I try to live my life in the open… mostly.

I try to be open to myself, open to the world, open to people.  I try not to hide who I am here.

But I still have been having a very difficult time getting to know other people in my real life.  In the past I have often felt very disconnected, cut off, unwanted, unloved, and unworthy. In short, I often felt LONELY.

Loneliness is not necessarily being ALONE

In the past I believed (wrongly) that my worth as a woman was determined by my ability to get a man. When I was with someone I gave up everything I was to try and be who that person wanted, whether that was “me” or not, and this often led me choosing men that were not compatible and with the men I was with treating me poorly (or maybe they wanted someone who would put up with their bullshit and they looked for the compliant, people-pleasing girls who would do ANYTHING for them??).   When I was not attached to a man I didn’t feel like I fit into the world – social life was very much a “couples” arena where the single people were gawked at as there was something “wrong” with them – and I would become desperate to find SOMEONE to like me.

I was pretty and lively and wonderful, but I believed boyfriends (and husband) who told me that I wasn’t – ugly, plain, boring, bitchy, frigid, slutty, fat, scrawny, flat-chested, stupid, moron, useless, unlovable… — because I based my worth on what the men in my life told me, and with how much I pleased them.  I was TERRIFIED of “ending up alone”.

I’m not going to go on about the hows and whys of getting into abusive relationships here – if you have been unlucky enough to find yourself involved in an abusive situation you know how hard it is to explain why you not only didn’t SEE it but why it was so freaking hard to get OUT of once you were in – but I do believe that the isolation that was caused by being involved in domestic/partner abuse helped solidify the pattern of jumping from one man to the next to the next in hopes that THIS relationship would magically be different, that it would be that perfect thing that fulfilled me.

Instead I went through one relationship after another that just left me HURT, confused, unloved, and profoundly LONELY. I put up with being called names, being told I was unlovable, useless, frigid, unloving, unkind, and that I wanted to be abused*.
*the ironic part was that while he was telling me that I WANTED to be abused, I was trying to get away from the “perfect” way he was treating me that I thought was abuse and HE thought was how a real loving, respectful relationship was supposed to be!

I would go from ONE abusive relationship that left me feeling lonely and unfulfilled to ANOTHER abusive, lonely, unfulfilling relationship… filling my life with the trying to make someone else love me enough to make me believe I was worthy.

And then something CHANGED

It’s hard to pin point WHAT exactly changed. I was with TheNoodle (R ), so it wasn’t like I was really a single woman who learned to be happy with her singlehood.  All I remember was a gradual sense of dissatisfaction with the way things were going with TheNoodle and trying to determine if this was really what I wanted in my life, if this was going to be “as good as it gets” was it gonna be better than being alone.

A radical change happened there, did you see it?  I was looking to see what I wanted out a relationship, and I actually balanced the idea of being ALONE against being stuck in yet another unfulfilling relationship!

I started to look at what I had in my life, my goals, my dreams… my potential. For the first time in my life I looked at how the relationship I found myself in with TheNoodle and placed it against the life I wanted to make for myself. And in EVERY aspect of my life I was better off WITHOUT TheNoodle — financially, socially, physically, sexually, spiritually, emotionally, with my family, with friends, with the kids, intellectually. He wasn’t abusive, he wasn’t violent… but he wasn’t worth the time and energy I put into him.

I started to realize that I was truly FREE to make my life my own, and to make it all I dreamed for myself and my children. I was no longer held back, I could make things HAPPEN if I wanted them to…

But not with TheNoodle holding me back.

I wanted to own a home.

I wanted to travel.

I wanted a good relationship with my kids.

I wanted to explore my spirituality.

I wanted to try new flavours, recipes, activities, experiences.

I wanted to be active

I want to LIVE my life. I want to EXPERIENCE. I want to PARTICIPATE in my life. I want to CONNECT, SHARE, and EXPERIMENT.

And when I stood back and really LOOKED at what I had gotten myself into with TheNoodle? Well… it was not gonna get me anywhere near the life I wanted.

And after thinking about it for MONTHS I came to the conclusion that I no longer wanted a relationship with him:

He wasn’t good enough for ME, it had nothing to do with me not being good enough for HIM.

He wasn’t worth my time and attention, my care, or my money. I could no longer JUSTIFY the mental, physical, emotional or FINANCIAL burden that he (and his kids) had become on my life.

