How to become yourself.

How to become yourself.

We spend our childhood being little helpless vessels for our parents to fill with whatever they feel like it really. They don’t have a clue as to what they’re doing, they have their own struggles and not knowing who they are or which way they’re headed to deal with but biologically they created a life and so now they have a dependent vessel to carry around. Sometimes the birth of that vessel triggers a spark of care and love that can assist this parent with its duty. Only sometimes.

After we’ve had our legally obligated fill of parental teaching fluid we are adults! Yeah! We are now supposed to know who we are, where we’re headed, and how to do whatever it is we want to do. We have some built in legal struggles, of course: how to eat, stay dry and warm, get around, etc. But that just levels the playing field.

Maybe you realize that actually, this is when our own life begins?

Before now, we weren’t in charge of our own lives. We were put somewhere not of our choosing, with people not of our choosing to live a way that was not our choice. But once we are adults all the choices are ours!

How one eats, stays dry and warm, and gets around differs, sure. But doing those things doesn’t make a self.

So how do we become ourselves? What defines our self? Does our childhood define it? I think it gives us clues about our inherent abilities and temperament but what you do with those things begins to define yourself.

So what do YOU do with your abilities and temperament? 

Letting go of the fight

I battle myself. The angry voice tells me to do things, do them perfect, do it now, you lazy dumbass you are going to fuck everything up. What are you doing? Everyone is going to be pissed off at you cause this is all on you. Then my other voice simply folds her arms and says “NO”….I don’t want to”. She is the stubborn girl who simply can’t be forced. She says you can hurt me, you can slap me, you can push me, you can call me names but I won’t do what you want….fuck you! The battle continues around and around and my stubborn girl rebels against my parent girl. Stubborn girl eats bad food choices and doesn’t work out today and doesn’t get her work done and just reads her book. She doesn’t care if the world hates her if everything crumbles around her. Then parent girl yells at her and beats her down until the tiniest of openings in stubborn girl’s resolve and stubborn girl realizes that parent girl IS right you know, everything will get fucked up and stubborn girl starts asking herself “why do I do this”? And she wants to cry.

It seems the common theme with both stubborn girl and parent girl is anger. But why am I filling myself and my life and my tasks with anger when I don’t want anger. I don’t want depression or sadness and that’s all that anger leads to. It doesn’t really HELP me get anything done.

I realize I’ve been looking at it all wrong. I’ve been approaching all of life this way….I’ll strive for perfection cause then I’ll be worthy of parent girl and make her stop yelling and if I just continue to be perfect enough then parent girl will be happy. Stubborn girl is strong enough to do it, just watch. But what if instead I got rid of parent girl and stubborn girl and took the war away. In the past years I’ve created the most real Karen, the one that does things because she wants to do them. She does things with purpose and she has good purposes. She likes to do a good job, she likes to be appreciated for the job she does, she likes to bring pleasure to people….sometimes….she likes to learn and grow and read and keep becoming herself. She likes to be a lot of things that fancy her at whatever moment in time. She doesn’t need to plan to be something at the right time because that’s the only way to be perfect enough. She just does what she wants when she wants and for always a purpose and she’s good.

So each day….she just needs to look at all that needs to get done and ask what is the purpose of her tasks. What purpose does doing x,y,z fulfill?

Our Human Heaven

Fluidity

Dancing in your love

Swaying in the sensation of our love

It’s deep and untouchable, unseeable

Look into your eyes and fall into your pond of fear and inferiority, see all your wounds and your embarrassment, all of your shame and all of your glory

I am close to you, I am connected to you, I am inside of you

You trust me with all of you

You are in a state of such freedom that your cage doesn’t exist anymore and we are wild and free together

You take my hand and we are together

We can explore and play and be our innocence before all of our pain

There are only smiles and the happiness of a child here, there is only freedom and being cared for, no burdens, no obligations, no standards, no expectations

Hearts jump and frolic around because everything is new and everything feels good.

