It was also because I lived a life of fear. Longing to please people, afraid to make anyone upset, I plastered on the smile. As Queen so eloquently put it "The show must go on". And such was my life, my experience. It didn't matter if my life was falling apart or that my heart was breaking on the inside. I had to put on the show, life had to go on. And isn't that what being a grown up means? Even if you are 8 years old. "Don't EVER let them see you cry" she said. After he died, and she lost the love of her life, after thirty years of marriage I didn't see her shed one tear. Not once in the 17 years that followed. "It's a sign of weakness" she said.
I loved him too, and I cried harder than I knew it was possible to cry. For hours, quietly and alone I hid in the church, mourning, and trying handle grief I didn't know how to process. I was only eight years old, and watched one of the people I loved most in the world get sick, for an entire year before he finally died from cancer. Yet I was taught it was not okay to cry, to show my true feelings. Crying is part of being human, its part of being real and I was taught that is not ok, that crying over the loss of a loved one means I am weak. Well what is so wrong with being weak? Who says I should be so strong all the time anyway? Yet I still have a hard time letting anyone see me cry. Sometimes I hurt so much inside I wish I could just cry to let it out. I watch a lot of sad movies when I get like that, to force it out one way or another.
I still smile a lot, and I still am nice to people, even when they don't deserve it. I still feel an overwhelming need to please people I don't know for fear of them disliking, rejecting me or being angry with me (and really why should I care? I wish I didn't, but I do). I still have a hard time being vulnerable, and I almost never let anyone see me cry, because I just can't. I fight back the tears as hard as I can even when I wish more than anything I could just let it out. I still have a hard time asking for what I really want in any given situation. I still fail at nearly everything I try to do and always have.
Yet I still make the choice to be happy in spite of it all. All my failed attempts at anything and everything. I still get up every morning and make the conscious choice what kind of attitude I am going to have. I make the choice to be happy, to focus on all that I am blessed with in my life.
Every time people betray me, I make the choice not to become bitter, and not to stop trusting people. Everytime I have a promise broken to me, I still make the choice to believe someone the next time they say "I promise".
And maybe that means one of two things..I am a sucker, and a failure or perhaps I'm just ignorant. It may also be true what "they" whoever they are...say. Ignorance is bliss. If I can just be ignorant of all these things then I can just continue on my merry way. But guess what, I can't be or I wouldn't be writing this right now. I cannot choose ignorance with the awareness that I have, its not authentic, it's a lie, and I cannot live that way.
I have known what I am supposed to be since I was in the fourth grade. Yet here I am turning 30 in a week and I am still not doing it. I still work one grunt job after another, being miserable, and mistreated time and again. I have a home that I thought I'd never lose in foreclosure and it is the one thing I want more than anything, but the struggle to keep it is exhausting to the point of losing my mind and I'm just so frustrated. I don't ask for much from this world, this experience this universe. Why must having the one thing I want cause me so much grief? I didn't ask for the nicest or bigggest house in the nicest area. I just wanted a space to call my own and a roof over my head just big enough for us and our pets. That is what I have, so is it too much to keep it without being house poor, unable to do things I want to including repair the house, and work jobs I hate just to keep it? Must I work jobs that run me into the ground emotionally or that take me for granted or that flat out just make me unhappy just to keep this one thing I want? Yet it is the only thing I want...the only place I am truly happy and feel at peace. I am so afraid to give that up...this house, this tiny little old home that I love so much.
When I tried to move to Hawaii, I mourned leaving this house. A part of me didn't really want to go, but a part of me knew I had to. The thought alwasy came to my mind, no one would love this house the way I did, and it broke my heart to try and leave it. I love this place.
I have lost a house before...it was not my fault. I was fifteen. But facing losing this house brings back all the fears and horrors of what it was like to have the only home I'd really known be taken from me and to be homeless. I know that won't happen now. I will not be homeless....I have friends and family, and we will find somewhere to go....but what is going to happen? I haven't come up with any of the money I need to keep the house and I'm running out of time and ideas...
Each new endeavor that I think is the answer, seems to be yet just another failure waiting to happen. Selling the products, this new job. I wanted so badly to go to school, and now that is not going to be able to happen until Fall of 09 and in the meantime I keep treading water. Wondering why with my skills I still haven't found that admin asst. job that I would be so amazing at, and that I would actually love. Why I am not writing every single day of my life and doing what I am here to do.
Everything that looks so shiny and pretty and I think is the answer to my prayers ends up being one more piece of coal that is being thrown on this fire that is burning me to the ground. This new job that has the earning potential of $30 an hour and to work from home, yet I'm making one sale a day and having so much anxiety I haven't had a good nights sleep since last Saturday, and more so I realize I am probably going to hate doing this and I want out now but it took me six months to get this job because the market is so bad right now. I can't give up now.
But what do I do? Is it time to walk away. Stay in this home for January and then let it foreclose and leave it? Will I have any other options? When will my path of failure change to the success I dream of? When will my simple dreams come true of the simple life I long for?
What do I do? What will happen? I just wish I knew so I could stop worrying about it and get some much needed sleep. :(
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