the dream and the nightmare

Most new-fangled spiritual books will say that we create our own reality, that none of us our victims but rather co-creators of these experiences, by our thoughts and intentions and emotions.

I think whether or not this is true, it is perhaps a helpful way of looking at the world.  If I experience pain (as I have with 'him'), then instead of just feeling hurt I can say to myself, "Why am I drawing this experience to me? Is it a reflection of my own insecurity, or did I need to learn a deeper lesson about unconditional love?"  The point being that if I do look at an experience which was painful, over which I have no control, and instead place it in my life as a learning experience, an opportunity to increase my happiness, etc., then I'm probably going to feel happier.

In the end isn't that a better starting point in life?

I'm not really there, though. I  have moments, and days even, where I can be in that space, but I still fall back into the maelstrom of pain on occasion.  I find I don't like it there.  I much prefer to feel that all of life is one, that nothing happens 'to' me, but that rather I am just part of a whole and can change the way I express myself to change the outcomes.

____

A little example of this happened the other day.  I'd stopped going to the gym many months ago, partly because I was just feeling self-destructive and miserable over 'him' but partly because they were spraying this horrible chemical air-freshener, every 15 minutes, through the ventilating system.  I'd be working out and I'd be breathing deeply and then Ugh! my throat and nasal passages would burn with the stuff.  

At the time I wrote a letter about it, but I felt a victim of the circumstances and felt also that they wouldn't do anything about it.  Guess what?  They didn't.

Realising that I needed to get back to the gym, really and truly, last week I talked a friend into metaphorically holding my hand to get me back there.  All was fantastic, big grin on my face, and then the spray ... Ugh!

This time, though, instead of feeling a victim of it, I just thought, 'Well it's perfectly reasonable of me to ask them to discontinue or replace it.  There is a lot of evidence that breathing air fresheners is harmful to one's health.  I'm sure they'll be fine with it, they will probably be glad I said something, because they don't want to be damaging people's health at a fitness centre!'

I rang them up, spoke to someone, told him how I felt and why, and he said he'd look into it.  In the UK, that means I might hear back in 2 or 3 weeks, if he's really on the ball.  In the meantime I sent him an email with links to articles about air freshener chemicals, in case he wanted any evidence to back up the request to the manager of the club (this was my local council's office, and the gym is one of their leisure centres).

A few hours later I got a call saying that the manager of the gym had disconnected the apparatus.  It was all done.  Just like that.

I went to the gym on Sunday morning, and the absence of chemicals was a wonderful thing.  

I wish things were so simple with 'him.'  He doesn't even seem to want to have contact with me.  I don't understand how we could be so close as friends and then how he could cut me out of his heart like this.  I understand it's not easy with his girlfriend, but he's got other women friends ... did he just start feeling contempt for me for no particular reason?  That is how he is treating me.

Now what does that say about how I feel about myself .... ? : )

life is beautiful

I just feel happy today. 

: )

God I miss him.

Elephant's best friend

Do yourself a favour and stop playing at 2:30 otherwise the American 'rah-rah' will make you want to vomit (and I'm American, remember?), but this is a very sweet tale.

Longest day of the year

Happy Summer Solstice everyone (all one of my readers).  It's a typically grey day in the UK, how relieving.  In California, from whence I've come, it will be sunny, clear, blue skies, and thousands of people will be dancing wildly in the streets at the Solstice parade.  

Here a few folks are listening to a didjeredoo (sp?) tape, for an otherwise silent meditation at dusk.  

Doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

But I was never one for sunny days and dancing in the streets.  

This morning I made myself a cup of mint tea and sat in the conservatory, on the rug I've put where my recently deceased cat's bowls used to be, and the other cat and I sat there quietly and watched the sea gulls on the roofs of the houses up above us.

I lit a candle for my departed cat, did a meditation, and thought about the book I am reading, which has gathered together all the experiments about the nature of nature ... we are, apparently, all made of light.  We're also apparently in constant communication with every living thing, at every moment of the day.  Each cheerful thought of ours can be felt by the plant nearby, each show of genuine affection between the cat and I will create a ripple that the sea gull on the roof opposite will feel and take in, just the way star light hits our eyes.  

Sounds a bit Pollyannaish, does it? : )

To me it makes sense, though.

So on this - the longest day of the year - I'm wishing you each (all one of you) a lot of light, light from a source of your own choosing.  I wish you love and joyful happenstance, I wish you serendipity and reprieve from any harm or pain or anguish.

I wish you a happy Solstice. 

xxxxx

the message never read

A few days ago I got an email from Myspace, telling me that I had a message from 'him'.  I still haven't logged in yet to read it.  Here are the possibilities, and why they all suck:

1) He's lovely and warm and concerned, and it just makes me feel sadder.

