Tag: fear

Time flies

I just realized that this order expires this coming Thursday… who would have thought I would long to be forced to stay at home?

I have been so delightfully productive with my time, and so emotionally healthy because of it all lately…, I want to keep it up a while longer, I believe.

I have more to accomplish before I am ready to release myself on the normal world again.

At the very least, I suppose I had better get to work on a few specific things already this weekend, then, if I want to be sure they’re handled before outing life begins anew…

Mmhmm…

Post-a-day 2020

Music of the night

I have started another song.

But this one is quite different from the other five so far.

This one…, well, this one has asked me to write it.

I don’t know how else to explain it.

I had asked, “Well, what do I write next?”

I already had an answer: I was going to continue along the same mental path that four of my songs had been following already – the silly path of almost love-life that I recently had.

But then, just before bed one night, before I had begun in my next song, a bought came to me… it was not particularly comfortable or desirable, so I allowed it to be merely a thought among many, and I let it go.

The next night, the thought returned, but it brought a couple or few phrases with it… They were so strong that, thought I had let them all go, when they kept coming back over and over again as I tucked myself into bed, I got back out of bed, and I wrote them down.

There, I seemed to say, Now you can let go of this idea, and move on to other things.

But it kept pressing the next day, when more lines came to mind.

I loyally added them to the page.

Then things happened… things that connected to this song idea, but that had happened on their own, from outside sources… a phone call from a friend, and something mentioned in that conversation… and action from me that seemed to have no spark of origin, but that, in a way, connected deeply with the topic of this song… and then, as I went to add another line that was pressing my brain, an unexpected phone call received, and, somehow, the exact topic brought up…

I am not scared, exactly… there just is likely to be little room for error on this song… and there will be lots of room for judgment… on this song, I am not only writing to share music, but to make a difference for others by sharing… I do not want other people’s potential resulting opinions of me to dissuade me from doing a spectacular job of that.

Yes, I want this to be inspiring and relieving for those who need it most.

For those who do not need it, I want it to help them to think twice about those in their life who just might be needing it right now, or who might have needed it st some point, but who did not get it then.

Yeah… I think that’s it… that’s the goal of this song.

And it feels heavy…

God, help me carry this weight – I want to carry it to its next stop, and hand it off.

Post-a-day 2020

So, pain…

What is it about pain that, when given to us, we so terribly want to give it back?

It is like when we purchase something from the store, but then we discover, upon arriving home, that it is actually spoilt… we take it back to the shop, saying, “Pardon me, but this is utter rubbish, and I want to return it, thanks.”

Except, at the shop, they’re likely to accept the return…

With pain, we do not do well receiving the dish without a strong desire to dish it back – perhaps not immediately, but, eventually, we always seem to want to throw it back into the server’s face: How dare you serve me such poison?!

Is it something about our experience of being so terribly unloved, that we feel we must somehow prove that we are worthy of being loved…?

Or that we are so afraid of being hurt even more, that we feel a need to put a hard shell forward and attack, showing strength that we hardly have… all just to cover up our degree of pain…?

Are we afraid to acknowledge what we might have done to be not true to our highest selves, such that someone was even able to cause us pain in the first place…, and so we avoid looking inward, and throw it all outward and back to its source instead…?

Are we embarrassed that we weren’t enough of something… to have the pain to have been avoided…?

Is it that we feel we are worth so much more than being treated as we were, but we don’t know how to show it…?

Do we really want someone else to experience the suffering we experience in life?

Plus, if we all seem to want to return pain for pain, would not the person who inflicted the pain on us in the first place have received his or her own dish of pain from somewhere else beforehand, thereby propelling him or her forward to continue the pain?

When we are angry at someone, it can seem impossible to ‘turn the other cheek’, as we were all told growing up…, to offer up yet another place for the person to inflict pain on us…

But, what if we consider someone we love dearly, perhaps more than we love ourselves…?

What if this person were hurting us…, and what if we knew this person’s extreme suffering that induced the outward actions of hurting us…?

In such a situation, I believe it would be somewhat easy to offer my other check… Go on, hit me – I know you need to do that right now…, and I am here for you, however you may need.

In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the monster says that his outward evil actions are the result of his intense suffering.

