Archives for category: more than a little bit of bitching
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Embracing Change

May 12, 2015 //
0

I am contemplating change this morning, over my coffee. My coffee is quite good, and my sleep was restful, although I woke feeling the night was somehow too short. Pleasant easy mornings often find me sifting through the mental miscellany before the day gets going, and lately I am often considering tasks and projects associated with moving from one residence to another.

It's a process.

It’s a process.

Change, this morning, is ‘about’ the move more than it is about most other things, but the move is also a metaphor for change in general, and the necessity to bring my will to life in order to take advantage of the power of change. I find these loops of thought very pleasing, and taking time to appreciate the living metaphor helps me learn life’s lessons more comfortably, keeping me on the path of becoming the woman I most want to be.

There are verbs involved - and it is not possible to see what is around the next bend.

There are verbs involved – and it is not possible to see what is around the next bend.

So, this morning I am sipping my coffee and considering things that have yet to be done, and using the process of moving to bring order to chaos, to shore up the foundation of my contentment, and to improve on the way I life my values, and invest in a positive experience day-to-day.

Sometimes it seems a lot of work, and I'm not sure I'm on the right path...

Sometimes it seems a lot of work, and I’m not sure I’m on the right path…

A pause for writer trivia…I touch type. It’s a handy skill, and relying on muscle memory instead of looking at the keys allows me to type pretty fast. Interestingly [to me], I have the most damnable time hitting the ‘ – ‘ key. I often find myself having to light the keyboard to go find the damned thing. It’s most peculiar, particularly after actively and accurately touch-typing for so many years…except for the dash. Yep. That generally comes up as a ‘0’, ‘9’, or ‘=’ two or three times before I finally pause to look down, at least once a day. 🙂

There are obstacles. Distractions. Sideshows.

There are obstacles. Distractions. Sideshows.

I’m eager to get on with moving and get it out of the way. I don’t actually like the upheaval associated with moving, and I’m concerned how it will affect me until I am settled in. The concern itself causes me concern on top of that – does the concern hold the potential to make the stress of the move harder to take? Is being more aware of the effect change has on me more likely to make it easier to manage? I am aware, fussing within the quiet of my thoughts, that the answer to all those questions and concerns is held within the practices I practice – most particularly practices of mindfulness, self-compassion, and good basic self-care. There are verbs involved. The eagerness dances an interesting emotional tango with my chaos and damage, affording me numerous opportunities to practice practices and to plan. I like planning, it feels like a secure foundation on which to build change.

Sometimes the journey seems endless...and I have to remind myself that the journey is the destination.

Sometimes the journey seems endless…and I have to remind myself that the journey is the destination.

This morning, my thoughts pause like butterflies in a vast meadow before moving on to the next flower. Books. Paintings. Porcelain. Clothes. I think about apartment living, and how precious ‘space’ really is, and how I enjoy the luxury of space between things and room to move, and  how I dislike the clutter that seems to creep in over time. I consider how to best make use of what I have, to minimize the likelihood that I will react to the stress of moving by behaving like I need to ‘have more’. Meditation helps with that one, by quenching the shopping jones. Success requires the will to practice, and to practice more – I find it doesn’t work nearly as well unless the practice itself is committed, genuine, and authentically heartfelt and real. Your results may vary. There are verbs involved. There is definitely a prerequisite that I bring with me the will to change.

It is worth investing in me, and learning to thrive in difficult circumstances.

It is worth investing in me, and learning to thrive in difficult circumstances.

This morning the real theme is that making good choices, and building the beautiful life I want and enjoy, requires that I know what I want in a fairly clear and reasonably specific way. I don’t run from practicing practices – practice is what it takes – but I wholly dislike re-doing things that were done poorly the first time, or handled poorly due to lack of forethought or planning. So…I think, and I plan. 🙂 It’s a nice way to enjoy my coffee in the morning, and wake up to a day in which I am active in the process of fulfilling my fondest desires.

However endless the challenges seem, I choose my perspective, I choose my behavior, and I direct my will; my choices matter.

However endless the challenges seem, I choose my perspective, I choose my behavior, and I direct my will; my choices matter.

It’s a lovely morning to good basic self-care. It’s a pleasant day to enjoy the woman I am, right now, and all the good qualities I offer the world. It’s a worthwhile day to make eye-contact and share smiles – my fellow-man is also on a journey of discovery, headed somewhere of their own choosing, each and every one. It’s a nice day to see the world.

