Fears

I keep wanting to write about fears but I feel like I have a whole long and dragged out story that has to go along with it. And I don't want to discuss the story here. It's too personal.

It's funny how we get so used to running our lives a certain way that we don't realize that there are certain feelings we've learned how to block. Of course they're not really blocked, they just manifest in certain behaviours. Like the survival behaviours.

I've been saying that April was a month of anxiety but that's not entirely true. It was actually a month of discovering that I was in fear mode and what my racket was, how I react when I am in fear mode. I was anxious, no doubt and my breathing was that adrenalized breathing, fast and panicky. I was doing everything to get off that roller coaster of feeling embarrassed for hoping and having the upper hand in the situation. Oh and I assumed I knew what was going on. I knew the story, this is why you are doing this and saying that and well, I have to win at all costs.

So I'm anxious, embarrassed, feeling like I'm being laughed at and thinking that I know the full story. And I'm reacting and I'm not breathing. That's a disaster waiting to happen.

Breathe. Thank God I journal because everything I know about taking care of myself went out the window.
Breathe. I wanted to flee the scene, never to be heard from again.
But I couldn't escape. Holy cow, what kind of a Girlfish am I when I can't swim away from my troubles?
Breathe. All is well in my world.
BREATHE. Oh My God, this feeling is fear. What am I scared of? Shoot, I'm scared of not getting want I want and even worse I'm scared of getting what I want. And this feeling is fear?

I'm so fascinated by what we bring along with us from childhood. There is so much that I've healed and I'm proud of that. I've worked hard. But it surprises me still how deep it goes. And now my work, my healing, my focus gets into feelings. Growing up with violence doesn't allow for feelings. You can't get emotional when the father figure comes home ready to beat up the people who love him. You have to be ready to react. You have to be focused on the sliver of an opportunity. And believe me, it's a sliver.

I was five years old and I was trained to wake up at the first sign of his violence. I was trained to get dressed in the dark and be ready for when my brother or mother would open my bedroom door, turn on the light and say, "Come on , let's go."
It was usually while he was having a pee so truly a sliver of opportunity. I didn't cry. I didn't have emotions. I wasn't a baby. I couldn't afford to be a baby. I was trained.

I've held on to that training for 45 years because that was all I knew.
In an ironic twist, I think I've healed enough and feel safe enough to actually feel. Safe and fear. Safe with fear?

So you're fear? Take a seat and let me get to know you. How do I look at you face to face? Breathe? Breathe.

As I retell the story of April in my mind I constantly tell myself, I was scared. If I'm going to move forward I need to actually know how to identify what I am feeling. I know anger oh so well. Anger and I have walked hand in hand, it's in that invisible knapsack of weapons I carry on my left shoulder. It sits snugly beside the dagger eyes I've been known to use.

Fear. Can't say I like you but I'm sure glad to know that I know you.

EY

I Went to Church Today

Sunday 20April14 1:48pm

I went to church today for the first time in 40 Years.
I'd been thinking about it for a long while. I'd been to this church before for a function and I liked the feel of it. A couple had chatted with me back then and told me that the service was filled more with affirmations and wasn't too churchy. That's why they'd started going. So this morning I was up, I got ready, and I left the house and went to church. It was a good experience and one I think I'll continue for the next little while, at least.

So much has been going on in my life that I'm looking at any way and all ways of grounding my energy and keeping a spiritual focus. I was reminded that it was 3 years ago this past Good Friday that I had my elephant experience at my part time job. I actually talked about it with my co-worker this past Thursday because it was the Thursday before Good Friday when the whole big spiritual experience started then continued into the Friday. I had actually said to my co-worker, "I wonder what my Good Friday gift will be this year."

I realized as I chatted with my co-worker about the shenanigans that had transpired through the week of the full moon eclipse that I was describing me coming into my full power as a woman. Finding it, acknowledging it and accepting it. We talked about the boundaries that I've been setting over the years for myself and what I will accept. We talked about the people who have bashed into those boundaries and how I reacted. I didn't react in anger or with force. Instead I looked at the situation, called it what it was, asked myself what I needed to do to clean things up and flipped the script. It's amusing how off balance every one gets when you flip the script on them.

There's nothing better than that moment in a woman's life when she realizes, "I don't have to wait for you to make a decision. I'm making this decision and I'm moving forward with that."
The full moon eclipse energy was filled with turmoil and chaos and confusion and I weaved my way through it feeling like I was dragging sacks of something heavy behind me but I had no choice but to get through it.

I felt so light hearted on my Good Friday, listening to music, singing like I was giving a concert and thinking about my 3 Bees in Australia and smiling. And I was purging. Yes I'm back to my purging with a renewed energy. I've decided I want to leave Toronto for good. I don't know how long that will take or how I'm going to approach it but like planning for Australia, I just need to focus on one project at a time. Ultimately I'd like to land in Australia.

