A Beautiful Crazy

 My Crazy is Beautiful.  Thats what a very good male friend told me this week.  I have a beautiful crazy.  This coming to me after I texted a last text to the guy that just rocked my world asking if my crazy was too much for him.  I got no response.  I guess the answer was yes.

I talk a lot about creating our own realities.  I make many references to our perception of things.  What I see as white,  you might see as off white or even light grey.  Our realities even if co-existing at the same time might be something entirely different to each of us.

I watched two of my coworkers these past couple of months,  have these seriously miss communicated conversations.  They were both saying the exact same thing but in entirely different words and mannerisms.  They couldn't understand each other, yet to an outsider looking in, it was clear they were saying the exact same thing.  Interesting experience for me.

So how does one manage to create and co-exist with others when there is such a clearly divided understanding in perceptions?  How is my crazy beautiful to one person and totally unacceptable to another.  How does one communicate to someone that is obviously on an entirely different level then them?

Am I connecting with those around me?  My crazy definitely isn't.  Am I on the wrong path?

Harmony.  Synchronicity.  Little signs only I would understand, are the life markers I need to know that I am going in the right direction.  Sometimes I need blaring signs to know that I am walking in the right direction.  Even when the situation is ugly to me, sometimes it has an underlying harmony to it.  I am in harmony with it.  Sometimes the signs point me to situations I don't want to experience, just to get me through to where I need to be...

(Sometimes I just get lost.... Sometimes I am trapped)

....That's a path I am walking out of now.  The dark painful path of suffering and low self worth.  The path of punishment and limitations.   The path I fought so hard to create for myself because I thought that's what I wanted.  I married myself to the hypnotic trance many living zombies follow.

Money. Status. The trophy boyfriend.  The perfect kids.

That's what I have been trying to manifest for years.  Ambition being the socially acceptable motivating factor.  Did you know on Plenty of Fish, a dating website, that one of the last questions you can answer to complete your profile is... how ambitious are you?  Why the fuck would one need to know that in a dating partner?

Probably so a person like me can see if the guy is still a society drone, I guess.

  Well maybe I shouldn't say that.  Just because money and status corrupt me it doesn't mean they mess with everyone.  Its just not my path.  I don't value money other then to pay my rent and buy healthy food for my daughter and I.  I used to value status, until I rose up to those people with status.  Then I realized people on the top have the same problems as people on the perceivable bottom.  And truly their problems seem compounded by money not lessened.   Money buys to many excuses and hide-a-ways.

Just a few posts ago I spoke so animated about the promotions I fought for at work.  I had many congratulations and people excited for me, to see my ambitions achieved.  To tell people I was so busy was to gain their approval, their respect.

 How quickly I burnt out.

 Its not me.   One of my last posts spoke about surviving the busiest period of my work year.   Surviving?  Is that all I want out of life, to survive?  What was I thriving on if I was just surviving?  How and why did I get to a place of being proud I survived the black hole that tried to suck me... wait better question, How the fuck was I so close to the black hole in the first place?

That black hole that I spoke about last year in these pages.  Have I not learned yet?

 http://recoverpower.blogspot.ca/2014/04/the-view-from-my-whole.html

That hole always presents itself when I am in risk of losing myself.  In the past its the guy I lose myself in, becoming someone I am not to fit his image of me.  This time it was having to become someone I didn't like to achieve my ambitions.   I lost myself once already in this current job I am in.  But I thought if I took a different approach, took on a different position I could maintain who I was and thrive in the company.

I was wrong.

Admitting we tried and failed at something is so hard.  Changing ones mind after passionately shouting it off the screens of a blog is hard business.  I  feel many times people don't take me seriously because I am so fluid, so changeable all the time.  However I am learning that's the crazy one guy couldn't stand and the crazy another found beautiful.

I need to get out and experience things.  I cant sit on my couch and have a conversation with a friend, play the scenario out and decide it isn't for me.  Nope.  I have to get out and live it.  Sometimes two or three times before I actually side step the hole.  I try different avenues, venues and paths to see if I can find a way around hole.  Most times it doesn't work.

I changed too much to become a project manager of an unstable landscaping company.  I had to drink too much coffee to sustain my energy.  My judgement became clouded and my morals weak when I let the aggressive man child get his way with my heart.  I became much too distracted to see that the company was starting to fall apart with me standing in the eye of the storm.  (well now that's a little mellow dramatic, but its how I love to roll)

When I am creating something that is not in my highest good, it has no staying power.  I have no staying power.  I did this same thing when I worked for the weight loss company and convinced the CEO to promote me.  I got to where I wanted to go and I crashed and burned.  It is not where I belong.

I am a kick ass manager.  I had guys telling me that.  I am good at everything I set my mind to.  I train well and I am a quick study.  I am learning however that there is a price to everything.  An energy exchange to every action you take.  To be manager means to rent a room in your head to a tenant that's always active.  I cant shut off my work when I am in that position.  My addictive nature thrives in situations where adrenaline and thrill out weigh self care and peace.  I become a workaholic at a high cost.

I change when my addictive nature is activated,  I invite drama, I create chaos, I thrive in manipulation.  The price is too high for me to work for and with people that are shady and living lies that pour over into my reality.  My reality becomes melded with theirs and I become trapped in a world of suffering and self punishment.  I don't need dope to activate this nature.  I don't need constant focus on my addict self to keep me out of this nature.

The rose colored glasses came off last weekend.

Three key players left the company on the same day.  The vision I could not let go off all that day and since,  was three men that I had come to love and respect walked away from the yard with three lit wooden matches.  And as they moved away in that slow motion picture kinda way,  they threw the matches over their shoulders and the entire yard went up in flames.  As I stood there left behind to go down in the flames.

Melodramatic?  Absolutely.  Some huge childhood issues of abandonment?  You betchya.  But more then anything came the awareness that once again I was frozen in place.   Caught in my own ambitions and losing everything meaningful in my life because of my addictive nature turning into this raging vixen that loved her games more then her self.

My last post was titled.... I am Done.   I have said that several times to people this week.  I am done.  I am tired of trying to achieve something that is not meant to be mine and becoming someone I hate to get there.  I am to experienced to make poor choices because I am to afraid to look at the truth of a situation and do whats necessary to get out of it.   One of those men to walk away from the yard, did so because he was changing into something he didn't like and he loved himself more then making someone else money.

That hit home like a sucker punch to the stomach.  Have you ever been punched in the stomach and didn't see it coming?  Its like all the air gets violently sucked out of your body and you cant gasp it back in.  Your suspended in this painful place of your own mortality.  As  he walked over the threshold back into himself he looked back at me with eyes that invited me to come back into myself as well.

Its taken me a week and several days hiding under my covers, to acknowledge that invitation.   Its taken some hard thinking as the man child advised me as he drove through the provinces on his way back to his loving family to recover from his ordeal.

To walk away from Vixen and her path means I will lose my large monthly income.  I will lose my

status.  And I will probably lose my new circle of accomplished ambitious status loving friends.

As the tears flowed nonstop for me this week, I washed away all that I have achieved.  I washed away all that I thought I wanted to be.  I washed away all the expectations of what the world around me creates as acceptable.  I washed away my own self judgments.  I washed away all the past hang ups and baggage claims that I am not good enough because I have been abandoned in the past.  I washed away my toxic desires that serve to chain me to a reality that is not of who I am aspiring to be.