“I am malicious because I am miserable.”

My heart ached for the poor creature, as he told his tale of woe, and how humans had been so dreadful to him, simply because they were afraid of him, and how they gave him no chance… they gave him no love of any kind…

What could happen if we approached all of our own pains inflicted from the outside in this way?

Would we no longer be longing to throw it back at the giver, but, instead, be aching to help ease the giver’s intense wounds of the heart that had him or her do us harm in the first place?

When I think of my own desire to cause pain to those who have hurt me, it is intense pain that propels the desire… how must people be suffering, if they are dishing out pain so freely and actively?

How lonely they might be…

Funny… (and by funny, I mean something else, of course) I suddenly find myself wanting to go hold and hug and comfort the person who last hurt me, to apologize… for what?… for my desire to make him suffer…, for any role I played – that I believe I played – in hurting him some already, though very differently than I was hurt…, for every thought of ill will I have had toward him…, for all the pain he must be in to have hurt me as he did… and I want him to experience being loved truly and cared for, to experience that he is not only worth it, but absolutely enough just as he is…

Yes.

Wow.

And then, another comes to mind… I am not by any means at a point of actually wanting to do this myself, but I can see how much that person must have been lacking in love – how miserable that person must be, in some level within, whether aware of it or not – in order to cause such misery to others, to me… it is almost heartbreaking…

Just, wow…

Okay.

I think I have found my new mentality to practice in life right now… how to offer up my whole self and never be hurt, by bringing love to the table… patience and pure, true, and free love.

Like free hugs… only better.

Like Michael Jackson’s constant serenade to me as a child, we can heal the world, make it a better place for you and for me and the entire human race…

I’ll start with my little corner, and see what happens… hopefully, we light the world on fire with this love, it will be so profound, so powerful… so true.

Post-a-day 2020

Phew!

Okay, yay – this is exactly what I have wanted and needed these past several weeks.

I wanted a more definitive feel for the situation, and I now have it.

Sure, I totally cried really hard for a while, but it was what I was wanting… truly.

Now, I’m clear that it isn’t happening and that it isn’t meant to be (for now, anyway, but that’s good enough for me to be at ease about it).

I said what I felt I needed to say to let it go, and I am starting to be filled with this feeling of breathing deeply, and as though I hadn’t experienced such breathing for ages, somehow.

Ha.

It really is nice to breathe…

And, though it is an extreme disappointment that things are not working out as I had hoped, even wished, I have full faith in the World, in the Universe, in God… there is absolutely something better on the horizon.

This was an opportunity for me to learn, and I definitely have learned much from it… definitely.

(And I do not mean just a bunch of surface-level nonsense, but true and deep insight into myself and who and how I want to be and when and how I can be at my best, and what that means in terms of the people who are around me [on many levels] and the relationships and interactions we all have with one another.)

Yes, this has been quite valuable.

And I am so grateful to be able to let go now of the stress I was building within me because of it all…

Yes, it is lovely to begin to breathe freely again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Post-a-day 2020

Don’t do it

You know, I swear, alcohol makes me stupid.

I was fine…. fine…, but then l, give me one single, not very strong margarita, and I suddenly lose all powers of sanity.

I had been doing very well focusing mentally on unflattering photos of this guy, and combining them with the fact that he doesn’t check in on me anymore, and it was becoming easier and easier to let go of the idea of him… rather, to let go of him, and just to have fun with the idea he had inspired within me…, because the idea is still there, but I have somewhat run away with it, knowing that it is likely to be only an idea…, so I have been having fun with the idea, since I can’t have fun with him.

Anyway, he finally wasn’t taking up 90% of my conscious thoughts anymore… perhaps it was down to about 30%, and they didn’t affect me near so much as they had before.

I thought I was actually letting go of him, and that I was okay with it.

Then, with some alcohol in my system, what do I do?

Suddenly start thinking about him, wondering how he is doing, knowing I have been working actively to stay out of it, yet fully aware that I still want to know…, and so I send him a message to check in…, because I really do want to know.

And then, later on, after, of course, no reply – as was expected – my thoughts are stuck around him all over again… and I find myself miserable and on the point of tears because of how much I really wanted this whole thing to work out for us.

