To be a better person

There comes a point when you realize that sometimes, relationships aren't necessarily about connecting.  Sometimes, there is no eye to eye, spirit to spirit, mind to mind melding of souls.  Often, relationships down here do not resemble anything like what they were meant to be.  Sometimes, the other person is more screwed up than you are and all you can do is try to look at them through the eyes of God, instead of through your own eyes, because your own eyes are blinded by pain.

But then, if you let go, and let God in, He provides the exceptional strength to deal with sadness and longing, regret and disappointment.  This is my cross to bear, and while it is just as heavy as before, I am stronger now, and better able to support the weight.

Life isn't always about being happy.  Life is about becoming a better person.  Life is about rising to the challenges thrown at us, pulling out our battle gear and fighting the demons that plague us.  Life is about letting the difficult things mold us into the person we were meant to be.  Life is about hoping when there is no reason left to hope.  Life is about choosing to be happy when there is no reason left to be happy.

The Garden

From Coucoumelle :

I'm thinking the Garden of Eden isn't so much a physical place that disappeared from the earth after Adam and Eve were banished, as a spiritual place that's been here all along, that we just banished ourselves from, through sin. In this garden, we truly can walk naked, in fact, to walk naked is a requirement, because here, there is only honesty and beauty and truth and the things that cloud your vision of that are gone. This is where you meet God, and this is where, if you let someone else in, you are free to see each other as you truly are, and to love, not despite the imperfections, but through cherishing and finding the beauty in those same imperfections that make each person distinct.

Sometimes, when the weather is calm, I light a couple of torches and I sit here on the beach in the dark and I just am. With God. And when I am just being with him, there is no language, and there are no problems, and there truly is nothing missing, I just am. And nothing else matters. And I think, I am free. Because nothing else matters. You can't be held prisoner by something that doesn't matter. And I don't mean that my life doesn't matter, I mean that it doesn't matter that it isn't perfect. It doesn't matter that it isn't even close to being perfect. I can keep on going and I can still be happy, because there IS something that is perfect. And I realize, whenever something bad happens, I can just escape to that happy place in my mind, and walk naked in the garden with God.  There are moments when I quite simply live inside my mind.

As a teenager, I would often go down to the beach not far from my house, to walk along the water and think, and commune with God and nature. I used to do my best thinking there. I have always loved shorelines. There's just something about all that open water in front of you, and the wind, and the gulls circling, and behind, the trees rising up, tall and strong.  You have both worlds at the same time on a shoreline. The openness of the water and the closed-in space of the forest.

Everybody's broken

Bon Jovi says it best with this song:

Welcome to the party 
Come on in and disappear 
You're feeling like a stranger 
But all your friends are here 
Little lines and cracks 
Around your eyes and mouth 
Something's trying to get in 
Something's trying to get out 

There are days when I think I am broken beyond repair, dysfunctional inside.  I am incapable of appreciating good things.  I am incapable of communication when it matters.  I hide behind a thick skin but inside, I bleed.  I think I may never learn to communicate properly.  I've been hiding behind thick skin for a long time.  It's funny how sometimes, it isn't the big things that hurt you most, but the accumulation of little things.  I think I am better off alone on my island.

I have allowed the words and inaction of one person to poison my life, when the words and actions of all the others should speak louder.  Why should words spoken so long ago by one person still have such an effect today?  Why should I even care, when these words came from the mouth of someone
hurt by life and more dysfunctional than I am?

It is time to get over it.  I am not the sum of words said to me, and my happiness does not rely on the actions of others.  I will make my own happiness.

Winter

I miss the winters of my youth - walking across a frozen river, building snowforts, roasting hotdogs over a fire in the snow...

Winter on my isle has no snow.  It is mostly stormy and wet.  This winter has been better though, slightly colder, but less stormy.

Gollum seems to be reverting somewhat to Smeagal.  If only the influence of his "preciousssss" could let him go...

As a certain CS Lewis so wisely pointed out, a demon's best disguise is to cause people to believe they do not exist.  A demon that "does not exist" is free to do as he wills.  Many people no more take precautions against the dangers of demons than I take precautions against vampires.  If only people knew that they are truely out there, "whispering" lies in the minds of you and me.

Thoughts are like e-mail.  Some thoughts are good, some thoughts are put there by the Holy Spirit, your guardian angel, or a saint in Heaven.  Some thoughts are your own.  Some thoughts are just junk mail from beings who want to scam you.  If a thought or an idea seems not quite right, it is always better to wonder where it came from...

Demons don't run around in the world in physical form like in Charmed or Supernatural.  Oh no... they are much more subtle and intelligent than that...

The spiritual world is governed by thought.  God thought up the world.  Litterally.  He thought the world into being.  Everything is done by thought.  All of a demon's work is done by thought.  Demons influence humans through thought to do their evil work.  People used to get this.

