Monthly Archives: August 2011

08/31/11

Finished Reading The Book

I started reading “An Invisible Sign of My Own” on Friday and finished it on Tuesday. Ariel said she really liked the book and wanted me to read it out loud. She had picked it up and investigated it at some point. She liked how the page numbers were vertical and in circles and the swaying words of “an invisible sign of my own” was on each top right corner of the page. I did too.  We spent some of Sunday and our school hours reading this book. I had to edit however, and make it a PG rating for them. I did get some questions like “Why did you stop reading?” I would tell them that it wouldn’t make sense to them so I was skipping it. They seemed ok with that.

They enjoyed hearing about the 2nd grade classroom and what they did.

Mona Gray, the main character ended up being a Math teacher for kindergarten to 3rd grade, but we mostly heard about the 2nd grade class. She had the children make numbers out of their bodies and created math problems. We all thought that was great and Ariel jumped up as soon as she heard it and made herself into a 3. We all got up and started making numbers and math problems with our bodies. Then, we went into the alphabet and started spelling words for a while. Our largest number we created was 1111. We were all ones per Joshua’s request. And Daniel and Ariel laughed and said we are “One thousand one hundred eleven!”

There were numbers throughout the book.

It was awesome. We talked about the math problems in it. They also asked me questions about why people were saying certain things or acting a certain way, so it turned out to be a great social learning tool as well. They didn’t get a lot of things, but they did pick up on more than I had anticipated. As I read they made Lego creations, Dragon tales with Ariel’s dragons, colored, drew, looked for numbers in their toys, and also shared with me their perspective about the story. Like why was Mona was acting like that or explaining to me that the 2nd grader who was misbehaving should not act like that. They told me how some of the kids seemed mean.

During our breaks we came up with our own stories.

Since I shared about Mars the other day, I asked them which planet was their favorite and we read about their favorite planets. Ariel’s is Neptune, Joshua’s is Jupiter, and Daniel’s is Earth, but is subject to change at any moment. Then, we created our own planets and wrote stories about them. I am going to share them in another post. After we wrote our stories we drew our planets. The next day we wrote poems during our reading breaks. I will share them too on another post. We also took pictures. Later we pretended with Lego’s and Dragons that we were on our special planets. We had a great time and I think I am going to do this again with another book.

On a personal note, I have realized another thing about myself.

I know why I have such a problem with reading fiction. I need to relate to the characters, but when I do,  I get too involved. It is too hard for me when I get to the end. I get sad that it is over. It does depend on the book, but when I invest in reading I am fully engrossed. With this particular book I started off excited and immediately fell in love with the characters. As the book went on it became too close to home. At times I felt like I was reading my own words and it exposed things that I wasn’t ready to expose. I thought. I do not think that it was an accident that I read this book at this particular time in my life.

It helped bring to life things in me that I have so deeply hidden.

I have already been on this journey, but the book helped solidify particular me parts that I was unsure of.  It also helped me see how many things that I have quit. I quit so I wouldn’t feel, I quit so I wouldn’t fail, I quit so I would not have to deal with uncertainty.  This was a hard book to read, but it was also extremely enjoyable.  I saw parallels in my life and it was good to see it alive on paper. I also saw the characters as characters and felt their lives. I lived it with them in the movie that played in my head as I read it.

I get sad when I am finished with a book because I miss the characters.

Many books when I get to the end, I cry a little. I never understood why my eyes would start to fill the closer and closer I would get to the end of the book. I think I get some of it now. When I read a book it is like I am the camera man who is trying to capture all that the director wants. I get frame by frame, with the perfect setting, timing, color, lighting, stills just everything. I am capturing the very small detail with the shadows or special effects and the people. It is seeking that perfect moment where the actors capture just the right facial expression and emotional manifestations that are so important and mean so much to the story. The movie plays out and I have hoped to bring forth the complete desire of the director and what they wanted all of us to experience.

When I get to the end, I realize that many people have missed it.

All of the tiny details, the most crucial of moments are missed. The speck of dust that had a world of treasured truth was not seen. And I am sad. I miss my friends that were playing in this movie that I became intimate with. I shared in their deepest darkest times and their awesome joys and wonders and now it is over. I feel lost a bit when I finish and if I am deeply attached it can take a few days to recover my loss. This is the case with this book. I love them all. I love the town. I love the little things. This book is definitely one of my top 5. I am finished writing, but I have to share this lovely quote.

“Math and music tend to get along, supposedly music is just math in its best dress”


 

 

 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/28/11

Special Interest Quicky

Another one of my special interests which I have spoken about a bit are words. I do love words. Words are fun and fantastical. There are so many things that words do. They are playful, mean, accurate, distinctive, repulsive, magical, loving, caring, hurtful, wondrous. You can make words up. They can be gibberish. They can be truth. They are their own art form. I love them. Some of them are prickly, some of them are sharp, some of them are soft, some of them are squooshy and some of them burst in colors.

Yet I do not fully understand the way they are used.

I enjoy discovering new words and their meanings. I enjoy, the way words look to me. They can be quite playful or be triggers. Since I recently shared how one word was a trigger, the word “soon”, let me tell you what happens when they are no longer a trigger. They become a game, a pleasant joke to my memory. Now every time I see the word “soon”, I laugh. He smiles and waves and says “See you got me all wrong”. That is what words do with me. They are alive like numbers. They have colors and move and they wink and make me giggle.

I have many words that tickle my insides.

They can also hurt like daggers or fill me with unmeasurable joy. Mostly they make me happy. No words hurt for long once I figure out why they hurt, then they become my friend and useful for good. I like to write poems playing with words. Especially, when I am researching or learning something new. It helps me relate and fuse what I am learning to my mind, such as one of my recent poems titled “Stumbled”. I titled it purposefully wrong.

