How's it going?

Things are "eh" for me and mine. We're hanging in there, all of us.

I'm not going to pretend, here. I never have. Tom and I went through some tough times; we're working through it and I'm optimistic, right now. One simple fact I always spouted but didn't really understand with the fullness I do, now, has become glaringly apparent: No matter where you go, there you are.

Over the last year and a half I've learned some weird things about myself, things I never did want to face but was forced to. I always knew that most of what goes on in my life has everything to do with the choices I make every single day. I have never been someone who blames anyone else for the crazy, twisted path my life has taken...but what I've done recently is face myself squarely about why I make those crazy choices and how I could, just maybe, during this second half of my life, find a way to steer myself in directions that will take me where I REALLY want to be.

I am a people pleaser, Ouch! I've always been one, was much worse when I was young and naive and thought there really WAS a way to "make people like me." Of course as I aged I understood that to be a silly concept and told myself I was "no longer" a people pleaser...I'd learned my lesson, right?! Ha. This I've had to admit...I'm still a people pleaser. It's been my deep-down goal in life to make everyone around me happy and whole, like if I could accomplish THAT my life's work is complete. Now I understand such a goal is ultimately unattainable and I'm destined for failure. I get that NOW. A year and a half ago...not so much. I didn't even understand what I was doing for most of my adult life until I had to figure out that trying to FORCE people to be happy, trying to mold them into what my idea of happiness for THEM should be, was ultimately ticking them off and upsetting the entire idea of what I was attempting to create!

So these days I'm busy trying to figure out how to adjust myself in a way that's going to keep me and the people around me from going crazy. I DON'T have to jump in every time family members disagree...did you know that?! I shouldn't try to "have the answers" when someone comes to me with a problem or a simple life complaint. Sometimes they just need me to nod and agree "that sucks." That's it. No "fixes," no advice, no ideas about how to make it all go away or get better. Just listen and commisserate, agree, sympathize. The end. WOW that's hard for me...but I'm trying. I've spent a lot of years thinking I had to "fix" everything in everyone's life. What's funny is that as much as my "fixer" mentality drives my family nuts, they also have to adjust.

I'm not going to be a "fixer" anymore, which means I'm NOT always going to run with a net of some kind when these people fall. I'm going to do what I've known I should all along and just couldn't seem to accomplish. I'll stand aside and be there for the comfort, but I have enough to fix on my own plate. I can't keep being responsible for everyone else's or I'll never have the time, thought, and energy for myself. And there's where the crux of my life situation hits.

I've been so busy trying to make everyone else okay that I turned myself into a mess--no, really. I don't want to completely lose my urge to help others, but I have to learn to temper it, somehow. I am learning to pull back and just let everyone else BE. Not an easy task for someone who thought it was her mission to make everyone happy...a mission which, like I stated before, was destined to fail.

I'm going to work on ME, for once. Concern for others, especially those I love, will always be a part of who I am, but I can't let it override concern for myself. The old, classic, silly saying is TRUE: "If mama ain't happy, NO ONE is happy."

That's the truth.

And here's something I found when I idly perused my horoscope:

You just need to get out of bed and make something happen, regardless of your feelings. Events in the past are over and can't be changed. Everyone has to live with the consequences of their actions, and that can be difficult. But don't give in to any tendency to endow your regrets with more significance than they deserve. Melancholy people are only appealing in works of fiction.

Scarily accurate.

Merry Christmas or Happy Humbug, whichever you prefer!
 

"Is this all there is?"

"Yup."

Robert Waltz wrote an entry that has inspired me. Some, if they take a journey into his blog and read the entry, might be confused by this...it's probably not somethig he wrote to inspire. It's something we all have to deal with at some point in our lives, though, most of us at this mid-forties middle-aged zone where Robert and I happen to find ourselves. To reiterate: "Is this all there is?" Answer: "Yup."

I'm at a point in my life where I look back and I know where I went wrong along the way. There are some things I can change for the betterment of myself and some things I just can't. I have to accept that. I didn't finish getting my college degree when I was young: result? I'm struggling financially in a way that saps my strength and robs me of creativity. I never made the time or implemented the self discipline necessary to save money when I actually HAD some, sigh. I wish I could do something about it, but at this point I'm pretty much stuck. I don't have the money or the time to return to school-I HAVE to make a living for myself and my family, meager as it is. I quite often feel sorry for myself about this, but I have to be real with me, too. Every choice I've made in life has brought to the place I am, today. If I could back up and achieve a "do-over" I would. But I can't.