Of course Toronto will start to be kinder to me now, right(?), now that I've decided it's time to go. I was never supposed to stay here as long as I have. I think what stopped me was that I always thought I'd have a companion to make the move with.

The hardest part about being back from Australia is I'm not able to gloss over what's missing in my life anymore. My friends are so spread out and busy with their lives and families. The 'man' I was supposed to find isn't here. And the question that keeps coming up is, 'if I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life, do I want to be alone here?' Um, nope. I can be alone somewhere warm.

My skin was so beautiful in Australia. I've never seen myself look that dark in my whole life and I loved it. It's so funny and ironic how we grow up with all these issues about our colour and how lighter skinned relatives receive better treatment than the darker ones and I discover how much more I love looking at myself in the mirror when I'm dark. Dark Dark!

So I went to church today. Because I want major changes in my life and I want to ground myself in all this energy and stay fully present in the realization of my own power as a woman. I wrote in my journal before I left for church this morning, "I know what it's like to live my life not having what I want." Going to church was the beginning of the prayers to help me to live a life having what I want.

EY

Sometimes a Friendship is Just Over.

You know when a friendship is coming to an end. You just can’t find the motivation to spend any time with that person anymore. Usually because the memories of the last times together still leave a bad taste in your mouth. It’s about a person giving up a feeling of caring for you and not admitting to it. Or it’s an anger that they haven’t expressed about some perceived wrong.


I was in love with a man back in 1998. It was a short relationship that took me a really long time to get over. It took me a long time because of the fantasy. Almost immediately I felt that this was the man I was going to marry. I’ve never felt like this about any one before. It was a feeling, a knowing, that this was the man I was going to marry. I won’t get into depth, I don’t think I can go into depth about it but needless to say it didn’t work out. He told me he loved me but he couldn’t be with me. And it was over.


The interesting thing about it all was this was the first time that I reached out to my friends and said, “I’m heartbroken and I’m having a hard time dealing with this pain.”
I cried on a couple peoples voice mails. I needed support. I needed to be around people who cared about me and I asked for it.


One girlfriend came through once. She’d invited me over to her house. We chatted, I cried, we watched a movie and then her new boyfriend came over to pick her up to go to his performance. I didn’t hear from her again for months. The entire summer went by and we were approaching winter before she’d finally started calling me. I didn’t return her calls.


As I look back on the relationship with this girlfriend, I remember that I’d already been feeling like our friendship needed a break, at the least, or was coming to an end. You know how it is, you just don’t enjoy yourself as much when you spend time with some people. They make decisions about how they want to behave going forward and it could put a substantial strain on your patience.


For instance, I can remember this same girlfriend had decided one year, “this year is going to be All About Me.” And throughout the year she’d announce constantly, “It’s all about me! It’s all about me” It was truly trying especially for the friends who had been with her all along. What does that mean, it’s all about you? What about us, the people who’ve always been here for you and supported you? A couple of us considered dropping out of her life.


So when she didn’t call me for months it was the perfect opportunity to call it a day. So I did. We are in peoples lives for a reason and when the reason is gone...


A couple of points come up as I think about this. I needed to move away from that relationship as a part of my healing. When I’m in anger mode and that is all that I can focus on... When all I can think of about a friendship are the negatives, I think, for me, it’s time to move on. It may be for a short time. It may be that it takes a decade to see things from a different perspective. It may be that the friendship will never ever happen again. It happens as it happens.


We have recently, within the last year, resumed contact with each other. It’s not the same kind of friendship, obviously. But we are friendly. I can remember all the things I’ve always liked about her again.


The ideas that are popping up for me now, as I look back on this lesson of friendship is that I had certain expectations. I set expectations on how I thought I should be treated during my time of need. I was upset, I made the meaning of her caring or lack of caring about, “you didn’t call me for 6 months when you knew I was depressed and heartbroken.” And the big part of all of that is I never said anything to her about it. I didn’t give her a chance to say her peace. Granted, as I said earlier, after the ‘all about me’ year I needed a break.


I think that we can be cowards. We’re all guilty of this. At some point something happens in our lives and we have the expectation that certain people should show up for us. We have a health issue and we think our best friend should show up. We’re going through a hard time and we think our friends should care in a certain way. They should care in the way that we say. But if someone is being exactly who they are we have to then understand that they may only be able to give so much. And the bigger point, there may be a bigger reason why they simply cannot show up. They just don’t want to anymore, can be one of those reasons.


I have to accept that I play a part in all that happens around me. All that I create. I also have to hope that the more I delve into what I see, the more I will learn. As we know better, we do better...