Each destination reached is the first step on another journey, and the horizon is limitless.

Each destination reached is the first step on another journey, and the horizon is limitless.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Spring

Some Days the Nightmares Win

March 27, 2015 //
1

Disclaimer: This post is about emotions. I sometimes work through them more easily with words, in text, that I can see reflecting the experience back at me. It is a way of getting perspective. This post, though, may be a downer – I say that before I even write it, because I am having my own experience, and I feel what I feel in this moment. I am so very human. So…do yourself a huge favor, take a moment for ‘informed consent’; if you are in a place emotionally where someone else’s pain and struggling may wound you, throw off a good vibe you are enjoying, or change your experience for the worse, I recommend skipping this one. Hey, if nothing else, the writing is likely to be of poor quality, and angst-y, and rife with spelling errors and weird grammar fails – who needs that on a Friday morning? I’ll understand, I promise.

Still here? Okay…

Some other morning, a coffee.

Some other morning, a coffee.

I woke crying this morning. I fell asleep crying last night. In between, I found myself ambushed by Demons in The Nightmare City. This is not an emotional space I want to occupy. I am frustrated by my lack of resilience, my lack of emotional regulation, and my lack of perspective. I feel sad. I feel angry. I feel resentful and let down. I feel. Yeah. I definitely feel. I feel mistreated, and mislead. I feel set up and I feel sabotaged. I feel hurt.

“That’s a whole lot of feelings there, lady, what gives?” I’m a human primate. I am an emotional being more than a rational one – it’s a balance. Today it isn’t balancing as well as I’d like. Stress kicks my ass, being hurt kicks my ass, abrupt change kicks my ass – and it takes me a little time to recover, even with some support. Emotions are not criminal actions. Assaulting people with them is, I hear, avoidable. That sounds like fine thing to me, and I turned the little sign on my door this morning to ‘do not disturb’, meditated a while, had a shower, meditated some more… I still don’t want to be as disturbed as I feel, right now. The sign didn’t do much to help with the feelings, but by design it may prevent anyone else from walking through the mess I woke to, within, this morning.

Meditation, mindfulness practices, good basic self-care are all going a long way to improve my experience of me, very nicely. I feel a momentary hurt, recalling with sadness how quickly encouragement turned to criticism, a few months after I began this journey. I was taking a moment to feel proud of my progress, and I was feeling pretty impressed with new tools and practices being effective at helping me on a level nothing else ever had… I got called ‘smug’. I was incredibly hurt. Admittedly, I had been foolishly trying to explain or share the experience with someone else… maybe they hadn’t asked? (I suck at that – put a person in front of me and I will probably just start talking. Are you aware that your executive function manages that for you?) It hurt, nonetheless, and since then I am self-conscious about feeling encouraged by progress, and reluctant to share positive feelings about it in conversations. (Sticks and stones? Fuck right off; words matter.)

I feel confused. “Emptied out”. I feel overburdened by unmet emotional needs piling up over time. I feel like I am not making the progress I could be, right now. It’ll be okay, I think – I hold on to that tightly. I’ve got the hotline number in my pocket, just in case it gets too hard.  I lost a beautiful niece to suicide this year, and I see how it hurts my cousin every day she is without her daughter; I won’t put my traveling partner through that, and I can take the steps to avoid it. Despair is a motherfucker – it is part of our human experience.

...and another...

…and another…

I can’t be certain that the intensity of my emotions this morning reflects something ‘real’ or necessary; they are only emotions. For all I know, this is a 100% bio-chemical experience with no grounding in events or experience. Does that matter in the moment? Well, sure. It matters the way anything true ‘matters’. One true thing is that my emotions are this intense, and unpredictably so. Another true thing is that my emotions, and lack of top-down control, are incredibly uncomfortable for some people to live with. (I don’t get a choice, myself; this is my experience and I live it.) Unfortunately, in a live and unscripted real-life environment, I also don’t get much compassion specific to the ‘invisible’ issues associated with my TBI or PTSD. I rarely fight for it; if it isn’t there to be offered, begging for it, pleading for it or wishing it were there will not make it appear. Compassion can be taught – but that phenomenon also requires an active learner. Change is, but forcing it on someone isn’t appropriate – and generally isn’t effective.

