They just keep coming.

People say I think too much sometimes. This time, I've got nothing to do but think, and what I've come to realize was that Life is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lesson after.

I realized after months of being miserable, but physically, emotionally, and mentally attracted to V, that I went about it all wrong. He was initially attracted to the strong, self-reliant and confident, fun, happy person I was. When we started dating that stayed for awhile, but then, we both changed. He wanted to be a different version of himself, a more-fun, happier, more active version, and I thought I had to be his role model and give him guidance and tell him what to do, how to act, how to fix things, and essentially, that he HAD to change and wasn't good enough.

I am so sorry for that.

I'd forgotten that I have to be myself at all times, and if someone wants to change, they can change themselves.
I can support, come along for the ride, but I can't change someone else. And to think he was feeling that pressure from me cuts deep. Especially now that I've lost him. He has to now avoid me, because he needs to heal. I guess we're both healing from the things we inflicted upon each other.

I'm so sorry I hurt us both.

I have to remind myself constantly that I am a good person, because lately, I have felt rotten about the way I acted. I guess, I'm just not going to have a healthy relationship. Not any time soon. For one thing, I'm still ridiculously in love with him, and I don't want anyone else. I want him just how he is: all those things the minister asks when you wed, I want those things. I want to marry him, and be with him always.

But since we've both got things to do, wounds to heal, and lives to live.. it's just not feasible that I'll pursue anyone else for a very long time.

Guess I'd better start working on em. Remembering who I like being, and trying to live with the pain of fucking things up so badly that I'l be alone for a long time.

I lied.. hardest thing.

That would be to realize the flaws in yourself, that possibly brought out the flaws in another.
I've done this before, to lovers and friends and enemies alike; forced them to see themselves in a way that was ugly to them, to see the flaws in themselves that they might not have been ready to tackle yet. Not out of malice, out of ignorance.

I know that I've got my own flaws, and what they are: impatience, frustration, selfishness, and low self-esteem at times. I've got issues with expressing my anger in an acceptable way. When one of these slips, the rest are in a rush right behind it, to pile onto me until I feel smothered in failure.

And this, I just discovered. I'm blind. When I feel overjoyed at having gotten something right, I want to share it with everyone and tell them how I did it, and push on them to do the same thing. I know I didn't do it out of malice, or of seeing them as flawed. I saw it as trying to help: "I learned a way to do things that worked for me, maybe you could try it!"

What I seem to forget is that everyone is on their own path. There are people in differing stages of their lives, that I'm just not seeing. I've had to step back and look at other peoples' lives as just that: their lives. Not mine. I have to remember that I'm not living their life, and I'm a different person than they are, with different thought patterns, life experiences and habits, so what works for me may not work for them. To think that I can fix everyone is unreasonable, and arrogant.

From now on, I will strive to remember that I am my own person, just as you are your own person.
From now on, I will strive to be more patient with everyone, myself included. Things take time; goals don't fall onto your head, neatly wrapped up in a Quest Log.
From now on, I will love myself, and treat others as I wish to be treated.
From now on, we're all individuals. You are not peripheral characters in my story. You all have your own.

I love each and every one of you. Whoever may be reading this. :)

The Hardest Thing

The hardest thing to do is pretend to the world that you'll be okay, that you'll get on and move on and feel great, when inside, you're dying.
I spent the last several months, hoping that the changes we talked about would come to pass. I waited for him to want to work out with me, like we did at the beginning of our relationship. I waited.. and waited.
He waited for me to ask him.

Our communication and expectations were in totally different places.
I have been hoping that he could be the person he said he wanted to be, when we began our relationship. It was such a bright hopeful future he had laid before him. In response to his happiness, and our love for one another.. that we professed.. I was so hopeful that things would be great. He is so incredibly awesome, except when he's dating me

I feel at turns happy, and sad, that he seems to be doing so well without me clogging up his life.
:(

We have called it quits, over such cowardly communication as MSN messenger.