It is all about harmony and destiny so to speak.

As you read it, it is clear that it is all a mishap of what is seen as yin yang happening. Discovering your perfect zen by accident. I liked using the word karma because most people do not know the accurate meaning. Karma means “action” or “deed”, what I have read recently is that it is not about good or bad it is about choices. The choices we make now will affect us later in life and if you believe in rebirth, then it will affect that as well. That is a very simple way to explain it. To use it in a playful way as I did in my poem is exactly what I meant. To poke fun at how little and how much control we have over our lives. I am not sure how I feel about any of the words I used in the poem I was just playing with their definitions.

I do this often in my poems because words are playing with me.

I enjoy our playing and bantering together. I will most likely not reveal anymore of what is behind my poems or writings any longer because they no longer mean the same thing as they did last week or yesterday even. Some of them, however have been created into echoes that will live for eternity in the pleasantries of my mind. Others the hard ones will be reminders of how dark times turned to good and helped to create the lovely ones. I have found my peace with words and understanding how people use them differently than I do.

If I do not understand I will ask and that is the end of it.

You may see more of my playful word use. You have been warned. :-) I have some pictures of my books as a child, most of them are actually mine. We did find almost the complete set that I had of the Dandelion Library, I think I still had four or five of mine from when I was a kid. The others are from when I was a child, you can see I took pretty good care of them. They are set up exactly as I had them in my room as a child and growing up.

The Mathemagic and The Magic of Words were my constant companions.

 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/28/11

I Love Mars!

I do! I do! I love Mars, the planet. Why? Well it is called the red planet and I do like red. It has two funky shaped moons that I find quite intriguing. Plus they have awesome names, Phobos and Deimos. Bonus! I am indeed fascinated with the Roman god of war Mars and I am rather fond of him being known as the Greek god Ares. Great mythic tales to read about them. I will not give numerous links or fill this post with my obsessive love addiction to the mythology of Mars. However, I will share that this has been triggered by a poem I wrote that I am not quite finished with and it made me all giddy and excited. I figured I could test myself and see if I could write about something of great interest to me, but limiting my word counts. So far I am at 152 and only two links!

Let’s see how short I can make this.

Mars, the other reasons why I like this planet is because it is the fourth planet. I like that simply because it is number 4, has 2 moons and that equals 6, and I do like the number 6. Also, the number 6 showed it’s happy little face to me in water in a bowl the other day that I found quite interesting and amusing at the same time. Today a truck drove in front of me and randomly had “111″ on a bumper sticker on its window. I have no idea what that means, but it made me think of 3 which made me automatically double the 3 to make 6. And that is how the number 6 is connected in my mind as I sat and write about Mars. I am at 298 word count and I still have more to say without really saying much. :-)

Mars!

I have often thought that I was supposed to live there. I would very much like to explore and spend hours investigating on the planet. So many rocks, crevasses, the mountains and not to mention the Valles Marineris. I think that would be intriguing. I am not sure exactly why I love it so much. I remember as a child it popped out at me and it was instant attraction. The letters MARS together make me feel happy. I like the way they look together. They are also only 4 letters and I like 4 and also the way that 2+2 looks. The letters of the word have always looked red, but that is because in this word the “A” and “R” are red but the “M” seems blackish and the “S” seems goldish. When they are all together they look like a deep red with sparks of orangeish red.

I know that it would be too cold for me though.

So I will happily explore my favorite planet from the comforts of my own home, covered in as much attire as I deem necessary. Well now I am going to end here because I have links that I want to share and I am almost at my word limit I placed on myself. Oh, I just passed it! Ok I am really leaving now and welcome to the more playful side to me, by the way. My other special interests may be coming out a bit more as well. The ones I would not allow myself to talk about or felt that I must keep hidden because of the reasons that I like them. There is a whole mess of things I worked through about hiding my special interests, but I am not ready to talk about that. Instead, I am singing “I’m Coming Out!” (It’s kind of long so really I just sang “I’m coming out” a few times.)

635 word count, (not anymore) Got to go!

“Mars” NASA

“Mars” National Geographic

“Mars” ESA

Leaving with…My favorite moon is Europa, but I will save that one for another day.


 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/26/11

Pictures and Ramblings

There has been so many strange things that have been happening to me that I cannot let it go. I will not go into great details, but it seems things are just trying to tell me something. It’s possibly that my mind is more aware of certain things, who knows just go with it! After my moment of “breakthrough”, so to speak literally something unlocked in my brain. My recollection of memories and remembering parts of me has exploded. Other things that have happened have just made me stop and look around and wonder if I am in the Twilight Zone. If I start to feel a doubt about something or someone, the kids start singing a song out of the blue that I have a direct connection with the person or situation.

I asked them why they started singing it and they do not have a reason, they just felt like it.

It has happened for days not just once or twice and it will be a random child, interesting. I have had numbers pop out at me more, I had turned this part of me off as much as possible, but it seems that I cannot control it. I have math equations flooding my mind, many I do not know. I see them dancing in their full colors of glory for me to ponder.  I find this interesting because recently I wrote a poem about 11 and Lisa from Alienhippy suggested this movie for me to see An Invisible Sign. When I watched the trailer something broke open my memory and the part that I had shut down about numbers in my brain burst in my mind. I am waiting on the movie to be available at Netflix and decided to get the book first.

I started reading it today.

So far it is one of my favorites. Mona Gray is one of the most quirky, endearing and lovable characters. I relate to her quirkiness and numbers thing very much. As I began to read the words came alive in my head. There are only certain fiction writers that can do that for me, another writer that I happen to be reading right now is Nick Hornby. I am reading “Slam” which I like very much because it gives the feel of another character that I do love so, Houlden Caulfield. However, Sam Jones, the main character in Slam is much softer and gentle a character. It’s more like the feel of the books, I see parallels with Catcher in the Rye and Slam based on the feel of the characters personalities. I digress!

I was amazed at the parallels that I am seeing in my own life and the pages of this book “An Invisible Sign of My Own“.

Part of my process has been accepting myself and reviving those parts of me that I have hidden or stopped. This book seems to be confirming my new changes and is helping me to see myself through the commonalities that we share even though we are different. My mind has changed from comparing myself to others to accepting my own uniqueness as good. You know, at times I feel like such a child in a grown-up body. I feel silly with these fears and things that I share on here. I feel like this is a universal thing, though.

It seems like there are stories and tales of self discovery at all ages.

Sometimes it feels so hard to believe that others go through this too, I feel foolish. I really don’t care though, not anymore. If I am foolish so be it and I have to believe these things that I share are for a reason. I have been having a lot of connections through various means. I had slowly started on a journey opening myself up to things I stopped myself from like movies, certain music,  books, and really enjoying being outside like I used to, examining things in nature and animals. Something woke up in me. I am rambling again…

I am just going to share a ton of pictures and some wonderful quotes from the book.

Wait…let me just say the number 11 has been like a silly little friend lately and has made me giggle. I think it has been a way that my brain has been using to revive my love for numbers. I confessed that I see myself as a red 5 the other day. When I read in the book how she spent entire afternoons thinking about one number I thought it was marvelous since I have been stuck on 11. Then she said: “Take 5.” She goes on to say: ” Seems regular–five-dollar bill, five-minute break–but five is also the sum of two squares, and a prime, and pentagrams, and my sixth-grade teacher told me that the Pythagoreans thought 5 was about marriage because it was 3 (their first odd) joined with 2 (their first even).”  I love finding out history and meanings of numbers. When I hear or see something like that I go and research it.

Myths(ology) and science fascinate me and numbers are deeply in both.

Another thing I related to that I recently shared was about my “shutting down” or “stopping my feelings” the character on her tenth birthday began to quit. She just started quitting things that she enjoyed. She seemed to punish herself by withholding pleasures. Yes, I can relate very much. Part of my “quitting” things was to stop me from feeling. It would seem this character was doing something very similar.

I will leave abruptly and with a quote.

“Mix up some numbers and you get an equation for the way the wind shifts or an axiom for the movement of water, or the height of someone, or for how skin feels. You can account for softness. You can explain everything.” ~Mona Gray

I tried to make this short…I just have too many words flowing out of my hands.


 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/26/11

Lessons Through Whatever

The funny thing about working through emotional issues is that life still goes on. We still have to do school, go to work, go to the store, go out to social events and continue as if your insides are not all in a knot. The brain still has to function properly, despite dealing with past baggage or current events. I find that so interesting about the brain, the ability to cope. Last week sometime when I was dealing with some of these emotions that I didn’t quite understand, I felt like my insides were just spilling out and I had no way to gather them up and get myself back to a workable state. I tend to laugh at myself when I feel this way because I know that many times my emotions can be exaggerations triggered from sensory or confusion.

The other morning something happened that made me laugh.

I was overwhelmed with confusion about not understanding why I felt such pain in my heart, I pulled myself together and got up to make breakfast. As I walked to the kitchen I looked down and Daniel had laid out four letters from his Word Whammer toy, C-O-P-E. I laughed so hard, I do not think that Daniel knows this word or at least the meaning of the word, but he could. I found it amusing that it was the word I needed to get over that hump of trying to figure “it” out and later as I finished stories and posts that I had been writing for a while, things seemed to come together in my thinking.

I knew that I had to be ok by Sunday, because it was my nephew’s birthday party.

I wanted very much for the kids to go to their cousin’s birthday party, they had not experienced a party like that. Plus it was his first birthday! Yea! Birthday! I knew that the kids were going to be overloaded for days and that I would be too. I prepared as much as possible, but I also knew that I had to get out of a vulnerable state emotionally if I was going because the sensory and social would be too much for me. My sisters go all out, they like big social events with grand everything. I like that about them in a way because I do have fun and the kids get to experience things that ordinarily they would not. For my sisters though over-the-top is an everyday occurrence so we have to participate in small doses. They did offer for us to come before everyone else came so we could not be so overloaded that was a great thing for them to think of us.

It was a big lesson/test for me.

I never know how my sisters are going to treat me, one second they love me the next I am being badgered and mocked about something. However, I am clueless to what is happening, I feel something is wrong, but do not know what is happening until later. This day just felt nice, it was pleasant and I felt comfortable walking in. I got my little nephew the second we walked in. I like their house, but it felt rather closed in with the decorations and made me feel  like I was in a box. I occupied myself with the kids so I was happy. The more people that came though the more I was getting overloaded. They had a bouncy house in the backyard so we took the kids out there and they jumped for a while it was helpful for them. I jumped too, it was helpful for me as well. :-)

I felt comfortable being myself.

Actually, I didn’t really think about it, like when I hid my water bottle in their cabinet for drinking glasses. I didn’t want anyone to touch it, breathe on it, look at it, or confuse it for theirs, so I put it in there for safe keeping. I do not like holding water bottles. I was able to be a comic relief with that move, the kitchen got crowded with people and I ended up having to ask my sister for my water bottle that was in the cabinet. She gave me one of her “You are so crazy looks” and laughed. I hide things in strange places and always have, but as you can see I have a perfectly good logical reason. Right?