So today I begin my shaky steps back on to the path less traveled.  Back through the little path that meanders up the side of the mountain.  That path that is overgrown and hidden from the drones view.  I step off the wide paved path that the zombies bumble down.  Finding peace and freedom by the little babbling stream that is coming off the mountains spring run off.

I am not really there yet.  Just painting a picture for the universe to grasp on to and create for me.  Its time to bring my hippie back and move into something more peaceful and loving for my life.  Its time for a new chapter or my story.   I love my life.... and my beautiful crazy.

Follow the White Rabbit

More of Him:

http://recoverpower.blogspot.ca/2015/08/good-bye-mr-beautiful-crazy.html

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It is Done.

Do we just see what we want to see?  Is the reality of the situation sometimes much different from our perceptions?

I had to call a friend to come stay with me this weekend.  I don't think my mind can be trusted to be alone even for a minute over the next couple of days.

Huge shift at work.   The 25 year old fling I had has now moved home.  My co-project manager has quit and one of our star crew chief's moved on to new things in his life.  All three of these guys's lasts days were yesterday.   I didn't make it through the morning.

The tears started at seven am and didn't finish until way late in the evening.   My mind on fifteen different tangents desperately trying to find a thought path that would slow the tears.  Nothing worked  Every path lead to a waterfall barricade.

So many things on so many levels were happening with those tears.  I am going to choose to narrow in on the one that is most relevant to this blog.  That of course would be my hang up of all things male.   So 25 year old Douche it is.

A lot of my time and thought has gone into what is love?  What is respect?  What does it look like to have a healthy relationship with a man.  I am certain that this fling was not with a healthy man but how can I be certain it wasn't love on a level him and I both understood it?   Or am I ignoring fifteen red flags and creating something in my mind that is not accurate.  Was he, and was I,  just caught up in each of our fantasies?  Or was it my circus he was visiting?

One thing with learning about the mind.  I learn how powerful and deceiving it can be.  How the mind can lead and trick you into beliefs that are not accurate.  To see situations that are not reality but fantasy in your own mind.  We see what we want to see.

I think the entire relationship I had with this guy was two totally separate scenarios playing out here.  They say communication is key if you want the relationship to grow.  When 25 and I would talk its like we were having two totally different conversations.  I am thinking that was a bad sign and perceptions were entirely off.   Or at least mine was.

Or maybe it was his.   I own every part of a failed relationship all the time in every situation.  The friend I have on thought management this weekend reminded me that some people are just douches and that's the end of it.   Did I really just hook up with a douche and I am trying to make it into some grande life altering lesson so that I can cover the fact I choose shitty once again??

This is where I don't need dope to escape reality and create my own scenarios anymore.  I can do it at will now.

Coming back to owning some stuff.  Its hard for me to think someone is that unkind just by nature.  I question if I hurt him really bad by sneaking out of his bed one morning and booking it home calling it quits on him later that day.  Because I couldn't take responsibility for my bad behaviour the night before.

 I am sure it was part of it.   However I think my bad behaviour stemmed from feeling him back off first.  That was the vicious circle I have been looping for over a month now.  I have beat this situation to death and I am exhausted.

But what was done was done and it doesn't matter cause he has moved back to Ontario and my life is now going to settle back into peaceful.   After I pick up the pieces and mend my work relationships.  I want to say it was a crazy fun ride but it wasn't.  It was just heart breaking.  from day one on.

This is why I beg the question,  Did I just see what I wanted to see?  Each time it didn't play out as I seen fit, well then I threw a fit.  When the relationship just kept disappointing me my heart cracked a bit more each time.   Do I create these relationships because I am still feeling like I need to be hurt?

Do I cause pain in them first so that they can retaliate and feed me what I know and understand? Betrayal?

I am tired.  Drained.  Done.

I have been here before.  In other areas of my life.  A bottom if you will.  A breaking point or a crossing of the line of what is acceptable and what is not.  A finish line we cross when enough is enough.

I am there.    Enough.  I am good.  Content.  All drained of angers and resentments.  All played out in the hurting arena.   I don't wanna play the game anymore.   I am ready to settle into peace again.  To regain my sense of balance and purpose.  To move forward back on my path free of my recent distraction.  Pit stop into pity lane is over.

Its funny because I am starting to blog on my work website.  I love to create words on the screen.  Its much different to write about landscape construction projects then it is to talk about the affairs and failings of the heart and mind.  Yet I tell our web designer all the time that I need a new writing outlet because creating these crazy dramas to have something to write about is getting a bit insane.

So I am thinking its time to give this blog a nice put to bed and start up a new blog on my very own website instead.    I think it is time to move into that arena.  I am tired and finally content.  I don't wish to hurt anyone anymore.  I don't wish to hurt unnecessarily anymore.

The defiantion of insantiy is doing the same thing and expecting different results.   Its time to change that now.

This is done.

Life After CHANGE

Coming back into myself.

What a process life is.  I love the process of life.  In my spiritual belief system there are ebbs and flows in the river of life.  Seasons change.   I just went through the birth of spring in all its glory and destruction.

I survived.

The witches calender Stops at Halloween.  That is the time of year that the harvest has all been pulled up and the ground freezes and everything dies back.  I like to look at it as the snow puts everything to sleep, slows everything down.  Winter is a time for contemplation.  A time to go within and asses what worked the last year and what didn't.  Its a time to make plans for the next year.

Spring is the time of year that everything wakes up and all the planning and assessing from the winter takes place.  Seeds are planted and the painful birthing through the soil occurs.   That my friends is where I am at.  Finally busted through the tough shell, through the cold earth up into the bright sun and refreshing air.

But let me tell ya, as with any growth period in my life it was not a pretty transition.  And I just about didn't make it, as many seeds don't.

Over the winter I was off work due to Burn out.  Last summer I didn't make it through.  My seed failed.   I fell into old patterns of coping with change, which is drugging and hiding out with toxic guys.  This year the same pattern emerged.

I planned all winter.  I brought my bosses on board with the promotion I was seeking and I received it.  I trained hard and I prepared myself to the best of my ability at the time.  I don't fully believe one can be entirely ready for anything in ones life no matter how much prep work and grounding they put into themselves before hand.  That's what is challenging about growth and change.  The seed still has to push through the shell on its own naturally no matter how perfect the conditions are.  Some people just don't have the Ego strength to push through.  I didn't last year.  I wasn't ready

When spring hit and my position at work went from making hundreds of calls a day to actually leading 12 guys through the delivery of the services I sold over the phone..... The shell burst wide open alright.  And chaos hit the fan!!

When one goes from what is comfortable, dark and cozy... to something totally different it feels like an exhilarating death.  Every single thing you once knew as your truth,  as your comfort,   as your stability..... gets ripped away from you violently.  With more preparation and plenty of guidance of course,  this can be a smoother transition.  For a girl like me,  that is obviously not the greatest with complete change,  its a bit of a dramatic affair.

And affair is what I am gonna have to get me through the change.  Affair with Dope, Affair with my rebellious teenage self.  Affair with the 25 year old hottie at work.

This is where I am learning about old fall backs that come into play for me.  I am comfortable with the toxic, highly emotionally charged Guy.  I am comfortable with the green ganga and the white powder.  Those are things I am familiar with in the world of complete chaos that I am experiencing.  I am okay with turning over the reins to my little Vixen.   I see why now when people get away from there chosen fall backs or bad behaviours they choose to stay seated exactly where they are and perfectly content with no more growth in life.  Its easier.  Its safer.