My attitude changed for the better

Instead of focusing every night on how lonely I was and how upset I was that TheNoodle wasn’t honouring my feelings and needs in the relationship, I was actively doing things that I enjoyed. Instead of worrying about talking to him I was happy about being left to think for myself. Instead of wanting to see him, I found myself unhappy when he and his kids asked to visit and take up my precious free time.

I let it go.

I let go the idea that to be happy and fulfilled i NEEDED a relationship with a man.

I let go the idea that I couldn’t do things for myself, with myself, and by myself and feel “right”.

I started to focus on becoming comfortable with me.

I made a commitment to MYSELF to change the things in my life that I wasn’t happy with, and make them MINE again.

I’m not always SURE… but I know a few things right now:

• I am taking a sabbatical from dating/relationships to work on finding my OWN light
• I am focusing on my relationships with myself, my kids and my Gods
• I need time ALONE to focus on my own private work
• Sometimes the best thing I can do is housework or solitary chores
• I know when I need to be with others, I know when I need to work on solitary things
• Its okay to be a “Heartless Bitch” and enforce healthy boundaries

Some days it just feels like I am not fully equip to live in normal society.  There are a LOT of days where I feel IMMENSE and IMMEASUREABLE (although, let’s admit it I still TRY to measure it, I measure everything) guilt over the decisions I made in the past few years – right OR wrong – and how horribly I have “broken” things.

Every SINGLE day I deal with a litany of complaints from ALL arenas about my children. Either theEx is complaining because of expenses associated with the children or having to deal with some issue with that the kids are having, or it’s GirlChild’s teacher complaining about how GirlChild BEHAVES. And a lot of the issues are placed squarely on ME.

Yes. My children have some issues.  But they are fucking CHILDREN, they are going through a fucking LOT of crap in their lives, and it is NOT 100% MY FAULT. And the sooner people realize that blaming things on their mother only makes things worse for EVERYONE the better off we will all be.

Because of the pressure of trying to make EVERYTHING the way EVERYONE else in the world wants it to be, I have started counseling. There is just SO much pressure to make the kids “perfect”…

You know what? I wonder what they mean by PERFECT.

My kids:

BoyChild is a sensitive sort that has been dealing with issues surrounding not feeling like he belongs anywhere. The first 4 years of school he attended 4 different elementary schools, so he’d make friends and then we’d move… and so more than ANYTHING he wants to be part of something, to fit IN with someone. He’s a child that wants to be loved and cared about and ACCEPTED. 

It’s been hard, for sure.

BoyChild has definitely been desperate to fit in. He wants to be accepted by everyone around him – adults and children alike – and the problem is that some of the people we find in our lives will just NEVER accept him. That’s a hard thing for a child. Hell, that’s a hard thing for a lot of ADULTS. And its VERY hard for me, as his mother, to watch him struggle to be liked and accepted and still fall short. There are just some situations and some people that you can’t gain acceptance from… hard truth.

GirlChild is an anxious child. She has a lot of trouble focusing and following direction, especially when she doesn’t feel secure with the adults in her environment. That’s partly what her counselor seems to think, and I can see it being close to the truth. She isn’t WILLFULLY ignoring the “rules”, she’s asking for attention without knowing what she needs. Unfortunately, breaking the rules gets her in trouble, and getting in trouble with the adults makes her feel LESS secure and MORE scattered and LESS sure of her abilities and MORE likely to break the rules because she needs to feel SECURE.

There isn’t much I can do.

Or is there?

My counselor put this belief to the test: 

Do I validate their feelings? Sure I support them, but I really LISTEN to how they are feeling and teach them that how they feel is ACCEPTABLE?

I don’t know that I do.

Yes, that’s a HUGE failing on my part. But I believe it is something that I can recover from.

In January I mentioned things that I wanted to change in my life, and one of them was changing my parenting style – not to something that fits what OTHER people want from my children,  but to the parenting style *I* always WANTED to follow (but was prevented by the situation in which I lived and survived up until this point).

So far, I have been making slow changes in this area… but obviously there is more I can be doing.

My children, by virtue of their lives, need more acceptance and care and less strict, harsh, discipline. They are still hurting from things. And trying to “make them LEARN” through recrimination, disapproval, and spanking doesn’t work. I know this.

I know that BOTH my kids flourish and behave better when they are praised for the good they do, rather than being told they are “bad” or being spanked. When they are praised they bloom, they want more, and they REACH for it. When they are told only how bad they are being, how much they do wrong they wilt, they give up and they quit caring about the rules and the consequences.