Ecstatic goodness in one pinnacle moment is what I’m after

Conquering your soul is my goal

Reek of a skunk

What is it like to reek of a skunk
To be the object of people's disgust
To have people see only squalid and rust
They slink away thinking you're boorish and drunk

Don't want to get close
They steer clear of your aim
Hurting your feelings it isn't a game
Smiling politely while sending you shame
In the end treat you like unworthy junk

They think it's deserved
You asked for their spit
For bringing your stench and taking a sit
You starting this war by talking your shit
Now go away quickly before you are sunk

Once in your presence they need a deep cleanse
For what you just uttered means you can't be friends
Your pungent odor it strictly offends
Isolated is solace when you reek of a skunk.

Vulnerability and emotions

I have come to some massive realizations about emotions. I know I need to feel them because when I stuff them they turn into pain and ailments in the body but at the same time I don’t want to feel them because they hurt. I need to share them so that they come out but at the same time that makes me feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. I always saw vulnerability as a weakness but I am learning that this is not true. It is not a weakness to be vulnerable it’s actually the exact opposite. What a great mind trick I have played on myself. To share my feeling with anyone, to be vulnerable takes immense courage and I just never had that courage.. It means you trust someone and to trust someone means they can hurt you, you are giving them to key to the knife that can stab you! Yes I found one person on this earth who finally showed me that I can trust him and he won’t hurt me but there is more than one. And how can I be there for him (or anyone else for that matter) if I don’t understand this? I can’t be there for him if emotions make me uncomfortable, if someone being vulnerable with me just holds up a mirror of how uncomfortable I am with being vulnerable. I need to understand this better.

To trust someone with my feelings is like the highest form of anything I can give. It is saying here is the key to the knife you can stab me with. I am handing it to you in hopes that you will choose to comfort me instead. And I have always trusted no one (until Dean….but have I?). Now look at that in reverse. When someone can trust me with their feelings they are giving me the most valuable gift a person can give! They are showing me that I am worth risking pain and hurt for, they are saying they will be vulnerable with me even though it means I could smash their heart into a million pieces but they are trusting that I won’t. I need to learn to open my heart to others’ emotions and be that person that people can trust and vice versa, take a risk and trust people. Obviously not just trusting anyone….but trusting more than one other person. How did I never see sharing feelings as a blessing? 

Have you ever thought about what you would do if you found out you were going to die?

I'm not talking about a bucket list. I'm not talking about the idea that we should all be living like it was the last day of our lives. Those are nice, happy colors to clothe the idea of dying in.

I'm talking about - real shit - doctor says you have cancer and have a good chance of dying.
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I've lived a life I think I can be proud of. I don't have regrets...really. I've done the best I could do with what I had at the time. I think I've made amends to the people I've wronged. I like to live my life knowing that if death took me in an instant, at least my conscience will feel at peace.

But even that is different.

If you know you have some time, you don't know how much, but the clock is now ticking, and chances are your health will deteriorate, and so what is important to you?

I already know that dying with dignity means something very different to me than it does to the people who want to off themselves and not suffer. I believe there is a beauty in suffering. There are lessons to be learned in suffering. There is compassion and love to be shared in suffering. There is connection, intimacy, and emotion to be shared in suffering. I believe that to pretend those things don't have meaning is to rob the living of a beautiful experience.

My husband is in the forefront of my mind when I think of what would I do if I found out the clock was ticking. I love my kids to the moon and back and I am truly blessed to be a part of their lives! They are each so wonderful in their own ways....but I worry most for my husband in the event that I were to go. I know my husband better than anyone on the planet! I know what he'd struggle with if he had to live without me. I know what he'd want to do if I were gone. My husband has a brain injury from combat in Afghanistan...and I've been his caregiver for 5 years. There is a lot he can't do at all, a lot that he can't do well, a lot that he can't do without me (and a lot that he CAN do, he's an amazing man!!!). But I think about all that he cannot do without me and I feel compelled to sift through my thoughts on the subject. My message to him would be this ---

To the man that owns my heart:
What I want you to do if you ever find your life without me being physically present.
I want you to live, to dream, to plan, to achieve, to love, to learn, to listen to me speak to your heart. I want you to take care of yourself as if everyone's life depends on it...because their lives DO! You are so infinitely important to the people who love you and whether you feel that or not, you must believe me because you trust me. I want you to follow my example and learn to love yourself as I learned to love me. It's your job now to love yourself like I loved you....like God loves you. That is how you honor me! Ask for help. Don't let pride cloud your actions. You can trust others who learned from me to protect you as I did. I want your soul to be at peace, I want your soul to be in communion with mine as I watch over you and take care of you. I'm always here. I want you to tell our kids about me and our grand kids. I want you to LOVE them in action like you loved me. Give them you, your time, your energy, your playfulness, your wisdom, you love for God. Be your best you! Not the you with no hope or no joy, not the tired you. Be the warrior you that takes care of your family like you took care of your unit. Be the chaplain for those that I love. When you are your best you, that is how you honor me! You own my heart, I gave it to you as the only person who earned 100% of it...you feel me, you know me, you see me, I am yours always. There really are no words that capture all of my feelings for you.

Extremist looking for the middle

I'm an extremist. I work really well on either end of a spectrum even though I KNOW it's not the "healthy" place to be. I intuitively feel like somewhere in the middle would serve a better purpose or a greater audience or what have you but getting to that middle is always a similar process for me.

Take boundaries:
For years I said yes to just about everyone. I put myself out there as someone who would gladly help. If I got the whiff of someone needing something, I'd help out. In retrospect, doing that made me feel like I was someone that others could count on or someone they thought of as a "helpful person" which was contributing to my ego obviously. (No, I don't believe in altruism).

Years and years of solving others' problems, helping others get info, helping, helping, helping just drained the shit out of me to the point that I actually learned that I do, in fact, have a limit! Ok that's good to know you have a limit...it really is. I wondered for years is God made me some superpower or something because everyone around me seemed to be so tired, worn out, or otherwise unable and I was go-go-going like an energizer bunny. Mind you, I'm not talking so much physical energy, I'm more mental energy and I could just churn out thoughts, ideas, information, research findings, etc like an energizer bunny!

Then I got burnt out and I clicked into the other extreme.....say no to everybody and everything.

In the past when I had tried my hand at saying no, I felt compelled to have to explain myself. I'd watched others not explain their "No" but I didn't know how they withstood the pressure that I felt when I said No. This time there was no pressure to explain because I was so burnt out that I didn't give a crap whether the person understood why or not. Maybe this time my "No" sounded more final? Where in the past it was more like a "tell me why I should say yes" type of No. I don't know but I've been operating on this other extreme for about 9 months now? I feel like I've thoroughly learned the lesson of the opposite extreme.

Now to find the balance.
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Even though I need to find the middle, act out of the middle, be that balanced boundary person it still scares the crap out of me. I hate the middle....haha! To know it's good for you and hate it....kind of like vegetables. It's like on one extreme I was on 23 shots of espresso buzzing around high in the center of Time Square then click to the other extreme and I'm on an isolated beach on a remote island laying in the sun having a servant bring me things. Two pretty different scenarios.

What does the middle look like? I don't know yet....still figuring that out. I guess right now I'm afraid that if I say I'm done with my "vacation" then I'll instantly be sucked against my will back to somewhere I don't want to be. I don't like the feeling of burn out, I don't like being all jacked up like a chicken with its head cut off. I guess I also know that I'm strong enough to not allow things to happen against my will. That's what boundaries are all about, eh? Asserting your will in a way that suits you in a healthy manner! Not trying to gain "like points" by being the good, helpful one that can only be accepted because of what she contributes and conversely not retreating from the world and becoming involved in nothing watching others actually live while I'm on a beach. I want to be LIVING. I want to be taking part in the things I want to take part in for no other reason than it's what I want to do.

Hmm...