My traveling partner encourages and supports me – he frankly provides a level of emotional support that I can only describe as ‘super human’ – but the environment in the household, generally, is unhealthy for me. I feel aggravated and moody about looking for a place of my own, because I’d honestly prefer to continue living with my traveling partner – he’s wonderful to live with [for me]. I am painfully aware, though, that living with me can be hard on him. Right now so much of what I am working through touches on sexuality, gender, individual identity, boundary setting/management, and relationships with others that it’s harder to treat each other gently in moments when we need it most from each other. So…yeah. I need to be on my own a while – not a break up, not even a separation, just a different living arrangement. It still sucks to hurt over it. I hope by day’s end I am embracing it in good spirits.

I leave other household members out of this, generally; I am writing about my own experience and the other people in it are entitled to be free of public scrutiny of their values and choices filtered through my chaos and damage. But…I am not willing to continue to over-compromise my needs, or undercut my values to keep peace, and the time I spend in the arms of my loves is too precious to taint it with OPD, or games. As a population of individuals, we don’t want or need the same things, and at 52 I have no time to waste on fighting to get the most basic emotional needs met; we are not all equally committed to that endeavor. I don’t yet have the emotional resilience to hold enough in reserve to continue to take care of me when common place bullshit goes sideways, and often find myself without any emotional reserves left to care for me, myself, by the time I have a moment to do so. I feel positive about the choice to get my own place…and for the moment, sad that it is necessary at all.

You know what I don’t feel? I don’t feel guilt or shame over the choice to move out, it needs to happen; I don’t thrive in an environment in which my emotional quality of life is poor. Hell, right now in this moment… I’m okay. (Thanks, Dearheart!) My tears have dried. I’m not feeling social, but I’m not enthralled by Demons in The Nightmare City.  (If I knew that I would have the kind of nightmares that I had last night, in nights to come, I’d never sleep again.) I don’t have the headache that followed me around all day yesterday, which is a huge improvement.  My coffee tastes good – I feel a pang of sadness sweep over me when I realize I won’t have an espresso machine in my kitchen for some time to come after I move; it will be a frugal lifestyle, focused on painting, meditation, and love. Wow. Suddenly that sounds fucking amazing – and all over again I wonder why this hurts at all. I enjoy solitude. I dislike drama. I have musical and culinary tastes that are not shared in the household at large… and I miss a good French press in the morning; it’s a lovely ritual to prepare coffee that way, time it carefully, enjoy the outcome at leisure… I miss living a gentle life. (The most humorous thing about that is how little time I have ever spent living that kind of exceptional quality of life – across years and relationships, I can’t really pin down more than a total of about 18 months that qualify as ‘gentle living’ in 52 years!

I’ve already found my way to a better place. It’s nice. No rushing, either; I’ve made changes to my schedule, effective this week, intended to dial down some of the fatigue-related stress, and don’t have to rush off so soon on Friday mornings. Have you actually read this far? Are you okay? Thank you for being interested, curious, or concerned enough to come all this way with me – whether just this morning, or over these past couple years. I appreciate it. You help me feel heard.

Yeah. Some days, the nightmares win. Today they didn’t. 🙂

Because love matters more. "Emotion and Reason" 24″ x 36″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic details and glow 2012

Because love matters more.
“Emotion and Reason” 24″ x 36″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic details and glow 2012

Today is a good day to put down some baggage. Today is a good day to practice good self-care. Today is a good day for self-compassion – first, not last. Today is a good day to enjoy this amazing woman I am becoming without competition, dread, or games. Today is a good day to treat others well, and understand that they are walking their own path; their story, and experience, are not mine to endure, to manage, or to criticize – and participation is a choice.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Big 5, women, Words

Kinder Than That

March 12, 2015 //
0

Be kind. It’s a simple enough suggestion. It’s not expensive to be kind to people (or animals, or celebrities, or nice things you may have acquired along life’s path). Further, what good reason is there to be unkind? Oh sure, there’s a lot of wiggle room between ‘kind’ and ‘unkind’ that isn’t so clearly defined. Can we accept that both kindness and unkindness are likely active choices or processes, rather than just fumbling along doing and being? If so, and we also recognize that most of us living in the U.S. probably heard the ‘be kind’ message, the ‘play nicely’ and ‘do unto others’ messages pretty repetitively growing up…what the hell is the matter with us as adults? Have you seen the way people treat each other? The nastiness? The negativity? The vicious unending criticism of self and others? The callousness and cruelty built on foundations of self-righteous entitlement and us/them thinking? So…um…if this is our idea of ‘kindness’ or ‘good treatment’ of our fellow man…maybe we would do well to be kinder than that? Seriously.