Its not easy to move through the cold, moist, even darker, almost suffocating soil.   Actually its down right fearful.  For me it is anyways.  I have no idea what I am gonna break through into.  Am I growing up into a beautiful well tended to garden or am I gonna burst through a pot hole on a busy city street??   That poor little seedling cannot know these things.

Preparation, intention and solid grounding before hand can definitely situate you in a better spot then a concrete pad however.  Thank the Goddess I did my prep work.  Hail fully to the Twelve steps!

However I did not come out of the dark soil without some challenges to over come.  I did get caught up in a toxic guy.  Probably the most energetically draining man I have ever come into contact with yet.  When ever I am in his energy field I can feel myself sinking way to comfortably into him.  With just one look from this guy, I am melting into a puddle on the ground, not a single resemblance of who I am left to identify.  Not good, Not healthy.  That is the largest obstacle in my path through the earth I have ever encountered in any of my growth experiences before.

Yet here I am blooming and enjoying the sun.

I was offered powder twice through my journey through the earth.  A little something something to get me through the toughest nights.  And I turned down the first time and completely ignored the second time.  That is an old pattern I refuse to fall into today.  Dope doesn't serve any purpose in my life today.  Their are absolutely no rewards I get from putting those drugs into my system.

It took me a bit longer to learn there are no rewards from the toxic guys either.  That instant feeling of attraction just like the first high you get from dope subsides far to quickly and the chasing of the dragon is far to exhausting for me today.  I need to place my energies else where.

Now that the spring is coming to an end the routine of summer is falling into step.  I am over joyed with the realization.... I did it!!!  I made it through!  I survived!   I am a blooming Tulip that worked hard to push through the challenges of growth and I have arrived in my glory.

Does it look like what I expected?

Nope not really.

I have made new friends along the way.  I have lost some dear friends along the way as well.  One thing I am definitely learning, that when one changes and moves into a whole new arena of life, everything changes.  Including people you love and cherish that you have to let go of because they are not ready to go where you are going.  Paths fork and people make different choices.  Its probably the toughest lesson in this life I have had to learn.  Moving from One phase of my life into another and continually moving forward means sevearl times, I will have to make that statement.... "only one thing needs to change, and thats everything".

I am still kinda nose down ass up moving forward so I havent even really had a chance to take in where I am at.  Last weekends camping trip with my daughter was the start of the, enjoy the rewards of hard work but brutal awareness of what I gave up in order to work hard, end for me.  So now its just a matter of allowing my self to adjust to this new life style and these new friends and be okay with feeling good about my hard work.

My new Journey......

I can cry for love.  I can work my ass off to be love.  Yet when love shows up to offer itself to me, I run away screaming.  This is where I am at now folks.  I need to let the plants I worked so hard to create actually be nurtured now.   That will be a whole new journey for me!!

And the process continues........

I'm the Love Clinger!!

Oh Baby.  I am back and it feels so good.

Letting go is the greatest freedom in the world.    I have been so consumed with my life and moving forward that I have forgotten about the things I love to do.  the things that fill my cup.  Everyone has a passion something that they love to do that brings them joy and a time out of life.  Writing here is my passion.

Yet when I get busy, when I get consumed with life, I forget to take time out to pursue my passion.  I wonder why that is?

Yesterday I wrote about getting caught up in a guy again.  It wasn't just a guy it was a couple of guys.  My infamous distraction in life.  I have contemplated about that today and I wanted to share what I discovered about my pattern of toxic men.

After I write something out it either feels right or it doesn't.  Last nights writing didn't feel right today when I re read it.   I don't love that guy.  I thought I did.  I think I really wanted to.  The desire to fall in love exceeding the warning flags that he wasn't the one to fall for.  Sad but true.  However that truth aside I am learning the difference between Love and Attachment.

I have attachment issues.

Duh.  All my friends are thinking.   How long and how many heartaches do I need before I catch on to what everyone else knows but me.  Hey, even these guys I have been getting caught up in told me I had attachment issues.  Damn even my beloved Boss shared with the current crush not to get involved with me cause I have attachment issues.  Where along the line did I not catch on to this?

Probably to blinded by the rage to prove everyone wrong.

I learn through experience is my excuse.  I am an adventurer, says one of the guys who claims to be my friend but who would crash on my couch and become my pet if I paid him enough. Oiy Vay.... The friends I keep.  Ugh.

Awareness is not enough.  To be aware I am broken is not enough.  To know that I have attachment issues is not enough to escape them, to overcome them or to tackle them to the ground and obliterate them.  No awareness is not enough.  It may be key to opening the door to work on the issue, but its not the end.

So now I know without a shadow of a doubt that I do indeed have attachment issues.  So to answer my own question from yesterdays post... have I never fallen in love before?  ......No actually, I don't think I have.  I have become attached to those guys that have allowed me to do so.  And in that willingness to let me cling to them I have called it love.  But that's not love.

I don't Love the guy that gets my heart racing.  He is not even remotely compatible with me, nor even close to my playing field.  Nor does he even want me.   I just wanted to fall in love and he was willing for a short time to let me cling.

With these new understandings comes a huge freedom.  I can let go of the need to attach myself to someone.  I am not ready to fall in love.   I have a house to hunt for and a Job that is keeping me completely absorbed and I love it like my own children.  I have a daughter that is so excited for our new house hunting project.  I have no space in my life today for love.  It was merely a distraction from the fear of stepping into a management position and a commitment to a house that pushed me to act out in old ways.

Old toxic boy patterns.  Not my style anymore.    Attachment issues.  I don't have time to work through them right now.  I have a career to build, a daughter to raise and a home to buy.  I need to refocus on what matters in my life and let go of those things that simply don't matter.... and well right now that is toxic boys that create heartaches for me.

Goddess love rain days.  I have had time to slow down and see the truth of what I was creating to keep my energy up.  Drawing off men is like eating cake everyday expecting to lose weight.  Time to go within and draw from the source that will create the future I want..... and omg, I am so close I can barely believe I am almost there.

A house of my own is my focus.  Stopped, reassessed and now redirecting!!  Home sweet Home!!

Thanks for sharing this with me.  I love you and wish you the best time of your life right now!!

Reflection in the Shattered Mirror

Why is it that once a guy enters the picture I lose all self control?

 Like a dog in heat, a bitch losing all sense of loyalty to her dearest owner when a Verile male mutt struts into the room.    Single focus, a chemical takes over my body, mind and spirit and all I can smell, taste, feel and think is.... omg!!   He is so hot I want him...... forever......right now!

Its happened again folks.

You would think all the work on self care and all the work and writings and journallings and self reflections..... I would simply be able to flow through the process of falling in love.  But nope not this girl.  I kick and scream at anything new presenting itself in my life.  All the good is as equal as all the bad, if its something unfamiliar to me.

Have I never fallen in love before?

Did I not love my husband?   I am sure I was in lust with him in the beginning.  I am certain after 17 years we grew to love each other deeply.  So then why now when I connect with a guy that has the potential of being something more then a friend do I lose my shit and sabotage it before it can grow into anything worth while??

My therapist says I choose guys that are emotionally unavailable to me for a reason.