That, and I really just want a long hug from someone who loves me…or maybe just to be held and petted for a few hours… much like how my friend’s cat snuggles with me whenever I am over there, no shame in wanting to be intertwined with me, while lying on top of me, and demanding rubbing, too…

Yeah…

Anyway, to sum up, alcohol made me feel stupid tonight, but it also made me realize that I was more avoiding my emotions than actually handling them… I’m not sure at present how to proceed, but I’ll just let myself sit in this for now, and see how tomorrow feels when I get there.

Post-a-day 2020

Which one did you want??

“Turn on your video for a minute…,” I hear from the guy who, not quite 30 seconds beforehand, had entered the shopping aisle.

I turn and see him holding the phone up, clearly FaceTiming with someone, displaying the products in front of him, “Which one do you want? These are TAMPAX… I don’t know which one you want.”

I smile heartily, enlivened by his comfort in asking for help, and his lack of embarrassment at the situation as a whole… he is not opposed to admitting he does not know, nor is he opposed to learning how to help.

“Unscented… super plus,” I hear come from the phone in a woman’s voice.

Wow… I never would have even thought to say ‘unscented’… I don’t even want to think about what scented tampons means… eww…

I look over again, and see the guy pointing the phone in very much the wrong direction – I happen to have just been looking at the exact product he is now seeking, so I know at a glance where it is – and so I smile again, and walk over and point out the right box for him, “It’s this one.”

With delight and gratitude, he takes notice, and grabs the box I’ve pointed out to him, saying a genuine thank-you to me, and saying, somewhat disappointedly, that he really doesn’t know all this.

“Unless she wants the Pearl…, in which case it’s this one,” I add as I point to a different box, placed elsewhere on the wall of products, recalling that most people seem to prefer the plastic applicators.

“Oh(!)…”. He holds the phone in front of the second box and asks, “Do you want Pearl?”

She confirms that she does, and he confirms what he is going to purchase, then he thanks me again, mentions again about really not knowing this, and thanks me one final time before departing the aisle.

I am smiling so hard, that was such a fun and comfortable and fulfilling exchange for me.

As I turn back to the organic section I had been perusing-slash-evaluating, an older lady is pushing a cart toward me from that end of the aisle.

She says to me, “What a good guy,” chuckling loudly, and we both share a few moments of laughter and smiles.

I wonder at her comment, not because I disagree with with, but because I imagine that she and I have different views on the situation as a whole.

The biggest part for me was that this guy wasn’t embarrassed to be on the aisle – he just happened to be on an aisle with which he wasn’t acquainted, like if I asked someone who doesn’t know about yarns to pick up some Artiste size ten mercerized cotton crochet thread for me, and sent him or her into a yarn shop or art supply store… it’s just a lot of new information that could take a long while to sort out.

But there’s no need to embarrassment at not knowing how to find the exact product I’ve requested.

Such was the case with this guy, and I really appreciated it.

Yes, I think it would be lovely for men to take the time – and women to take the time with them – to learn about feminine hygiene products, especially the ones that their significant others use, and why they use them, as well as what versions of them the women use and why.

Nonetheless, I think this situation today is an example of a good start for such a conversation, and it shows promise for society in moving to a place of comfort with feminine hygiene products and menstruation… we have a long way to go, I dare say, but I feel so much transformation already from these past ten-ish years – especially the past few years. – and how the younger generations are already approaching and addressing menstruation rather openly, both among women and in sharing more with men, talking about things that are so, and not letting the presence of men in a group stop them from sharing (e.g. ‘Hang on… I need to go put a tampon in before we start,’ or, ‘Today was crazy at work: right at we started our morning meeting, I started my period…’).

Keep it up, folks… keep sharing and keep learning… all of us, yeah?

Yeah. 😉

Post-a-day 2020

Take it off

I found out yesterday that The Full Monty is not just a film, but also a stage play and a stage musical.

(!!!)

Did you see that???

The Full Monty

!!!!!!

And I kind of really want to see a production of it now….

No, I have never really been interested in any Chippendales activities (though I did have a blast* with both Magic Mike films, it wasn’t really for the reasons one might expect).