Sorry. I’m sick with a head cold, and feeling out of sorts. Life’s day-to-day bullshit and drama are more easily tolerated, avoided, or managed more skillfully when I’m not ill. My emotional resilience is limited – and when I’m sick, my default reaction is often anger; I honestly just want to be treated gently, supported, and cared for – because I’m sick.  Of course I’m not alone in that; it’s spring, and the second significant wave of illness has hit the area (there’s ‘flu’ season, then just as spring gears up, we often see a major short-term increase in people out of office with colds).  I’m pretty sure I picked this cold up either in the office or on the commute. (Cover your coughs/sneezes, people, please!) Hell, I’m not even the only person in the household who is ill this week.

Here’s the thing about kindness that I notice most often; people aren’t doing it. A lot of people, totally not investing even the slightest effort to be kind, and instead actively investing will, intent, emotion, time, choice, and action into treating people poorly – not just any people, the people they say matter most! I regularly see or hear people being total dicks, seriously hurtful and unkind, to friends, lovers, even family. What the hell? These are people we care about? What’s the thinking there?

What does kindness really look like?

What does kindness really look like?

I’ll take a real-life example – a stranger from a recent bus ride – to illustrate. A woman gets on the bus, she is on a phone call. She is talking very loudly, and it is not possible to avoid overhearing every word of her phone call (at least her end of it). So, okay – that’s our first moment of unkindness; she seemed utterly unaware that this behavior could be disruptive or unpleasant for other passengers at all. As the call progressed I learned way to much about her, but it fuels the writing this morning. 🙂 She was angry, and venting to a friend about her resentment that her current lover expected her to shower before sex (note, this is happening late in the afternoon on a Wednesday) and observes “I just had a shower on Sunday morning, and it’s not like I’ve had sex since then!”. I’m struck by her resentment… we live in a pretty hygiene conscious society, and my own perspective in this context was to feel just a little shocked that she’d admit to ‘being so nasty’. lol (I am aware that different standards exist in other cultures, and that the frequency of bathing in other circumstances could reasonably be quite different.) She goes on from there to rant about his many other lovers that she is sure exist, and all manner of vengeance she is inclined to enact due to the existence of these other lovers. The conversation continues. In the space of a few minutes she rather self-righteously exclaims a variety of fairly criminal acts to be within reason for her, in her circumstances: stealing her lovers phone to go through his address book without his consent, contacting people she doesn’t know to say derogatory things about him (specifically untrue, and she’s quite clear about that, too), physical violence against her lover or his potential lovers, arson, homicide, assault, gas-lighting, stalking… and all delivered in a tone of utter self-righteous entitlement, and clear anticipation that her position is rationally supportable and justified. It was actually pretty  horrifying to listen to. I could not help but wonder why anyone would have sex with someone who would say such things about them, or potentially behave in any of those ways! She directed an equal measure of implied invective toward herself stating assumptions about other women with similar characteristics reflecting her self-defined short-comings, and the imagined advantages held by women of others sorts. (She was very concerned about the weight of her lovers potential paramours, and made it clear that ‘skinny girls don’t have these problems’ – which goes well beyond any acceptable lack of social awareness for an adult, I think.)

Am I gossiping? I hope not… I am also doing my best to avoid being (or sounding) judgmental… I’m trying to get around to making this point; be kind. Treat yourself and others well. Sure – but if you don’t understand that being loud on a cell phone on the bus is unkind to other passengers, will you know not to do it? If I don’t understand that making threats of violence when I am angry is unkind to people for whom that level of acting out causes anxiety, will I know to work on handling my volatility differently? If we live in a culture where we regularly see people treated as property, will we understand that people are not property – and that assault and arson are not appropriate responses to another human beings sexual decision-making? That it isn’t okay to kill people because we’re angry with them? The woman on the bus very clearly believed in her cause, and that she had been wronged, and that any action she might take to redress that wrong would be acceptable – who taught her that? Who taught her that her lover becomes her property because they have a sexual relationship? Who taught her that someone else’s needs are of less importance than her own? It really got me thinking about me – about what I do or don’t expect from people, and what I find appropriate day-to-day – and why. I can do better, day-to-day, to be kind. I can’t find any reason not to.

