Change'll do you good

I’m sure it’s common knowledge, but when you are unhappy in one aspect of your life, most everything else falls into the category of unhappiness. It sucks that it happens that way, but I have yet to find a way to control my border in between. I have read often that you should deal with one problem at a time instead of attacking it all at once. It’s like an addict trying to go to rehab and detox off of their drug and quit smoking at the same time. Take it slow, do one thing to change at a time. I know I always use drug rehab as a way of explaining myself, but I guess that is something I feel strongly about and know more than I would like to know about. I can also use the Aitkin’s diet as an example, during the induction stage you are supposed to STOP eating any carbs. That is the most sleepy, depressing, angry time of that entire diet.

You can totally put your body into shock no matter what it is you are trying to fix, change get off of. No matter what addiction you have, drugs, food, sex etc your body will not be happy with you at first at all. In fact your body will do everything it can to tell your brain that you NEED to give up on the whole quitting situation and go back to what is comfortable. The fact of the matter is, that would be the easiest way to deal with it, wouldn’t it?

I am struggling with certain “unhappy” things in my life and man would it be awesome if I could just give up and start from scratch. I think about it all the time. How easy it would be to just live and be happy with no negativity at all, right? The problem is that the minute I had my son, what I wanted took the backseat and that was something I had to get used to pretty quickly and I am totally fine with that, it is my mind that makes me crazy and tries to push me in the wrong direction. So I can’t just give up, I can’t just move on without him in mind, because every single decision I make has to have that child in mind or there could be consequences. The words selfish and mommy do not mesh well, unless you just don’t care for your kids in any way, and if that’s the case, then go for it, say goodbye to them because it will happen sooner or later.

I have never felt so weak in my life. I have always been a very strong person (at least I think so). I am always there to pick YOU up when you’re down, why does it seem so hard to pick myself up? Some mornings, I just don’t want to go on and have to drag myself out of the bed with the help of that strong little man I call my son. The beautiful thing about being a parent is that our children love us no matter what. They don’t see us in any light except the brightest and they deserve the same. My little guy doesn’t deserve the bitch that I am some nights. He deserves the crazy happy mommy that dances to silly music and chases him around the house.

So now that I am about out of words for now, all I can finish with is, things will have to change, or else… (feel free to read between the lines, just because I blog doesn't mean I will tell all).

Peace and Love.

Detachment

We have all had that terrible feeling in the pit of our stomach, when we are gone or leaving for a vacation and we feel like there is just SOMETHING we have forgotten or something that is missing. That has got to be one of the worse feelings ever. The only problem is lately, I have been feeling that just about daily. I wish it was because I was going on daily vacations, but it’s almost like I feel like there is just something in my life that has gone missing or I have left behind somewhere. This may sound confusing to some, but most of the time I find that there are more of you out there that read my blogs, that do actually have the same feeling that I do and I think that is why I post such things. I don’t mind sharing my inner most thoughts, it really doesn’t bother me and blogging is the best way to do it because you can read it if you want and if you don’t want to, don’t. That way I don’t feel like I’m forcing things on anyone, or putting anything on anyone else. I’m just letting it out and that is the whole point.

Regardless, here goes. I have had this feeling for quite some time now. I am not sure when it started, or when it will end, but I think I have to figure it out before it gets any worse. I have issues, like anyone else, but lately I feel like my issues have been taken over by my feeling of responsibility for other’s issues. The problem is that I am letting this happen. I make everyone else’s problems mine when I have no business in them. I try and try and then I get pushed back and this has pretty much happened, my ENTIRE life. The crazy part about all this is I never realize it until it’s too late. I am now going to make reference (again) to the book I have been reading for over a year now, because I think I am finally getting it.

Chapter 8: Set Yourself Free; “Let go and Let God”

Chapter 10: Live your own life “The surest way to make ourselves crazy is to get involved in other people’s business, and the quickest way to become sane and happy is to tend to our own affairs”. (Codependent No More; How to stop controlling others and Start caring for yourself. By: Melody Beattie).


