"When you die and go to heaven,

our maker is not going to ask,

"Why didn't you discover the cure for such and such?",

The only question we will be asked

in that precious moment is.

"Why didn't you become you?"

Elie Wiesel

The drunken master or getting off the emotional rollercoaster

I spoke to two people I trust and listened to reason.I confronted my feelings, and even looked at all of the other distractions too.It took a little prodding from me, but I was able to just lay my contradictions on the line. I said aloud what I felt about my ex-husband, what I think I feel for my ex-boyfriend...lol...ex,ex,ex.
Look behind door number three. How about considering that something else can be on the way?
The moment I start thinking emotionally, I know that I cannot make a decision from that head space. I have to take a moment and find out why I am acting that way. What is it that I believe I want from the situation? I must articulate it and see whether it shall really reward me as suspect.This is always about feeling good, so I cannot make light of people who have addictions, who is to say that my feelings are not in that category as well?
What I do know is that, if something is to work, it should not be hard to make it work. It should not require hurting others, it should not be all about uprooting and disrupting what I am about to have it.
I feel embarressed to be so vulnerable, but this is because I pride myself on knowing better most of the time. I'll get over that.
I so want to be appreciated, admired, loved,share love, that despite myself, I am reaching out towards what is comfortable and familiar.
Perhaps I also need to start going out sometime, I have gotten into work and home to the extent that I do nothing else.Maybe, if I focus a bit on things outside myself that I enjoy and can do for myself, I may be less likely to feel so emotionally needy.

how honest is honest?

This I must ask myself because I want to write much more, but I don't even dare to do so here, and the question really is why? My feelings are growing for someone from my past. I like the way that I feel, but the timing is all wrong. All wrong. There is an obstacle, and he is approaching me now because his obstacle is no longer in his way.
I know that I cannot continue with what has begun to happen between us. I know it, but it is hard to tear myself away. I cannot believe that I am so weak? I used to pride myself on being quite the opposite. Not even necessarily strong, but just able to say no, able to withstand certain advances.
But he is coming at me in the right way, massaging my defences, challenging my boundaries, slipping in through our friendship and old love and worming around my resolve.
I can't bare it when he looks directly at me, and he does this a great deal, and smiles as though he and I hold some secret, which in a way, we do.
I didn't realise that so much had lain dormant? I took it for granted. To me, I lay that baggage down a long time ago and moved on. But now, I see that it was strong, it was beautiful and it was resilient.

Sometimes it must be asked what do you really want and more so, what do you believe is best for you? I have had the time to ask myself this about my emotional life in particular, thinking that writing, stating and feeling what I want was very straightforward.But now, I find myself in two minds, evenly divided down the middle. I must sort it out as soon as possible because I am not following my own thoughts on the matter.
What surprises me about myself at the moment is that I am thinking very emotionally, thinking very selfishly on the one hand and then very pragmatically and reasonably on the other.
How can I be happy, when it can only be fleeting? Obviously wanting much more is inevitable. Logic requires prudence. I know what I must do, but I want to enjoy what I can while I can, and this is driving me around the bend.
The good thing about this is that I can discuss it honestly. Yet,that is the problem too, because it is so obvious that so much is shared and appreciated, and those things make decision making harder.
I just want my cake and to eat it too.
I thought that I could handle everything, but I must now be realistic. I just have to be steely and end this lovely experience.

Found on the blog alchemy,legend,myth

i beg you... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. don't serach for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

I chose to be born to very dynamic parents.In every way they represent everything that we strive for on this planet, and they succeeded. However, I also was born to two bullies. It is difficult to confront that I chose that dynamic on which to walk the earth,and I may have escaped into the hands of one instead of duel bullies, but now that I have been living with my parents again, there are days, as this one is, where the truth is such a slap in the face that it must be said aloud.
I must find solutions to my present status. I must. The things that occur to me seem to be getting more and more intense, and I have wondered, what next? My very presence seems to rankle, even though so much is asked of me that I do indeed do for the household and beyond.
My self esteem has been knocked about in this gilded cage called home. I have looked at this often. What do I do? What should my next step be?
Tonight I feel closer to the strength of standing up for myself in the way where I can say, I just need to make a move, it does not have to be a brilliant place, it does have to be good enough and safe enough for my little one. But recently, I began to say to myself, I motivate so many people, I have seen my energy take root in them and watched them blossom. It is now time for me to see that I too am a butterfly whose wings are made of the strongest stuff.

"You gotta be who you are, no matter how dangerous it is" -- Lawrence Weiner

now that I know...

Now that I know that it is all about me, this look at my old flame and wondering about my own choices, I now ask myself, so, now that you know that the dissatisfaction is within, what am I going to do about it?
Change things.
I have to go back to Canada in the next few weeks, or at least before August. I am thinking about the things that I would like to accomplish this time around.
I would like to see parts of the country that I have only read about, and I also plan on doing a bit of online research to know what to expect and to make further plans. I look upon the whole Canada thing as an adventure, and I am very open about it. I don't know what the possibilities can be. But I am very optimistic about it.
Getting work and having money and savings shall go a long way to making me feel better about my life and myself. Not having money, having to rely on the chosen moments of kndness of my family has grown quite stale.
I am divorced now, and I have had the year of wondering what to do next and the looking in on myself and looking at where I need to be and to go. So now it is time to act, whether I have things in place or not.

some more thoughts...

