty about my life in general. No one should ever use my life as a model for sobriety. The road I've walked to get here has been an exhausting one. I did everything the Mildred Ratched method instead of doing them in a way that would have been faster, easier and with better results. Never being able to completely surrender has always been a huge problem for me. My inability to learn by other people's mistakes and having to do everything the hard way isn't due to any genetic mule-like tendency. My real problem stems from lack of trust. When a person is damaged at a young age, they spend their entire life either trying to heal or trying to run away... or both. 

Their futile attempts of trying to gain normalcy is like some slow emotional death sentence. Somehow they manage to prove ourselves right time after time by the unhealthy relationships they form and the tangled, drama-filled situations in which they become involved. The outcome is always the same...disaster, disappointment and despair. Throughout life I have learned how to skillfully navigate through failure, but never have learned the proper keys to success. As long as I manage to remove drama and negativity from my life, I'm able to stay afloat. As long as I isolate myself from having any intimate relationships involving love and sex, my thinking stays relatively unclouded. As long as I have virtually no life, I can live drug free. So what! So what if I can say "Hey, look at me. I stopped doing drugs!" My life absent of drugs is far from what anyone would call a life. Every fiber in me screams at anyone looking at my life for answers to look elsewhere. Anyone looking at me needs to quickly come to the conclusion that they need to do things the right way and not the Mildred Ratched method. They need to find a way to let go and trust others. They need to stick with it and know anything good in life requires great patience and extreme effort.  

So here I am 50 something years old and I'm wondering when the hell that happened. How have I managed to come so far, but never leave square one? The ugly truth is that I isolate myself just to stay sane, sober and safe. Surely, there could have, should have been some other way to get here, but Miss Mildred Mule picked the path of least resistance. She picked the path where all she had to do was do what she does best...listen to herself and no one else. Trust herself and no one else. In doing so, Mildred picked the path once again of self-destruction. Mildred's addiction without drugs is like a gun. She just keep loading her gun, placing it to her head and firing away. So far, her gun has shot blanks. So far all her gun has done is numb her to its horrors. So far, all her gun has done is kept her from living, from being able to succeed and be happy, from being able to accomplish anything that requires effort, focus and stamina. Pulling that trigger everyday is the easiest thing Mildred has ever done!

* reposted from November, 18, 2011

WHAT REVS YOUR ENGINE?

I can close my eyes and I can smell that smell. Can you? Ooooh, that smell! The smell of death surrounds me! It isn't just in the drugs and alcohol that people abuse. It's in our food. It's in our water. It's in the air we breathe and the pharmaceuticals our doctor prescribes us and deems as necessary and perfectly safe to take. It's in the cars we drive and the cellphones we use! It's in the sex we have! It's in the wars we wage! It's in the poverty and hunger all around us! It’s in our planet as it grows warmer and more polluted. It’s in the hatred and the fear we feel towards each other. It's in the politics that divide us more each day. It's everywhere! Just look around. It's in everything we see, feel, smell, taste and hear! There's no escaping it... I feel like I'm drowning!

Any insomniac, addict, mentally or emotionally disturbed person or anyone who has ever been in dire straits and is at the end of their rope with nowhere to go is well-acquainted with temptation, self-indulgence and pleasure seeking behaviors. Satan, imaginary or not, comes in many forms and touches the lives of the most desperate and the most vulnerable. We are his army, the hedonists of the world. Even when we aren't capable of actually feeling pleasure, there remains the memory of pleasure and what a driving force that can be. To love one more time...to feel the pleasure of carnal delights one more time, to experience whatever revs your engine and gets your creative juices flowing is the ultimate mind candy! SIGH!

I say it's time to dig down deep inside yourself and satisfy that wild hair that beckons you and when you do heed its call, please make sure you write about your adventure in explicit details and post photos so I can satisfy my troglodytic voyeurism. (Oh no! I think I just discovered a new psychiatric diagnosis! lol) So what really revs your engine? Be honest. To thine ownself be true... Here at Mildred's place we make no character judgments. We just live and let live! I need a little something something to put some pep in my step and I don't know quite what it is yet. Any suggestions? I NEED A SPECIAL WILD HAIR DAY!!!

Well, I'm off to the doc, maybe she'll fix me up. Ha! When has that ever happened? Hey, doc, have you got something that'll satisfy my wild hair? I guess there's a first time for everything and I shall return, but I have a feeling it won't be with a smile on my face...