A person has a lot of time on their hands to think about these things when one is alone...

Communiciation is impossible with Gollum.


I have been out all morning and come back home to the hut. Gollum is at the door looking for something.  He screams and curses and stomps around.  I shrug and go about doing my own thing.

Gollum:  Those nasssty monkeyssss gots my ring!

Me: Maybe you just left it at home.

Gollum: Who let the monkeyssss in here anywaysss?!!

Me: What monkeys?

Gollum: The monkeysssss!  They took my ring!  My precioussssss!

Me: There were no monkeys in here.  They couldn't have taken your ring.

Gollum:  Then why is my precioussss gone?

Me: Maybe you left it at home.

Gollum:  The monkeyssss, they takessss it.

Me: Not here they didn't.  There weren't any monkeys.

Gollum:  Then why is my precioussss gone?

Me (patiently):  Did you try going back home?

Gollum:  Those nassssty monkeys took it, why'd you let them?


Why bother talking to him when he obviously can't hear a thing you say?

Give a little bit...

So give a little bit
Give a little bit of my life for you
So give a little bit
Give a little bit of your time to me
Now’s the time that we need to share
So send a smile, we’re on our way back home


The hardest part about being ignored is having to pretend that you aren't.  


What used to be a special day for me was ruined long ago, by someone who didn't want to celebrate it with me.  For years, I dreaded that day, and the phone calls it would bring, the well-wishes, the wanting to know how I was going to celebrate.


I wasn't going to celebrate and no one was going to do anything special for me.  


Every year, it was the same.  People would call and wish me well, and talk all about how I was sure to be spoiled.  I would have to listen to them go on and on about it, and let them assume.  Then they would start to ask more specific questions, like did I get this or that, or was there cake or flowers?  And I wouldn't know how to answer.  Do I tell the truth and make someone else look bad?  Or do I lie?  I hate to lie.  I really, really hate to lie.  


But sometimes, I had to, and it was always painful.


I was always glad when the day was over and I could get on with life as usual.


In some ways, being lost on this island has come as a relief.  Especially when that certain day comes around again.  There is no one to bother me out here.

Teddy Bear

I dreamt I met Teddy Bear again.


The first time I ever met Teddy, it was like the sun had come into the room.  He was the most jovial, outgoing, affectionate person I had ever met.  He was able to reach out to people like me and bring them out of their shells.  Right from the start, there was no being shy with him, he fit in the room like a comfortable pair of jeans.


So being the unsure person with low self-esteem that I was at the time, I put him on a pedestal.  "Here," I said to myself, "is someone who is everything I am not."  He would never, I told myself, want to be around someone as boring as me.  After all, I had grown up in a place where I had been constantly reminded that no one wanted me around or was interested in anything I had to say.  I spent my adolescent years analyzing my behaviour, trying to figure out what my problem was.  Did I talk too much?  I worked on talking less.  I tried to stop joking and to not attract attention.  Did I laugh too much?  Did it bother them?  I made myself laugh less and more quietly.  As long as they didn't notice me there, they seemed to be less annoyed by my presence.


When I broke my finger, they laughed at me.  When it was my birthday, they begged me to take a break for once and leave them alone to play.  When I was nine, they laughed at the idea that anyone would ever want to marry me and by the time I hit high school I didn't dare let on if I thought a boy was cute.  It was impossible to befriend a guy, because none of them wanted to be associated with me.  To be linked to me would have made them the laughingstock of everyone, so even friendship was out of the question.  Girls were not quite as hard to befriend, but even so, friends were rare.  I had not been out of that world for a year yet, when I first met Teddy.


Later, I had the opportunity to get to know Teddy better.  We both participated in a project with a group of people.  We saw each other all day, every day. By then, I had gained some self-worth, and Teddy got off his pedestal and seemed a little more human.  But he was still so much the superior person in my eyes.  He was the one who was generous and kind, and paid attention to people.  He went out of his way to welcome newcomers.  He was the life of the party.  I was the satellite.  The one who sat back and watched instead of participating openly.  But what did I have to say that could interest people?  It had all been said, and I felt I had nothing new to add of any worth.


A year and a half passed.  I was in a difficult situation, and Teddy invited me to share his apartment with me to cut expenses.  For the first few months it seemed we fit together like two pieces of a puzzle.  It felt like we were a couple that had grown old together.  (Without any of the perks)  We did almost everything together.  We talked, we shared, we started to know things instinctively about each other without being told.  Everything was so simple.


Then the misunderstandings came.  He thought I was hanging on to the recent past, and was losing grip on reality because I didn't even recognize people on TV.  The fact is, it wasn't so much me losing grip on reality, as me just not having had access to a TV for the past year and never having been much interested in TV before that, and not having lived long enough in this relatively new place to even be all that familiar with all the regional artists.