I’ve discussed this before - accepting people exactly the way they are and accepting myself exactly the way I am. I think it’s a huge theme for the future, for everyone. We hear it, we’ve said it, if we’re going to stop wars, if we’re going to ever see world peace we have to stop trying to insist that all people be just like us. We have to learn to accept everyone’s differences. I’m no philosopher nor an academic so I won’t get into the atrocities that we humans commit against one another and entire countries.


I have another girlfriend. Her achilles heel is that people abandon her. She has told me on several occasions, “it seems like out of the blue someone freaks out on me and they basically tell me to go fuck myself and then they’re gone from my life. They don’t want to be my friend anymore. It has happened so many times and I don’t know why.”


I’ve been a coward. I suspect why some people have left her life, burning that bridge beyond repair. I’ve told her in one instance but not in all of them. She has the answer to everyones life, all the time. She has the answer with a touch of venom using poison tipped words. And she blames the person for any bad in his or her life. She’s simply not nice anymore. And she’s always had that insensitive edge to her. One of those, “I’m just telling you this for your own good” which is supposed to absolve her of any wrong when she says something without tact. You can tell somebody something for their own good without being an asshole.


She’s going through what so many of us go through once we hit a certain age. It’s having to face the reality that all of our childhood dreams have not been met. Let’s look at my realities - I never became a dancer. I’m still an unpublished writer. I’ve never been married or had children. Heck, I don’t even live in a fancy anything. I’ve accepted that. The only thing that hurts is being unpublished.


This girlfriend hasn’t accepted her reality and worse, she’s mad at those of us who are living our lives the best way we can and we are all starting to realize that about her. She cannot find a way to be happy when one of us has a nice bit of happiness enter our lives.


So slowly as I realize that this is exactly who she is. This is what she is going through. I spend less time with her. I would guess that so does everyone else. Hey, my life sucks too sometimes, I don’t need to make it suck more by spending the little free time I have with someone who is filled with venom.


Needless to say, she went through a breakup similar to mine and when she called asking for help she threatened, “If someone doesn’t call me back I’m going to do something really bad to myself.”


And that loaded word obligation came up. I didn’t want to call but I didn’t want to be left with the guilt that if I didn’t call and she did do something to herself that somehow I would have been at fault. So I called. She wasn’t a crying mess like I had been. She was angry and filled with all the answers as to how she is filled with a power that had intimidated her boyfriend and that’s why he left. Okay. When I changed the subject and asked about mutual friends, she proceeded to blame one for being sick, said another one was in an arranged situation (‘there’s really no love there) and asked me when I was going to get off my ass and get my writing done. Did I mention she doesn’t work and I work a full-time job and a part-time job? Yes it’s easy to have all the answers for the world at large when you haven’t worked a day in your life. But that’s just a little of my venom.


After that call I didn’t bother to call her for 6 months. I just couldn’t be bothered. I felt like her cry for help was emotional blackmail, a manipulation and I just couldn’t be a part of it. Emotional blackmail is one of my achilles heels. Emotional blackmail gets you to say yes when you don’t want to say yes for fear that should you say no something really bad could happen and by extension it would be your fault. I do not respect anyone who gives me no choice other than doing what they want me to do. IT MAKES ME HATE!


Anyway. We recently got together for dinner. I didn’t really want to go but I figured since it had been at least 6 months maybe it was the time to approach the subject. The moment I saw her I realized that nope, it wasn’t going to be discussed. The first thing out of her mouth was a careless remark that was basically like a laugh at how hard I work. Basically I’m a loser in her eyes.


I sat across from her and for the first time ever all I saw was an ugly person. Her skin looked ugly, her eye contact was angry and ugly. She was ugly to me. I knew that her poison tipped words were probably about her anger towards me. She is angry that I haven’t called her in six months. She is angry that I didn’t support her in her time of need. She didn’t ask me why I haven’t been available and I didn’t volunteer the information. Another girlfriend said to me last night, “that dinner was the funeral for your relationship.” Truth!


As I look back at the girlfriend who didn’t call me for six months, I wonder had she felt she’d done enough of what she could possibly give me at that time? Was I putting on her expectations of what I wanted not considering what she could do? Does my heartbreak mean that everyone else should stop what they are doing to sit vigil by my side? Does your heartbreak mean that I have to sit vigil? And it brings me back to accepting people exactly the way they are and accepting myself exactly the way I am.


Byron Katie shared a story a few years ago about her husband who wasn’t interested in joining on family outings. The outing were with her grown up kids and he didn’t have kids. And overall he just wasn’t interested. She made it into a thing briefly and then finally set him free from having to attend. She made family plans without him and found she enjoyed those outings more because she wasn’t worrying about him having a good time. And he went off and did his own thing. It wasn’t too long before once he had the freedom he started joining the family outings and started having a good time himself. She said something along the lines that when she realized she wasn’t responsible for him and accepted that the family thing wasn’t his thing it made everything easier. And for him, he needed the freedom to choose and when he did have the freedom he actually chose them.