That is just a small amount of what I think I am finally understanding about this book and the sad part is, now I want to start reading it from the beginning again. I read those chapters and at the end of the chapters they have activities to do to help you. At the time of reading the chapters, I guess maybe I wasn’t ready to do them. The word “Detach” was used a lot and it scared me. But I think I have hit that “wall” everyone talks about. At 31 I want/need to detach from people that are sucking the life out of me. I don’t want or need this stress and anxiety anymore. This doesn’t mean I don’t care anymore, this just means that I am finally seeing that being the “caregiver” to people who don’t care back is not doing anything for me but bringing me down and hurting me in the end. I hate that it took this long into my adult life to realize it, but I guess it’s better late than never.

I guess what I’m saying at this point is, it feels good to find what has been missing and it really shouldn’t have taken me this long to realize what it was. I have been missing from my life for quite some time now and I think it is high time to take myself back and bring me back to life. I deserve good and I deserve happy. I’m done with YOUR problems, it’s time to focus on my own..
Peace, love and DETACHMENT!

A Mental breakthrough

For the first time in a long while, I have found myself in one of my depressing, yet favorite moods with headphones blaring music that is sure to help me release (I have done some of my best writing in a mood like this). I feel like I could go in any direction at this point. The tears are there, but so is the madness and the laughter at the same time. As I have said before, I really don't know what I would do without music. Pretty sure music is what helped me make it through school and pretty much every bad (or good) thing that I have come upon in life. Maybe it's hormones or lack there of, whatever it is, it feels like a good time to put it down in words. I have been trying for a couple of weeks to really let loose and I get to a certain point, the tears fill my eyes and then I just stop and erase it. I am honestly not sure what that means, but I am trying not to pressure myself. Afterall, my blog is MINE and it is MY therapy and I feel that when it is time, it will come flowing as it normally does. I think that's where the title came from for this one, a little Psych term if you will.

I have got to stop thinking so much. I feel like my head is always going and I can't stop it from running all the time. I swear, if I ran on batteries, I would have to recharge every hour of the day. I have come to realize that the term "Hot Mess" refers to myself alot of the time. In my head, I don't mean HOT as in sexy hot or anything, I mean HOT as in ready to explode and well Mess it pretty self-explanatory. I just feel like I am on the verge of exploding and if I don't handle myself now or let it out, I may end up spontaneously combusting and making a huge disarray of everything.

It's days like today that make it really hard for me to hold on. I feel like the world is spinning too fast for me to keep up and if I stop moving, I will just fall flat on my face. I have reached the point in my life, where it feels like I am just tired of trying. I want to give up, because that would really be the easiest thing for me to do. Then again, when has anyone known me to just give up because something got hard? Afterall, I finished college and I feel like that makes me an intelligent person that can acomplish things maybe anything. Anything, that is, if I would stop trying to be so safe all the time. I guess that is just something that comes with being a parent. Safety is good, especially when it is financial safety.

I am a very peaceful person you may not think that when we first meet because I am very outspoken and pretty much say what I want when the time is right. I don't hurt peoples feelings (purposely at least), I just want to make everyone happy. I guess it's when I come across someone who constantly brings me down, that I just can't handle much more. I literally sat here yesterday and recited the Serenity prayer. I just need strength to bite my tongue ahd go about my business. Hopefully one day (SOONER than later) my happiness will shine through the dark cloud that has been hovering over me for a few years. Maybe....

Peace and Love

Pre-New Year's Rant

So every year comes to an end and everyone is talking about what their New Year’s Resolution is going to be. Some will start diets that will ultimately fail, attempt to quit smoking, drinking, be a better person, stop cursing so much etc. I used to make a New Years resolution myself every year; normally it was to stop saying the F-word so much (if you know me, you know that didn’t stick). I remember one year it was to quit smoking, which I ended up doing, just not that year. I resolved to try and take better care of myself, be nicer to everyone etc. I think I just about hit them all. Over the past few years, I have resolved to not make a resolution and that always worked out pretty well for me. Being in a family that is full of the addictive personality gene, giving up something only makes me want it more anyway. I won’t give up anything, I will not say goodbye to any bad habits that I may have. To me my habits (good or bad) make me the person I am, and if you don’t take the good with the bad, then what else do you have? All good is boring and all bad is just stressful. Ok, enough of my pre-rant.

This year has not been all bad, but it also hasn’t been all good either. I have definitely had worse, that is for sure. This year another person I love got smacked with the Big C, which really brought a lot of stress and anxiety to the whole family. Anytime I hear anyone talk about Cancer, all I can think of it my family and how we have all had to endure the pain of losing daddy and watching mommy suffer. Then Mimi got smacked with it too which just puts the icing on the cake. I feel like I was very lucky to have been able to spend Thanksgiving with my family in Florida, which rarely happens. I wish we could all have one of those HUGE both sides of the family Christmas dinners, that way you could be with everyone you love all at the same time, but living 12 hours away makes that pretty difficult. Either way, I got to spend equal amounts of time with everyone in my family this year.

Christmas was a great time for Mason and that is all that matters to me at this point in my life. I just want my boy to be happy, I don’t want him to see anyone cry or be hurt or see pain. Yes, I guess you could say that I do want him to be sheltered a bit. I think I did pretty good though, I only halfway lost it on Christmas day and I believe I have held it together for the most part since then. I have had a few tears to myself here and there, but nothing like it could be. I honestly have no idea where I am going with this blog. I had a few ideas swimming around when I started typing it up yesterday, and then a few others today so I guess right now, I am just going to throw them in the same blog and be happy with it. Ok, back on track.

So this year, I think I will make a New Years resolution for once. Nothing too deep, that will make we want to screw it up on January 2nd, just something that is broad that I can do myself and not have to involve anyone else to bring me down or make it sound good or bad. 2012 is going to be my year of fixing. Yup MYSELF, I have to fix me. Are you broken? You ask. Yes, yes I am broken in many places and ways. Before I can help or “fix” anyone else. The bottom line is I am unhappy inside and with a lot of aspects of my life. If there was a possibility that I could get up one morning and just say screw it, lock myself and my family in and never go back out, I totally would and I could be happy for the rest of my life. I have to stop finding excuses for things and just live. All the sadness in my life should be boosting me up to see clearly that my little family and I are all healthy and we need to stay that way. Who knows when our last day will be.

My goal for 2012 is to start loving myself for once. I want to look in the mirror and not cringe or get up in the morning and be happy to be there. I need newness, I need a clean slate to begin again and I really believe that if I can stick with it, 2012 will be a good year for me. I will be healthy and happy no matter what goes on around me. If things get hard, I will find other ways to deal, maybe I will buy a punching bag, or some boxing gloves. I will deal with life in the manner in which I know how, yet rarely use. I don’t want to wake up one morning and be forced to change. The way I see it, if I change myself on my own, then there will be no forcing. I will be on the road to happy again, because I lost happy a long time ago and I really need it back.

That’s all for now, sorry I jumped around so much, there will be more to come of this…

Peace, Love and resolve….

God Grant me the serenity

The further I get through this book (if you follow my blog you KNOW the book), no matter how long it takes, I begin to understand myself more. It may take me a week to get through one chapter (not much free time), but it could take me a few weeks to absorb that chapter. I have finally come to the chapter that explains the most about me (so far that is). Learning the art of acceptance.

When I was a counselor in a drug rehab, my biggest concern was that individuals that had addictions were going through the grief process the correct way. I had packets and reading material and a number of group meetings that helped them go through the entire process. In the midst of all that, I had just lost my father a year prior so it was not only a teaching experience, but a helpful learning experience for me as well. I taught everyone about the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and ACCEPTANCE). Nobody goes through these stages at the same pace. Depending on what you are grieving, it could take from days to years to fully accept the fact that this has happened. Just a side note, you can grieve anything, it does NOT have to be a death, it can be divorce, loss of job, home, anything. Everyone deals with loss in different ways, which makes it very hard for our loved ones to understand or even know what to do when we go through our stages.

The crazy thing that I thought about during my reading this chapter is, not that I lost my father or grandma or dog or any other family member, but to be honest I think my biggest problem is the loss of my girly parts from my hysterectomy in 2008 (go ahead male readers, click off the blog if you must). Even though this is my loss, I still grieve it the same way that I have anything else. I remember the way things went when my dad died and that was the first time I had ever really knew what loss was. I went through all the stages and I finally arrived at acceptance about a year or two ago (that is also in a past blog).

I frequently tell people that when I had my hysterectomy, I went into the OR one person and came out quite another. I lost Heather in there. She went in and some crazy psycho woman missing organs came into the recovery room. It sounds funny and I often laugh about it (on a good day) but it was a very sad experience for me and I am still suffering from it. Don’t get me wrong, it was MY decision to do, knowing good and well it was permanent. I was tired of living with pain and I just wanted to live a normal life. My doctor and I had spoken about it for quite a few years and I finally came to the decision to just do it and move on. NOT THAT EASY!

DENIAL:
This took me quite some time to get through. Part of me felt great still I didn’t want to lie in bed and recover, I wanted to do things and move around. I thought “this isn’t so bad at all” I can handle a hot flash here and there, I’M GOOD! Until all the menopause crap smacked me right in the face.

ANGER:
Wait a minute. Now, I want another baby. Damn that doctor for not explaining all of this to me. It’s his fault. Why didn’t someone talk me out of this? Why did I do this to myself? Why was I given all these problems in the first place? Part of me still gets pretty angry at least every other month.

DEPRESSION:
I am way too young for this shit. I can’t and really don’t want to have sex, I don’t want to be touched. I keep having these feelings that my husband wants to leave me for someone else. My family is going to end up hating me before it’s over. I flip out at the smallest things. I can’t do this, how the hell am I supposed to take care of everyone if I feel this way. Now I will get some medication. RIGHT? WRONG.

The depression has always been my hardest stage. I am great when it comes to helping others with their problems, but man do I suck at trying to deal with myself. Pass the alcohol please or maybe a nerve pill, anything to make me numb for a little while, so I don’t feel accountable for what I am feeling or what I am about to say when I flip out. With this, I am not sure, but I think I may be stuck in this stage of the grief process. I really don’t want to accept it even though I have no choice. I want to magically wake up one morning feeling awesome and wanting to jump around and get laid and be all crazy happy. It hasn’t happened yet though.

I guess, what I am getting at is this is my grief. I am grieving the loss of the woman I was. Though she was already off kilter, the events that happened October 20, 2008, made her 110 times worse. That girl in a way lost herself to never be found again. Which sucks, but at least I can recognize that this is my biggest problem and it has WAY too much power over me. A little 12 step reference there. I want to change, it is just very hard. Alcohol doesn’t help (especially when you’re a binge drinker); medication doesn’t do anything but give me more side effects. I just want to get to the acceptance part and that is hard to get to when I am always trying to mask how I feel and hide my pain and grief. This is me, broken into pieces all the time, but at 31, I am finally realizing it is time to accept the things I cannot change, pray for the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Pray for me.

Peace n love

Don't judge me

"When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself"- Wayne Dyer

I have always been a person that gives others the benefit of the doubt. I’m not sure why I have always been that way, but it just comes naturally to me. I have always been a very trusting person, until I am given a reason to not do so. I am a firm believer that everyone deserves chances in life, if and only if they are honest and trust worthy in their trying. My problem is that once I have been done wrong, I have a very hard time getting back on the “trust wagon”. I become very anxious and nervous that I am going to be wronged again and again. Does that make me a judge or a nervous wreck?

Just because someone has done something in life, does not very well mean that they are going to continue to do that. Many people learn their lessons after the first go round. Some, it takes a few go rounds and other just don’t learn, which makes me sad. Who am I to judge or make a decision for someone else? I believe in God, I may not agree with everything that is spoken about God, but I do believe that for the most part he is the decider and the judge at the end. What I do not agree with is those of you that preach and preach and then JUDGE. I don’t think that is what he would have wanted. It’s not your job to judge. It’s not your job to punish someone. It’s your job to care for you and your own.

I am not sure where I am going with this today; I just had the words and felt the need to throw them out there. I have two sisters that I love very dearly (yea I am going there AGAIN). They both may have not always made the best decisions in their lives, but why should they have to pay for the rest of their lives? Why do weak people have to use that against them? Because most people that point the finger at them are actually doing wrong themselves and the feeling of guilt makes it easier on them to point!! There are so many people out there that say “once a cheater, always a cheater” (being a past cheater, I beg to differ) “once a thief, always a thief” etc, etc! Blah blah blah!

I looked through a long list of quotes and the one I put up, is really the one that means the most. It’s true, when you judge another, you are defining yourself not them. Most of the time, you don’t even know the person fully, that you are judging. You just know a choice few things that you have allowed to get into your head and now that has painted YOUR picture of that person. What does that make you look like?

Maybe it’s because I have worked in the jobs areas that I have worked in (jails and rehabs) that has helped me to not judge along the way. Or maybe it is just the nature I was born with, who knows. All I know is people are too quick to judge these days. When you are ready to put a tag on someone, you need to sit back and look at yourself in the mirror and see what kind of tag that puts on you.

I think that is all for today’s rant. I will end with a quote that I totally dig:

“Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I'm not perfect and I don't live to be, but before you start pointing fingers make sure your hands are clean” – Bob Marley

Thanks for reading

Peace n love

Dear Daddy:

If you are not in the mood to cry, you probably shouldn’t read any further. Today marks eight years since my daddy passed away. I have never been strong enough to write my actual feeling on THIS day and let anyone read it. If this was paper, it would be soaked with my tears. Every bit of me goes into anything that I blog about, today is just the hardest one that I have ever put down. It just seems like time for me to let it all out. For me..

It seems like just yesterday that we had a late night “smoke” and a McDonalds Hot fudge sundae at the hospital. I remember the pajamas you had on and every word you said to me, because that was the last time we were alone. I think you knew that it might be, so we said what we had to say. You told me to always take care of myself, not matter what the cost. You told me you wanted me to always be happy and to take care of my sisters, and to be the strong one. All I can do now is hope that I have honored our talk and you can see how hard I am working to do my best.
It seems like just yesterday that I was watching you hold back tears at my graduation video. You were so mad that you weren’t allowed to come, but the hospital was the first place I went afterward. I finally felt like I had done what you wanted. Little did I know, this would be the last time you would be able to hug me back and tell me how much you loved me and how proud you were. You actually knew who I was that day and meant the world to me.

It seems like just yesterday it was “my” night to stay up with you at home and make sure you were comfortable. For some reason, I knew that it would be my night that would be your last and I was so scared. Everyone was there, just as you would have wanted it. I remember the movie I watched (Bend it like Beckham) and that I slept on the couch with the only man you were ever really ok with. I held your warm hand for the last time and cried.

It seems like just yesterday that you fell cold in front of my eyes. The pain was something I had never felt before. Your hand was cold now and you were not there. It had happened. I know I had said goodbye to you, because you really weren’t there, but it was real now, TOO real.

It seems like just yesterday we said goodbye forever. I saw you for the very last time. It didn't look like you, but you were wearing your favorite Tae Kwon Do uniform and looked peaceful. There were so many people there paying their respects. People I didn't even know. People that respected and loved you for who you were and what you stood for. Then you were gone....and we had to go back to our lives like normal.

I'm not sure if I have made it back to normal daddy. Actually, i'm almost positive, I will never get back there. I miss you every single day. There is always something that reminds me of you. I wish I could control it. I feel like I have lost my mind.

Every year on your birthday and during the holidays, I relive my last moments with you mostly happy ones from those days. It is this day October 5th that is most painful.

It seems like just yesterday that I thought about it, because it was. Just like every other day to come...

I love you daddy! I miss you so much! See you in my dreams.
Love, Heather

Thanks for reading.

Peace n love