Tuesday, September 22, 2009

COMMITTED TO LOVING

For over a week I went through a lot of stress, which stretched my emotions to the breaking point, but only enough for me to shed tears, not enough to lose any sanity, or even any sleep. Stress, as it will do, caused me to change. Change is always welcome.

This week I was rejected for having changed. I was laughed at...ridiculed. Since the person choosing to do that was my favorite person I went into an emotion whirlwind, shaken to my core.

I have survived. I have bid goodbye to that person. I accepted the pain and it didn't kill me. I reeled from it for a bit, and it altered my sense of reality and self. But I am a better person as a result. Given the choice to lower the esteem in which I hold someone else, or lowering my self esteem, the other party loses every time. I live the opposite of the way I was raised to live. Pride and fear can take a flying leap.

I would love to say this has never happened before, but that is not true. I have cared for many people and held them in high regard, only to lose respect for them as they treated me as less than worthy of respect. I view respect as a healthy fear of loss. Once someone treats me poorly and then laughs at me, I lose any fear of loss I have. I would rather be away from that person. I say goodbye.

Healthy people laugh with one another, not at one another. They talk to one another, not at one another. Once I am treated as an inanimate object and told to negate my own emotions, I do whatever needs to be done to get free of that relationship. There are no exceptions.

Abuse comes in many forms. I choose not to enable it.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

BREAK TIME

I'm stuck.

That happens sometimes. It's as if the wheel of life has stopped and the gears simply aren't meshing and turning at the moment. It's akin to being perched at the top of a Ferris wheel, waiting for the ride to begin again. While I am here, I take the time to look around me and settle back to review my day, and if stuck long enough, my life.

In recent months, I have begun a number of things, a book, a craft/sewing project/ learning to play a keyboard, but I have not continued on. There was a time years ago when I wasn't able to finish things that interested me, as if I didn't deserve such things...but I got past that so long ago that I have accomplished a great deal more than I ever thought I would.

But right now I am stuck.

I've gone through so many changes lately, I sometimes feel like a character in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I love the result of all of the changes, and have no regret at all. But I am stuck!

Making decisions and following through has cleared confusion out of my life often. I would like to go forward and follow my creative urges. Instead I keep coming across blocks, so I spend time purging things that are in my way, rather than creating new things. I can be grateful the blocks that come up now are things outside of me, and not created from any lack of esteem. It simply feels odd to be changing what I do and who I relate to at such a rapid rate.

As I sit here writing, a light goes off. I have grown. I have outgrown situations and even people that were once very helpful to me. The same things that helped the wheel to turn are now blocking it from turning! Amazing.

Perhaps I am stuck for a good reason. In a life centered in love, there are times we need to slow our pace a little to allow room for those we love to either part with us, or decide to come along as we continue in our growth. To honor the proess, we need to pause and reflect on what has come before, to be able to release it. The wheel only turns in one direction. There is no reverse.