I’m really trying to find that place of true full out acceptance. Removing false expectations and obligations from others and hopefully they will do the same for me.


The best analogy has always been about giving money to charity. It would be ridiculous to donate your entire pay cheque to a charity leaving you with no money to pay rent, get groceries etc. No, you give a portion of your pay. You give what you can afford to give.


I want to accept that people, my friends, my loved ones are giving me what they can afford to give emotionally, spiritually, keeping their own well being in consideration. I want to remove the focus on what I think they ought to give me, how they ought to support me. How many phone calls are enough phone calls if I’m heartbroken. Because if I lift my head and look around, other people did support me through that heart break. I wasn’t alone.


That work as yoga practice has really been helping me to look at my life from a different perspective, with a different attitude. And zero in on where I cause my own problems and zero in on what meanings I give to events that don’t have to mean the most negative.


And that said, sometimes a friendship is just over.

This was a long piece. If you’ve made it through the whole piece SERIOUSLY Thank you for reading!

EY

Work/Yoga Mindset

Adults Acting Out

On Dec 4th, 2012 my friend Sarah's facebook status said that her mother passed away that morning and later on in the day Sarah's husband of 3 years, Neil, also passed away.

I burst into tears. How? How does one person have to endure such devastation at one time? And so close to Christmas. I sent her a message right away with all my phone numbers and said, "call me when you need to scream, cry , talk, whatever you need."

She had a memorial for her husband on the 10th of December, the day before his parents were returning to England. It's bizarre how life works out sometimes. His parents had come to Canada on vacation and while they were here their son dies. It's so hard to wrap your head around stuff sometimes.

At the memorial I just wanted to keep my focus on not crying. I could cry after I left. I simply wanted to be a support. Sarah mentioned at one point to a handful of us who all used to work with her and each other that another mutual friend/ ex co-worker decided not to show up because he said it was too hard for him.

Sarah says, "too hard on him? I've lost my mum, my husband, and my cat, all on the same day and it's too hard for John to show up."

That is the way it goes though, doesn't it? People find the worst times to act out. What is with people acting out anyways? When my mom died, my Uncle's girlfriend spent the bulk of my time in Montreal grasping for attention. If she wasn't crying uncontrollably over some random something, she was getting rip roaring drunk. No, I wasn't a fan.

I've been thinking a lot about people who act out especially since there was a fair amount of it in 2012. I've decided I'm no longer rewarding people for acting out. I'm not going to react or give them my attention, neither positive nor negative. At some point we all have to get over ourselves. We have to work through our issues.

This is the next step in my healing and letting go of the energies that pull me down. I've overcome hanging out with people I don't like in order to spend time with pople I do. I say it straight out, if you've invited so and so I won't be there because I'm not a fan. And now I'm not giving my energy to people who act out in order to manipulate me into giving them my attention. I believe that acting out is a manipulation.

We only have so much time in a day and to spend it buried in crappy energy then with the hours or days of angry thoughts and feelings that follow the crappy energy. It's not worth it. Children act out. The rest of us should know how to use our words or figure it out.

Some people use anger to control us or stop us from speaking honestly.
Some people insult us in order to get us to change a "no" into a "yes."
Some people guilt trip us.
And some people act out when they feel insecure about some attention they think they deserve to receive at the expense of your feelings or what's really happening.
I'm simply not going to reward them for that behaviour.

In the grand scheme of attention, some people, some of my friends, are really going through serious hard times. I get choked up on a daily basis thinking about my friend Sarah. I've been sending her messages and ideas on how to cope. Telling her what helped me when I was grieving. I can't even imagine how to recover from such pain.
EY

July 9 Year - Breaking Through

We eat too much, drink too much, smoke too much and whatever too much because we're not always in touch with what we're really feeling.

I've been standing in quicksand this month. Stuck and not able to move forward despite knowing what I want to do and even knowing the steps I can take to do it. I have to admit it's been bugging me. Shit! I'm always doing this work, always looking within, always looking at ways to move past all the garbage I've lived through, the hurts, the beat downs etc. I'm always looking at the ways that I've played a part in all of it. Quite frankly I've been sick of it.

I've tried to adhere to Christine Delorey's advice to "Slow down, stop racing, and simply Be." Well that part has been easy if you put it in a being lazy perspective because, to me, I've just been lazy. On a more enlightened plane, I've been waiting for some answer for a question I haven't asked yet. Yes.

It's half way through the month and Christine always mentions to re-read the forecast for the month to find deeper meaning. Two things stood out for me yesterday when I re-read my forecast. The past reappearing and some secret that will surface. I kept asking what was showing up now that was like a repeat of my past. And what possible secret could there be left? I've dug through all the secrets.