All my friends are always telling me I am not ready for love yet.  I could never really understand why they would say that.  I don't need a man to take care of me.  I got that covered on all fronts.  I am completely self sufficient.  I want a man to share my life with now that I have so much to offer.

Do I really have whats needed to be offered yet though?

This last escapade with a... OMG. so HOT, like drop dead make my panties wet whenever he looked my way kind of hot .......guy, showed me that I might not be ready for this kind of love relationship yet.

The minute it started to get a bit deeper then a friendship I went squirly and broke up with him.  But only because I was smothering him out of fear of losing him.  That's crazy insecurity.  He brought out every single issue I have ever had in my entire life.  Looking into his eyes was like looking at my entire life flashing before my own eyes.

I understand in my reality that when you become intimate with someone it is like looking in a mirror and if you have cleared up your stuff then you love what you see.   I loved what I saw but I also seen the closet full of bags.  The running type of bags.  I know them all to well.  The baggage you bring to a relationship because you just cant seem to shake it no matter how many years of therapy you have paid for or how many trips into drug rehab you have.

I am a broken girl.

Broken girls get left behind or give up on ever finding a man that will be able to withstand the shattered image in the mirror.  Some things cannot be fixed in this life time.  I have mastered my career.  I am a great mother.  I am proud of who I am and what I have accomplished.  Yet underneath is still a very very hurt woman when it comes to relationships both with men and women.

I know I am not unique.  I understand fully we all have a story.  I also in my years in this world have come to learn through experience that some of us are much more wounded then others.

The incredibly beautiful male that is sniffing around my world right now is a pretty wounded man.   I am so in love with his woundedness.  Every time he opens his mouth regardless what comes out I seem to fall deeper in to him and his world.  With every interaction we have no matter how frustrating or how incredibly breath taking I sink deeper into his wondrous energy.

As I continue to walk into his light, I know in the deepest part of my heart he is walking toward my light and experiencing the same fears and the same sabotages and the same pull backs.  We are both empaths I can feel it.  We both react more to each others subtle energies then our words.  Its what confuses us the most.

Yet with all this wonderful knowledge and understandings, I still come into the this page full of heart ache and frustration over losing myself once again.  Between my 19 hours a  day job and this glorious man, I have had no energy to refill my cup.

Ask me when I meditated last?  Ask me how many days ago its was when I chose a glass of water over a McDonald's coffee?  Ask me how many minutes I have spent with my daughter in the past month?  Working out, yoga, you ask??  Ya non existent.  Self care has lost its entire meaning in my life today and I am struggling to get it back again.

I am not being hard on myself which is a huge change for me.  I get that I am in an incredible movement phase of my life.

I have been made manager of a busy landscaping company.  I am managing four crews of three guys in each right now.  That makes for long days but huge rewards in teaching, guiding and directing these amazing guys to not only meet my expectations but exceed them on a daily basis's.  My clients are giving me best ever reviews.  Yes my career has taken off, my incredible pay checks are a testament to that.  A huge difference to six months ago thats for sure.

I have been a approved for a mortgage!!  So one of my long held dreams is about to explode into my reality.  No co-signer, no man..... no help but my own hard work and dedication to my finances.  I am defiantly in a huge movement phase of my life.  I have moved into a new circle of Friends that are progressing not only my dreams but my own self growth to heights I never dreamed possible for myself.  I am defiantly moving along on a speed highway.

So I understand that my self care has taken up the back seat... well, more like plastered to the back window like a fly splattered on the inside!!  And now I have to give mouth to mouth to that little splattered fly.

It was my self care that got me to the place I am at.  It was daily mediation that helps me see the lessons in my life.  Its in the silence that I hear the guidance for my next step.  Its through Yoga that I release the trauma energy trapped in my tissues.  Its from water that the toxins slowing my mind down are washed away with.  And it is through spiritual connection that I find grounding and peace amongst the storm.

I cannot move forward with this glorious man or any man for that fact if I am not grounded and doing the things I need to in order to release the issues that are sure to show up in my cracked mirror.  I believe the main reason people avoid falling in love is they cant stand to see there own reflection.  I have a growing love for myself and want to see myself fully in the eyes of another person.

It might not be this person and I might have some more work to do now that I have been blind sided by some crazy stuff, but I will do the work  because falling in love is the last thing on my list to accomplish for this incredible growth period of my life.

Then by Goddess, I will be ready for a rest period!!

Stumbling into the New

I have a chest cold and my head is in a vice grip..... to write or not to write, that is the question.   lol

It has been almost a month since I came to play in these pages.

I used to see that as a bad sign.  As a sign that I was getting caught up in the wave.    Easily being thrown around in the raging water, crashing violently into the rocks and left broken in a million shiny peices on the beach.

I guess in the past that probably has some truth to it.     Its not the case today though.  I did ride a wave, but I was pretty good at staying on top of it this time.  I did just crash into the sand but missed the rocks entirely.  So all in all it has been an exciting passed month.

I have been putting more time into building my website and writing for that, then I have been writing here.  I reached my goal where this blog has been concerned and that was gonna be it for here.  However now I am feeling the emptiness, the void, that this platform has left me.  I like launching myself off this platform to clear my head and make sense of stuff that's going on in my life.  To stop doing it now has proven sad for me.

So on I will babble here.

My life has spun its wheels into turbo boost this past month.  My job has catapulted into the air with a hefty raise, increased work expectations, Business commitments outside of normal job standards and gala events to network.  The excitement generated in just this area alone has me vibrating at levels uncomfortable for me.

I am also on my last course of my hypnotherapy course and the clients bouncing towards me has left me spinning as well.  I am setting up meditation classes and already serving clients.  Meeting with my Guru once a week and trying to find time to study on top of all that has again raised me to a vibration that is new and uncomfortable.

With all this new and exciting stuff going on I find I am falling into old habits and behaviours to cope

with the good exploding in my world.

Worthiness is always an issue I struggle with.  I am always feeling like people are going to discover who I am underneath and freak out that they enlisted such a prestigious position to me.  Now, I have to be honest..... that is lessening even as I write this.  Why??   Because I am doing the work necessary to be able to feel some self worth and to come to a place of liking myself even if for just a moment.

In the past my low self worth would sabotage all these great things and have proven to do so as late as last year this time.  When I was exactly in this same spot... even down to the chest cold I have today.  But whats different today is the work I am doing on myself.

I am building a foundation of supports around me that is solid this time.  I am learning the tools to work through issues without my head imploding.  And I am taking the actions to actually move out of my comfort zone and build myself a new worthiness level.

But I still almost got wrapped up in a toxic situation again.  I almost let my raising self worth be tarnished by actions that are far less then me now.  But I didn't go to those places this time.  They felt wrong, dirty, beneath me.  And not lower then in a greater then thou sort of way, just dirty to my clean.  I cant play with dirty when I am clean.  I guess there is a certian level of muddy I am willing to get.  I found that level this past month.

I am learning life is about experiencing things.  For me I need the hands on, walk through experience in order to fully understand the lesson.  Maybe one day I can hear another persons story and be able to learn from their mistakes and not have to walk through it, but today is not that day.  Today I do not seek perfection.  Today I just seek to increase my self worth.

I can see clearly that I am achieving my goals this time.  No longer is it okay for me to hang on to the guy that is going no where in his life because of his own self worth issues.  I cannot,,,, nor do I want to carry him until he gets it.  Nope not my bag anymore.  Thats getting my hands too dirty for someone else.