The same holds true of the world in general. I can vote for my candidate of choice in National Elections and tout his qualities to others through campaigning, word-of-mouth...I can vote and encourage others to vote and strongly advise EVERYONE to vote their conscience (another blog entry grows in my head)--but I no matter how infuriated it makes me to be subjected to slanderous, untrue, just-plain-wrong and irresponsible journalism...I doubt my opinion will change much. Giving myself a coronary over it would be useless, something I wouldn't have realized ten years ago-maybe not even five years ago! I'm too busy with my own life and personal issues to make world and/or national issues my priority. I don't watch or read the news like I used to. I scan the headlines, read what appeals to me which isn't much, anymore, and move on. Partially I'm disappointed in my fellow writers...I might be able to call them "fellow journalists" since I've freelanced here and there...but mostly there really is too much going on in my own head to make room for much else, something I wouldn't have even allowed to happen, or at least admitted to, "in my youth." (And I'm seriously not concerned about 2012-sheesh *triple eyerolls*)

I am also learning, slowly, to back off. I'm a "fixer," you see, at least I have been. I've, for some reason, considered it a responsibility of mine to make everyone around me "okay." I thought if I just tried hard enough, pushed enough, helped them "see" what they need to do or be often enough, I could make things better and quite rosy for me and everyone around me. We could all get along famously and our lives would magically fall into place if only they would listen and adhere to my instructions for living-Imagine my surprise when I'm usually hit with resentment and resistance. I try to work my "fixer" magic with the best of intentions, of course, but with less than stellar results. I've had to admit that I don't have all the answers for even myself and I never will. "Live and let live" needs to be my new mantra. It will certainly help me out, emotionally. Maybe I can stop getting sucked into everyone else's turmoil. God knows I have enough of my own-

I can look at who I am and where I am in life and resign myself to the knowledge that I am so not where I wanted to be at this time in my life...but that's pretty much because I never really PLANNED for this time in my life. I looked into the future with a misty idea of what I wanted to be true, but it didn't occur to me that for it to BE true I had to take steps THEN...oops. This is what I know, this is what I must deal with now.

I want to be happy--doesn't everyone? But to get there I know I have to find a way to be okay with where I've been and haven't been. I have to find a way to forgive myself for what I didn't do to move myself farther along by now. At work I'm surrounded by youngsters with lofty aspirations for themselves, which I hope for their sakes come at least partly true for them....but I can't help spouting a little advice--do NOW what it takes to be there THEN. I tell them to take a lesson from me, working the job they do for the pay they do at twenty years older and with many,many more responsibilites weighing me down.

My aspirations are so much simpler than they once were. I want to find a job where I can eek out a decent living with a little left over for a latte` if I just want one. I want to regenerate my creative brain, somehow, get myself writing and submitting work just for the joy of creating and then sharing it with someone else who might get something out of it (I'd love to make a living at it but here rears the realism factor of getting older). I'd love to someday have the time to get back into community theatre. I'd love to lose weight and feel physically better-at this point I'm in my forties but I FEEL about seventy. I'd love to go back to college and actually achieve the degree which has eluded me for all these years. I want to have the ability to sit back and just let the people around me BE without any urgency to take their happiness or lack of it upon myself-

These are my life's ambitions. It's time for someone else to "save the world." Or at least to want to.
 

If there's one thing I've learned, pretty recently even, it's to refrain from judging others. God knows there's enough I could be judged for and come out smelling more like the fertilizer of a rose than the alternative...

A very nice lady has walked into the breakfast room. She is wearing a purple velour track suit/sweat suit kind of ensemble. She has small diamond studs on each ear, a pair of nicely set wire framed glasses, and she's holding a Jonathon Kellerman novel in her hand. She's come down to grab some breakfast at almost 5am, something I usually have prepared and waiting before 4 just for Mayo Clinic patients like her who have to get up and head to the clinic early...

This lady is bald. It's quite obvious why she's here. She breathes hard as she walks around; occasionally she rasps a cough that just doesn't sound right, like the air expelled out isn't complete or something-

After her breakfast of toast with peanut butter and jelly, she got up, threw away her trash (halleluiah), then stepped outside with a shiver. Some guests, even with a shiver, go outside for their morning stroll or run, or sometimes even just to breathe some early morning air-weird morning people!

