What? No Giddiness?

Something inside me doesn’t want me to be happy. If When I find it I’m going to squish it with an evil smile on my face. Maniacal laughter shall follow. I’ve earned happiness, today especially. Today I bought myself a car - a really nice car, with an affordable payment, a Bose sound system, and a showroom-ready engine…crappy credit and all. I just told the recession to shove it. Strange thing is I haven’t celebrated yet. I’m not currently giddy-happy, which I reasonably should be. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet; tomorrow when I bring it home it will (insurance paperwork is a pain). The part of me that really really hates payments had to bite her tongue. As Honey pointed out in his classic black & white fashion, I’m gonna be paying someone my whole life. Not a single thing is free anymore, maybe it never was. As he also pointed out, I don’t take any joy in my success. Somehow I manage to find something to worry about or pick at and there’s no giddiness. “Thou shalt do the dance” hasn’t happened yet. And damnit, when you make a third of what you once made and just bought a luxury SUV there shalt be dancing!


And it was all me. The angels get their credit too, especially the short one I know personally.

So the morals of today’s story: “in the pits” is partially a state of mind. Widen your view. Sometimes you need to lose to gain. You are exactly where you are meant to be.

Relapse of sorts

I read my latest blog post to my husband the other day and he asked why I've been getting easily overwhelmed lately. And it's a fair question: why am I worried about...anything really? Has worrying ever helped anyone? Does it help you find the answers or make the questions harder? In my case, it turns me into a twitch.

So no more twitching. I know these things, like worrying doesn't help and often makes it worse, that you must show affection or your partner becomes furniture, that your parents don't decide who you are...but sometimes those things sneak up on me and I don't realize I'm doing it. It's frustrating, especially when you know.

I was doing so well.

The morning after Where The Wild THings Are

Life seems strange to me right now. I’m trying to determine what I want, what I really want out of all this, and so far I’m getting conflicting answers. The two sides are starting to argue loudly and making decisions…leaves me second guessing myself. It’s very hard to plan for the long-term while the short-term won’t is misbehaving.

That doesn’t make much sense, even to me.

Let’s try again. I have several dreams, a couple pretty big ones, the paths to which seem to cross, therefore making decisions to move towards one leads me away from another. So the crux is: what do I really want. Or in the have-cake-and-eat-it-too sense, what do I want first.

I want to travel; roam the Earth like a nomad until I’ve seen enough, which may be never cuz I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl, be free to try anything that even tickles my interest, and effectively escape the mundane 9-to-5 career-based life that works for everyone else. We can start in the States with a travel trailer and graduate to backpacking everywhere else, or vise versa.

AND I want to have a little mini-house out in the mountains somewhere where I can live off the grid, grow all my own vegetables, and embrace the slower, much simpler, rather hippie lifestyle. I want goats cuz I like the milk and I think they’re cute, in a destructive sort of way, and a dog without a lease or a yard. I want solar panels and a wind turbine, a compost barrel and to pay nearly nothing in taxes because I’m self-sufficient.

Hence the inner struggle on what to work towards. Then of course there’s the issue of logistics. Even when the dream is to live simply it requires funds of some kind, funds requires a job of some sort, and I’m generally against those, for one because I hate paying taxes, and for two because you have to devote 40 hours a week or more to earn scraps. It’s defeatist from my point of view.

So how do I have the dream of being a nomad while being tied to a job in order to pay for it? Short answer is I need to work for myself, doing something that’s not truly based anywhere, or more directly, is based wherever I am. I haven’t got one of those in my back pocket, not yet anyway.

So all that is battling on the inside. On the outside I’m dealing with life in front of my face, which includes “biding my time” at a job I’ve been at for nearly a year, tire issues, trying to sort my life out of the many boxes Honey haphazardly packed it into, and needing to buy my own car soon, which is a whole other tangle – do I get an economy car for in town or a truck to go camping/fishing with even though I no longer have the boat, how am I going to afford it, how much do I have to put down, is there any way I can avoid going through a dealer and still get something decent that won’t break in 3 days????

There’s not much room left upstairs for anything else, so please don’t ask me anything hard. You’ll likely get a dumb stare.

We watched the movie Where the Wild Things Are last night, which struck several sensitive nerves. I cried for far more of it than was probably necessary or normal and had very confusing dreams I don’t remember on top of that. None of which is helping me get oriented or going this morning. A dream interpreter would need therapy after a week with me. Anyway, I’m gonna get some food and try to roll with the many waves instead of fighting them all.

Plan? There is no plan.

I’m surrounded by boxes. I had to move boxes to get into this chair, but I have no idea what’s in them. What is all this stuff? I know I don’t have this much stuff!