As I push up my comfort zone and mix with people that in the past intimidated me,  I can see the growth in me as I hold my own in political conversations, business conversation and just general talks with people that I would have never dreamed would be ble to speak a full sentence with let alone sit on a committee with as one of my peers.   That my friends is building some serious self worth in me.

So then why when the business meeting is over or the boot to the loser catupults him to the moon and I am free again........ do I want to run for the hills with a big bag of weed and a bottle of cheap wine?

Celebrate my victory old school style?   .........And it will end old school style for me as well...   Back in detox.

Ya I dont want to go there anymore.  Its time for me to stop spinning my wheels in the mud of low  self worth and move forward in my life.  The pain of staying the same is becoming greater then the pain of change....  So thats what I am doing.  I am changing.

Escaped another Trap!!!!

Why is it so hard for me to enjoy the moment?  To just BE in it?

Why is my mind always on the potential pain that's coming my way?  How do I flip my mind to look at the potential glory and joy that is coming my way?  How do I still move forward when there has been so much pain and heart aches left as results of my risks in the past?

Getting older is hard stuff.

With age comes wisdom, but wisdom only comes through experience.   As I experience life I make more mistakes and feel more pain.  It becomes exceedingly more challenging to take risks knowing that it really is a fifty fifty chance of the situation working in your favor.

I guess with practice I can learn to stay away from the experiences that I know are gonna only end up in heart ache, but those seem to be the same experiences that through the process and before the heart ache the joy is over the top wonderful.  I guess the question is, is the joy worth the pain then?

Sacrifice.  Is there sacrifice in everything?  Can anything be achieved without the work?  And does the work need to be hard?

I am on about creating our own realities lots in these pages.  I just had a great conversation with my hypnotherapy guru,  about how one creates their own experiences void of suffering.  And even as much as I respect him and our relationship is one of teacher/student there are some things I just cant understand yet.

I feel pain is a wonderful earthly experience.  I have been enlightened and feel super connected to the energy of all when I gather the courage to reach deep into myself and touch the pain that has been brushed under the carpet of my heart.  I feel liberated when I allow myself to fully BE with the pain, to share it with someone else and then have the courage to walk through a similar experience and create a joyous outcome.

 That to me is what life is really about.   Experiencing it fully and completely.

But... I can get stuck in the Being with the pain and the sharing it. Constantly looping there.

I have changed my reality tremendously a couple times in my years.  From income levels of poverty to middle/upper class.  From obese and miserable to fit and happy.  My social circles have changed entirely several times and I have moved out of being married to freedom for me.  I understand the power behind manifesting my reality.  I also understand the sacrifices I needed to make for each of those changes to occur.

So my counter to my glorious Guru was this.....

What I don't understand is why not everything I want manifests and if its because of vibration levels and universal timing then how can suffering and pain not be involved?  I am human and my feelings sometimes act in their own accord.  I can manage my thoughts and I am learning to manage my feelings.... but I have learned I cannot suppress either of them.  I can shift the energy and change them, but not push them down and hide them.

Maybe this is where my teacher is trying to direct me to.  that its a choice if I suffer or if I have the power to discipline myself to flip that pain into love.  I can get on board with that, but I need to remember to first allow myself permission to have the negative thought and feeling first.   To experience it and fully embrace it before I flip it.  Because I think its in enjoying the entire moment for what it is, is where I am missing out entirely.

I get caught up in the fear of losing the happy feeling so I squash it in my time and my control. It's the only way I know how to let go.   Or I get lost in the drama of the pain that I allow myself to stay there because its easier to just stay in sadness then to find happiness and lose it again.  Because I can't let it go.

I think to answer my own question about why some things manifest and some things don't.  Is those things may not be on the path I am going.  They are distractions that my higher self can see.  So even though my ego is salivating over the potential experience, my higher self knows its not gonna be good for the intentions I have already set for myself.  This is where the idea of God residing within me always confused me.

Hmmm... So I am marrying my progressive beliefs of I am in full control of my manifestations, with the worlds outer belief that what is happening in their lives is happening to them and gratitude for universal mercy reigns supreme.  I think my struggle is with my Ego and the art of letting go.

It always comes back to my inability to let go.  When I want something whether its good for me or not, I chomp down and wont let up until the morsel of meat is entirely devoured.  Which sometimes leads to terrible bouts of food poisoning.

Being in the moment I guess then means knowing when to let go and when to continue on.  Because truly if I am not in the moment and struggling really hard to be, its always a loop I am caught in.  That is when fear of past pain pulls me down.  Not that I wont feel that fear ever, but when it loops and causes me to lose focus for extended periods of time... that's the suffering for which maybe my guru was speaking of?  Thats me not in my higher self, but my Ego.

Food for my thoughts I guess.  Have a great day!  Sending you love and light and many growing experiences today!!

Just about Lost it.

I am an addict.  I will always be an addict.  I need to surrender to the fact I am an addict.

It is so easy for me to forget that I am an addict as soon as my life begins to take on some normalcy again.  After four months of staying home to focus all my time and energy on recovery.

Meaning....... attending meetings,  Talking daily to my Sponsor and only people in recovery,  Working the steps and reading the Narcotics anonymous literature.  Its easy to stay clean and surrendered to the fact I am an addict when I surround myself in a cocoon of recovery.

But what about when I head back into the real world?  What happens when I get that promotion I had been seeking?  What happens when the incredibly sexy guy starts to flirt with me?  What happens when my non addict friends and supports tell me I wont be an addict forever and that its okay to pull away from them using people?

I can tell you what happens for me.  Bad behaviors surface as a warning sign and then I am off and running straight for that white fluffy cloud of invincibility.

And that my friends is where I am at today.  My beautiful supports have picked me up from my relapse in the summer.  They dusted me off and helped me get stable on my feet.  They encouraged my first few steps and watched me start to walk again.  The minute there attention moved on to someone else that needed picking up, I was off and running at a wobbly sprint.

I am running like a drunk person away from my supports!!  Wtf is wrong with this picture?  Who do I think I am running from, and where the fuck am I running too??  Seriously  this poor lopsided, crazy woman is running down the street in her hospital gown thinking she is escaping.... what?  Her demons?  Her captors?

Probably my fucking self!!

There is way more pun in that sentence then most people would catch.  I am running from myself.

This is too hard.  Recovery is too hard.  Life is too much work.  Its too much work to be an addict trying to function in a world where everyone is a fucking unrealized addict.  Its so hard for me not to get caught up in other peoples blissful illusions.  I want my blissful illusion back.  I want to be able to fuck that super buff beautiful 25 year old that has me so bloody weak knee'd I can barely stand it.  i wanna go with my boss and finish off the bottle of Crown he is tempting me with.  I want to let my arrogance attract more power into my life.  I want I want I want..... all these things that end up killing me in the end.

Why does this have to be so hard?  Why can I not be normal, with a normal life with simple challenges and soft life lessons?  Why did I choose such a hard existence?  How did I become an addict and how to I unbecome it?  How do I live in a world full of corruption, lies and deceit and keep open and not get hurt?  I don't know how to Live.  I am on step three and I am finally beginning to understand.... I truly do not know how to play the game.

