BEHIND BROWN EYES

Somedays I have to remind myself that being alone is okay. Others days I know being alone is better than being with the wrong person...or the right person at the wrong time. Sometimes I feel compelled to say out loud that "finding home" or my center of gravity isn’t anything I can discover externally. This quest is all about me and no one else. I've had a void in my life for so long that I’ve come to accept it as being as much a part of me as are my long legs. Every now and then I throw myself into the abyss of relationship uncertainty and drama. Each time I explore it, what I find is the same old thing. That brick wall never gets easier to run into no matter how many times I do it. 

The inner peace and happiness I’m lacking is not in someone else nor is it somewhere else. I know that happiness lives within and radiates outward. The missing factors in my life are factors that left me at an very early age. The void I feel I often times think is simply the childhood I never had and will never have. How do I fill that void? I often wonder who I would have been if I had grown up in a family where love was not a painful thing or if I had never left home as a young teenager. Would I have perished or would I have survived? Could I have thrived? Would I have learned to stand and fight instead of running away? Would I have learned how to ride something out from beginning to end? Would I have ever known the taste of sweet success? And would I have learned how to love myself without this path I chose? Can anyone really answer those questions with absolute certainty? I certainly can't! 

Sometimes nostalgia floods my thoughts along with thoughts of "what if". What if I just stopped running into that brick wall time after time? The last time I made that mistake was several years ago. I allowed myself to once again believe that loving someone could change my life. Silly me! I really did know better than that, but foolishly got caught up in flood of feel good moments. I let how I felt when I was with this person grow into believing that love conquers all obstacles. What I forgot was that unreciprocated love and one-sided relationships conquer nothing. From my track record, one could assume that I’m everything from a glutton for punishment to being just plain stupid where love is concerned. In reality, I’m neither. In reality, my interest in finding that special someone has waned drastically to being almost non-existent. Now finding home has become more of a quest for inner strength as I deal with my declining health. 

 As I've developed several health problems and often times feel as if I'm quite literally falling apart, I find myself less interested in the whole relationship scene. The memory of my last cruise on the Love Boat still haunts me. My entire worth was measured in terms of my physical performance or should I say my lack of physical performance? How could I have been so wrong once again about someone who had captured my heart? I remember feeling crushed, disappointed and unworthy. But unworthy of what? Of not being able to do something I’ve never been exposed to doing before or ever attempted to do before this person came into my life? Would anyone be able to climb a high mountain on first try without climbing the small ones first? I now believe by letting this fish go without a fight, it was I who lost nothing. In my quest of finding home, I found where home isn’t and was reminded that being alone is okay.

*Repost from November 28, 2011

NINE SECRET RULES FOR BEING HUMAN

 

According to an article a friend sent me there are 9 secret rules for being human handed down from ancient Sanskrit literature. These rules are:

1. YOU WILL RECEIVE A BODY.
You may like it or not, but it will be yours for the entire period round.

2. YOU WILL LEARN LESSONS.
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

3. THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, ONLY LESSONS.
Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The ‘failed’ experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately works.

4. A LESSON IS REPEATED UNTIL IT IS LEARNED.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it, then you can go to the next lesson.

5. LEARNING LESSONS DOES NOT END.
There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6.'THERE' IS NO BETTER THAN 'HERE.'
When you're 'there' it has become 'here', you will simply another 'there' that will again look better than 'here'.

7. OTHERS ARE MERELY MIRRORS OF YOU.
You cannot love or hate something about another unless it reflects you something you love or hate yourself.

8.WHAT YOU MAKE OF YOUR LIFE IS UP TO YOU.
You have all thè tools and resources you need, what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. THE ANSWERS LIE INSIDE YOU.
The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.

Live Life With A Meaning...

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

What doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger! Does survival really mean we are stronger or does it merely mean we're smarter and more leary of placing our hand in the same fire that burnt us the first time? Stronger would imply that if faced with same battle whether it is an emotional or a physical one, we would be the victor the second time around. But doesn't it take more courage to walk away from a battle sometimes than to stay and fight? Isn't that wisdom, victory in itself? 

Gratitude statement: I am thankful to be a survivor whether or not that means I'm stronger or smarter or both! 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO THOSE FAR AND NEAR

I don't remember any one particular Thanksgiving while I was growing up.  It's more an accumulation of all of them rolled up into one pleasant memory that makes me smile. The song "over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go" definitely was the theme of the day for my family.  Yes, over the Penobscot River and through Brewer to the picturesque countryside of Holden was the route to my grandmother's house where a feast always awaited us.  Sometimes winter had already begun and the landscape was delicately draped with snow.  My brothers and I were always filled with anticipation of the exquisite meal we would eat and the days ahead that led to the grand finale, Christmas. 

My Nana's house was filled with delicious holiday aromas from the pumpkin and apple pies.  My guilty pleasure was the suet pudding soaked with hard sauce.  The dessert was so rich and flavorful, I could only eat a small serving even though I always wanted more.  The hard sauce was spiked with a splash or two of my grandfather's whisky so I felt all grown up eating it. Cinnamon and other spices masked the smell of the turkey roasting in the oven and the medley of garden-grown vegetables on the stove. Native-grown McIntosh apples would fill the apple pies and sweeten the day as their flavor mingled with the vanilla ice cream slowing melting atop the warm pie.  Their aroma is so distinctive that I could always tell if they were being sold in a store and now whenever I smell them, I'm instantly transported back to autumn in Maine when the orchards are bustling with business. 

There with her colorful bib apron on, Nana was the captain of her kitchen and always busy making sure everyone present was thoroughly sated. As she baked the pies, she always baked one pumpkin pie just for herself and she would eat it while preparing the rest of the Thanksgiving dinner. She rarely used a recipe, yet everything she made was baked to perfection. Her culinary expertise was strictly from instinct and the experience she had mastered many years before made her like some legendary figure from a Norman Rockwell illustration in my mind.

My choice from the turkey was always the wings, but when my Great Aunt Leah, one of my grandmother's sisters dined with us, I had to share the wings because they were her favorite as well. I never minded and to this day whenever I eat poultry, I always announce out loud that this one is for Aunt Leah as I eat one wing for me and one wing for her.  I know she'd like it that she's still remembered and included in all our holiday meals. Nana piled our plates beyond capacity, but no matter how much we ate, everyone always had room for a little dessert and then a little nap before going home. Nana always told me that my eyes were bigger than my stomach.  I suppose she was right, but on holidays even a child can have a hollow leg and be a bottomless pit. 

As the table was cleared and the food put away, my brothers and I did the dishes while the adults went into the living room to take a much needed breather. Nana always saved the paper tablecloth so I could cut out the turkeys and other Thanksgiving pictures printed on the tablecloth.  By the time I was done cutting, it was late in the afternoon and time to return home back through the woods and over the river to Walter Street we would go, but each time I went to Nana's house before I would leave, I always made sure I signed her guest book she kept on the desk in the corner of her living room. Doing that always made me feel as special as the others who had been guests in her house.  I'm sure the thought never crossed her mind to tell me not to do that because it was only for guests.  After all, I was her only granddaughter and I'm sure she indulged me in many, many ways.

*Repost from April 4, 2019

IS LOVE JUST ANOTHER FOUR LETTER WORD?

I could probably write a whole dissertation on the unfairness of love, but I won't. I could rant on about how many mistakes we all make in relationships. I'll let that slide, also. What I discovered or should I say rediscovered is that some love doesn't fade. It smolders unnoticed and unattended and then it takes only a word...a thought...a touch to ignite the fire that once was. That realization made me both happy and sad. When something is right, it remains right. It withstands the horrible disappointments and remains honest and open regardless of past scars. There is no fear in letting the person know how you feel even at the risk of those feelings being unreciprocated. Love is brave and foolhardy all in the same moment. 

Imagine a tree reaching upward towards the sky...arms open...strong and ready to embrace any of the sky's unpredictability and to weather any storm. Limbs break, leaves fall, yet the tree still stuggles to live and grow. There's a quiet place deep inside that harbors that special love against the unfairness and mistakes. It sits patiently awaiting... believing in love itself. That place transcends the obstacles and sometimes in a few rare cases where the people are bold enough to take a chance and to make their dreams into reality, they seek the love that safely lives in the shadows. 

They fearlessly bring it out into the sunlight together. Then it no longer exists only in dreams or in the stillness of all the 4 a.m.'s spent alone remembering, hungering for a touch that once made each day filled with passion and laughter. Something inside me awakened as it has in the past. It smiled and my eyes twinkled for a moment before it retreated back into the safety of the darkness within my cave.

*Repost from March 31, 2010

MILDREDISM FOR BEGINNERS

My lifelong quest for spiritual knowledge has lead me in many directions with each new direction leaving me as empty as the last. When I finally reached the point of realizing that I am what I am and that for me God does not exist it was a point in my life that has come with both the feeling of great liberation and immense sadness. My sadness isn't due to not finding God, but of feeling true empathy for the pain anyone experiences who comes out of their closet. Living in any tightly sealed closet is like living in a coffin, but coming out doesn't always involve love, compassion and the support from those people who claim they love us. Although I do know how it feels to be judged, this time is different. This time I see just how little tolerance there really is in the world and that instead of people viewing each other as brothers and sisters and accepting each other's differences, I see how people want everyone to view life as they do. They want each person to be a cookie cutter version of themselves with no deviation. I want to scream, "I do not share the same desire." I appreciate the differences people have because I know without them life would be a very humdrum experience. Without them there would be no food for thought or choices to make. 

I also can and will continue to respect a person's right to believe or not believe in any higher power or lower power if they so choose. I can't or won't say a person's relationship with any God is a figment of their overactive imagination because I believe reality is what a person perceives it to be. Having a relationship with God simply is not a relationship I have nor one I feel I need as validation of being a good person. I don't believe religion holds exclusivity on bringing out the goodness in mankind. If it did, the world would be a much better place than it is. I think we all believe what we need to believe. I know many find great comfort in their faith and feel a need to worship. Perhaps there is some validity to Karl Marx's claim religion is the "opiate of the masses." 

Again, I have never found that numbing comfort nor the urgent need to worship as others have, but I will stand in support of a person's right to choose to worship or not. I will not stand in judgment nor will I belittle a person when their opinions and beliefs don't match mine. Yes, I will state how I feel, but in doing so I don't NEED anyone else to tell me I'm right...or wrong. Ideally, I'd just like the people journeying through life with me to accept me for who I am and to accept I am a good person without religion being at the core of who I am. And ideally, this is just a WANT and not a NEED! 

Gratitude statement: I'm grateful for the inner strength I have especially at times of great adversity.

*Repost October 4, 2011