I know how they feel…

It’s the same feeling that I had in my marriage, where I felt nothing I did RIGHT ever mattered, so why should I try? I was gonna get in trouble, no matter what I did, nothing I did was going to be rewarded, I was stupid, ugly, useless, a bitch, cold, unlovable, dumb, unwanted…

I don’t want my kids getting THAT message.

I have been uncomfortable with the idea of spanking my children for a LONG time… and yet, for quite a while I bent to the wills of those around me, those people telling me that if I didn’t want my children to become “brats” (or other hideously nasty labels) I needed to spank them to get the message through to them.  I don’t believe this. I have never believed that spanking was necessary. And yet, I spanked, and (worse) I allowed other people to spank my children.

When I had my babies I wanted to be an attachment parent – I breast fed, on demand, until they self-weened; I co-slept with them (BoyChild until  he was  1, GirlChild until she was 6 months); I wore them; I was anti-ferber/cry-it-out; I made my own babyfood; I delayed bottle feeding (pumped milk) and introducing solids – but I was vetoed on some things (cloth diapering and homeschooling) that I wanted to do.  TheEx did not agree about the attachment parenting thing. He was more than willing to leave the kids with his parents for hours (or days),  he objected to the kids sleeping in bed with us because he felt he was disturbed more with the fussing and feeding routine when we were in bed with him, and he definitely did not want the “stink or expense” of cloth diapering. The idea of homeschooling was completely out of the question since I had to agree to work outside the home when I had GirlChild.

But I let the opinions of other people, even people who really had no real right to a solid opinion on my parenting or my children, influence me.

Everyone seems to have an opinion about raising kids, and they don’t hesitate to share that with you whether you want it or NOT.

No more.

I have decided that I am going to try to focus on my OWN parenting, and not listen to what I need to do to be a “good” parent or what the kids need to be like to be “good” kids.  I am listening to my heart.

Yes, my kids have issues. Yes, they don’t always listen, they don’t always pay attention, they don’t always OBEY… but they are small people who deserve to be encouraged, not discouraged.

I am committing myself to finding the way that is right for US to be a family, to be HAPPY.

I’m gonna try not to stress that people don’t like my kids. I’m gonna find people who DO like them, and surround myself with family-positive people who will encourage me to parent positively and accept my children for who they are NOW instead of withholding love until they meet some artificial ideal.

The ideas of my ex – punishment, control, obedience – are being left behind…

I am starting to panic

No, seriously, I’m not sure if I can “get ‘er done” and get everything moved.  It feels like there is SO much to do and I don’t know if I can get it all completed in time.

This is the first time I will be moving on my own with minimal help.

The first time without a “partner” to assist in packing and cleaning and arranging things (although I did all the logistics)

The first time without family assistance

The first time I need to deal with 2 homes at once – moving stuff out , doing repairs, and cleaning the old place while painting and setting up a new place.

The first time I will OWN a place on my own

And I haven’t even started packing

You heard me, I haven’t started packing yet.

I intended to do a bunch of it this past weekend… but things didn’t work out that way. Friday found me exhausted from being kept awake late by the neighbors and then woken up AGAIN by same neighbors at 4am when they decided to turn their music UP… I was a walking zombie Friday at work.

Added to that, the stress seemed to finally catch up with me and I ended up with the beginning of a UTI. I plain didn’t feel like trying to find boxes and drag everything out and pack it up.

And then I had to run out to the Scout camp on Saturday night to go to campfire for my BoyChild because his father had only agreed to let BoyChild GO if he didn’t have to do anything other than drop him off and pick him up (and BoyChild wanted to go and for some reason hoped his father would care enough to come and participate with all the other parents at the campfire event… he doesn’t know his father very well, does he?). So in order to not make BoyChild feel like no one cared about him, I trucked my sorry (and SORE) ass out in the snow to the middle of nowhere to be there for my kid.

That’s how I roll, yo!

And Sunday… well… I wanted to REST because I hadn’t slept well and I hadn’t felt well…. I just wanted downtime.

I should have booked myself off from all other obligations and found boxes and packed. But I didn’t.