So this is me getting honest.  I had to tell the incredibly fucking sexy big boy that I cant play his game.  It will hurt too much when I lose.  In an emotional meltdown I texted another person about my utter failure at life and my compete surrender to my brokenness.  I talked to my supports.  I answered a couple questions in my step working guide and i fucking cried.... and cried.

And I am clean today.  And I didn't sex anyone.  I didn't blow my entire bank account.... only partial.  I didn't eat the entire fridge clean, only a late night snack.  I am not happy today.... but I have found peace and some serenity.  Thats enough for today.

Movin' On Up!!

Eat, sleep, work, repeat.  Eat, sleep, work, repeat.

My oldest daughter introduced me to a techno song that used the word Rave instead of work.  As I grow up, I have lost the fun word of Rave and replaced it with work.  No wonder I have huge outbreaks of drug frenzies in my world.   Eat, sleep, work, repeat.... is a bundle of fun!!

I am integrating back into work after being off for four months due to an energy burn out resulting in a drug relapse.  The transition back into work has been a challenging one.  Challenging in ways I never anticipated.

I knew my body was going to revolt.  No physical exercise for four months.  I am a landscaper!  Ya, my body has loved me, but has used up the majority of the energy I am creating.  That I was prepared for.  My plan of action in preparation for this situation was to sleep, sleep and more sleep.

My counselor stomped on this plan recently.  I see why only after a bit of a hate on for her and my own stomping of the feet in protest.  Such an infantile I am when my plans are thwarted.

Eat, sleep, work ,repeat, regardless of the situation is detrimental to ones health.  Apparently, we do not charge ourselves through sleep.  I struggle with this notion and so as per my normal way to learn and understand I write stuff out.

See to me sleep is when our body recharges and our spirits connect back into the universal grid.  To sleep is to go home for me.  I believed that all my charging was coming from that place of sleep.  Yet looking back over my epic burnout of '014, I see that was what I was doing then.  Eat, sleep, work, repeat.

I had no time for friends, no time for fellowship, no time to build on my passions, my hobbies.  No time for romance, for family, or for myself.  Twelve hour physical days and twelve hours deep sleep.

 It wasn't until the end.  I realized I had completely drained my energy tank.  I jumped into a pallet bed project and opened myself up wide to a lover hoping to begin a desperate process of energy recovery.  But I was too late.

Today moving back into the work force I am being triggered terribly by those final days of burnout.  I am working the same route of residential maintenance as I was then.  I am as tired as I was then.  Yet, Its a different tired and I am doing a different job on the route so its not entirely the same.... and I am coming back instead of going down.

Similar to how people react to spring and fall.  I am excited for growth, I have already went through the dying off phase.

Leaning heavily on where I once was, I need to dig into the things that charge me up and move me forward.  Sleep is a huge deal as I move back into a physical job, but eight hours a night is enough.  Instead of adding more sleep if I need it, I am actually trying something new.... and cutting back on what I am doing at work that is exhausting me.  What a novel concept.  Less exhausting work, taking care of my health equals more time in the day for me.  Huh, who woulda thought?

So....

I have asked for a promotion.

 Instead of doing the full manual labor list my boss has for the maintenance department of his landscaping company I have asked to run it.  After a huge proposal and a two hour presentation to my boss and the HR manager.   I have been given the title of Residential and Commercial maintenance manager.  Yay!!  I wont be using my body and exhausting myself as much, I will be using my mind, which I have learned is something that charges me up.

Eat, sleep, work, repeat.   Now I am loving my work again.  Its like raving for me, it charges me up and makes me happy.  When I am charged up and happy I have a tonne of energy for other things in my life.  Like family and friends.  Lovers and fellowship.  Hobbies and passions.  All of these things charge me up even more.

There was a time within the last two years that I only needed six hours sleep and had so much love and energy flowing from me that I couldn't contain it.  I was sharing it with everyone.  A hard lesson learned on that one..... energy vampires will find you and drain you if your not careful.  But that is a blog for another day, actually I think I have a few of them written already.  Still leaning heavily on recent past experience I have a better warning system and an understanding of what it means to be vulnerable and what it is to be open.  But let me not digress.

Eat, sleep, work, repeat.   My boss has invited me to hold a chair in his business chapter.  Its a huge networking group of professionals and business owners in the city I live in.  I was thrilled to be asked, as this introduces me to a whole new set of contacts and people.  One thing I have learned in my years on this planet called Earth is that growth comes through the people you are connected with.

 To continually grow is to be always moving into new circles of people.  This is a new chapter of my life opening up and I cannot even begin to describe how excited and freaked out I am to move into the arena.  New energy, new interests, new people, new responsibility, new income level.... yup it is time to recreate myself a new!

Eat, sleep, work it cause your worth it, repeat!!

The Epic Burn out of Summer '014

What is exhaustion?

Got my coffee on my desk, a day off and a mind full of words.

In many ways I am coming back into myself and in many others I have this new personality developing within me.  My HR manager would argue that our personality is something we are born with and does not change.  I am not sure I am on that same train of thought yet.

I do know that I am almost at the end of a tremendous growth cycle.  My writings wont be as much about where I am at.   They will move back into things I am studying as oppose to things I am experiencing.  For me life is about cycles of experience and go get em' kinda of growth.  Then there are times of going within to rest and study up on what I just experienced or look into new areas to study.

That is where I am at now... going within.  Which seems odd as physically I am back at work now but mentally I am going within,  These past four months, physically I have slowed down and seemly experienced less but my mind was still processing my gigantic burnout crash.

The explosive dramatic burnout of summer '014.

I just read a time magazine article about exhaustion.  The writers take was factual.  Sometimes the facts hurt more then an opinion.  As a nation we frown deeply upon exhaustion.  Doctors don't buy into it and therefor people are not supported at all in their concerns of being over tired.  Employers continue to work their employees to hard and marketers continue to hypnotize people into believing they would feel better if they had this or that product.  Thus creating a viscous cycle of debt and the need to work more..... disgusting.

Did you know we are really the only nation that works this way?

We are easily lead pawns.  Makes me so sad.

So my crazy crash into a brick wall was apparently quite a norm in this society we have created for ourselves.  That does not make it any easier to deal with.  Strangely enough what does make it easier.... is the fact I am also a drug addict.

Does that not sound entirely strange to you?  Yay for being a drug addict.

With a drug affliction I was taken seriously by not only a medical doctor but a psychiatrist and a psychologist.  However if I was to just have burnt out.... nothing.  I would have had very little support.  How does one measure being over tired?  Tough I guess, doctors cant work with that maybe?  But have me fill out an assessment of what drugs I have used in the past twelve months and I am admitted into a world class womens treatment center for six weeks to rest up.

Our society is ass backwards. What we reward is ludicrous.

But holy Hanna this is not at all where I was intending to go with this post.  I merely wanted to share my experience with integrating back into work force after four months off and the struggles to re prioritize my recovery plans.  I guess I do love a good rant about society though.  So let me move on to what I really wanted to identify...

 How do you know when your exhausted, or over worked and how do you deal with that?

I have only been working like 20 hours each of the past two weeks but it feels more like 60 hours each of the weeks.  I am a landscaper and in my little northern city that means shoveling a shit tonne of snow.  So the work has been physically demanding.  No wonder I am tired after each snow fall, from four months of sleeping and hiding under my covers, to back breaking work... duh!  