2) He's brief and cool, and therefore not leaving room for any response.

3) It's simply a generic email to everyone on his Friends list, asking if they are online and want to IM, in which case it was not only not for me, it was meant for someone else entirely as he must know I haven't logged in in over a week.

Can you see why it is best not to know?

If he really wanted to contact me, why wouldn't he write to my email address, or just text me?

There was a moment or two where I felt excited but then ultimately it's only been hurtful to have this tiny bit of contact/non-contact, knowing that I mean almost nothing to him, and feeling rather awkward and exposed because he means so much to me.

I just want to keep walking, walking away.  If he really comes to me and takes my arm and says, 'hey wait a minute,' I'll be there for him, but why would he?  It's probably easier for him to have me gone.

I know I sound really pathetic and dramatic, and I don't know how to explain this satisfactorily to a stranger ... If you can understand what it feels like to not feel at home with another person, not even members of your family, not your friends, not your lovers, not your husband, even though you might not realise what that means because you don't have anything to compare it to ... and then suddenly you meet a person, not a great person, a flawed person, a person not right for you in many ways, not meeting your list, and not even being available! ... and yet, for the first time in your life you feel like you are with family .... 

Does that help explain why this is so hard?

music man

That's a great film, too. ; )  Well actually not GREAT, but the story is lovely, a bit like The Rainmaker in that faith in someone makes them the thing that they claim to be.  

In the psychotherapy I am studying, person-centred, the theory is that providing Unconditional Positive Regard (just a fancy way of saying unconditional love) and empathy creates an environment that allows the person to integrate, own the various parts of themselves, and therefore make better choices that reflect who they really are in totality.  

It's so simple.

Wouldn't even be necessary if we didn't live in such a cold cold world.  

I look at psychotherapy as a kind of magic, and I don't mean that like witchcraft or David Blaine either .. I mean ... the alchemy of human relationship and contact.  Truly being intimate with a person, even within the constraints of that relationship, is a powerful healing force.  It is touching reality at it's deepest level ... we can get there gazing at the stars or whatever else, too ... but certainly to be there with another person is phenomenal.

The constraints, the formality, the order of it ... that is necessary in our world, but the important fact of one person sitting in that room to be of service to the other, to provide something deep that they need ... that is old-fashioned shamanism as far as I'm concerned, in the best possible interpretation of the word.  Healing.

I hope I am up to the task.  Am applying for a position with a domestic abuse centre, as a trainee of course because I still have another year to go on my programme.  Watch this space to see if I get it and if so, if I'm still waxing poetic after a few months of front line care.

missing

That's a great film by the way ... Missing, with Jack Lemmon, Costa Gavras film, true story about a man who's son was killed in the coup in 1973, Chile.

Nonetheless that isn't what I wanted to write about.

I am writing as a kind of nicotine patch, trying to wean myself off of Myspace, and contact with this man who I never kissed or held hands with but fell for anyway ... alcoholic unemployed depressive that he is.  Aw, bless.  Love is love, there's no logic to it.  He's obviously more than that, too, of course. Truth challenged, has a thing for girls half his age, and plays video games non-stop.  

He's also bright, sensitive, creative, funny, big-hearted, passionate, thoughtful ...

If I post something there, if I log in, I'll see if he's posted anything, I'll be connected to his life and experiences then, and I'm trying now to be logical and reasonable and to 'move on'.

So instead I inflict myself on you, my Patch, my substitute for him.

I suppose this would all be a bit easier to take if my cat hadn't just died this week.  

There, NOW do you feel sorry for me?  ; )

I miss her terribly.  I feel lonely with it all, the loss of her and the knowledge that I can't even be friends with him ... and a growing knowingness that I won't fall in love again.  

It is a relief, too, though.  I don't ever have to feel not good enough for anyone but me.  

I think I'm good enough for me.  At least I can mostly trust myself to take my side in things.

She was a great cat. 

Welcome to me

I've been blogging on Myspace for over a year but as you probably know that's  a tangled maelstrom of high (school) drama.  This friend reads my blog, that friend comments, etc., and all the romances and broken hearts and secrets inadvertently revealed (I have one friend who even found out that her boyfriend was engaged to be married - to someone else - via Myspace). 

In my own case the man I have been pathetically in love with reads that blog and checks it regularly (how do I know this, since he doesn't comment? Because I installed ProfileSnitch.  You see? High school.).  I find I censor myself, knowing also that his girlfriend (yes, this is sticky) reads it too.  

Keep in mind I am a 46 year old divorcee who wasn't into high school politics even in high school.  You will concur, I am sure, that it is unseemly for me to continue trawling the corridors of Vampire games and profile trackers in order to know that he's 'thinking about me.'

So ... here I am.  

What will I become here, knowing that probably no one at all is reading this anyway?  

Let the adventure begin..