I feel terrible about the way we last spoke to each other, especially since he had only been asking when we could see each other again, and I wanted to see him. I don't know what prompted the rage to spill out. Maybe unloading my anger into punching the wall, something I haven't done in a decade, woke up emotions in me that I'd tried not to let out, for fear of invoking them in him. I didn't ever miss him like THIS, until he refused to see me, when I asked to speak to him in person; to make up for the unleashing of fury I heaped on him via texts. I wanted to tell him that I love him. Instead, I called him names and gave up on him.

I haven't felt this broken, and torn up, and godamnit absolutely shit-awful, in so long, I forgot how much a person can hurt. I am wailing when I cry. My stomach clenches in knots and I scream in long gasping keening wails. I think the last time I did that was in 2004.

I'll be okay for a time. Life seems unreal. For about an hour today, everything I looked it had about a 1/2 " red glow around the edges. I have no idea why. Is this what my pain looks like? Like everything bleeds?
I'll feel numb, and my eyes feel glazed and too big for my head. It's silent, like a grave.

And then I'll think to myself, "You're gonna be okay, you'll get through this! Get up and Do something!" And my thoughts, what I want to do.. Turn to anything at all, that we did together, and I fall apart. I can't do what I did before, because he's not here with me, and never will be again. It feels like someone cut off my arms, and then told me to go and hug people to show I want to live. I can't.

I sit and I cry, I wail into my hands, and I don't know why it hurts so much. I can speculate that because my other friend, Jason, may be moving away to China in the coming months, that it's rendered me incapable of coping with all of this at once. My two best friends in the world, leaving and not coming back. How do I do this? Can I even be human any more? Can a human being hurt this much and not die?

I feel so battered and broken, and utterly, utterly alone.

How do I live this life when things are happening as I said I wanted them, but all I feel is pain and loneliness?

Now is when I start to Live Life.

I have been overweight for 11 years. I gained about 60 lbs when pregnant with my son, and then went on Depo Provera contraceptives for 4 years. I am currently (and have been mostly) hovering at around 200-220 lbs, when my ideal weight (personally ideal, not “You’re this tall, be this fat” ideal) is roughly 130-150lbs, toned.

I have started to work out and eat right many times over the years. And it works; each time I start, I see results, but then I stop, for one reason or another, and it comes back. Most usually the problem is food, or rather, money to get the right food. Another factor is how I feel about myself. If I’m having a rough time in regular life (a break-up, a job loss, some other perceived failure) then I lose motivation and just stop what I was doing that made me feel great and productive.

I recently started again, in January, to work out daily and drink more water, as I’ve had a problem staying hydrated for at LEAST 10 years. My body’s now been trained to retain water, so when I flood it out with the RIGHT amount, I shed inches really quickly.

This past month however, my workouts have dwindled down again, pretty much due to my sadness at how my relationship was going. I’m now starting back up again, every morning at 6:30.

I now get up, don my workout gear, grab a bottle of water from the fridge, and turn on the Turbo Jam. It’s a 20 minute workout and it’s intense for someone not having worked out for a week or a few. I sweat, I wheeze, my knees ache and I feel energized. So many people I know say, “Ugh I’m not a morning person *grumblegrumble*”. Really. Neither was I, until I forced myself to change.

I was the girl who had to have her mother step on her head while jumping on her bed to get her out of said bed and ready for school. I was the girl who arrived at school rumpled and mismatched, because she got dressed at the last second and usually in the dark. I stayed in bed until ABSOLUTE TIME-SENSITIVE NECESSITY required me to be out of the house to catch a bus to school. I would glower at my family, not eat any breakfast unless forced out of early by my mother screaming, “GET UP THE BUS WILL BE HERE IN 3 MINUTES!” only to find I had 13 minutes. I would not talk in the morning ever, I did not want to be AWAKE while the sun was cheerfully blazing, and I sure as shit did not want to be around smiling, cheerful, chattery MORNING people.

When I made the decision to be a different person, I changed a lot. And it was gradual change. It wasn't overnight that I decided to hop out of bed like a happy little chickadee and hop around being cheerful. No way.. It took me years to work up to that. In the past few years though, if I woke up in the morning, and I had a game plan, I’d be cheerful about it. I LIKED having goals, a routine to follow, places to be. On the days when I have no plans, like no work, no school, no appointments farfar’way from my house, I laid in bed til 1pm and then did nothing.  This has lasted me for quite a while now actually. I still do this.