The kids were happy and having fun, but they were going into sensory overload.

We managed to stay for about two hours. It is a 30 minute drive there so we had to think of that as well. Plus it was hot, very hot! They had not even opened the presents or done the cake or anything and it was already 4:30pm, our guys were not going to make it. I was not going to make it. I was already disconnected. At one point my sister said something about being angry and I was surprised and asked “What did we do?” she told me that she wasn’t mad at me, but if I wanted to be part of the group that she was upset with fine, she would be mad at me too. From that point I was confused and my sisters began their banter on me, I could not hear what they were saying because what I was hearing all sounded like buzzing bees in my ears and I could not make out their words.

I looked clueless.

This is why people have thought of me as being dingy or stupid because I am trying very hard to understand what they are saying, but I just can’t. It is all fuzzy and hurts my head and I stare blankly. I was overloaded by sight, sound, and smell. Their bantering felt different though, it didn’t cause me confusion or make me feel bad. It didn’t seem to feel the same. Later when I talked to my mom she told that they were actually doing their sisterly loving banter. She said: “They were trying to be sisters”. I knew something was different, they were not being mean even though an outsider’s perspective could have deemed it mean. It was a great lesson for me to be able to trust my instincts about people. Now I know when I have that feeling that what someone is doing is wrong, I can trust it. All of my sisters do this bantering/mocking thing with me. I do not understand it, I have been confused by it. However, others who have witnessed it think that it is very mean and attacking at times. Again, I do not need to worry myself with those issues as long as I am not confused. Now I have a clear distinction of “feeling” to clarify for me.

I can begin to trust my feelings about people’s other motives as well.

The short version of the rest of the story, we all had fun, but were seriously overloaded. I ended up sitting on the couch crying and at first began to ask myself why I was being so silly and crying, but then I just went, “Oh, I am overloaded.” I let the tears fall, I was not sad or depressed my body just had too much input on all levels. It didn’t last long and then I felt better, very tired, but better. All of the kids were out of control the rest of the night, shutdowns, meltdowns, non-stop spinning objects and bedtime was not fun. But overall it was fun and worth it. It didn’t help that I gave them each a cupcake because they couldn’t eat the cake, even if we had stayed. It wasn’t gluten-free. Daniel and Joshua are very social and LOVE the ladies. Daniel made his rounds making googly eyes with them and then loving on the ceiling fans. Joshua however, was devoted to Grammy. Ariel sat and observed and then gave a blow by blow of all the goings on at the party after we got home.

On another note, the Bible study has been going well.

I am a bit peopled out, but it was good. I like this group of women. They are real. I was surprised when I shared with them how I had been working through the fear of abandonment and all of them said: “Oh, yes.” or had a reply with explanation about their own fears. I knew it was universal, but it had not become real to me until I saw and heard others with the same fears. I came out of the closet a bit and wasn’t sure how they would feel, I wore my shirt that says: “Dear Math, I love you ∞” (infinity symbol). My mom rolled her eyes at me and laughed, the other women didn’t give me any weird looks or anything. I believe it triggered some conversation about science and math though and I shared with them my thoughts about seeing God through various means like that. They hadn’t thought about God or even math (numbers) in certain ways, if anything I was glad they thought out of the box for a moment. I have a thing about all of the numbers and symbols in the Bible. I know, I know BIG SURPRISE!

In all things I learn lessons.

What I have learned this week is if I am not coping the Universe will force messages through my kid’s toys. :-) When I am overloaded it’s ok to admit it, accept it and let my body respond to it. I really love my sisters and I really appreciate their differences. I am willing to trust people even after being burned a lot in my life. I never lost trust, only buried it for a while. I adore and cherish my kids more than I can express, the love I feel for them is entirely different from what I have been talking about lately. I admittedly have a different way of thinking and feeling about love when it comes to animals and children. Yes, I did just confess that. I have to acknowledge that as part of who I am and not feel guilty for it. I see connections in all things and that is how I feel God speaks to me, how I learn, and how I process. A major thing that I have learned is that love of self is actually quite important. You need to be able to love who you are in order pour out your love to others.  An ancient teaching that has only manifested in truth for me recently.

Those are some things I learned this week.


 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/24/11

Unleashing Feelings

Guess what? I have broken open a flood inside my heart. After writing out all of these issues that I have been working through I have discovered something, the cage surrounding my feelings has been opened. I seem to have locked away a lot of my emotions over the years so that I would force myself not to feel. I have repeatedly told David that I feel like a robot. I am not a robot. He has always challenged me in these words of mine because he sees me. I have a strange way of not seeing things in myself but seeing them clearly in others. David, my mom, and close friends have repeatedly told me that I am a loving, caring and generous person.

I haven’t seen it.

Or if I have seen it then words from various voices have popped up and said “Now you are just being prideful”. I do not do nice things or show how I care for others because I want or expect something, I just do it. After I wrote the last two posts dealing with fear of abandonment, something seemed to just leave me. A foreboding dark cloud of some sort just up and left. The lie that lingered has started to fly away and I see the sun shining down. I know that I will have other things to work through in my lifetime but once I “get” something, I get it. There is no need for me to return. I am able to see the error in my thinking and move on. I have no guilt or shame about it, it is what it is and it’s a done feeling.

I realized this with the word “soon”.

I got so angry with myself for being afraid of a simple word. But see, it wasn’t the word, it was the not knowing hidden in that word. It represented something that I did not want to face – it represented that I do not have certainty about this life. Like many of my anxious feelings, I am afraid of the unknown or the uncertainty of something. There is something truly manifesting in my thought process about these phantom fears of mine. They are smoke screens of what I am truly fearful of: I get afraid of being hurt or being in a state of confusion. Confusion causes me much pain. In my mind, I have taken these phantom fears and placed tangible fears in their place so I could hold on to something because a fear of something is far better than not knowing.