But, I think the fact that this film (and show, I guess – it wouldn’t be that different, right?) is about a group of goofy married (I think most of them are married, anyway) men who decide they can outdo and outshine (or at least end up comparable enough to earn some cash) traditional fit and sexy Chippendales performers… somehow…., and they go through this whole development and growth and transformation of outlook and spirit of life…., and it is just a lovely and totally silly and fun story, following these guys and feeling their emotions with them, and, especially, joining in their delighted terror and triumph as they actually pull themselves together and perform their show… just wow…

So, yeah, I want to be cheering on those guys in life.

I think it would be a really funny and silly and fun and empowering and inspiring show to see… because live is a whole ‘nother experience from a Hollywood film. 😀

No editing available on a live stage, so you can feel the extra layer of struggle within the actors, in addition to the struggle within the characters the actors play.

So good…, if it is done well, that is… and I hope it is done well… 🙂

*The first was amazing, because I went on a new friend date with a guy from my dormitory where I had just moved in Germany… we had agreed we both wanted to go see a film in the theatre to practice our German, and Magic Mike was almost finished showing in theatres in Germany, so I kind of wanted to see what the fuss had been all about back in the US while I suddenly had the chance again… so, I asked him if that film was okay, because it was playing in 45 minutes at the theatre in town… there was a hit of back-and-forth about ‘Why this movie’, and I believe I convinced him with the fact that it was likely to have less difficult dialogue to follow, combined with the fact that it was just plain crazy for us to go see that film in particular… to practice our German…, as two disinterested-in-dating opposite-gendered people… So, that was great – I understood maybe 5-15% of the actual words said, though I still got the gist of the story.

The second time, I was at a girlfriend’s apartment while her best friend was in town to visit… they discovered that I hadn’t seen the second film, and declared that I must see it now…, so we put it on, and they whooped and hollered, and I giggled along with them…, but, what I noticed most, and what delighted me most, was the dancing… I could hardly wait to see the dancing, and just the opening dance scene in the workshop blew my mind happy – the creativity of the dance, as well as all the other dances in that film, due to their creativity and smooth execution, were just mind-blowingly fabulous…. such a great film… and I kind of understood the plot of it, too, like the first film.

Plus, I have always had a crush on Channing Tatum, so it was lovely to see him working through struggles as a smart, extremely capable man in both films…, and it was even cooler that he was a man who had true rhythm and could dance… and then even cooler cooler that it was all based out of his own story of being smart in life… just awesome, man. ❤

Post-a-day 2020

The pressures of production

So, I just did this for productivity tonight:

I felt a need to do something tangible… as though the list of today’s accomplishments weren’t already long enough (Trust me: It is long enough already.).

It is called an anti-stress coloring book.

Just like the rest of its kind, though, it stressed me out with all the details.

So, I went for how I really felt.

And I actually like it a lot better this way…

Sigh…

Do you ever feel tired of being productive? Like stressed out about it, I mean…

I have been so productive the past couple weeks or so, I feel that I now have the pressure of a standard I have set to be very high…

For example, this past week, I discovered song-writing, right?

I wrote three songs, one right after the other, spending about two days on each, beginning last Friday.

By this Friday, I felt sick about writing songs, because I felt this huge standard weighing on me suddenly, in the form of ‘another week means another two or three songs’.

And I just felt like I would fail, which has made the pressure even worse…

(Plus, on that topic in particular, when I even begin to revisit writing a song now, I grow instantly annoyed with the fact that nothing feels real – feelings and emotions from within myself – except my worried, upset, annoyed, and longing-for thoughts in relation to this guy I DON’T EVEN KNOW…. [Like seriously, I barely know him, and getting to know him better has not been going very well… he seems way less interested in getting to know me now than he did at the start…] Can I get over this already, please, so that I can return to my regular set of absurd emotions?… I can totally handle crazy, but it needs to be my crazy, not whatever these past three weeks or whatever have been… exhausting is what they have been, and I’m tired of it…)

So, I feel all this pressure continuously popping up to hang around for a while – maybe even a long while – and to make me feel like snuggling up and crying into a large stuffed animal in my bed – because we all know that I have no person with whom to do this – and sleeping the world away for a while…, I love being productive, but it has somehow become more like a contest against myself, and I very much dislike it – it is not empowering for me… just stressful, and it makes me want to give up and run away…

So, yeah… that’s about where I stand tonight… sigh… and I don’t particularly want to do anything to turn the emotions positive right this minute – I just want to be heard (because, again, we all know there is no one out there calling to see how my day went, and to wish me a lovely night’s sleep tonight).