It's a good thing that I believe in Christine's work because this month's forecast was a pain in my ass. ha-ha!

It says,

There is a strangeness about this cycle and you may be unsure of what your next move should be. You want to do something, but the feeling persists that whatever you do may not work the way you want, and may be a waste of your time and energy.

I have been weaving in and out of sureness and unsureness of indeed what my next move is. How do I keep motivated with my writing, work my two jobs and have a social life. It's summer for crying out loud, I can be disciplined in the winter months when I'm happy not to leave the house.

This fear of inadequacy is being triggered by the voice of guilt telling you that you must constantly be doing something – and that doing nothing and getting nowhere in this human ‘race’ is unacceptable. Stop judging yourself by these outdated standards. Slow down. Stop doing, stop racing, and simply BE. Accept the uncertainty of it all and know that no matter how much pressure you are under, the situation will change in due course.

First thought, "I don't know if I feel inadequate" and mid month, "okay maybe I do feel inadequate." But at least there is a positive that the situation will change in due course. More waiting but what the heck am I waiting for? Why can't I just plow through?

Be aware of how past actions have led to your present situation. You are likely to be more ‘alone’ than usual and, if not, then it is up to you to take some private time and space for yourself. You have some very important thinking, feeling, and healing to do. The question is, “What do I really want?”, which can only be answered by another question: “What do I really feel?”

I keep looking at my past actions but am coming up blank. I look at what I call my laziness. Whenever I say I'm lazy to others they remind me of all that I actually do that proves that I'm not lazy. But I always feel like I can do better. Last year I realized that what stops me a lot is that I think 'that could have been done better' about everything. It's a level of perfectionism that buries me.

I have been more alone than usual and that I've been mostly fine with. I keep telling myself that I'm alone because I need to be, if I didn't need to be I wouldn't be alone. But how can I use this alone time wisely. How can I do it better? ha ha!

And I've been constantly asking myself, What do I really want, What do I really feel? And I haven't always been sure about what feel I'm looking at. What do I really feel about work? What do I really feel about my life? What do I really feel about what I really want to do? Yes, I can drive myself crazy.

The reason the events of July are so confusing or contradictory is because your sense of direction has become muddled. The only way you will be able to see your options, let alone make a decision, is to go inside, back in time, and determine what it was in the past that led you here; to this state of being lost.
In fact, you are likely to find yourself in the past whether you put yourself there or not...
Look for a connection between mistakes you see others making and mistakes you have made yourself, as there could be a futile case of the pot calling the kettle black going on.

What is it from my past that has led me here? I do feel lost. In my 'lostness' in the first half of this month I kept trying to think of the past. What is happening now that 'seems' like the past? I touched on it a couple times in conversations but didn't really realize that that was it. On my walk with my friend I'd mentioned my frustration with some friends about how I feel like they punish me when I don't do things the way they want me to. You know, someone ignores me for awhile so I don't chase after him or her and I feel this distinct punishing energy coming from him or her?

And in the other conversation I was cracking a riff on being Brown Snow. I said that in my childhood I could compare my story to Snow White but since I'm a black woman I couldn't call myself that, I'd have to call myself Brown Snow. It cracked us up. But it did delve into the punishment for just being me idea that has been bugging me.

Secrets from the past may reappear. Deal with them because, in the 9 year, past issues that you don’t deal with usually find a way to deal with you. Either bring a secret into the open, or accept that the matter is unresolved. Then work through the fear or guilt you are holding in as a result. You may find that an issue no longer needs secrecy, but if you stand to hurt yourself or someone else by “coming clean”, ask yourself what would really be gained by making a painful revelation. Perhaps the only person you need to reveal your secret to is you. Or, perhaps someone else’s secret will be revealed to you. Maybe someone will shock you as they reveal how they secretly feel about you.

And that damn secret! I was secretly hoping that the secret was someone revealing to me how he secretly feels about me but then I realized I didn't actually know anyone who I wanted to profess some love for me because you know, exes are exes for a reason. And most of the other men I know are married and the ones that aren't, not so much. Unless Dwayne Johnson (the rock) appeared suddenly and saw me once and was completely dumbstruck by his instant love for me?

The secret about finding the bio-father isn't such a big secret except he doesn't know I've found him.

Okay Christine, you're killing me here!

Last night I walked home from work and as I was, I reminded myself that this alone time is good, it's what's needed otherwise I wouldn't be alone, in the middle of a Beautiful July. That I just need to make better use of this time. I got home and got my writing stuff all organized in one spot to dig into my novel rewrite. I attached my Livescribe pen to my computer to charge. Then promptly started to play Cubis and drink a couple glasses wine. Woo hoo! Better use of my time!