What I was not aware of is what exhaustion feels like.  I can pound out my list of 24 driveways in a mere six to eight hours alone with no problems.  Physically I am still fit albeit grossly overweight.  Its when I get home that this extremely heavy feeling blankets me and my eyes wanna close but my mind is still awake and calm.    It makes sense that my body would be tired after working it like that, but what do you do when your mind isn't so much tired?

Drug it?  Yes, doc I will take some sleeping pills please.  Or wait I can just get some weed, much easier, thanks anyways.

The use of drugs or alcohol in this time magazine article stated that addiction was considered the leading cause of exhaustion.  Addiction to what?  The article suggested Street drugs and booze.  What about all the doctor prescribed drugs that change a persons moods and forces a person into states that are desired?

Please let me not digress here.  I have a strong opinion about medications and I don't want this to move into a me bashing them rant.  So let me just state the point that using prescription drugs is not the only answer to dealing with your problems.  Its the easy way and in some cases its is the best way for A person... but those some cases are less then twenty percent. Prescriptions are a drug that eventually lead to more exhaustion thus keeping us pawns in the life game of chess.

Physical and mental exhaustion go hand and hand I am noticing.  When I get tired physically from lack of sleep due to stress, I tend to eat more starchy foods which quickly escalates that over tired feeling.  This moves into exercising less because I am just to tired and then the really viscous cycle of weight gain and all levels of energy drop dramatically.  Leaving me no energy to deal with the original problem of grieving or an emotional upset.  Truly those are the basics to energy and low vibrations within the body and mind.

 From there depression sets in and all negative mind bashing thoughts which lead to the over use of prescriptions or street drugs.  An easy fix and when your tired, the seemingly only fix.

From my experience with proper eating after a lifetime of over portions and extreme starches, I cannot even begin to stress how important diet is to a persons mental state.  My four months off from a crash from being over tired threw all things healthy and good for me out the window.  I have been eating huge portions again and eating starches with little regard to healthy amounts.  I have gained twenty five pounds in four months and feel like the biggest bag of shit around.  I am reminded of how I felt before I began eating to the Canada food guide.

Going back to work is forcing me to eat better again just to get through my day which is good. Getting enough sleep has been the toughest thing, eight hours my ass... this girl needs at least ten on days I push my body.  Instead of sleeping pills to slow my mind I have used meditations and sleep hypnosis.  Already my mood is shifting from one of defeat and inertia from being off all those months.... yet now I am finding that the fear of crashing again is almost overwhelming

This is the true nature of the post I wanted to write about.  I am very aware now of when I get tired.  Physically and mentally.  I never want to burn out again like I did this past summer.  Over work, lack of nutrition, and addictions drained me entirely of my energy.  Not practicing any source of energy drawing activity just about killed me.
 
I have learned from my HR manager as of late that I am an introverted person.  I recharge alone.  Being around people drain my energy not increase it.  This has presented a huge problem as far as fellowship meetings for my drug addiction is concerned.  I have had a terrible time reworking my recovery plan to be kinder on myself.  Now I spend more time on the phone with my sponsor reading the daily meditation together.  That fuels me up.  I go online to meetings now, I get what I need information-ally but keep my energy from seeping out.

I love cooking for my girls I have learned during my time off.  I find I am gaining much energy from doing that.  I am back to yoga and meditations which are always wonderful for me.  Plus studying has these huge energy spikes that I had no idea of before.  I study what I am passionate about and this fuels my dreams and helps me visualize an amazing future which has a strange way of becoming my present.  Art and crafting things for my home bring me joy as well.

I think by keeping mindful of what makes me happy, will help me stay in balance with the work I must do in order to pay my bills.  I love working outdoors and truly enjoy my job.  In the past I have kept my passions out of line with my income because as soon as I attached dollars to what I loved doing, what I loved doing became a job.  Today I enjoy that I have passions and I work to support those passions.  If those passions make me a few bucks on the side, great.

Truly illuminating exhaustion for me is to accept that I work to live.  I cannot live to work.   There is way more to this life, way more depth then just working.  Love what I do as I spend 40 hours a week doing it, but know that there is a whole wide world beyond work.  Work has become my humbling experience, my hours to keep myself in check.

This is the end of my workaholism.

Wow took a long freaking time to get to that conclusion.  I said at the beginning I was full of words!!  Man I need to write more often, that might keep the topic a bit more simple and to the point.  If you made it this far.... thank you and I am sorry for the double rants.  Blessings!

Who Am I, Without You?

Dependence or Inter-dependence.  Attachments or Freedom.

I used to think I had a good understanding of those two concepts.  I think I was wrong.

Man, It has been a long month since I was last here writing.  Work and my psychiatrist have been running these personality tests on me lately.  The doctor for medical mental reasons.... which it turns out I am not crazy after all.  Work because we have a new HR manager who is wildly into matching team members up with their best suited position and colleagues.

I think my HR manager is brilliant.  I have learned that writing is one of my main sources of creative outlet.  The way I think about the world is apparently rare, making up only one percent of the population.  I share the same personality as Mother Thersa, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. And I took the test three times, twice out of the three were this personality.   I think that's cool.

So now with that knowledge, of writing being such a force of healing for me I know why I always sit here aghast when I write for the first time in weeks, even months.

 Its been a tough month.... a real tough month.  The fourth month of my sobriety and the last month off before going back to work after again four months off and Christmas in the month.  Yes a super tough month it was.  And yet instead of coming here to write out my trials,   I go into hiding until I have tribulations to note instead.  Again another personality trait I discovered from a few different personality tests as of late, I withdraw when I am overwhelmed.

Isolation or healthy withdrawal.  Maybe that should be a secondary topic.  In recovery they warn deeply against isolation.  I get that.  When I spend to much time alone I get really down on myself and end up relapsing because today I am still my own worst enemy.  Yet healthy withdrawal as an introvert is definitely needed to recharge my batteries.  I run away from recovery when I spend too much time in the rooms with highly chaotic people, as we all are if we have landed our asses in narcotics anonymous.  But too much chaos sends me over the deep end and the main reason I use...to bring myself back into balance.  Which of course never works.

(Ugh my key board just revolted. Creating e's instead of question marks and then my shift button stuck on.     Probably because of  the lack of use in the past month.  I have just spent ten minutes trying to fix it and now have lost my mojo groove....  So apologies if this is now broken and disjointed.  where was I?)

Oh ya, tough month.

After three months of being off work I was ready to go back.  I think three months was the magical number my mind allowed me to be unattached from my addiction of working.  I really began to back slide in this fourth month where my self worth was concerned.  I began questioning who I was without work.  I found myself trying out other hats coming to understand just how much of a workaholic I had become in my first full year of sobriety.  If maybe I caught that at the beginning of my relapse last January I would have saved myself some much heart ache and a drained bank account....

Hindsight is twenty twenty and the part of life that I truly do love, trial and error. Experience.

But let me not digress.  Knowing I was slipping into the dark again without drugs and now work to fill that void within me, I jumped into cooking and caring for my two daughters still living with me.  I was baking every day(from a box, but don't judge that still huge for this TV dinner kinda girl).  I was making my girls lunches, a first in pretty much their whole lives.  I was doing their laundry, keeping the house clean and listening to their life issues and providing guidance.  That last part I loved.  Actually all of it I enjoyed doing, just my waist line was the one with the problem, too much taste testing.


So half of the month was inspiring.  I was trying new things and placing my focus where it mattered.  It felt good.  But then the girls went to their fathers for Christmas and I was left alone for a week.