Post-a-day 2020

Waltzing with trauma

Yesterday, a friend shared a recording of a waltz he sang.

It was lovely and inspiring.

I danced around my living room, true form and moves and everything; I felt it all through my back, that fabulous stress of tension that looks just glorious in the posture while waltzing… and I loved it.

And, while I was doing it, at one point, as I stumbled mentally on certain moves, I had the thought – the kind of thought that is more of an all-encompassing feeling and experience than it is actual words in my brain – of wanting to dance with a specific individual, as it would be so much easier if I were just waltzing with him.. it always was so easy to waltz with him…

It was a thought that made me open my eyes wider… it made me want to consider, but not too hard… for the moment, I would dance, and just set the thought to the side, and allow myself to return to it later on, so that I could enjoy my waltzing for the moment.

Today, listening to a faster waltz – a Viennese waltz – I found myself thinking again on how easy it always was, and therefore nice, to waltz with that same person who had come to mind yesterday…

I had, yesterday, found discomfort in my thoughts, via a slight worry that I actually would put myself back into interactions with this person – a person who hurt me terribly – , and thereby degrade my terrible experiences and all the feelings associated with them… kind of like just ignoring that they ever happened…

And that would feel like a disservice to myself, and a denial of my own value – for it was terrible, because I deserved and deserve so much better than the treatment I had been given – and I don’t want that to happen.

Yet, tonight, as those same thoughts arose again upon consideration of the somewhat surprising desire (?) to dance with him, I asked myself if there were something beyond that concern… What if that weren’t an issue? Is there something else to be noticed about this current scenario?

And there was, as it happens.

Just as I have said lately, and have very recently not so much discovered, but begun truly to acknowledge as being so within my own life, people are more than their good deeds or their bad deeds…. also, the good do not negate the bad, and the bad do not negate the good of an individual.

Said differently, if someone does loads of amazing things, and then does one bad thing, that one bad thing does not erase all the good things… and the reverse is true, as well, with one good thing not erasing all the bad things an individual has done.

What is the case, however, is that each action can stand for itself… a good deed can be taken as a good deed, a bad as a bad, and the one does not have to affect the other.

So, applied here, the terrible string of events and everything that happened because of that individual does not mean I need to feel guilty or worried or paranoid about wanting to waltz with him… I enjoyed waltzing with him, because he was good at waltzing… period.

And, just because I want to waltz with him, does not mean I am excusing him of all of the terrible he gave to me and my life, or even than I am saying it wasn’t a whole lot of terrible (because it certainly was a whole lot of terrible).

It simply means that, despite all the terrible, there was good, and I valued and still do value that good – in this case, the waltzing.

So, yeah… there’s that to think on for a while, I suppose.

Post-a-day 2020

Struggle Bus

Boy, has this weekend been giving me a run for my money… oh, wait… I don’t really have any money….

Well, it has certainly made me feel like I am slowly falling to pieces via a slow and painful inward collapse from anger, frustration, and helplessness…

And I know everything will be great and more than fine, and I am great and more than fine, and everything else hopeful and positive in my life will be amazing… I know all of that.

Nonetheless, I am having lots of emotions hit me pretty hard this weekend.

An escape to the forest and mountains would be spectacular right now… some nature would be good for me, instead of a house in the middle of a city with all of its parks closed for the time being…

Anyway, I haven’t got that option.

But it was nice to visualize it for a few moments…

Perhaps I’ll just go to sleep somewhat early again tonight.

I slept really hard and well last night, and for eleven hours – clearly I was lacking in sleep.

Now, we shall see if tonight’s rest will help me tomorrow…

Time for some more meditation and reading, and then I shall pray for healing through sleep.

Wishing you all well,

Peace

Hannah

Post-a-day 2020