So I have to find a way to find boxes between my full time job, evening activities and obligations, housework, and parenting this week. Which I am thinking won’t be easy to do because this week I have something each evening – Scouts, Dance,  counseling appointment, support group, kids – so unless boxes fall from the sky or I purchase banker boxes I will have to wait until the weekend to start packing…

And that’s not ALL I have to do, I still have to:

• Change my address for all my accounts and things
• Get my satellite service moved
• Get internet hooked up in my house
• Choose paint colours
• Figure out when people can bring deliveries
• Disassemble things which can’t fit out the doors of the old place
• Fix doors and paint issues in the old place

And OMG taxes need to be done… and things need to be dealt with.

I don’t feel qualified to do this stuff on my own. I don’t feel like I should be solitary, but I am. I feel like I need family,  I need care and love and being part of a group that will actually work with me. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I realize that I am truly alone in a world that is dark and scary. Where I thought I would have someone to have and to hold, I have cats who only want to be fed or to trip me in the dark.

I am glad to be single right now, don’t get me wrong. The alternatives would be theEx (abusive and distant), the Stalker (hoarder and clingy, also live the cycle of abuse), or Reg (totally tuned out of life), and I am happier without any of them. I am happier without being told what to do or think or say or be or eat or feel. I am happier doing my crafty things and being active (when its not too cold out) than sitting around gaining weight and watching tv. I am happier spending my time and energy on my children, rather than on being the perfect little wifey . I am happy with my mild clutter and clean spaces rather than facing the potential of dealing with a hoarder on a daily basis.

I look forward to having a home of my own and having MY tastes and style front and center. I want to explore who I am and what I am, and have that show in my space.

But sometimes, late at night, I wish I had someone to hug. I wish I had someone to help haul crap with me.  I wish that there was someone out there who could accept me for me…

I wish it didn’t feel “too late” for a 35 year old mother of 2… sometimes its just 2am inside my mind.

In the light of day I know it will all be okay. Not because I am stronger than I think (I am) or because there will be something magical that happens to pull it off at the last minute (there might be)… but because it has to be.

I just can’t seem to slow down time to give me more space …

Last night my relationship with R ended.

I knew it was coming, I had felt it and fought against it for months, hoping that something could miraculously change and I wouldn’t have to start again.

ALONE

It ended over IM. A sad state of affairs, but in a few key strokes it was over, by mutual agreement that things were NOT working, that too much was going on in our lives (for me– kids, divorce, ex, legal issues, child support fight, buying a house; for him—kids, cross border divorce, custody, child support fight, financial difficulties, depression) for us to see a future together.  He realized how bad it was, finally, only after I had given up on asking him to show some interest.

So, through type, the way the relationship started, it ended. With a whimper, not a bang. There was no fighting, no tears, no harsh words or recriminations. It just wasn’t anymore and we both knew it hadn’t BEEN for months. 

ALONE again

There were no tears. I didn’t expect any. After all, he hadn’t called much, he had stopped texting me months ago. I was feeling used and unwanted and I knew I had to end it. And yet, at the point of ending, when it truly hit home that he didn’t have any interest in fighting to stay with me? It hurt… a lot.

I sat, alone, on my couch staring at the closed computer, wishing desperately that I could run off and be supported by a friend or two.  But there is not one friend out there I knew I could call to ease the pain.

Not one.

Not one person who would listen and hold me.

Not one person I could call on the phone.

Not one person who would even be mildly supportive via text.

 The dark thoughts started to take over:

I am utterly and completely alone in this world now. I mean, I have my cats, and I have my kids… but I have to be strong for THEM, I am their support network they are not there to be mine. That makes the feeling of emptiness all the harder to face, somehow. I can’t crumble, because there won’t be anyone there to help pick up the pieces, and my kids NEED me. Without them I might as well not exist anymore… and that really is the truth of the matter now.

Not one person, besides my children, would miss me if something bad happened to me. It could be 2 weeks before anyone cared to seek me out, if anything happened. I’d bet that my cats would just happily chew on me… after all, my daughter tells me I am made of meat.

Only a few days ago there was someone who might have pretended to care. I know he didn’t, not really, not anymore… but the illusion was there

There is no illusion anymore.  

R is no longer someone who would care for me, who I could call. He no longer wanted me. And there was emptiness in my soul, there was a pain in my heart, there was gloom. There was utter and complete loneliness in the darkness and quiet in my house. Sitting in the dark and quiet feeling desperate to talk to SOMEONE, realizing that there was no one I could think of that I could lean against right now.

I felt disconnected from everyone.