I never knew just how long a week could feel.  Like an entire life time rolled into those seven days.

I was a mess.  Truly.  I felt like one of those old kid toy tops flicked out of its spin. This poor weeble wanted to fall down.   I was launched deep into a pit of,  who the fuck am I..... and ....the only answer i could come up with was, No One.

So Sad.

Dependence.  Take away the dependence on substances to get you through and then what?  Work became my substance to keep me afloat.  Take away work and then what?  My daughters became and truly always have been what kept me afloat, but take them away and then what?  My friends became my floating devices, but it was Christmas and they had things to do to.

When I was alone with just me.... omg.  I was a nightmare.

I am on Step Two.   Which is... We came to believe in a power greater then ourselves to restore us to sanity.

Not once did I reach out to my higher power in this time.  I am still mad at her for letting me fall into relapse this past time.  I am still pissed off at her for not giving me what I believe I had worked so hard for and deserved.  I am having a hard time coming to believe.  Because I am having a hard time letting go of my attachments.

What I learned most about myself in this past month is that as long as I am filling the void with outer things like drugs, work, parenting I can not fully receive my true self.   Which comes through as my higher power.   But, and this is a big but.... I also know that sitting in a dark room removed from these things(well okay not the drugs they are just wrong no matter how you cut it) is not beneficial either.

I guess then what it comes down to is balance??

 I hate that word, its like perfection. Its Illusive.  I need people to live a thriving life but how do I become inter-dependent and not dependent.  I need work, I love work.  I have worked the past two days and feel so amazing I cant even describe it, but how do I not let myself become a workaholic again?  My girls are back and even my son was here this past week and I loved being mommy again, but how do I do that from a loving detached place?

Having my eyes opened wide to the fact I am so attached to certain things in my life was terribly scary.  Truly I was a mess this month.  I go into hiding when I become a mess like that.

 I did better then before though as my close supports knew what was going on.  I even cried in front of other people.... alot.  Which was weird, not a norm for me I can tell you that.  I am definitely letting more people in during my rough moods as well as my good moods  which is new for me.

Life is growth, learning hard truths about ones self is part of that growth.  I think its part of breaking the seed shell or pushing through the earth.   This past month was a definite breaking the shell kinda months.  Learning that I like to leech unto the things that will give me balance instead of seeking that balance in my own right was huge.  Gross and nasty, uncomfortable and heartbreaking but needed in order to continue to grow and move forward.

Learning who I am without those attachments is now the journey I will embark on.   Kinda scary, kinda exciting.  I am always on about how great experience is, I always tend to forget the tough stuff one needs to process through before the lesson is learned.  I hated this lesson.  I am eager to move on.

Question.

If you removed yourself from all your labels and took off all the hats you wear, would you be able to answer,  Who am I?

Not that I wanna send you on a painful journey of self discovery, but knowing one is not alone is huge in moving through healing with a little bit more grace.  Together we can do what we could not do alone.......

Past Mistakes:Future Amends

When did I lose my Voice?

Where did I lose my sense of direction and power?

I remember a time when I convinced the CEO of the Company I worked for on a Sunday evening after a three hour conversation to Promote me from a bottom position in the Company to three levels higher then what I was currently at.

Where did that strong woman go?

As I sit here faced with my past work options as possible current future career directions, I am also faced with my mistakes made at each of them.  My self worth has been severely marred.

That Job that I had the overwhelming desire to step out of my bubble of comfort and persuade my Higher up to promote me, ended up in me walking out when the fire got to hot with my head hanging low.   I failed.

Another Job that has resurfaced as an option for a future move is one where my words almost got the boss canned from her position.  Unknown to me at the time of the power I held with the sentences I choose to speak, I had unwittingly just about cost a really great woman her entire career.  All over my loyal defense for my best friend who had been done wrong by this boss lady.  What I didn't understand then is that it was my friends fight not mine and today I am still paying for my out of bounds step.  I failed.

My self worth is as shaky as my current job with my wonderful landscaping company is.  My job isn't shaky because of my lack of good work or dedication, its shaky because its a small business that relies on the weather for its cash flow and the weather has not been conducive for the needed amount of cash flow for the coverage of wages.

So I feel defeated and a bit lost.  I feel all my past failures coming back to taunt me.  I hear that little bitch in my head reminding me how I just about fucked over a past boss.  'You deserve this', I hear her scratch.  She continues on to remind me of how hard that CEO worked to get me into my own center only for me to turn tail and run at the first challenge.  That voice is as convincing as I was in my glory days.

As I read a wonderful book about being Love now by Ram Dass who is quickly becoming a strong voice of reason for me, I am implanted with the idea of Experiences as our teachers.   I am a huge advocate of experiencing life and then sharing those experiences with others.  I take harder paths a lot of the time just for the lesson in the experience.  I love everything this world has too offer.

So what is it I am missing in this situation?

I have two past jobs and one current one in Limbo.

I have put in a resume to the Boss I tried to fuck over.  With previous attempts at amends she has refused.   I pray that maybe this time she will let me come back and make it up to her.

I have the phone number of the CEO of the company I couldn't run away fast enough from.  Apparently there center here in my city is in shambles and they are desperate for someone to come pick up the pieces.  Maybe this is my chance to make it right again.

I also have my current Boss bending over backwards to keep me afloat with hours and job duties until the spring kicks into gear and the hours are in abundance.  He respects me and doesn't want to lose me.

As I write this out I can already see the pattern developing.

I am about to screw over my current boss by turning tail and running back to a position I have already fucked up in order to appease my ego and make things right in the past.

The past is dead.

I am terrible at letting things go.  I hold on to an experience until I suck the ever living life out of it, I chew it up until the taste is totally gone, then I spit it into a plastic container to save for another day.  I pull it out to rechew when I have nothing else to turn my stomach and remind me of how undeserving I am of a new piece of meat.

Sad.

I think instead of running back to these old jobs to make my living amends to myself I need to bring what I learned and gained from those experiences into my current position.   Instead of turning tail and running this time I need to stand up and offer everything I have to my current boss.

I bring a lot of assets to this company.  I am an incredible sales woman, I can sell a freezer to an Eskimo.  I can build my bosses residential and commercial client base.  I was seeing double the amount of clients then some of my coworkers at one of those past jobs. Instead of building that old center back up to its previous glory state I could build my current bosses business up to something spectacular.

I can make my boss money and save him so much stress..... if I just got out of my pity party and started using those experiences to lift me up instead of tear me down.  We don't have any control over the challenges we face but we do have control over how we react.  I am reacting like a child throwing a hissy fit and not wanting to put in the work to get what I want.

I want a voice and I want my power back.  I want to be a strong female who teaches her girls how to be stronger females.  I want to be someone who is not afraid to go after what she wants.  I want to be a woman who lives in love, passion and excitement, not one trapped in fear and pity.

So I called my boss just now.

Told him for the month of January I will make my daily wage with calls to spring clients booking our services early this year.  That means twenty clients need to be booked and paid for before the end of that month.... easy.  I asked for a sit down with him and his new HR manager next week to go over the plan I have developed for the upcoming year.  I sold him on the fact that I can and will, if he should agree, to make him a substantially larger revenue this year and save him much stress.

He happily agree'd to the meeting.

I think I just found my voice.  This Stella is gonna get her groove back!!