Until recently, I mean.

Now my mornings, whether I’m working that day or not, consist of wake up at alarm (6:30am on work-days, 8:30 on non-working days), work out for 30 minutes, shower, dress, make a protein shake and healthy breakfast, and then get on with my day.  I’ve found if I stick to the work out plan every morning, I’m less inclined to sit on my buttski and stare at Facebook or webcomics if I have the day off. I’ve also found that it keeps my feet from hurting as soon at work, while standing in one spot for hours, chopping vegetables. I also seem to be in a better mood. I’m fully aware that exercise releases endorphins to make you feel good, so the more exercise you get, the better you feel, so I’m trying hard to stick with it as much as possible. Trying to adjust to such a massive upheaval in your life as a break-up, thus removing any contact with the people you both considered friends, is difficult already; without some sort of routine, I’d fall apart.

On March 2^nd, I will be starting (for real!) the Georges St-Pierre RUSHFIT program. On February 29^th, I will be taking the assessment, which is as follows:

60 seconds of air squats

20 seconds rest

60 seconds of pushups

20 seconds rest

60 seconds of sit-ups

20 seconds rest

60 seconds of burpees.

Oh gods.. the sweaty...

Essentially 5 minutes of pushing exercise, to see what your endurance and strength and stamina can produce. In 3 months I will do it again, myself, just to see what I can then accomplish, after the training.

I also plan to bring my pell into my living room, and practice my SCA sword shots, more with my left hand than my right, because my left hand is weaker. By spring I want to be able to look good, feel good, and hopefully begin training again with the rest of the unit.

I know this will take time and effort. I know that I will have muscle pain and that weight loss, either 12 inches around my hips or 60lbs, whichever comes first, is essential to me feeling good about myself, and being able to walk without feeling dragged down. I want to wear pretty clothes, I want to wear costumes, and crazy outfits. I cannot do that without toning up, slimming out and building muscle and confidence this time. I’ll be 32 this year, I don’t want to continue living the way I have for the past decade. I want to have fun!!

I will do this by cutting down sugar and gluten intake, by drinking more water, eating healthy meals and snacks, and with my exercise. I do not plan on spending a lot of time on the internet, or playing computer games. I don’t do a lot on the internet anyway; Facebook, webcomics and occasionally news are all I really look at. I will keep updates a-coming on my blog, so we can keep track of what I’m doing and how things are going.

So my new year begins now. Now is when I’ve decided that I want to be happy, successful, proud of myself and my looks, as well as my massive accomplishment of cutting an addiction to pieces and becoming who I want to be.

Who do you want to be?

Things I Keep Running into Lately.

I got this from a post by The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute 

“Who we become depends on who we surround ourselves by. I really believe that this is true.”

I did not write this, but I feel it should be shared, and there was a bunch of stuff written at the beginning that doesn’t really go with it, for me.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

This is a quote made by Jim Rohn, motivational speaker and self-help guru. To be honest, I don’t fully agree with this statement because it negates the fact we have our own consciousness as well. The quote will be more accurate if we revise it to: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, including yourself”. 

In my general day-to-day life, I encounter 'sleepwalkers', who generally lack a core focus in their lives. Their lives revolve around working, eating, sleeping, partying, random entertainment and generally getting by. When I am with them, I find it very difficult to branch the discussion beyond lower level, fear/ego-based topics such as gossip, complaining, unhappiness or dissatisfaction and day-to-day weary, to more higher-level, love-based topics such purpose, self-improvement, and so on.

How people around you can affect you

There are two variables that interplay in determining how much of your thoughts and actions are influenced by people around you. The first is your consciousness and resilience as an individual. The second, is the collective sum of the consciousness of the people you are with. These combine to give you a weighted impact on who you become.