I didn't notice anything unusual about the woman as she stepped outside. I was counting my drawer with a calculator like I have to in the morning, busy with my own pursuits. I really don't watch everything the guests do! At one point another guest murmured something to me and I turned around. It was a reflex. I gasped when I saw what the lady in the purple suit was doing. A cloud of smoke had just vigorously billowed from the side of the door where I knew she was standing. I couldn't help it, my first reaction was: Good God! What in the hell does she think she's doing? She's already recieving chemo treatments in a desperate effort to stay alive! What is she thinking!! I shook the thoughts off quickly because I really do try not to judge the motivations of others. We really and truly do not know unless we've walked in another's shoes, cancer-ridden or not.

She must have known, must have dealt with stares and judgement for awhile now, though, because when she came back in she gave me a rueful half smile. "I'd have tried to quit if I had a chance in hell of living."

That's all she said. She ambled back to her room, book still clutched under her arm, as I watched her go.

Don't judge someone until you've walked a mile...

 

I don't know what I'd do without the people I'm so fortunate to know and hear from here at WDC. You people just ROCK!!!

Those of you who commented were very forthcoming with amazing advice. In keeping with NOVAcatmando 's advice, I'm going to admit something a little strange: almost three years ago I dealt with an emotional tidal wave from my Liz. We'd gone "visiting" for the holidays and she freaked out both in St Louis and Guymon, Ok, places where her families reside. After the return trip from hell where we had to stop at a psyche ward in St Louis, I was, again, at the end of my emotional rope. I started coloring.

That's right, I started coloring. My teenaged daughter, 18 at the time, had whimsically bought a "Peanuts" Christmas coloring book from the dollar store and I picked it up, along with crayons and markers. I started to color.

The funny thing about this is: I never liked coloring all that much when I was a child! But for some reason the exercise calmed me, focused me away from the viscious turmoil that had become my life. I was able to distance myself from the emotional vortex Liz's problems had placed me in. I colored a lot, night and day. My kids were a little take aback by this exercise of mine, but I think they sensed my need. I even picked up a sketch pad at some point and started coloring designs. Mind you, I've never been the type of person who is artistic by nature. Most of the time I can't draw a straight line.

But for a month or more I colored like crazy in that Peanuts book and made frenetic, colorful designs with my markers and crayons. Over a month later, crazily, my passion for the pursuits waned. I stopped almost as quickly as I'd started. But I felt healed in a way.

I guess we have to go with, at the time, what feels right to us for our wounded and bleeding souls. I know that, at this point. I've made some proactive decisions which have gone a long way towards making me feel better. I couldn't have cleared my mind enough, though, without the input of all of you, yesterday.

THANK YOU seems so small in comparison.
 

Things have been dicey for me lately, I'm not gonna lie. This is my blog and I promised myself a long, long time ago that for the most part, I'd be honest between these electronic folds.

I won't go into specifics, they're not necessary. What I want to deal with are the inner workings of my own minid, heart, and soul. I want to get back into my own skin and figure out where I've gone and why I've been swallowed whole into other people...that's so not okay.

Why do I fall into the abyss of others? Why do I allow my own psyche to become so intertwined with others that I freefall right along with them?!? I did it with Liz...I seem to do it with everyone. I have so much trouble distancing myself from the emotional backwash brought on when someone I love goes through turmoil of any kind...this does not make me productive for myself or anyone else, not even for the person whose backwash I'm consumed in. How do I combat this "habit" of mine, this empathic quality which allows me to sharply feel the pain of another and answer it with my own? My own emotional pain grows threefold as a result and I end up feeling like a walking wound...

I'd like to say I have distanced myself from Liz's emotional issues, and actually I have. She's still full of angst and problems like you wouldn't believe unless you've ever known a bipolar person in the throes of such pain and anguish. She's medicated and then she's not, she's on track and then she's not. I lose track of where she's at in her life and I talk to her every day. It honestly feels good to lose track...I'm her mother so of course I worry about her, of course I go through guilt and pain for her, but that's the difference: I go through pain FOR her. I'm not enmeshed in it like I was for so long.

No no, instead I've enmeshed myself into the pain of others.

I can't seem to get away from this part of who I am. I feel what others feel and then, of course, I have my own to deal with, so I'm on a neverending trek of emotional turmoil which I honestly think would fell the greatest of men. It immobilizes me, keeps me from being a productive member of society and from producing a life I know I'm capable of.

My EQ is in the toilet.