Many years ago I was admittedly not particularly concerned about kindness. I didn’t ‘get it’. (Righteous rage doesn’t make much room for compassion or kindness, honestly.) I think about kindness a lot now. I am not able to make a good argument against being kind – but I see a lot of ‘traps’ along my journey; it is tempting to rationalize very good sounding reasons to exclude one person or another from being treated with kindness. It isn’t easy to maintain kindness toward others when I’m having a difficult moment, or feel angry at that person I am tempted to be unkind towards. It is sometimes difficult to be skillful at not permitting myself to be taken advantage of or treated badly in the face of kindness; I know I have much to learn, and I also know that kindness is possible without sacrificing good self-treatment, consideration, and self-respect, too.  Life’s curriculum is rich, complex – and rewarding. I am still a student. I am still a beginner. “I am only an egg.”

What does it take to build a beautiful life?

What does it take to build a beautiful life?

Today is a good day to be kind. It’s also a good day to be kinder than that. It’s a good day to take being the woman I most want to be to another level. We are each having our own experience; a kind moment might be all that other person needs to thrive. It’s a good day to be the change I wish to see in the world.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, women, Words

Executive Level Management Principles

February 23, 2015 //
0

Yeah…this is not about ‘management’ as in ‘leadership’, and it’s not about improving one’s resume for a better paying job with keys to the executive washroom. Nope. It’s another sort of ‘executive’ ‘management’ altogether. The ‘executive functions‘ of the brain manage cognitive processes, such as (and likely not limited to) working memory, reasoning, task flexibility, problem solving, planning, impulse control, and in specific areas like the ‘orbitofrontal cortex’, things like evaluating subjective emotional experiences (and so much more). All very interesting, no doubt, but for me it’s a little more personal, and relevant…my TBI is a frontal lobe injury. The lingering impairments are mostly executive function sorts of things, and as with so many other people, and other TBIs, very interestingly individual – the brain is fancy, and the outcome of any given injury is equally individual. A whole new world of potential to heal and move on opened up when I started learning more about how these injuries work (don’t work?), and why, and how it changes my experience… and in so many moments, the experience of those who make their lives (or work) with me.

It is what it is, at least the piece where I look in the mirror every morning and I am… me. It’s not all bad. It’s better, actually, than it once was. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve grown. I’ve become more skillful at caring for this broken vessel, and at sorting out some of the chaos and damage that lingers.  It is, sometimes, a shit experience and I struggle. Very human.

How about this one for a great practical joke on one human primate by the universe… one of my ‘favorites’… my PTSD causes serious sleep disturbances, nightmares, sometimes insomnia, and diminishes the hours of restful deep sleep I can get; I’m easily awakened by the littlest noises, or novelty, in my nighttime surroundings… (waaaait for it…) and my executive function impairments are much more pronounced – to the point of being quite obvious – if I don’t get good rest, reliably, pretty nearly every night. So… yeah. A night or two of poor sleep, for whatever reason, and I start… declining. My temper is often the first obvious sign that ‘things are not right’ – I become irritable, and easily angered, and feel less positive, generally, when my sleep is of poor quality. Next up, I start struggling with emotional balance, and lose ’emotional regulation’ characteristics in my day-to-day experience most adults don’t even realize they have going on in the background; I feel them most particularly when they slip away unexpectedly.  The more tired I become, the more fatigued over time, the more prone to real tantrums, crying jags, and irrational mood swings I become – and (waaaait for it…) less able to sleep; my brain won’t shut down. When I do find sleep, I sometimes dream that I’m awake in such detail I wake exhausted to the point of tears. Yep. Pretty god damned funny. (Not)

Most of the time, these days, I still manage decently well overall…enough to pass as a grown up most of the time. There’s no real way to share what the subjective experience is like (you sort of have to be there). Every one of the many calming practices I’ve learned matters a great deal. Every choice counts. Every effort is meaningful. Every success – however fleeting, however limited the benefit, however difficult it is to recognize in the moment – every success builds the foundation for successes to come. My hope is that over time, that foundation grows substantial enough to bear the burden of the entirety of the chaos and damage…strong enough to hoist me above the pain, long enough to really see the view from a radically different perspective somehow ‘above it’… I would very much like to keep working at life and love to find that I have transcended what has hurt me most and become that woman – or more – that I might have been without the chaos and damage.