You may be the most conscious and smartest individual around, but if you are constantly surrounded by negative, fear-based people in your life, it will have an impact on who you eventually become and your progression in life. If you are heavily rooted in yourself, there might be a limited downside that negative friends can bring you. However, you are also getting a limited upside because you are spending time with people who are holding you back vs people who can be elevating you.

If you hang out with a group of successful, positive-minded individuals who believe in taking responsibility for their lives, you will move to become a proactive individual who shapes his/her future. If you hang out with a bunch of pessimists who believe the world is out to get them and there is nothing worthwhile, you will start descending into the negative whirlpool at some point, even if you are initially a positive individual.

This is especially important in goal achievement, because the consciousness you vibrate at affects the kind of thoughts and actions you undertake. If you want to lose 20lbs of weight, you need to think as your end persona; the person who is clean cut in making diet decisions. However, if you are constantly surrounding yourself with people who eat a lot, you make it harder to restrict yourself. At this point, your ability to stay on track in your goal will boil down to how grounded and resilient you are. Think of how much easier the task becomes if you were hanging out with like-minded people with similar visions, or even people who have already been there before.

Of course, this does not mean you should sever relationships or cut away every single person who does not contribute to your goals. It just means you should reduce the amount of contact you are having with people who do not enable you to become a better person. Only in the event that the person is seriously dragging you down should you resort to cutting him/her completely away. Remember, if you are entrenching yourself in relationships which are not elevating you or bringing yourself forward, you are not really helping yourself nor anybody else since you are not being the best you can be and subsequently, not being the best you can be to them.”

There follows an exercise to identify your core circle of people.

Let us do an exercise now.   Pick up your pen and paper, and write down the answers to the following questions: (Even if you’re “not the type of person who does this” try anyways. If you’re sincere about change, things have to change.

1. What is the kind of person you want to be?

What is your ideal self that you wish to become? What are the qualities you want to possess?

2. Who are the 5 people you spend the most time with in your life currently?

How are they like? What are the top 3 qualities each of them stand for?

3. Do they match who you want to become in the future?

Do their qualities match who you want to become? Do they help enable or disable your vision for yourself? Do they elevate you or bring you down?

4. Who are the top 5 people who embody the qualities you desire?

They should be people you aspire to become and/or respect in some way or another. There are no rules here – It does not matter whether the person is a specific individual or a general person, outside of your social circle, lives in a different country or dead. It can be someone who already achieved the end state or goal that you want to achieve. It can be Oprah, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Obama or whoever. Let your imagination run wild here!

If one of your career aspirations is to be a chef, you can list Iron Chef or a world-renowned, international award winning chef as one of the 5 people. If you want to lose 100lbs, list someone who has already achieved this goal or someone who has your aspired body type/weight. If you want to be a movie producer, list someone who has achieved acclaimed successful in this line of work, such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, etc.

5. How can you increase contact with them?

This is where the interesting bit comes in. Depending on who the people are, you can use the following methods to reach out to them:

·         Direct contact:

This can be via face-to-face contact, telephone or via email/internet. How can you increase the opportunities of interfacing with this person? If you know the individual, how can you communicate with him/her more often? If you don’t know the person, does this person belong to a certain community which you can be part of? Do you have any friends who might know this individual? Is there a way for you to bridge into the same social circles?

·         Products of their work:

If direct communication does not work out, you can always bring the person to you in the form of his/her works. Does the person have any works under his/her name, such as shows, books or podcasts? Get your hands on them and soak yourself in them. These materials were after all written/made by them and the content will convey their consciousness and knowledge. In essence, being exposed to these materials is equivalent to interacting with them in person.

·         Visualization:

This one sounds like the most airy fairy method out of the three, but it can actually the most powerful. Clear your mind and visualize these people in your mind. Try to project them as clearly as possible, from how they look, think, act, say. When you are done, consult them in your mind and observe their responses to whatever you ask. It can also be used in daily life, where you project their persona onto you in your situations and think/act the way you think they will.

Napoleon Hill wrote in ‘Think and Grow Rich‘ that every night before he slept, he would have an imaginary council meeting with his ‘invisible counselors’. The council started out with a group of 9; it eventually expanded over time to over 50. These included people such as Darwin, Einstein, Aristotle, Confucius, Socrates, and the like. Through these nightly council meetings, he received immense inspiration, knowledge and ideas which he credited for his success in life.

Transitioning to the new you

What will happen from here on as you increase your contact with these 5 people? If the disparity in consciousness levels is high, you are probably going to start off feeling terribly misfitted. They will probably talking in lingo and topics which are different from what you are used to. Even when they talk about topics you are familiar with, the perspectives they come from can be totally different and not something you looked at before. You probably feel awkward around them.

But if you are to connect with them every day, even if for just 15 minutes a time, it’s a matter of time before your consciousness alters and shifts to the new level. If you are a stubborn individual in a low consciousness, it will take a longer period of time; if you are a high consciousness individual who is highly adaptable, it will take a shorter amount of time.

Eventually, you will start resonating with these people you aspire. You will find that you start thinking in the same wavelength and start talking about the same topics as them. Those thinking will then affect your actions, which will manifest into results you see in life.

Shape your life by choosing who you are with

By choosing who you spend time with, you are literally shaping your own future. Start by examining the people you spend the most time around. Consider if these people are enabling you towards your envisioned self. If they are not, identify and increase contact with the people who will enable you to become the best person you can be.”

Holiday labels.

This is a small but heart-felt message, on this day, called by the human people, St. Valentine's Day, or simply by Valentine's Day.



To the societal masters and media who make single people feel unworthy of attention or love on this day, to tell all those people to believe that your self-worth lies in your ability to score a significant other for this day alone, I wish you to read this and take it directly to heart.


Fuck you.
Fuck you, with crunchy peanut butter and glass as lube. 
In any orifice handy.



That is all.

My Anger Solution

Well folks, it’s been about a week since I last wrote anything. The past week has brought a lot of memories to the surface.

For now I want to talk about anger. We all have it. One of first few things I decided to change about myself was to deal with my anger. First I had to acknowledge I had it, which wasn’t easy.

Remember the person I spoke of before, with whom I moved to this city? Our adventure obviously didn’t end with hopping a bus. I believe it was some Higher Power, Serendipity, Fate, whatever you want to call it, that saw I was ready to change and thrust this person in my path; someone who was willing to go balls out (so to speak), say what needed saying, do what needed doing, for the greater good.

We packed up and left Hamilton, on a Greyhound bus, and 13 hours later we were in Sault Ste Marie. At first, life was exciting; lots of hope, and sunshine, and faith that we’d be Somebodies, we were going to change the world!

Walking 6-8 hours a day, looking for apartments that would allow us to live there. Meeting all manner of people, some nice, some rude, some sketchy, some shady-looking but with good hearts. And then we found a place.

Once we moved in, and were no longer nomads for the summer, the shine wore off the relationship. Living with that person, and trying to set a routine for his kids, trying to be a Mommy to kids I didn’t particularly like, as he’d raised them to be demanding little selfish brats. His loud mouth got him in trouble a lot, and the testosterone he was taking for his gender-switching worked only when he took it, which wasn’t regularly. In between, the Bitch came out.

Above: The Bitch in Rych.

It was at one of these times, that the peace of our quasi-life shattered. There was shouting, a fistfight, two shots to the face (by me, to his, btw), and me leaving in my slippers.

I had nowhere to go, so I stayed at a shelter, and had to come to some hard truths about my life. Where did I want to go? What did I want to do? Who did I want to be? These weren't things I'd thought about before, but I knew that I needed to change. The people I was with tended to be reflections, mirrors of myself, and I am grateful I saw them. I realized soon enough, that I had anger issues. I would bottle my rage up for YEARS, against myself, against others, and then without any warning, it would blow and someone would get hurt, usually not me, but sometimes.

I tried to date again after deciding that I had to work on these problems with my emotions, but it lasted a month and a half before there was another explosion, and this time, a lot of his blood spilled. (Though to be fair, he knew I was going through a lot of soul-searching, and that people had attacked me before, so he shouldn’t have been surprised that when he leapt on me I reacted like a rabid, cornered badger, with teeth and everything).

Also frightened. Badgers are rarely frightened, but you get the idea.

I stopped dating for about a month, but I was lonely. New city, middle of winter, didn’t know a ton of people. Tried a few times to meet people from online dating services, just to have some friends, someone to spend time with, and nothing went anywhere productive. I chose one boy because he was the exact opposite of the previous: instead of tall, short; instead of strong, weak; and instead of exceptionally masculine, this boy was very effeminate. We got along, had things in common, and it was nice to have someone to hug regularly, even if we didn’t sleep together very much at all. That ended about 2 months later, when I broke it off, saying that I was interested in spending time somewhere that was not his house; his friends were for the most part, NOT the types of people I wanted to spend time with, and he never did much without them. I was also very interested in another man I’d met online, strictly as friends at first while I was with the other, but on my side, it was developing into more than that.

That ended as well, not long after it started (couple of months), as I’d never really met someone decent (male/dating) who was interested in spending time with me, up til that point. I became very clingy, because hey, when you’ve had crap-sandwiches all your life, someone hands you a ham & swiss and you hold onto that sucker! He walked away. I broke, I healed, I still grieve sometimes for what could have been, but I've healed.

I had a lot of trouble trying to keep hold of any relationships while fighting myself. I had a lot of weeks, even months, where I couldn’t do ANYTHING. If I didn’t have my best friend around, I’d probably have never gotten where I have today. I yelled at him, screamed, raged, demanded he leave, and he just smiled and said, "No." He was the best thing that ever happened to me, and after experiencing what I have recently, I am even more amazed by his incredible patience. It must be the divas he's had to work with; rages and screamfests are easysauce to deal with.

Working on the anger was hard, because I had to acknowledge I had it, and what to do when I felt it. My typical reaction was to just smile and let it bottle up. That worked until I recognized what it was, then it wouldn’t stay bottled! Having to constantly remind myself that OTHER PEOPLE cannot MAKE you feel emotions, YOU are in charge, was the hardest part. It’s so much an ingrained habit to say to someone you’re arguing with, “Yea well, YOU made me angry, so it’s YOUR FAULT!” I had to remind myself to say instead, “When you do this, I feel this emotion, and I don’t like feeling that way. How can we solve this?” To converse, instead of accuse. To look for a solution, rather than just bemoan the problem.

When you have one side working hard to change themselves, and the other side refuses to help, it’s even more difficult. The person I was with at the time I started the Anger Solutions program, (call him M) had what I call White Knight Syndrome. As long as I was helpless, and didn’t know where I wanted to go in life, and didn’t wanna work too hard, he was Everything To Me Man. As soon as I started changing my thoughts, my behaviours, to reflect the person I wanted to be, as soon as I started to try and achieve better for myself, I was a lost cause and he picked fights with me as often as he could. I look back and see that he had the same problems I did, he just never wanted to deal with them himself, and by having me around doing so, it made him face uncomfortable truths he didn’t want to face.

I felt unlovable. I felt unwanted, and broken, and useless. Worthless. Nobody loved me, because I wasn’t good enough. I grew up thinking that I had to be everything for a partner in order to be fulfilled. I had to take care of them, feed them, make sure they remembered important things, basically, I believed I had to be a Mother to everyone I dated, so they’d see I was useful, important, and had to keep me around. I had to feel needed.

PLEASE LOVE ME!

I still sometimes feel that way.  It’s good to be needed, to be depended on for doing what you’ve promised. I was taking it too far. I was trying to do my own version of the White Knight. I’d meet broken people and want to fix them, change them into what they said they wanted, help them live, but in the meantime, I felt lousy. I had to help them, because they wouldn’t help themselves. They’d sit and moan about not being able to do something, get something, feel something, buy something, understand something, and I’d be there, giving them what they had to have. I felt like I couldn’t have a life, because I had to take care of them. And I hated it. With M, I hated it so much more because I saw him doing the exact things I was trying to change in myself. It was a very hard lesson to get through, but I did it.