It is not enough for me tonight to write about the people in my life and even about what I am discovering about myself. I also wanted to look at making decisions about things without always wanting the perfect circumstances or the most logical ones to come to the fore. I was reading over some of my posts here, and whenever I re-read what I have written here, I listen for my tone.
In this instance, I was alerted to my comments that my ex and I are getting along better.This is good, and what must happen now is that I keep going along the path of what I want to see accomplished.
There are those in my family with heir views about him, about me, about the whole scenario. But that is their opinion.
I am tired of giving over my thoughts to the worst case possibility and then some. There now comes a time when even if the worst does happen, you should be able to know with certainty that you will survive and even thrive, no matter what.

What I need is time...

Time to process some information that I heard today from an old flame. He made some amazing decisions that should have been the kind of decisions made by my ex-husband and I. I dislike comparing these two people, and I am embarrassed to do so, but it is in my thoughts, nagging at me because of how things turned out. I just marvel at these two men, they are from completely different backgrounds. Yet the story that should be told of both has turned out the opposite. But when I peel back the layers, this isn't actually about my ex at all, or the old flame, this is about how I feel about myself.
When I see where this person is in his life, even though we are meeting again for reasons I am not always comfortable about and am struggling with, he and I have been placed together again for definite growth on my part.
Today we had a great time, just talking and driving around looking at houses and discussing architectural taste and styles. This is something I have always liked to do, but never really got anyone to do with me. He kept saying that he wished that he had had his camera with him, a number of things we both observed deserved to be captured.
The comparison also comes up first because my mother made a comment tonight about my ex that just continues to perpetuate what always kept things difficult (it seemed) to me. I tried to diffuse her, but only managed to add gasoline when I thought it was water. She may never be in any other mental space where my ex is concerned, and I just have to accept that.
What has surprised me is myself. The old flame is looking at the house, at me, at everything around and about me, with eyes that have advanced twenty something odd years since we were an item. I wonder about those eyes, do they judge fairly? Or no, I should say, how do those eyes make me feel about myself? Because really, I cannot assume to get into his thoughts, and can only reflect my own onto him.
I wish that I had the resources to do the things in my parents home that need to be done. I wish that I had my own wealth that seemed the easy and effortless type, where I take it completely for granted that everything I have is just a reflection of my taste and style.
For a moment, that sat heavily with me.
I am devoid of much physical trappings, and only feel its stinging necessity when I think of the needs of my daughter.
Yet, of course, I too want the expected things of life. I sit between two worlds, the going forward in any direction with those intentions in mind and the awareness of the steps to take.
It is actually in some ways an exhilarating thing, as I can say, the old flame must see something that I may not see, or fail to acknowledge as truly valuable.
The good thing is that I am not standing still, and I am not putting my emotional self into a tailspin wondering about what others think.
As a learning device, I see the chance for bringing forth in myself a way of seeing what I do and where I go next, and I thank those coming forward to prepare me for my journey. I own it and the point is to feel self satisfaction within whatever it is and will be.

The concept of money

I am not the only person in the world focused on money and concerned about it. But today, when yet again I was faced with a purchasing decision, I realised that I should look at my issue differently. Instead of going into a tailspin and complaining in my mind for the thousandth time about my salary and other past decisions, I looked at the matter in the present and the future. In the present by saying, what has been my situation? That question brought up what I am facing squarely,instead of what I have been facing in the near distant past, and then I knew that it shall not always be so.
Then I looked at the idea of life as an adventure, and I actually let the perceived problem go. It may not change the outcome for tomorrow, but what it did do was get me out of the place that I usually venture, which is worry, doubt and blame, and they do not help me one bit.
This way of thinking also did something else that was unexpected, and that was, confronting anxiety head on, knowing that this is not the way that it shall always be, and focusing instead on better.

On another note

Although things are better with my ex-husband,I find sometimes that I feel the obvious distance between us that divorce has caused. I know that I am made aware of it. It is something that I must simply work through.
We went out with our little one this afternoon, and I felt the old family closeness though, and it made me think again of the proposition that he has put to me.
You never know what life will throw at you, what you do know is that the tables can literally turn at the most unexpected moment sometimes, and a belief system can be tested and proven obsolete.
Amidst all of the challenging feelings that are coming up for me, I have concluded that feeling good about my decisions is what I need to do.
It is odd how much I focus on what the other person wants and believes, and if they tell a good story, a logical story, I am inclined to say that they deserve a listening. Yet, I too have a story, and this year, when things have wrung false, or I have felt awkward about circumstances, I have stood my ground. I am not easily swayed as I may sometimes think.
When I post again, I shall do so to discuss my plans, centring around my desires and needs.