I know that this is my own fault, not knowing quite how to make friends with new people, not knowing how to connect to people, how to stay connected… for being so introverted and hidden and afraid that now I am alone in a big, wide, TERRIFYING world, when what I need is support and caring and to be touched and connected to again.

My loneliness is MY fault

I don’t know how to change any faster than I am! I am unhappy feeling friendless. I am unhappy being disconnected from the larger community… and I know this feeling is motivating me to CHANGE how I approach social situations.

I can’t hide so much. So much of my life has been lived in fear – afraid of being punished, afraid of being “bad”, afraid to rock the boat, afraid to speak up, afraid to reach out, afraid to be rejected – and it has been very hard to overcome my natural desire to hide who I really AM. I’ve been trying so hard to figure out what everyone ELSE wants from me that my own MEness has been pushed aside in hopes that THIS time I’m doing it right.

But you know what? I’m okay the way I am.  Sure there are things I want to change, ways I want to grow… but I’m a good person and maybe, just maybe, if I let people see ME they might like me.  And if they don’t like me, then they aren’t my RIGHT PEOPLE (thanks Havi).

I don’t have to be a teetotaler to be “good enough” or “spiritual enough” (thanks Pace!), it only matters WHY I choose to drink or not drink

If I want a tattoo I can get one, there is nothing wrong with being a “freak”… freaks are some of the greatest people I have met so far (and just having a tattoo doesn’t make one a freak…) (Thanks Pace AND Kyeli).

If I want to write, who cares if I suck? If I am silly sometimes does that mean I can never be serious? If I get hurt, if I cry, if I am terrified… is that really such a bad thing? Can’t I reach out when I feel this low without worrying that asking for help will be annoying or bothersome to someone? And if it is, do I really want people like that in my life?

I just don’t know where to START!!

• I write, but I don’t know if anyone reads (is anyone OUT THERE?? And if you are, do you know how to get my analytics to work? Or how to upgrade my WordPress since it keeps nagging me to do it?)
•  I try to comment on other blogs, although for the most part I am a lurker mostly because I read on RSS feed rather than visiting blogs.
• I am involved in Boy Scouts,
• I’m taking a dance class,
• I joined a support group (Beyond Abuse),
•  I think I got talked into a local writer’s group.

Any other ideas of how to build relationships (both online and offline) that are flexible and inexpensive?

I cannot survive ALONE anymore. I am a social creature…

One thing I learned, long ago, is that all action starts with the idea… the thought-form that you transform through pure will and guts to produce something physical. Sometimes, though, I think that my professor (all those long long years ago) missed something essential.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Change is epiphany motivated, that spiritual call or push or yearning that gets you thinking about WHY things are the way they are. It has always been the brilliant flashes out of nowhere, the soul sparks, and the sudden realizations that have lead to determining what lead to the state of affairs in which you find your life. They are the tiny squiggles of pure happiness as you realize new ways of looking at and doing things that guide you in the direction of change.

Cause and Effect are not always CLEAR in our lives

It is easy to get so caught up in EVERYTHING that we miss the connections between parts of our lives. Consequences sometimes feel like “karma” – the actions seem far removed from the resulting effect – and we keep doing the same things over and over. The patterns are created in our lives, road maps and recipes for activities, and it isn’t until something gives us pause to reflect that we see how these rote actions really affect us.

When a pattern starts causing a problem we seek answers

As long as things seem to be working away as we expect them to (good OR bad) we don’t pay attention to the patterns and assumptions that we make about ourselves, our choices, or our lives. It’s not always immediately clear that we are doing the same things over and over in our lives, causing the same things to happen over and over, until we finally notice “this has happened before”.

Epiphanies are sometimes described as lightning bolt moments, something so life altering that we just have to sit up and take notice. But epiphanies can be gentle, tiptoe to awareness, tap on the shoulder, a gentle hug or a shift of awareness that sidles up to you and infuses you with a need. They are our soul’s way of telling us that we need to slow down and take a look at what’s happening – and if all else fails our souls will try the “burning bush” approach that will DEFINITELY get our attention.

Sometimes we don’t accept the news until it beats us over the head with the obvious stick.

Lately my life has been ruled by a lot of sudden epiphanies – some subtle nudges, others more of the beat-over-the-head obviousness type – which have radically changed my personal life direction. I recognized that for years I have been rushing through my life, stressing about the things that I thought really mattered, trying desperately to make myself fit in SOMEWHERE… ANYWHERE, and I was so busy trying to cram the square-peg of my life into the round holes around me, that I wasn’t aware that I had tried the same thing over and over, always with eerily similar results.