I started to second-guess my worth.  He was too nice.  He was too generous.  He was too concerned about my well-being.  I thought, maybe he's just being nice.  Maybe I don't mean as much to him as he does to me.  Maybe I'm just another project to him.  A girl he's helping out for a bit.  Because that's what he does.  He selflessly helps people out without getting anything in return.  I asked him once, when we were going somewhere, did he ask me to go along just because he wanted me to go or did he want to keep an eye out for me?  He said he wanted to keep an out for me.  I took it to mean it didn't bother him one way or the other if I was there or not.  To me, it confirmed the fact that to him I was just another project.  I could never really be his friend, because I would never be at the same level he was.  I was so far below, it was useless to try.


I think I hurt him, refusing his help later on.  It's not that I didn't want his help.  I did.  I liked him helping me.  I just didn't want him to feel he had to.


I moved into my own apartment, and followed a series of cultural misunderstandings.  Where I grew up, things were done one way.  In this place, things were done differently, and it looked like I did not appreciate the help I was getting to move and fix up the place.  I realize this now, but did not know it at the time.  Even though the apartment was close to his, we saw less and less of each other, and usually it was because I had made the effort.  When we did see each other, he sometimes made comments that first surprised me, then had me seething for days.  I never said a word when he got mad at me for things he thought I should do differently because I was always so shocked that he was mad.  When I thought of something to say, it was usually too late.


I tried writing once.  Basically, the answer I got back was that the problem was that "With you, it's never finished."


That would have been because he had his say, then forgot about it, but I never had my say.  Because I hate confrontation.  Because I had only ever fought or disagreed with the people who couldn't easily turn their backs on me and never want to see me again; my family.  My brothers and sisters were stuck with me, they couldn't not see me again.  Everyone else could drop out of my life if they wanted to.


I stopped making much of an effort to keep up a good friendship with Teddy.  I decided I would just let him go if he wanted to go.  We still saw each other.  We had mutual friends.  I called from time to time, we were both involved in a couple of the same groups.  But it was never the same again.


I got married.  I moved away.  I called once to let him and another friend know I'd been to the hospital recently and had my baby.  There was another misunderstanding.  I got mad.  The next day I wrote him an e-mail, told him to have a good life, deleted him as a contact and tried to forget about him.  That was almost 12 years ago.  Every once in a few years I would meet him again because we still had mutual friends.


I think we forgave each other long ago because there was that one time I was able to put my arms around my Teddy Bear once again in a big bear hug that lasted not long enough.  But we never talked.  The silence between us speaks louder than death.  I have never been alone with him in all those years, there has always been a crowd of people around.  It has been easy to ignore him and talk to others instead.  We have gone separate ways in 12 years.  There are many things I am sure we would not agree on.  There are too many things left unsaid, too many misunderstandings.


I have lost my Teddy Bear and I do not know how to get him back or even if I can get him back.  I get a sense that he is not so happy all the time.  I think he was happier then, or at least life was much simpler for him back then.  I no longer think Teddy is superior to me any way.  We are just made differently.  I have a few very dear friends, such as Gypsy Queen and Mr. Tumnus, who I think are amazing people.  But they are mostly similar to me.  We are a cold lot.  We seek warmth.  


Teddy was the first person I thought absolutely amazing because he was so different.  I am not a touchy-feely person.  Put two cold people like me in a room together and we will never touch.  There will be no slapping of shoulders, no quick, random hugs.  There will be no pulling, tugging, or pushing.  We are the calm, cool-headed people.


Put me in a room with a happy, energetic person, who seems to thrive just off of greeting people and I will instantly be attracted to that person.  I have met this type of person a few times and every time I feel a natural pull.


I don't think I have ever been so attracted by someone's personality as I was to Teddy's.  In the early days, before I came to live with him, he used to sing "You're as cold as ice" to me.  He was right.  Later, when I'd moved into my own apartment, and trying to reconcile some things, I wrote to him saying we both had passion, only his was hot and burned quickly where mine was cold, slow to start, but burned steadily once started.  He started things, got them going and then moved on.  It took longer for me to get started and longer for me to move on.


There was a time when I could have been physically attracted to him as well.  In spite of the fact that he was overweight, he wore it well.  He was taller and larger than me.  A huge Teddy Bear.  That made me, a tall, large woman, feel small and petite and feminine like no one else has been able to since.  But that has all changed.  He has changed.  The last times I saw him, it didn't feel the same.  Like he'd undergone some change in his chemical balance.  I'd always felt his masculinity before, and now he was just... neutral.


Still, I wish I could have that Teddy back.  The one I met long ago.  The one that lit up a room when he walked in.  The one that got his energy from being around people.  I miss him.  Perhaps he's moved on.  I don't seem quite able to.  I wish I could.  But mostly, I wish I didn't have to.