The boxes say otherwise.

In the midst of all this chaos it has occurred to me that for a very long time nothing in my life has gone according to plan. I’ve gone from having the plan that covered my whole life, or what I thought was my whole life, seen in terms of a career and not much else, to shorter and shorter mini plans as events continued to do other than I expected. Life deviates and after awhile I just got tired of rewriting the script. To those who say “life is what you make of it”…I obviously have no idea what I’m doing. On the up side, I’m getting more comfortable with the randomness of things and just treating them all as a sort of ongoing surprise. It keeps it fresh, to say the least.

Being a sales clerk at a lamp store wasn’t real high on my list of life goals. Neither was falling madly in love (at the time when I bothered to have a list of life goals). There are blessings in both. Finding love brought my face up off the books and made me realize I’m my own person before anything else, especially a mindless drone of the career-only mindset or someone's puppet. It completely changed my perspective and my path; so did quitting a good/bad job just in time for the economic downturn.

Its funny how all your decisions lead down the path you’ve walked and yet you feel as though you’ve had no say in your life. I don’t feel that way – I’m not in control of much, if anything, and I’m sure all the decisions I’ve made, big and small, have lead to this moment…just don’t ask me which ones.

Two days from now we start again. In a sense it’s a new life. Enough things will be different I couldn’t reasonably call it a continuation of our old life, but its still us living the best we can, so – your call. I hope things will change for the better, that we make progress towards our dreams, which is all I really go for these days anyway. Know what you want (that’s key) and work towards that dream, hold on to it like the shining sun on the horizon, something you can see even in the darkest dark or deepest pit, and always maneuver towards it. The journey will be amazing and one day you’ll reach it.

Or you won’t. Sometimes you can’t have what you want. But better to spend your life pursuing a dream than not. :)

Quickie Update

Ok, here’s a quickie update, cuz the madness has reached a new level of fever pitch and the next post may be a while…

We went to an MMA event at the Orleans Hotel; all amateur bouts. Honey got to be ring side; I sat in the back row – it would have been nose bleed seats if there was any elevation. There was a lot of blood – see below – and during the one heavyweight bout, the guy who'd been easily winning for the first two rounds got his arm broken in the third. Good times.

We attended the St Baldrick’s charity event hosted by Circus Couture at the Palms Hotel. There was a bidding war over a carved block of Monterey jack cheese and a Beatles painting. The majority of the donated art was purchased. There were fashion shows and circus acts. A girl shaved her head on stage (St Baldricks has shaving events where they donate money for every person who shaves their head) and there was a dwarf: a very small he-man in a speedo and a shoulder harness/feather collar thing. Awesome.

The after party at Ghostbar was…intresting. The dj was awesome and then the music would die for the live band – it wasn’t a good transition. I found a place to sit on one of the speakers closest to the wall. Lemme just say…anyone who’s seen the movie Private Parts…the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia…yeah. I didn’t get all spread and leaned forward or anything, but I couldn’t stop giggling. Enough said.

The next ten days are going to be a free for all. Wish me luck.

Explanation

I debated back and forth about writing on this subject. But it’s been bugging me since yesterday (Thursday) so it’s probably better to get it out. Have you ever had someone you know, who knows you well enough to know better, assume something terrible about you and just run with it? Hurt feelings follow, assumptions are made that lead to a tangle of other assumptions, and at the end of it all there’s a 300lb gorilla in the room I didn’t know about. It feels awful, but worse than that. There aren’t enough adjectives…

I think I jinxed myself. I wrote a post mentioning I’d only offended one person. Now I’ve done it again. Technically it’s still one cuz it’s the same person, but I want to make it clear to that person in particular and everyone else in the world who might stumble across this blog:



I don’t write to hurt you or anyone.



I’m not an angry, malicious, secretly vicious, or otherwise nasty person. It goes against my inner, happy hippie nature and my theory of go along and get along. I’m the one who doesn’t retaliate because I don’t want to stoop to that level, plus I’ll feel shitty about it later. So it shocked my socks off that this particular person thought I was stabbing at him via the aforementioned post, when in truth and aside from the first paragraph, it had nothing to do with him. When I said life wasn’t about pleasing people and ‘you’ weren’t on the list anyway, I meant ‘you’ collectively, including everyone on the planet. Here’s a little further explanation if it’s still not clear:

I was raised as a pleaser. Making my folks proud and receiving affection became based on how I performed at school or on the soccer field. A ‘B’ in math earned a frown and a ‘C’ in reading was unacceptable. They tried to stage an intervention when I got a ‘D’ in college calculus, despise my having been in the hospital for a week during that term. I became the one who could always be depended on to work overtime even if I had plans. You can’t always do what makes others happy, and you shouldn’t do things you normally wouldn’t just for that reason. It turns into a huge mess eventually.

I’m 28 years old and I’m just now becoming my own person, realizing that I have a right to set boundaries and say ‘no’, and that people who would rather hurt than help, or refuse to respect my happiness have no place in my life. That’s what I meant when I said life wasn’t about pleasing people.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me being the first person I need to please either. That’s not selfish, and if you (anyone) disagree we’ll have to agree to disagree on that point. I’m not out there getting my jollies by stomping on the dreams of others. Pleasing me doesn’t hurt anyone. I deserve to be happy, and for me, a lot of that is an internal struggle with old, very deeply rooted issues.

This blog is helping me with some of those issues, especially the ones about expressing myself. Not all my thoughts are cute bunnies and fluffy clouds, but what I wrote is how I felt at the time and I needed to get it out. There are too many emotions careening around inside and damages are imminent if I keep stuffing them down. I won’t apologize for having thoughts or feelings that offended someone, because I had them, ugly or not. But I didn’t post them to hurt anyone and I’m never going to post something intentionally hurtful in the off-chance that the person might read it. That’s too grey. If we have issues, rest assured I’ll be contacting you (anyone) to discuss them directly.

Anyway, that’s the general jist. If I’m still not being clear, please COMMUNICATE that to me.

WTF

Picture me heaving a huge sigh, possibly shaking my head, cycling through a myriad of emotions…sadness, anger, frustration. One voice in my head says “just be done with the whole mess”. Another says “why can’t you just say what needs to be said?” A third says “those two are practically one and the same”. The last one says “this sucks”.

I’ve had a friend for 18 years. Well, let me rephrase…I’ve known someone whom I’m friendly with for 18 years. The count for actual solid friendship is several years fewer. We walked nearly identical paths for a long time, and then mine did the veer and hers came to a dead end at a race track.

She’s stuck. She’s miserable. And I think she’s broken.

I’ve been slighted, ignored, avoided, and dismissed. The part of me that’s just getting the hang of enforcing abuse limits is starting to chatter in my ear, asking what exactly I’m doing here. Because I’m a great friend. The kind who’ll bail you out of jail or come to the rescue when your car breaks down (distance not withstanding); who’ll let you crash on my couch indefinitely so long as you help with groceries, and has been known to loan out underwear in extreme circumstances. You call, I’ll be there.

There are limits. And I’m rubbing against them. I don’t think it’s the least bit selfish to expect something in return. Not only am I not getting near what I give, I’m not getting anything, and that includes the time of day. I am playing second fiddle to a 6-month old relationship involving a de-virginized Mormon who’s hell-bent on marriage at the first opportunity. He’s her world, because there’s control. I get the logic: when you’re whole life is spiraling beyond your grasp, you hold on to what you can control, fiercely. The problem is he’s not helping her get a better grip on anything else, he’s just distracting her so she can pretend reality’s not happening.

And as you can imagine, the few occasions I do get time with her they inevitably include him. I can’t stand him. He’s the least informed and most opinionated person I’ve ever met. My dad, being the most opinionated person ever, at least had the decency to do his research. This one is something else. And he whines. Constantly.

The dilemma is: how do I get time with her without him; closely followed by: is it worth it, considering I’m the only one fighting for this relationship? When I’m angry, the short answers are “don’t waste your time” and “no”. There’s a soft spot somewhere though (damnable soft spot!) that reminds me we’ve known each other longer than anyone else (outside of family which is a whole other cluster fuck) and there’s history there. It should be as simple as talking about it.


It’s not.


In my experience with this particular person, talking is harder than it has any right to be. Mostly because everything said could be the one thing that ends it all. She likes truth far less than she likes reality, and the people around her have found it easier to sugar-coat things or simply let them go. No one is attempting to break the cycle, not even me, though I’m beginning to feel that the consequences would be worth it. I’m a Leo – it’s impossible for me to hide when I’m angry. Anyone who’s actually looking at me can tell what kind of day I’m having.


Earth to Friend: Look at Me!!


She wanted to get together tonight. I blew her off. Two months without a word, then a weird chipper message about $4 pizza deals. My door’s always open, anytime she’s free to get together. No response. I can’t even get penciled onto the calendar cuz something better might come up. I’m not gonna beg for anyone’s time.

I don’t feel better. I don’t know what to do…whether I should fight for 18 years of history, be it patchy in places, or let it slowly fade into nothing. I miss my friend, the person she was when I was worth her time. I guess she’s not that person anymore.