Please don’t tell me that’s wishful thinking. Tonight I couldn’t bear to lose the crutch of some shred of positivity to lean on. I’m tired. I know I am. My brain is buzzing like it’s noon on a sunny summer day; I’m not sleepy…but if I can practice good practices (meditation, and yoga are both very calming), and avoid becoming negative, or caught up in some random moment of weirdness, or a sneak attack by my own brain, I might sleep – or at least rest. Rest is okay. Rest is enough.

Enough is okay with me. Hell, I’m not even having to ‘do it alone’, really; my traveling partner checks in now and again. I welcome the closeness, the touches, the tenderness. The reassurance that love is, helps me find my way in the darkest darkness.

Wrapping this one up on a positive note; perspective matters, too.

Wrapping this one up on a positive note; perspective matters, too.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Words

Incoming!

December 15, 2014 //
2

Wow. What a shitty morning. I woke too early because other members of the household manhandle doors without giving people sleeping much thought. My first association with anyone else in the house went awry very quickly. I feel mistreated. I feel disrespected and hurt. I’m angry. The time I made to enjoy the company of someone dear to me – by choice – was treated as without value. I haven’t been awake even two hours and I’m in tears, feeling hurt, feeling pissed off, boundaries violated, explicitly stated needs utterly disregarded, and reeling from the powerful emotional punch that is having ones security threatened, emotional security that is. There was a time in my life when I did not understand that these experiences are not ‘love’ – they don’t define the wonder and joy of Love and loving – these kinds of experiences suck, and hold no pleasure, no value, no joy. I find them unpleasant, and unworthy of being called ‘love’.  Experiences like these still happen in the context of relationships I have with people I love…which doesn’t stop the experiences from sucking, actually, I think it makes them suck that much more. Love, in its wonder and joy and delight, isn’t defined by our challenges – that’s just human beings, being human. Hopefully, when I cool off, there will be a lesson to learn.

I feel sad. I feel pissed off. I feel blamed. I feel cheated of a quiet pleasant morning in the good company of someone dear to me. I feel ashamed that I let someone else’s shitty mood provoke me, too. No one needed that.

Searching for the positive, finding stickers and thorns.

Searching for the positive, finding stickers and thorns.

We’re all so very human, aren’t we? Each with our own baggage, our own experience, our own perspective…the context of our unique perspective, that is so ‘us’, can so easily find us out of step with those who matter most to us… assumptions… expectations… the narrative we accept as ‘true’ or ‘real’… the stories we tell ourselves… Right this very moment, more than anything, I would like to be laughing and sipping coffee with this fantastic guy I love… right now, I can’t stand the thought of being in the presence of his right-now experience; as much as it appears to suck from my perspective, I imagine it must feel pretty awful from within, too. Certainly, it’s not what I expect from love.

I don’t know why I’m bothering to write about this… we all have these experiences, though, don’t we? Moments of anger. Moments of hurt. Moments of frustration. Moments that suck. They are, however, just moments.

Today is a good day for perspective…I hope to find some, soon. Today is a good day to treat people well – myself, included. Today is a good day to change the world… I’d be content to change the moment. Today is a good day to remember to dress for the weather, and to remember that this too shall pass*.

*Indeed, it did pass…with some practicing of practices that work to move my heart in a more positive direction, like ‘taking in the good’ and savoring small pleasures as I walked to the light rail station, and taking on a healthy challenge that distracted my focus, in general, and also had the benefit of giving me some needed exercise – I walked to a much more distant light rail station than I usually do, and enjoyed the bracing winter air, the feel of taking on a challenge and meeting a goal. More pleasant, nurturing, words were exchanged along the way, and I took a moment to be grateful for the technology that makes it so easy to do so, without stewing in my own emotional bullshit all day long before getting to that opportunity. Kind words were shared. Encouragement and apology were offered, and accepted… the day moves on. Humans, being human. Lovers, loving. Today? Yeah, as human as I am, today is a good day.

Tags , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Love, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, women, Words
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »