The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

 Today is Tuesday. December the seventh, two-thousand and ten. And Today is the worst day I've had in a VERY long time. I feel so bogged down and depressed today. In the short span of time that exists between Saturday the fourth of December and today, the seventh, I have lost two people near and dear to my heart. One was a good friend from high school. He was one of my first friends after I transfered to Seminole, and he always had a way to make me smile. He was wise beyond his years. And he loved God and held fast to his faith better than most of us I would think. He was like a brother to me my first awkward years of high school. And I regret not staying in better contact with him while he was still here. I still can't stop the tears when I talk about him. He was one hell of a guy. I missed a good friend's wedding because of it.
  Sunday morning, I woke up with some very angry wisdom teeth and a canker sore. I've been running a low fever off and on since Sunday night. So all of Monday I spent down and out, trying to get better. This morning, I woke up, and drove to Seminole to take my baby sister to a doctor's appointment, where reality dealt me a swift blow to the gut by reminding me that she's not so little anymore....after leaving the office, in much pain from feeling unwell, I arrived to my parents house only to get into a fight with my brother and realize that I had to go back to town because I forgot to get a doctors note for my sister. So we went back to town; ran some errands; and on the way home, I receive a call from my mom telling me my grandpa has taken a turn for the worse and is completely unresponsive. So when I got to my folks house again, to more fighting, I had a mini break down.

I went back to Ada. I went to my boyfriends, and I zoned out for a while. Then my dad calls. My grandpa passed away today.

Trials are meant to make a person stronger...fire forges stronger iron, yes? I hope so. I don't feel strong. I feel broken down and bone weary from it all. I just want to curl up somewhere and cry; for the loss of a friend; for the loss of my grandpa....I just feel like a good cry...or several..is in order.
 A wise man told me that it's not the test, but the result of the test and what you decide to make of yourself through it that matters. For tonight...I think I'll make myself some hot cocoa, and maybe cuddle a bit with my boyfriend.

Thanks for indulging my rant, everyone.  

This is Just a Tribute

Hello all! I hope your holiday has been as rewarding and fun as mine so far! I'm in a great mood; like really, really great! Soo, I think I'll make a quick run down of what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving Season.

1. My Family.
   I know that typically people say they are thankful for their families; so allow me to elaborate here just a bit. In the last year, I have been engaged, gotten married, struggled with raising a husband, struggled with having a hand in destroying a marriage, been diagnosed with manic depression, played musical medicines, and gotten divorced. That's a LOT to take in in under a year. But my family has been supportive and caring throughout. My parents intervened and saved me from myself when I was at my lowest points. They saw my needs and did everything they could to help me. I owe so much to them. My siblings, despite losing what was to them a brother, have been real troopers. My baby sister has, if anything, become more open with me and I am very thankful for the opportunity to be someone she can trust with all her secrets. My brother is, as always, my brother. We fight, sure. But when he saw me hurting, he was absolutely loyal to me and tried is very best to comfort me. I am also very grateful to have such an open, loving relationship with my mom and my dad. Especially my mom. I can honestly say she's one of my best friends. I'm lucky to have her and my dad, who will always let me sit in his lap and cry if I need to.

2. My close friends
   When all the crap hit the fan, and I felt alone, my true friends stepped up. I swear, I had people crawling out of the woodworks to make sure I was okay. In times of trial, you will always find who your real friends are; who's willing to stick it out as your friend, no matter how messed up you are, and who would rather just delete you from their lives and be done with it. I've got to admit, there were a few that really surprised me. But to see how many people loved me for me, despite it all, was overwhelming and comforting. It makes me feel so loved and it makes me shine to know that I can be me with these people. So many of them knew I was not being me for so long. And I am very thankful to have those kinds of friends.

3. My Boss
  Odd as it may sound, Monnie Smith is someone I am sincerely grateful to know and to have been able to work for. She's loved me like one of her own and been a second mom to me when I needed it most. I will never be able to repay her for all her kindness. She is a stellar boss, and a remarkable woman. I am truly blessed to know her, and many other women like her.
 4. My Boyfriend and his family
   Cheesy? Yes. Truthful? Definitely. My boyfriend was one of my closest friends for a very long time. He knows me inside and out, almost as well as my own mother. When I was going through the divorce, he was one of many friends that came out of nowhere to make sure I was okay. I can't thank him enough for all the really great advice and talks we had those few months of hell I had to go through. I respect him so much for the man he's become, and no matter what he will always be one of my very best friends. His mother was also an incredible friend to me for many years. She always had great advice and a friendly face when I really needed it, and she still is one of the coolest women I know. I'm very thankful for both those relationships.
 4. Annie Hooper
  Annie has been my best friend since we were fourteen. We have seen so many ups and downs, but we stayed close through it all. If I ever needed anyone to help me bury a body, it would be her. She knows me like she knows herself. And I'm thankful to be the sister she never had =) I love you Annie bo Nannie!!


I'm also very grateful for where I am in my life right now. I've been through some trials for sure, but I have a sense of who I am through it, and a sense of direction for my life. I can't wait to see where this road leads next!!! I'm finally enjoying the adventure that is my life. And I hope you all can say the same.

The Face of Insecurity

   So, it's been a while since I blogged. I haven't been struggling with my insomnia as much; and my life is settling down a bit. I feel like I'm finding "normal" again. But tonight...tonight, my readers, I feel down and out. At first I couldn't put a finger on it. My emotions were nameless, yet overwhelming. I think I may have traced it now; and that's why I am writing this blog.
  I'm feeling insecure. That's the root of my emotions. I'm feeling less than adequate; a bit like a wall flower. To be clear, I am not having "relationship" drama. That's not it at all. What triggered this bout of self-doubt was some anxiety over my most recent job interview. I have been trying to get in to a retail position for a year and a half now. But I've never made it past the second interview or the personality assessment. It's disheartening to say the least when you are constantly passed up on a job for nothing more than appearances. I always lose out to the stereotypical pretty girl that fits this vapid worlds image of beautiful. It's a blow to my self esteem every time it happens. I don't have the "Look" that these places are after; so instead of me, the short, pale red headed spunky girl, the medium height thin teenager with the long blond hair gets the job. That makes me really self-conscious, and very aware of all my feature flaws. I have worked really hard for most of my adult life on my self esteem, trying to look in the mirror and see an image other than the one painted by a stranger when I was just a child.
I think I deserve to feel beautiful. So I don't fit the image that the world posts on every billboard and in every magazine. I don't want to; I don't want to be another cookie cut from the same plastic mold. I deserve to feel good about who I am and how I look, right?
I think so. I think we all do.
So, thank you, friends. Thank you all for every time you've called me beautiful, or liked a photo of mine. You all build me up so much; I don't think most of my friends realize I need that from them, or that I appreciate them for it. You all make me feel beautiful and priceless. And on nights like this, that's really all I need.

A Piece of Perspective

  Hello out there, all you lovely people who actually take time to read my blogs! Now, some of you may have come across a status post of mine on Facebook promising a new blog. This is that blog! For those who may read this and not know of the status that will be the center to my whirlwind of thoughts to follow, I'll post it here for you:

What gives someone the right to judge another? At what point does one person get to decide, dictate and announce the character of another human being? 

Now, I won't lie. I was pretty heated when I wrote that. Let me fill you in a little. Now, anyone who's read my blogs or knows me at all knows I am recently divorced. I made a mistake, and my husband left me. That's the short and sweet of it all. I told him because I felt bad; he took it and broad-casted it for anyone in the world to see as something much much worse; he's made me out to be a pure villain, and he a saint.  Well, that's just fine. I bit my tongue, I swallowed what pride I had left, and I let the guy do what he needed to do to help his own healing process. I did what I had to to protect myself; and for the most part I had assumed he was moving on from his initial response of telling anyone who knew me anything he could to make them hate me too. He told me I was a liar, and our whole relationship was just a lie too; none of it was real, none of it mattered. So to a large group of relative strangers, I appear to be the most monstrous woman alive; a cruel, heartless liar who never loved anyone in her life. 
Some good advice from my mother, God love her, helped me through that at the first; she told me that people will sit around talking about people no matter what the truth of it might be. But that I don't have to take it. So I ignored him, and his Hate-Aubrey club. Let me tell ya, when you want someone to disappear out of your life, and you don't want to hear the latest drama, ignorance is the best assistant. 


As of late, I have received, from various good friends, word that, after three months and a divorce, he is still up to these antics. Not just him, but others who had claimed to be "Above" that kind of behavior. That's what got me ticking that night on Facebook. But I don't like to post in the heat of emotion, because it leads to some very dumb writing. I like to take time to cool down and look at the situation with perspective.


        And now we hit the heart of what I am getting at; Perspective. Perception, if you will. 
Now, my question is at what point does one person get to outright dictate the character of another? And why is it okay to take something like the character of a person based on the word of someone else? Especially someone who clearly has problems dealing with that person. It just seems nuts to me, and yet we do it all the time.
But isn't it all in perspective? Isn't the way we see someone's character biased by our own personal perception? For example, my baby sister's closest friends see me as someone they love dearly, and even look up to to an extent. My mom sees me as her baby girl, who's always making a mess of herself. My friends see me as a person they can trust for a good laugh and like to be around. My ex-husband sees me as a monster.
And I see them all differently as well. My perceptions and experiences with a person are not the same as another person's. 
 In a Sociology class I once took, we discussed this very thing. Our professor told a story of four people who all witnessed the same crime. But none of them told the exact same story. Where someone may remember four people being involved, another may have only noticed two. And so it's important to get all the different perceptions so we can put together a realistic picture of what actually happened. 


I think this same theory should apply on more personal levels. It is not right, nor is it fair, to base an opinion of someone and their character off one person's say so. It is not okay to hate someone when you only know one side of a story. So in closing, I would ask any of you who read this to keep those thoughts in mind.
We are all guilty of off hand judgments; none of us have ever heard something about someone we don't know and automatically thought "Hmm, I should really ask around and find out more before I decide to say this person is evil." But we can start. We can all consciously try to remember that no good story ever has just one perspective. And no person's character can be judged by one person's perception. 

What the Heart Wants

 Have you ever thought about your heart as something separate? Have you ever imagined it with it's own mind, deciding what it wants for itself, and if so, have you contemplated it's desires conflicting with the logic of your mind?
I find these thoughts compelling. I think about them all the time. At one point in my life, I thought that I had to choose; either the logical desires my brain could think through and plan out, or the strong, emotional desires of my heart that I can rarely, if ever, think all the way through much less have completely mapped out. Why did I ever think the two were mutually exclusive? Looking back now, I can see that the two extremes have equally bad consequences. When I ignored my heart, I often found myself thinking "What if?" rather than enjoying the moment I was living in. If I went solely with what was more logical, I was constantly planning the next step, and not taking in the beauty of what was in front of me right then and there. In the end, I had no joy in my life when I made it a matter of choosing one or the other.

As of late, I have found myself thinking in new ways, looking at events with new perspective, and I like the change I am seeing in myself. I don't think it's a matter of one or the other anymore, but instead it's about finding the harmony and balance between my heart's desires and my sense of what is logical and what reality is or could be.
 I've been divorced just shy of a month, officially. I am over that relationship, probably much faster than I had thought possible. And I have found out that my ex-husband, for all his talk of my disloyal heart and inability to really love, moved on just as quickly if not more so. At first this took me by surprise, I'll admit. He had said so much to and about me that his own actions seemed hypocritical to say the least. But once I processed it, I was happy for him. I can honestly say I'm happy he's moved on so quickly and effectively; it makes me feel better about the marriage ending in the first place. It confirms for myself the idea that we are both better off without each other. So when is it okay for me to follow suit and find someone else?

What if my heart knows what it wants? When will it be okay for me to openly pursue it as well? When can I find my happiness without feeling the invisible heat disapproving eyes on my back? What's stopping me?
I don't know that anything *is* stopping me. I think I've already figured it out; I know what my next step is. But unlike myself in past situations, I am going to let the balance between logic and emotion help guide me into it.

I can honestly say, with a clear mind, that I am happier now than I ever was before. It has taken years of dis-contentedness to figure out what it was I really wanted in this life. Now I am just going to sit back and enjoy the ride. We only get to live this life once; and I am on my way to knowing at the end I can say "Hell yeah, I would do it again!"

Insomniac

Sleep, you evade me. Not once, not twice. But always. This is a constant dance; a chase, if you will. You tease me, and lure me to your sweet dreamy edges, then you run and hide. You flee from me like a shy lover. Where do you go when you leave me, sweetest sleep? who's head do you fill with dreams and rest when you refuse to succumb to me?

Do you know the effects of your wicked little game? Of course not. You are a state of my own mind and body. You have no understanding, no emotional capability. You simply are.

It is my mind that keeps me running on empty. It is a product of my very own chemicals that allow me to drift closely, but never fully, to sleep. My mind becomes a dangerous place at night when it refuses to allow me the sweet escape of rest. It twists the little noises around me into something terrifying. It makes the shadows come to life and dance across my room, tormenting my overactive imagination.

It takes every issue of the day, week, and month and plays it over and over, like a skipping record. And with every instant replay, it highlights yet another insignificant detail, causing me to ponder, sometimes for hours at a time, as to the meaning of that particular detail.  Every little picture, the slightest change of tone in voice, something I could have said during a conversation, something someone else has said. It all magnifies in my treasonous mind.

I feel trapped in my own head...and suffocated by my emotions. I can't breath enough to keep up with the whirl wind in my mind. Too many thoughts spinning faster than a twister inside my poor self-tortured mind.