Yikes!

I can apply this to many of my fears. I have created fears or reasons so that I would no longer be in a state of confusion. Confusion makes me ill. It causes me to not be able to eat, sleep, think, and live, basically. It just puts me in a state of depression so in order for me to be able to function, I created faces to my fears to help me be able to put them away. This has caused me to have many inaccurate feelings and ideas. It has also caused me to shut down my emotions throughout the years. I do not know if others are able to do this as well, but I have to ability to turn off certain feelings so that I will not feel it anymore. But they are still stored and documented and they manifest through other means.

Anger is one that I dealt with over the last two years.

I did not allow myself to feel angry for a long time because I interpreted anger as a wrong emotion. I felt like I was judging people or that I had misunderstood them when the anger would arise. Partly this was due to me having meltdowns and freakouts throughout my life and people telling me how wrong I was for doing so. I admit that my temper was out of control in many cases, but it was mostly due to lack of understanding, and most of the time, I knew that I was being treated badly but did not know how to express it. Hence, hold it in, hold it in, hold it in, BLOW!! I experienced full-blown rage with the church people that continued to tell me that I had done something to cause Daniel’s autism. When he was not accepted, most people didn’t even acknowledge him, or me when he was with me. It made me angry and confused.

Rage stirred in my belly when I continued to see people used and abused in the name of serving the Lord.

I had seen it too often, I had seen too many people have their voices squelched, their identities destroyed for the sake of leaders’ desires, the words of the bible used to manipulate and control others. If you haven’t witnessed this in your religious (or other forms of institution) circles, great! I mean really, I think that is a wonderful thing, but it does happen and people get hurt and people become dependent on leaders and no longer rely on their instincts or the true biblical understandings. It happens and the truths of humanity in the bible become caricatures of the opinions and views of leaders. It burned rage in me that I forced down because I thought I was wrong. The rage, however, was left in me. I was unable to see clearly what had happened to me in churches but I could see it in others.

I could recognize it and call it out for others but not for myself.

I do this with a lot of things. I dealt with a lot of that rage in the last two years. I wrote about it, I thought about it, I finally saw it in my life and I dealt with it. I can finally hear a sermon and not get angry, though I get annoyed sometimes, I no longer get angry. I dealt with my triggers and allowed myself to feel that anger. I reposted something a while ago about my feelings about church and after that it was done. I thought there was a lot more, but there wasn’t. I had already typed out so much in my personal journals that I had actually been helping myself heal without knowing it. I got settled with people and I got settled with God on the topic and have since moved on into a new journey of understanding my personal experiences with God, this world and spirituality.

The same thing is happening now with love.

I had said before that I had only felt love once. It is true but evaluating it I see why it was so impactful. It was the first time I gave myself freely and didn’t work on trying to hide until I became confused. The relationship exposed things in me that I had a choice to deal with or stifle. I chose to deal with many things that it exposed in me but then out of fear, I stopped it. I began to hide away parts of me that had started to manifest, I only allowed “safe” invisible parts of me out, ones that I knew would not hurt too badly. I already started to build walls around my heart and soul, so when I met David, I had actually spent an entire year forcing myself not to feel for myself but only feel for others. I could control my feelings but not the feelings that I was overwhelmed with by others.

In a way, I had been so vulnerable that I felt I had to protect myself from feeling.

I can walk in a room and be consumed by people’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, vibrations, I don’t know how to explain it – I just feel them. If I allowed myself to feel what I felt also, it was too much. For the past two years, I have been in a safe place to deal with me. I have not allowed myself to feel love through me in a very long time. I know that it started when I had a miscarriage over 10 years ago. I was terribly hurt by people, their words and my own inability to be able to grieve properly. It started a shutdown process. I started to eliminate the shutdown, but quickly had to go back into shutdown mode for various reasons, such as being ostracized by my church, an (ex) husband who was being a complete jerk, I got laid off from my job, I lost a friendship that meant a lot to me, and started a new church. That was a few…there is a lot more. All of this happened one after another, things just piled up and I was incredibly confused by a lot of this stuff.

I had to stop feeling.

All of this awakening has been incredibly painful but SO worth it. I am discovering how much I do love. I love people, I do. I have convinced myself for years that I don’t. I like the fact that I can find good in people, even though I need to be cautious with that. I would rather see the potential and possibly motivate them to get there. Those who are mean or nasty can help change me for the better. I have a choice to be bitter and angry or not allow their issues to be mine. That is an entirely different thing than righteous indignation or standing up against injustices in the world.

I love life.

There is so much treasure in this world. There are so many great things to ponder and experience, a lifetime is not enough. I know there are terrible, horrible things that happen in this world but I also see so many triumph over the tragedy in their lives. What was meant to destroy or break a person made them stronger and a powerful voice to encourage others. My prayer for people in those detestable, wretched situations would be that they come out with their voice loud and powerful, that their hearts would not be formed into bitterness or fear but that they would see their strength, value and fearlessness in them that they survived.

They are there to talk about it and help others.

I am just writing run on sentence after run on sentence. My mind is but a whirlwind of thought and I am not sure what I am trying to say. I feel the power of loving one another today. I feel the sensation of oneness with our world and with creation. I feel something that I have not allowed myself to feel in a very long time. I feel the light of the world that does not allow darkness to consume. I feel balance. I feel, I feel! I have no idea what tomorrow holds but I am not afraid of it. I do not know how anything will play out and in a way I comforted in that thought. I actually feel the peace of not knowing. If for a moment, I felt it. :-)

I would rather have that moment of feeling than never know of its existence.


 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/20/11

My Mechanisms for Self-Preservation

I have been thinking about the things I do to try to protect myself. Here are several of them that I thought through. I am sure I have more but this is what I came up with so far.

Constantly looking for data and patterns: I have gathered a lifetime of data, and in my mind, any behavior that closely resembles or relates to past experiences of hurt will trigger and tell me to be on guard and be prepared to be hurt.

Constantly analyzing myself: I analyze everything about myself, every negative or perceived negative comment about me has been stored and can be pulled up at any point in time. I use this to help me prepare for possible rejection or abandonment. If I know what is wrong with me, no one can surprise me, and then I will know why they are leaving or rejecting me.

Combing over words: I look up words and definitions and have since I was a child. Because I do not understand what people mean by body language and other cues, I have relied on their words and actions to be my source of understanding. The problem is that people still do not use words with their “proper” definition, and it is based on interpretation. A lot of the times, their actions do not align with their words, and this has caused me a lifetime of confusion. It also brought about the constant feeling of being wrong. I finally get it! There are always exceptions to the rules! Also, people give themselves license to do the exception when it’s convenient, but often judge others for breaking the same rules. I don’t understand it, but I get it.

Making rules: I have given myself strict rules to follow to protect myself. An example is when I became a Christian, I revamped my life completely. I stopped drinking, smoking, cussing, dancing (for a while, until I found churches with dance ministries), listening to secular music, and watching R-rated movies. I got rid of TV, I read nothing but the bible and Christian books. I stripped  myself of me completely so that I could stop myself from feeling. Movies, music, literature, books about science, poetry, and biographies that I read often made me feel. They made me think, they made me question and in order to protect myself from operating out of my perceived past identity of “Wrong Angel,” I adopted what I thought was “Right Angel”. The truth? I thought I could “fit in” if I could just pull it off. But I could not pull it off, so then I felt like a failure and went into more self-preservation.

Having rituals: Another form of trying to protect myself was creating a home with no chaos. I kept my apartment spotless and everything was perfect. Once I had kids, that was impossible and it made me a nervous wreck. It was the only thing I could control and it was out of control and was a constant reminder of failing. If the house was not cleaned and organized, I had failed at being a good housewife. I nearly drove myself to a nervous breakdown in our last house trying to keep it perfect. Let me just say having three toddlers, one on the autism spectrum who was not talking or feeding himself and having meltdowns all day, taking him to therapy, serving in three ministries, writing bible curriculum, and being emotional support to my mom, my husband and people at church nearly caused me to lose my mind. Not to mention no one listening to me about Daniel being autistic. AND my biggest worry was keeping a clean house? Yes, it was the only thing I could control. A clean and orderly house gives me peace of mind. However, I have learned that it just cannot happen right now. :-)

Saying it before anyone else can: My way of dealing was constantly pointing out what was wrong with me and how I failed before someone else could. This recently came to mind when a friend told me to stop with my “crazy” talk. I had called myself crazy quite a few times in an email and didn’t even realize it. That interaction made me realize how often I say negative things about myself that I don’t really even believe but I just say them so that no one else can. I am trying to protect myself from them saying it first. David has asked me throughout the years why I say certain things like that, but I have not had answers. I know that other people often say things negative about themselves to get positive reinforcement, like “Oh, I look so ugly” – they may just feel that way for the day and want someone to make them feel better. I do not say it for someone to make me feel better, I say it so they can’t say it to me! Because I can’t read them, I am unsure as to what they are going to say. So I automatically assume it will be negative. I then go over all the possible negatives and then say them out of protection. I don’t even feel that way about myself, I just don’t want to be surprised!!

I am gaining a lot of freedom here, and I sure hope others can relate to this as well.

My “Fix Me” story is not me directly at this time, it was the feeling of wanting to understand. I captured the desperation of giving up because the world was just too hard to understand. I did pray that often throughout my life but I believe I am receiving the answers to my prayers by making the choice to face this stuff. I believe I am being fixed by getting a whole new perspective on what “fixing” means. Being fixed is operating in your whole self. It also means dealing with all of the past hurts that have caused parts of you to hide away out of fear, build boundaries and rules out of fear, and form your own cage. It is a cage that locks away all of the greatness hidden inside of you that can help others and help them to walk in their wholeness too. We are not alone in our fears and we do not have to live in our own personal cages. We are free to face these hard fears and deal with the hurt in order to gain true pleasure.

If we are not willing to face the real hurt inside of us, how will we really know what joy is?


 

 

 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/20/11

Self-Preservation:Unlocking My Cage

I have a post in my drafts waiting, I am not sure I will ever share it but it helped me to see my patterns of protection. The title of the post is Fear of Abandonment. I would like to share the difference between fear of abandonment and fear of rejection.

Definition: The fear of abandonment is the persistent dread and extreme anxiety of the loss of someone or a group that is extremely valued and important to the individual.

Definition: The phobia and fear of rejection is defined as an irrational and abnormal anxiety about the possibility of being made to feel rejected. This might be feared during a variety of situations such as social gatherings or relationships. This phobia often affects individuals who have low self-confidence or low self-esteem.

The first one seems to manifest the latter. Being abandoned in any form, physically or emotionally, whether it was real or perceived, a root gets dug deep into the fears of one’s heart and mind. After a lifetime of having people continue to abandon you, it definitely will give just cause for fear of rejection, especially when you have no clue whatsoever as to why you are being abandoned or rejected. A person will begin to protect their true selves at all cost. The concrete slabs begin to fall with loud thunks at each moment of hurt. Gradually, the person you once were no longer exists and fear and the need for protection are your only source of survival.

For a very long time, I felt as though I was the only one feeling the fears.

Now I am seeing that many people all live with some sort of constant fear of something and a lot of them have the fear of abandonment. It is not isolated in humanity, it is not only the weak or fragile that have this fear. The difference is how the self-preservation manifests. We all operate out of fear differently, we all interpret differently. So here I am facing my fear of abandonment and in order to do so I have to unlock the cage of self-preservation that I have been surrounding myself with since I was a child. You know, I never lost myself – I only locked me away and several years ago it was the final straw that caused me to shut down memories of who I was and all that I enjoyed. I lost all hope in people. I lost trust completely and I could no longer allow it to happen again.

I was careful with my trust always.

Though, when I accepted someone I completely accepted them and would share freely…well, up to a point. Year after year and hurt after hurt, I still managed to have the walls surround. It is funny how this “fear facing” has manifested. I recently had an email interaction with my dad, and for the first time I realized that I was not wrong. He loves me, this I know, but he does not know me and he has never taken the time to get to know me. I do not know if this is out of the guilt or shame he has carried my whole life because of the things he has done or not done, or possibly how he feels in how he treated my mother. I don’t know if it is because I am a constant reminder of the woman that he loved and still loves but was unable to stop destructive behavior to be with her.

I don’t know. There could be a million reasons, but it doesn’t matter.

I am not bound to someone else’s rejection or abandonment. That is what I am working through, understanding that I do not need to fear that. It is not gone. I feel it, I fear it, but now I see it and I am understanding my triggers. My mind has collected every pattern and situation that actually was or perceived as abandonment. I have been abandoned and betrayed by family, friends, in relationships, and churches. And I know that others have been too and may not even realize why they have this fear. It could stem from a heartbreak, loss of a family member, even  by words, such as those suffering from depression having someone say “Well, others have it worse than you, so get over it,” or “Just focus on the good, it will all work out.” That is emotional abandonment, someone you are trusting and value has just devalued you and left you alone in your hurt.

For me, in order to understand all of this I have to process through writing.

I write stories and poems to process. In the last few months I have written quite a few and the other day I shared two of them that I have been sitting on and processing. I find it so funny when I start to process something and then connections just start to manifest. I want to share my process because possibly it could help someone – I hope it can. I wrote a story called Soon. The word soon for me has deep-rooted triggers from my childhood. My dad would say that to me and then would not fulfill the ever promised soon. It also represents  the constant promise from my mom, except her version is “We’ll see.” The majority of the time “We’ll see” meant “no” and “soon” meant “never.” Both of these statements can have the veiled hope of a promise or the lingering threat of never. There is no way to discern what it means. It is not concrete and therefore can leave someone with a pattern-thinking mind to start to gather evidence and data to see if it is yes or no.

It is so funny that the word has popped up several times for me lately.

I was already pondering the word “soon” when I watched a movie in which the main character used the word soon with a “friend with benefits.” It was clear that soon meant never. Also in the movie there was a scene where the main character’s love interest used “We’ll talk soon,” and it implied never because later you discover that they never saw each other again. It seemed to confirm my feelings of soon being another word for an evasive “No.” This for an Aspie mind can be very difficult to grasp. There is nothing concrete or understandable in words like that. I say that because a child on the autism spectrum may get upset with you if you use words like “soon”, “in a few minutes”, “in a little bit”, “later”, “we’ll see”…all of these are evasive and do not give clear, concrete time frames. These words and phrases cause anxiety in both adults on the spectrum and children.

I did not truly understand all of this until I wrote it out though.

The story helped me to process and face my fear of the word and the past scenarios. The same thing happened with the story Fix Me I have been writing that off and on for about a month. It is a culmination of various events in my life but I captured the feeling. In order for me to capture the feeling and face it, I have to understand what it is and why I feel it. I have had myself locked away for so long that I have forgotten how to feel. I stopped writing what I was feeling for a while and in 2009 when I started this blog I didn’t realize that I was trying to regain myself. This is the place where I have felt the freedom to be myself. I have shared more on this blog than I have with most people. I have slowly been working through things and expressing myself, and it is no wonder that I worked my way to having to face all of the things that I have written, but not fully understood emotionally.

When I wrote them before I had no true connection to it.

I have been writing to connect with me again, find out who I am and where I went and I didn’t even realize it. I preserved myself with the physical but gave freely here. My actual fear is fear of abandoning myself. If I face myself, what will I see? Well, you have been reading it. I have been afraid to feel and process all of this, and I have been associating my fear to others. Their rejection of me has been a lifetime of rejecting myself, abandoning who I am. I have used various means to protect myself, but when I thought I was protecting myself, I was actually causing me more harm and forming false opinions and ideas about myself. These are all falling away and I am starting to see through each new memory of my past through new eyes, what has been causing me fear. When we realize our fears, we have a choice, we can face it and conquer it or we can continue to allow it rule and reign.

Once I see it and realize my fear, I cannot let it reign no matter how painful it may be. I am a fighter. :-)


 

 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/17/11

“The Moon Is Reaching For Me”

I have many obsessions, I tend to have obsessions about movies and actors as well in my cycles. One cycle I have mentioned was Marilyn Monroe, I had almost every movie of hers, books, stamps, life size stand ups in my apartment, clock, calenders, posters framed they were all black and white and I thought it was the coolest thing ever in my apartment. My guy friends seemed to like it too. :-) But she is not the only one, though I did not collect as many items as I did with her I have had others where I collected books, picture books, movies, items like that with Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock along with a few billion others.

I tend to get a bit consumed.

I still love all of them along with several others but I do have an all time favorite and that would Audrey Hepburn. I adore her. I not only think that she is beautiful on the outside but she was an amazing woman with great character.  She had the most loving and caring heart. She did not seem to have the scandals as others did in her day. I know that she had great heart break also. She loved greatly, gave freely, and cherished this life very much based on things written and spoken about her along with her own words.

I am focusing on her today because she makes me smile.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. Audrey Hepburn

I love all of her movies, even those that are not all that great. One that I truly enjoy is Charade with Cary Grant, they were fabulous together. There are so many that she was in that had the best ever quotes and I wish I could gather all of them and write them all down but I do not have time for that. However, I can share a few, here are some grand quotes that I do adore. Smiling at you all today. :-)

 

Quotes from movies.

Sabrina (1954)

Thomas Fairchild: He’s still David Larrabee, and you’re still the chauffeur’s daughter. And you’re still reaching for the moon.

Sabrina Fairchild: No, father. The moon is reaching for me.

Charade (1963)

Reggie Lampert: Come in. I’ve got something that stings like crazy.

Alexander Dyle: You’re the kind of girl who’d have something like that.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Holly Golightly: We’re alike, me and cat. A couple of poor nameless slobs.

Roman Holiday (1953)

Princess Ann: At midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin and drive away in my glass slipper.

Joe Bradley: And that will be the end of the fairy tale.

Paris When It Sizzles (1964)

Richard: You really like it, don’t you.

Gabrielle: What?

Richard: Life.

Gabrielle: Oh! Every morning when I wake up and I see there’s a whole new other day, I just go absolutely ape!

Funny Face (1957)

Jo Stockton: I was taught that I ought not expose my inner senses…

That is all I can do for now. I will leave you with some clips.

Moon River Clip

Charade Clip (I love this movie, oh just go watch it!)


 


 

 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share
08/16/11

We Have Been Warned

Several weeks ago when David and I were having some intense conversations until we reached an understanding for both of us, it was a bit much for the kids. They all seemed a bit stressed and unsure of what was going on because David and I were talking all the time. I was worn out and would shutdown and then would cry. It was a lot. Daniel fixated on his toys and would try to distract us by asking the same questions over and over or turning on things in the house that he knows he is not supposed to. Joshua fixated on Lego’s not much different from everyday but he did add an element of wanting us to stop talking and build with him and would ask over and over again.

Ariel watched and listened.

She would play but would have her eyes on us and her ears open. She was listening to every single word we said. The thing about our kids is that if they think something is wrong or if they feel we are talking in the wrong way, they will say it. They will ask what do we mean and why are we saying that. We both talked to them telling them that we had things we needed to work through, we have been as honest as possible with what you can with a 5 year old and two 6 year olds. They got upset with us several nights during this time because we were “too loud”. I was asked why I was yelling. I wasn’t yelling in my mind. I don’t like yelling so I am usually sensitive to it. David gets loud too but he does that when he is happy, excited or upset, we are all used to that.

He and Joshua do not have an awareness of their volume.

It has only been brought to my attention in this past year that I get loud. There was another time when something happened and David and I were having a discussion, I don’t remember what it was about and apparently I was loud. So basically to others I am yelling but to me I am still talking in a normal voice. I remember when I used to yell and these times recently are not yelling to me at all. I am just involved, excited, upset but I associate yelling with anger. I have not been angry much, but when I was I stopped talking. David and I do not yell at each other, even our “discussions” are truly that we do not get into heated arguments.

There are no personal attacks or digs.

I can be a smart butt at times but so can he and if we make each other upset, “well sorry and move on”. It’s pointless to waste time on things like that. I am sure that people would not get our arguing, it is normally data based and analytical. We have always tried to find a resolution not discuss emotion. That is why I think it was so worrisome to the kids because this last round had emotions involved, that made it more intense. It threw me because I was not used to David responding in certain ways and I also felt not heard. Once we came to an understanding things have been much more settled. We are dealing with our issues on our own and trying to keep it calm for the kids.

But this brings me to our warning.

Paint Warning

I heard Ariel one night in the front room, I wasn’t sure what was going on but I had that mom feeling that something was wrong. I went in and saw the brown paint lines on the wall. I was in the middle of making dinner so I told her to go talk to David about what she had done and why. He asked her why she painted on the wall here is the conversation:

David: Ariel why did you paint on the wall?

Ariel: It is a warning.

David: A warning for what? For us to stop talking?

Ariel: Yes. I don’t like it when you guys talk.

Normally it would not be an issue if we talked.

She did not like the way were talking. She also shared that when she thought I was yelling (which to me I was not) she saw the word “happy” in the color orange and it would melt. The letters would start to fall and then would be gone. I am very happy that she feels that she can talk to us and even express herself, I would rather it not be on the wall though. Frankly, I don’t care much about that, I would rather her do what she needs to if she doesn’t have words then to hold it in and get confused or worse yet do what I did and blame herself.

She also made something else very clear.

She told us that she no longer wanted to hear us talk like that in front of her and from now on “You need to just email each other”. It has been too confusing and upsetting for her to try to figure what we are talking about and what it all means. We have listened to our warning. It makes it better though that David is letting me do what I need to work through things. Unfortunately, for him some things he is dealing with has to go on the back burner but that is how it works. Sometimes I have to be settled for the kids and then other times he has to be settled for the kids. My stuff seems to be over-pouring right now.  It seems one onion peel opens up another whole grand layer I have forgotten about. Some good and some not so good. We may not be doing everything right but we are trying.

I do feel good about our kids feeling that they can express themselves and they know we are honest with them.


 

Be the first to like.
Unlike
Share