In my dream last night, my mother and I were looking out the window watching these grown men playing. They were helping one man move out and came across hot wheels and proceeded to set up hot wheels tracks and were getting the cars to do flips and stuff. My mother and I were watching them and laughing at how men can be boys.

I woke up at 2:15am. I had the debate about whether I should get up or sleep until 3am. I couldn't decide if that early was really a part of my normal early rising or if I woke up because the fans made me cold and I just needed a sheet to cover me. I tried to fall back to sleep but by 2:30am I knew it was probably my early rising time and I'd get up and do my morning pages. I can always go have a wee nap after yoga.

And my morning pages wrote themselves. My first sentence was, "Is the secret that I am lonely? And from there delved into what I am still grieving about men, about my family and feeling that I've done everything wrong. And I delved deep into what my fears are that are related to the punishing thing that really stops me from being intimate with others, sharing myself (my feelings, my thoughts, my dreams). It's causing me to remain stuck, this feeling that some of the people I trust and love and give to beat me down and don't value me the way I need to be valued. My hurt and fear is the quicksand that is keeping me stuck. Okay, I'll say it, I am scared to have everything that I want, I know I can have it, because I'm scared that the moment I feel good in it, comfortable in it, confident in it, some one I love is going to wipe it all away and it will be lost and how will I ever recover.

There's a lot more in there. My morning pages are three legal size pages after all. And the ironic thing is about that dream this morning. A couple years after my mother passed away a psychic told me 'when you're mother appears in a dream, ask her what she has come to tell you." Man oh man, every time my mother appeared in a dream I'd wake up frustrated because I'd forget to ask the question. It wasn't until I said good-bye to a work friend who had passed away, whose funeral I couldn't attend, as I was falling asleep I wished her well and told her to look for my mother that my mother would help her out on this new plane, that I finally had the dream and asked my mother the question. In that dream, like in the dream this morning, my mother and I were looking out the window watching people and their antics outside.

Some how those two dreams feel like bookends to me right now. And the connection clicked in as I was writing the dream this morning in my pages. I had tears streaming down my face and I was laughing. It wasn't the painful tears of release. It was the happy tears of how powerful our lives are and our value in life. And our connections to EVERYTHING!

And P.S. if the Rock would like to come meet me and profess his undying love for me, I'd still be okay with it.

EY

Blue Metropolis

I realized at some point in March that I was in a bit of a rut. I had become so accustomed to living in pain that now that I'm not in pain I'm still living my life as if I were. I made myself a commitment that I would make it a point to enjoy my life more, even if I had to schedule things. As it happens, when you make a commitment, the next email I received was from Blue Metropolis in Montreal and it was their events and dates.

Sometimes I don't have to be hammered over the head before I get things. I decided that I would attend. I haven't been to Montreal in at least 5 years and the way the scheduling worked, I would be free in the mornings to do what ever I wanted. I realized that everyone would be at work during the week so I knew I wouldn't be seeing too many people. Because I stayed at my best-friend's house, I drove into town with him every morning and did my own thing.

I made plans with my Aunt and a couple cousins to meet up for lunches. When in Montreal, I've got to eat everything that I cannot get in Toronto. Like good Smoked Meat sandwiches, Lafleur's hot dogs, bagels, good pizza (although Pizza Nova Toronto comes close). My mom used to get mad at me because I never wanted home cooking, I just wanted fast food but in the end she got over it when she realized she didn't have to cook.

Wednesday I got my location figured out. Hotel Opus, where Blue Met was being held, was in the perfect spot at Sherbrooke and St Lawrence. It's close to the Mountain, Close to Smoked meat sandwiches (although I didn't go to Schwartz's deli, I went to Salaison Slovenia for Smoked meat and hot salami combo), downtown, and close to a zillion Metro stations (Subway stations, if you've never been to Montreal.) The people at the Hotel were awesome, friendly, always smiling, made me feel comfortable when I was just hanging out in the lobby for my next event. Apparently it was the first year that Blue Met was held there.

Thursday I had breakfast at Eggspectation on De Maisonneuve near Crescent, after walking past riot police surrounding a handful of protesting students. If there's going to be drama let it not be mine. lol
Eggspectation was a brilliant choice, baked beans with sausage and eggs!?! Never thought of that. Loved it.
Everyone was so friendly. It's not the Montreal of old, when you spoke English and people were pissy with you because of it. Everyone said, "Bonjour, Hello." The French has to come first but at least the English does come and not grudgingly. What a pleasant surprise. I left there and rode the Park Ave (Avenue du Parc) bus all the way to the end and back. Located St. Viateur, which unfortunately I never had a chance to get back to for St. Viateurs bagels because of the student protest on Sunday. I walked over to the Dairy Queen on Park Avenue, near the mountain, and could remember being 4 years old and standing in line with my Mother and my Brother on a hot summer night to get some ice cream. I swear that DQ has had to have been there for at least 50 years. I guess they do well! I walked a block over where KayVan Furniture used to be and looked at our old place, the first place I can remember living at.