WHY do I do this? Okay okay, it's the way I'm made. But I have to find a way through it, around it. I have to learn to distance myself from the abyss, the great oceanic storm that becomes the emotional wreck of my life because I channel so much of everyone else.

I can't afford a therapist which I probably greatly need. I can't afford healthcare of any kind...so where do I turn? I turn to my friends, of course. Iowegian Skye is invaluable in times like these. So is this blog and the knowledge that others whose opinions I value deeply will read and perhaps be able to offer a piece of advice or two.

This is where I'm at...the end of my emotional rope. Any suggestions??






 

I decided to find and post a picture of Shaun Cassidy since Scarlett hasn't had the pleasure of being acquainted with my first celebrity crush

For those not "in the know": Shaun Cassidy, the younger brother of earlier teen hearthrob David Cassidy, got his BIG television debut playing a Hardy Boy, the younger of two teenage brothers who went around solving crimes, The show was based on a long, long-running series of books for youth and aired on Sunday nights-I actually remember that-and Parker Stevenson became a later crush of mine...he played the older brother. Shaun also recorded a few albums and toured the country as a singing, teenage hunk before the Backstreet Boys were even a thought! Shaun is the son of an actor named Jack Cassidy. His mother is Shirley Jones, known to most of the American public "back in the day" as Shirley Partridge of The Partridge Family, a sitcom from the '70s about a rock band family...and starring none other than DAVID Cassidy! He was Shirley's stepson. They had no idea the other had been cast until after the fact. Pretty funny, huh? *It's very sad, the amount of useless trivia that gets stuck in my head, never to leave.*

I spent the summer months between 6th and 7th grade singing to Shaun Cassidy's "Da Do Ron Ron" and staring at the poster I had tacked to my bedroom wall-a rendition of the picture I'm posting, here. I was totally blown away by the weird sensations staring at the poster gave me, ha ha ha! Oh, to be young again...sometimes it's fun to remember back-waaaay back






I could have sworn, back in 1978, he was the most gorgeous boy on the planet




 

Country singer Mark Wills:

I've been busy!

That's not why I haven't blogged lately...

I simply haven't had much to say.

My mind has been a blank slate and the state of a blank slate in a writer's head...it's sad. But truly, I haven't felt compelled or led or inspired or anything else much. I haven't seen a word in my head...it's making this "Nano" month really hard. I told Tom the words have stalled, it's just not there.

I have "stuff" going on in my life, blocking the words, I know. Not cool, not okay. I'll work on getting the words unblocked.

For now I have something I DID write on inspiration. YOU figure out who the subject might be.

I'll visit everyone soon, my WORD!

From one of my favorite musicals, Rent:

It's been a while since I quoted good ol' Billy...who, of course, in my world means Billy Joel. For those not yet indoctrinated into "my ways"...Billy Joel is my equivalent of the Beatles. He is a gifted musician, an even more gifted lyricist, which is the core behind my adoration of the artist if not the man

I read Mel aka Mrs Tor 's most recent entry and I was humbled.

Every day I greet and smile at Mayo Clinic patients from every walk of life, all over the world. Two days ago a woman in a turban checked out, made another reservation, told me she might not keep it because "Hope Lodge" was trying to find a place for her. Hope Lodge is a Hospice building downtown. I smiled at her, told her to let us know if she had no need of the reservation. She smiled back and promised she would. In her wrinkled blue eyes I saw so much...

But Mel...Tor...who among us hasn't at least stumbled across their blogs and presence on this site?! I deal with Mayo Clinic patients every day. I smile and try to be as stoic or sympathetic as they need me to be. I talk to them, commisserate, brace them for the worst or the best...but to personalize it all is Mel. I can't help but ponder, mourn, think, feel in a way I can only do for those I know and care for...


In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To a river so deep

I must be looking for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross

And even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and I stand on the shore
And try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find out what I've been looking for

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep

And I've been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I would never lose
Something somebody stole

I don't know why I go walking at night
But now I'm tired and I don't want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn't take the rest of my life
Until I find what it is that I've been looking for

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the jungle of doubt
To a river so deep

I know I'm searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind

In the middle of the night

I'm not sure about a life after this
God knows I've never been a spiritual man
Baptized by the fire, I wade into the river
That runs to the promised land

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the desert of truth
To the river so deep

We all end in the ocean
We all start in the streams
We're all carried along
By the river of dreams

In the middle of the night


My prayers are for Mel and her family.

Billy always speaks for me. Always.