And of all the thoughts, all the things I fear when the insomnia takes it's wicked grip on me, which ones always come out on top? It's always "Am I good enough?" For anything. Am I good enough for anything. Do I really deserve...anything? How does one know they deserve to be happy? Or to do amazing things with their life? Or find that one person they can truly trust with everything? How can I ever deserve that.

Does humanity deserve it? A second chance, true love, true happiness. When we all have done so much to wrong one another, and hurt one another..... in these moments, my mind knows the answer is "yes" most of us do, in fact, deserve those things. But the insomnia's iron grip screams back that NO. I do NOT deserve that. How could I? After all I have done in this life, how could I ever expect that any happiness I find will last? What makes me think after the pain I have caused I should get that chance?

The fight usually takes every last drop of energy. The fight within, one side pulling me down, the other reminding me there is a Savior who died for me so that I can, in fact, HAVE that second chance at love and happiness. That there is nothing that can take the love of my family and friends away from me, no matter how depressed I get, or anxious. The ones who love me will never forsake me.
If I have learned anything from the last four months, it's that.

The World's Slowest Poison: an after thought of another blog

 Poison. Defined in the Miriam-Webster dictionary as "something destructive or harmful." Typically, we think of poison as a dark liquid that moves swiftly through the body shutting down all vital organs, including the heart. But if poison is defined as something destructive or harmful, we are surrounded by poisons every single day of our lives. If we compiled a list of all the poisons in the world, we would all wrap ourselves in bubbles and never come out again. Everything from the media, to politics, to what we eat can be destructive or harmful. But in my pondering, I have found the one poison that interests me the most because it, by far, has the most victims. Ourselves.
The human mind is, in my opinion, the deadliest and the slowest of poisons. Humankind has an innate knack of getting in it's own way and becoming poisonous to itself. We let our thoughts spin wildly out of control and push us to the brink of disaster. We get ahead of ourselves, or full of ourselves. And as the old adage goes, "Pride doth go before a great fall."We see examples of this within great literary works such as Romeo& Juliet, a tragic story of two "star-crossed lovers" with the unfortunate luck of being born into rivaling families. And there, just in the beginning of the synopsis, we can see that age old poison sinking in. If those parents could have gotten out of their own way, perhaps their children would have lived. Perhaps the feud of their lifetime could have been put to rest. They could have found ultimate healing and peace by setting aside grudges, and embrace the joy of young love. There are endless possibilities as to how the story could have gone. But Shakespeare wrote it out to play to the tune of self destruction. Why? Because self destruction plagues society and always has.
When we get inside our own heads and watch those wheels as they spin, what exactly do we expect to happen? A great epiphany? A sudden and complete understanding of ourselves? As a girl who spent many a night locked in her own head watching the wheels spin, I can assure you it rarely leads to anything other than over-thinking and self-destructive behavior.
 The human heart has an incredible capacity for many things. Healing ,for example. A heart can heal itself from the worst of heart breaks and shape us into stronger, better people. But every coin has a flip side. The human heart also can hold onto things much longer than is healthy for a soul. Past hurts and wrongs against oneself can sit and fester in the heart until soon our whole being revolves around a competition of sorts. Constantly having to prove we're fine. Constantly competing against the festering growth of anger and revenge. Here is my theory.

When you hold onto something that cut you deeply, when you let it stay in the back of your mind, it has a way of finding your heart. When it does, no matter your outward appearances, you begin to poison yourself slowly. Because soon that hurt alters your way of thinking. You may have kept that memory in the back of your head to make you stronger and more aware for the future, so as to prevent it happening ever again. But that robs away the joy and trust from your relationships. Soon everyone you know is silently, secretly on trial for an action not their own; for a cause that they did not create. It slowly builds to a serious self destruction. And the person who is destroying themselves won't even notice it, because it has become such a part of themselves.

So what do you do if you see this happening to someone you care for? well, if I had the answer, I would gladly share it. The sad truth is you can't stop someone from self-destructive tendencies. You can't prevent them from starting the process that leads to it. You can rarely halt it, and even then you're lucky if they let you close enough to do so.
All you can do is try and recognize those behaviors in yourself, and prevent your own self destruction. Your mind is the most dangerous poison. And only you can keep yourself from taking that poison.

WARNING: A Rant

Ah, hello blog world! I have been missing you. So far, life is good. Really good. I have officially been a Divorce' for two whole days now. Honestly, that wasn't as emotionally overwhelming as I had thought it could be. I went to court, raised my right hand, did a few "Yes Sirs" and walked out with my ex-husbands last name and a fresh page to start on. All in all, it's good to have it behind me. I'm still on decent terms with his parents, as is he with mine; that always makes things easier I think.