It's spooky how much I can still remember and how the same it looked. It looks the way I remember. I wrote down the address for my journalling and went and sat at the foot of the Mountain until it was time to make my way to meet up with my Aunt and my cousin, her youngest son for lunch. We had lunch at a Portuguese restaurant and caught up. It's been so long since I've been around family that it was nice. Just as we were about to eat, I stopped and looked at them both and said, "Oh my Mom is here!"
They both looked at me suspiciously. I told them that the first song I heard after spreading my mother's ashes on the Mountain back in 1997 was the song, "You Gotta Be" by Des'ree and that song was playing in the restaurant.
I said, "It's like she came to visit and to let us know that she's happy we're together."
I haven't heard that song in years.

Friday morning I was supposed to spend with my Aunt's older son but he had to cancel so I had the morning to myself. Of course it was cold and raining. Not to be deterred, I walked from my BF's work to Atwater Metro, got a day pass and a map and got on the metro. I went to Villa Maria Station and checked out the place we used to live in at the corner of Monkland and Decarie Blvd. Place is all renovated and looks nice, I'd live there now, if I could be a full-time writer and didn't have to go to a 9 to 5 job. ha-ha! We lived there until we moved to British Columbia for a year.

I walked to the first place we lived after we moved from Park Avenue, which was down the street on Decarie Blvd just above Notre Dame De Grace. The place looks the same and still has a furniture place underneath. We seemed to have a furniture theme for a minute there. Only now they sell Antiques. The old guy that owned the entire building when I was a kid died years before my mom did. Been trying to remember his name and somehow I keep thinking it was Chesterfield. Funny!

I walked along N.D.G towards Girourd Ave to where my elementary school used to be, down Girourd towards Sherbrooke through Girourd park where one summer in the 1970's it was overrun with bats. I remembered the bushes that ran all the way down through the park and when we were kids we would run through the middle of those bushes.
I walked over to Sherbrooke and Decarie where we lived when we got back from living in BC. They were important places, those homes on Decarie. The first one with my father and all that entailed, the second one being on the run and ultimately leaving the city and the third place coming back and feeling safer. Or better yet, The first place I was an outgoing child who would perform if you asked me to and by the time we moved to the third place, I was shy and quiet.

I left there bussed it back to Villa Maria and metroed it to Angrignon Station in Ville LaSalle to bus it to the place I lived from the age of 11 to about 15. It was the only place that we lived that enabled me to stay in the same school once I started High School. We moved again but I refused to change schools. It was a traumatic place, with violence and knowing more than a child should and superstitions like, "If you laugh all day, you'll cry all night." That superstition was proved time and again and for many years in my life as an adult, I continued to believe it until I decided to change that belief. I still get nervous if I laugh all day.

I stood outside that house and talked to myself. It's the place where I could never be sure if I'd even see the future. It was the place where I started to write. It was the place where I lost my good feelings about myself. It was the place where I learned that stress can make you physically sick. It was the place where so many things happened that I need to write about them but for the most part I felt like I exorcised them just with my presence and facing them down. Yes I survived it and I've changed so many of my beliefs that were born there.

As I stood there, I wondered about the energy of me as a little girl, if in some other dimension she is still living that life. I pretended that my now self could meet my then self and tell her to hang in there, you're going to make it. And as I walked away, I burst into tears.

Before I left Toronto, I had dinner with a girlfriend and I was telling her that I was having some anxiety attacks over going home. I didn't know what it was but I thought maybe this was the opportunity to go face down some longstanding demons. I said to her, "I've been through so much and I never stop to acknowledge the strength it took to survive. I don't know my own strength."

When I walked away from that house in tears, I realized my own strength. I had to have a helluva lot to make it through those tests. And I did. I do.

I took the Lapierre bus to Lafleur and Clement and had a great lunch at LaFleur's restaurant of Michigan hot dogs (hot dogs with spaghetti sauce) and French fries. If nothing else, everyone knows I have to have Lafleur's when I'm in town. The first thing everybody says is, "LaFleurs?" and I say, "Of course!"

The rest of my weekend was spent indoors at the Hotel Opus attending my writer's festival. I couldn't have imagined nor intended a better vacation. It was a little bit of everything that I needed.

EY

Mindbloom

Wednesday 8June11

I had a problem solved recently. I've been trying for 2 years, if not longer to do a television fast. You know, stop watching television for say an entire week or month and get shit done. I couldn't manage to find a way to do it. The moment I walked in the house I was clicking on the TV and had it on Bravo for Law and Order. How many times do you need to see the same episodes? Then it was some other show and another. That 3 hours a night I could have been getting stuff done, like say, writing a novel.