What is that quote that everyone uses? Oh, yeah:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein) 

No wonder it was “crazy making” I was unconsciously leading myself around in circles, starting and ending in the same spots, and yet kicking myself for the very fact that I had not gotten anywhere. Every repeat of the pattern brought the similar results, and every time I would curse my “luck”… and then do it again.

Until, sitting with myself and listening to my soul-voice one night, I realized that there was a PATTERN there, and that I wasn’t learning my lesson and changing what I was doing. I realized that I was drifting through my life thinking that I had not been making decisions or choosing a path, but unconsciously I was just living out a pattern over and over…

AND GETTING THE SAME MISERABLE RESULTS!

Awareness of a pattern is just the FIRST step. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that noticing that there is a pattern at work is the same as solving the issue! It’s not as simple as that!

Once a painful pattern (because, obviously, if the pattern is working FOR us there is much LESS need to delve into what it is doing) becomes obvious to our conscious minds, it is necessary to observe the history of this pattern in our lives. Although this might sound like a waste of time, after all you now SEE that there is a pattern of behavior there, but reviewing past behavior not only reinforces the pattern in your mind, but might actually lead back to when the pattern STARTED.

For me the biggest epiphanies happen once I notice WHERE a pattern started and HOW I can do things differently. There isn’t much point in seeing a pattern if you are just going to keep repeating it because you don’t fully understand WHY you do things the way you do? The whole point is to see what needs to or can be done differently, make the change, and see the different results.

So how DO you go about finding the source of the pattern?

I don’t believe that my behavioral patterns are rooted in my DNA, or that they are a foregone conclusion set about at the moment of my birth by some divine plan. As a student of the social sciences I know that we are creatures of both nature (DNA, hormones, etc) and nurture (past, family, society) that sometimes makes untangling the knots of patterns extraordinarily difficult. Not IMPOSSIBLE, just difficult.  Sometimes it isn’t necessary to go all the way back, sometimes it is. Sometimes we need to understand the traumas that led to choosing to do things one way or another… sometimes it’s enough to know that there IS a pattern and that it has been repeating itself so that we can move on.

For myself, the process of finding the patterns (and the pattern sources) involves writing.

• I journal,
•  I blog,
•  I scribble madly,
•  I consult the tarot (and note it down),
•  I look back at past journal entries and blog posts,
• I ask friends and family.
• I make mind maps.
• I draw connections between words.
•  I create networks in my books… and pathways in my neural networks.
• I draw timelines.
•  I note trends in events.
• I use calendars to visualize time and events
• I note how I react to other people (journaling)

And I see how things relate, what events are similar every time (therefore part of the pattern), and which things vary (and therefore either part of other patterns or not necessary for the pattern). I then FEEL my way through the pattern, to see where the “red flags” came up, and what they were, and how they felt.

It is a process of trusting yourself, even retroactively.

And I see what happened, over and over. It hits me. Not just intellectually, but emotionally and, often, physically. And I suddenly BELIEVE the pattern is real.

Because I believe I can find patterns I also believe I can change the patterns.

The realization of what needs to change, what has been going wrong, and that you really can change  the pattern is the grain of the epiphany (an epiphany seed, if you will). For me (and YMMV) the power of the epiphany is not so much in the new realization, as in the new realization that THINGS CAN CHANGE… that the force of Will (mindful determination/intention) can change things in my life.

I am not powerless to a force greater than myself… not for MOST things anyway.

I am working on myself and finding my way through the maze of things I want to change in my life. Right now there are days where it seems NOTHING is right at all, where all I see are the patterns staring me straight in the face and telling me “you can’t change who you are”. I’m working on self-empowerment, and it’s a long and difficult process.

My patterns have controlled me in the past, but they don’t control me anymore.

 I have patterns. I have a lot of patterns. Some days the thought of fighting against the tangle of the patterns scares the crap out of me, some days I feel so beaten down that I can barely get out of bed,  some days I want nothing more than someone to tell me they love me (and mean it, not just say it because they feel they should.

Other days I feel like I can do ANYTHING, that I can change my world for the better. That I can find love, within myself and from another person, that I can better myself and my world, that I can be a change in the world and that the changes I need to make aren’t as hard as they appeared yesterday.

It’s all a journey… (and that’s an epiphany TOO)