I did some small celebrating, talked to some very good friends, and I have been living my life with a new zest for the mystery in it all than I have ever had.

Correct me if I am mistaken, but isn't that a normal way of healing to a bad break up, or in my case a divorce?
Not holding on to the past, realizing it's over and why it is in fact over, and moving forward as best as you can? I think that's pretty healthy. Which makes me feel good about where I am, and excited about where I am heading.

This brings me to the thing that annoyed me today. I will never be okay with the false facade of a person who has "Moved On." A person who wants the world to see they have done the normal healing involved in long relationships ending. A person who, for all intents and purposes, looks to have found a new start with a person well suited to them for whatever reasons. When that same person turns around and says or does something so clearly the opposite of the image they have built, it can only make one wonder as to why? Why would they lie? Why would they pretend? I can't think of anyone who would judge another for having to heal from a broken heart or a bad ending to a long standing relationship.
Now, just to clarify, I am not in any way referring to my ex-husband. I think he really has done the normal process of healing; or at least most of it. He did what he had to do to help himself; I don't agree with a portion of it. But I don't hold it against him. He's not the target of my blog today.

The target for this particular blog is no one special; I just see these things happen so often, and it's really very sad. It makes me wonder when the social stigma that you have to always land on your feet and be "A-Okay" at all times following a break up was developed.
I think it's unhealthy. I think we should all try and do our part to put an end to that social stigma. Think about it for a minute; how many of us know or have known someone who had the biggest breakdown of their life after pretending to be just fine and dandy at the end of a long relationship? I know for a fact that that behavior can lead to serious depression and poor decision making. I know it from first hand experience. It's a self destructive idea. It's unrealistic and best, and manipulative at worst. It holds consequences far outstretching the couple itself; it can hurt family, mutual friends, new relationships; you name it.

So the next time you feel the ground slipping, or your life shattering before your eyes, remember that it is OKAY to feel that way. That it's NORMAL to not know what to do at the end of something you may have thought would always last. It is not in the least okay to pretend, to yourself or anyone else, that you feel anything slightly askance of your true feelings. That leads to immature and impulsive actions. And those, dear readers, do more damage than owning up to how you really feel ever could.

We all fall down, we all break ourselves and others. But the pieces do get swept up, and slowly, they get put back together. And the picture you'll see if you let yourself heal the right way is a far more beautiful future than you could have ever dreamed of. 

The Reality of Emotions

   Have you ever felt emotion hit you like a tidal wave? Like your own personal hurricane slamming against you over and over until you can't feel yourself breath anymore? Until it overwhelms you to the point of surrender, and you give in completely to the emotions which create the raging torrent inside of you.


Why do our emotions ebb and flow this way?  When you lose yourself to the torrent, how do you reconnect with reality? Where is the shore when the tide pulls you in...that's my question right now.


It feels as though I am constantly battling that current of emotion. It pulls, and I try to swim down under it and resurface up on top of it once more. But that's only the start of the cycle. It's a daily fight and a complete toss up each time as to who may win; me, or the emotions that build underneath the calm, bubbly surface. 


Out of curiosity, I looked up the definition to "Emotion." I found many, but here are a few I'd like to share:

As defined by the Medical Dictionary:

emo·tion definition

Pronunciation:  /i-ˈmō-shən/ 
Function: n 
1 :  the affective aspect of consciousness 
2 :  a state of feeling 
3 :  a conscious mental reaction (as anger or fear) subjectivelyexperienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specificobject and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.

And as defined by www.dictionary.com,
–noun

1.

an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow,fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished fromcognitive and volitional states of consciousness.

2.

any of the feelings of joy, sorrow, fear, hate, love, etc.

3.

any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by experiencinglove, hate, fear, etc., and usually accompanied by certainphysiological changes, as increased heartbeat or respiration,and often overt manifestation, as crying or shaking.

It feels nice to put a clear definition to something that isn't tangible. 

Emotions. A state of feeling, often manifested in a conscious mental reaction and a subconscious change in behavior.

I don't know about you all, but when it comes to battling something we have so little control over it's good to know that we have one weapon to fight back with: new knowledge. An unending desire to learn more about what drives us to these emotions, how they come about, and why they cause "behavioral changes" is as strong a life jacket as any. After all, knowledge is power, is it not?

So until next time, good luck to all of you out there who are swimming in the sea of emotion. Remember, safety first. Never swim without your life jacket.