I was mad at myself everyday for being so weak and just not keeping my promise to myself.

And then a friend sent me an invitation to Mindbloom. I was bitter at first. Why are people always sending invitations to some kind of social something? Jeez, I'm facebook, I'm on plurk. I've got 5 email addresses and I spend so much time keeping up with those things it's any wonder I leave the house. Any how I checked it out.

It's a wonderful tree of your goals each branch is a specific area of your life and you start with 3 branches and create actions for those areas and you get seeds for keeping those actions. It's beautiful, it's visual and it's fun to keep track of your goals. The best part is because it costs you seeds to add an action, you really have to think about the most important actions you want to take. And as you go along, you make reasonable goals.

Well since I've been keeping track of my goals and actions on mindbloom, I've been so busy working on what I love that I have had no need to turn on the television. And my tree is looking mighty fine. And it all feeds into my chant, I want to feel good. I think if you click the title to this blog entry it will bring you to tree.mindbloom.com

Oh and as an aside on the man front. The gorgeous guy I'd about given up on has reached out, so he's not totally written off. Phew! I do really like him and I'm mindful that we both need to be choosing each other. I need to make him feel good and he needs to make me feel good if we're ever going anywhere with this very fascinating and exhilarating beginning.

EY

Clearing Old Energy

5June11 Sunday
"Oh Man, the universe had to send me the most attractive, intoxicating guy for me to say no to in order for me to clear the old energy. It's not a learned lesson without a certain level of difficulty." My journal entry from 1June11.

Yep, I'm feeling the tests of the universe, that is for sure. It's always that way, when you say you want to stand for something, like wanting to feel good, the Universe will send you these curves to see how fully committed you are to your new stance. My latest test has been the most adorably gentle, intoxicating man I have ever met. I swear when I'm near him the aliens abduct my brain that is how intoxicated I get from him.

But something isn't quite right. I've been going to his work for 3 years. I never even realized he noticed me other than being a customer. And it's within the last couple months that there has been a decided difference. I won't get into the nitty gritty but he has come across as being very happy with me doing all the showing up. He has been wonderful when ever I see him. He makes me feel like he's happy to see me. He intoxicates me. But any kind of "outside of work" contact has been nil. Non-responsive to the couple emails I've sent him, no moves for my phone number. etc, etc. Everything feels so public all the time with no real moves for one on one. Warning signs?

In keeping with my new boundaries of how I want to be guided in my life, it doesn't make me feel good. I am filled with anxieties about him with all those questions that come up like, "When is he going to ask me out? When is he going to ask me for my phone number? Is he ever going to make a substantial move?"
Always when I leave I walk as I call it the "depression walk". Because I know it will be yet another week that I will have to wait. Now don't get me wrong, I do love a man who takes his time and doesn't rush things but getting to know each other on a one on one basis doesn't fall into rushing things it falls into moving things forward.

It's interesting though because his presence has helped me to adjust some of my daily affirmations.

I've been through this too many times to count. I've been the woman who shows up and shows up and wonders all the questions above and eventually watches as the guy ends up with someone else. Ironically, the movie that was playing last night was, "He's just not that into you." Message? I think so. It's so easy to make excuses for people who don't quite choose me. Oh he's an, "Out of sight, out of mind" kind of person so I just have to make myself MORE available. Or he's shy so I'll have to take the reigns. Well, what I've been told by many men over the years is that even the shy ones find a way to ask a woman they like out.

It's funny how male/female interests can bring up so many family issues. I don't keep in touch with any of my family like I used to, after my mom died, because I realized one day that if I didn't call, they wouldn't call. It was hard to see that the only reason why a relationship was maintained was because I maintained it. Right, right... that was what ultimately fed into my bout of depression so many years ago. Interesting!

So I analyze this situation and I feel like I'm doing an awful lot of chasing for great feelings at the time but then when I walk away I feel like shit.

In my return email to my ex that I mentioned in the previous blog entry, I told him that one of my latest affirmations is I no longer need to attract this into my life (whatever 'this' is). And the sweetface intoxicator is helping me to add more of what I no longer need to attract into my life.

I no longer need to attract the feeling of being lonely in a love relationship again.
I no longer need to attract a man who makes me wait needlessly.

I want a man, I want people who choose me. Plain and simple. They don't have to be up my ass, but I know which people choose me and I certainly know when a man chooses me. And if there are bad childhood feelings that come up, clearly there are things I have to work on and I can only work on them the best way I can. But chasing after people who are not available for me for whatever reason breeds desperation and the question, "What's wrong with me?"

What's wrong with me that he doesn't call? What's wrong with me that I have to do all the work? And all the myriad of questions that can come up. There's nothing wrong with me. I am more than enough.

He is just not that into me. He doesn't choose me and in order to feel good, I can't choose him.

EY