I’ve been accused of not being patient enough. Maybe that is true. I get impatient when I see something fixable, not being fixed. I want to do it, so I know it’s done, and we can all move on. But how does that help who I fixed things for? Does it help them learn how to fend for themselves?

I feel angry very rarely now, or rather, I express my feelings more than I did before.

Lately I’ve bottled them up, but it’s never longer than a few days. It’s still just as painful to let out those feelings, but now I am not inarticulate with rage, sputtering and hating myself because I can’t communicate my feelings when I’m that angry. Now I let it out, still not rehearsing in my head what I’ll say (I’ve never really been good at that, maybe something else to work on so I don’t sound dumb) but it tends to make more sense when I do speak while angry.

Not many people have seen me angry, and I like that. I like knowing that I’ve had a good handle on my feelings since working so hard to change how I see myself, and see the world.

There’s a phrase I saw recently: You can't live a positive life with a negative mind.

So, blog reader-friends, when those angry, negative thoughts come up, remember to change them to positive ones. Yes, it’s Work. Yes, it’s hard to stick to it. But it can be done.  The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

I did it, and I’m still working on it. But I can’t do it for you. You have to want the change in yourself, so you have to work for it. And remember, when you achieve something all by yourself, it’s that much more rewarding when you accomplish your goal.

Here’s to faith in ourselves.

Just a Little Note about Goals.

As promised, a blog that is less Soul-Searchy than the rest have been.

Here I’d like to list my goals for the year 2012. Whether I achieve or exceed the detailed parameters, they will be here. :D

1. I will lose 60 lbs (or 12” from my hip measurement) by my birthday, June 11^th.

            Update: within one month, I have lost 2” everywhere already. 5 more months to go!

2. I will save a minimum of $1000 by December 1^st.

3. I will learn a new language by December 1st. Right now I’m looking at Dutch, Afrikaans (derivative of Dutch), and Spanish.

4. I will refresh my old-school memory on French.

5. I will learn to drive, parallel-park, park, and not freak out driving on a highway (or a road for that matter.

6. I will return to college next January to begin my Level Two Culinary training.

7. I will begin, in earnest, to write my business plan for the café.

8. I will begin purchasing lottery tickets, once a week, once my pay starts.

And as an aside for this list, I’m adding what I would do with the first $1 million if I win. ;D

1. Give $20,000 each to my immediate family members, my son’s and niece’s in the form of trusts. Son, sister, niece, mom.

2. Invest in Facebook, as it is going public.

3. Donate money to the Lung Association and the Canadian Diabetes Association.

4. Buy property to build my own self-sustaining homefront.

5. Buy a shiny Jeep. :3

6. Tattoos.

That’s pretty much all I have right now for goals. I’ll post more if I think of any, or barring that, I’ll update every few months with my progress on these.

Have a great day!

Cycles of Guilt and Shame have Very Uncomfy Seats. Why Bother Riding Them, Anyway!

"The reason that we have not been ‘loving our neighbor as ourselves’ is because we have been doing it backwards. We were taught to judge and feel ashamed of ourselves. We were taught to hate ourselves for being human."

First of all, what is guilt? I see it as manipulation. Parents use it to control their kids, probably believing that by showing them the consequences their behaviour has on others, that they’ll learn to be more considerate of others, to show compassion because of some sudden realization.

We should be aware of our connections, yes, but not at the expense of questioning our own desires and needs. We lose perspective on what’s really important because we don’t want to “feel bad” for choosing our desires over what people will think of us for doing so.

Shame is even worse; it takes it one step further by bypassing guilt. Now, by ignoring other peoples’ needs over our own, we’re selfish, we’re inconsiderate, we’re stupid or self-serving. We are “bad people”. Basically, those people will use our wants and needs as a source of shame as they see their own as more important.

If you’re able to ignore the guilt-trips, the people involved then move on to attack you as a person. It moves blame from what we’re DOING, to who we ARE. We don’t really have much defense against that, so we just absorb it and accept that’s part of who we are.  THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

Once we get this treatment over and over, we learn to do it ourselves, without anyone having to say anything; we know the score, we’re on it. *GUILTSHAMEGUILTSHAMEGUILTSHAME* all over ourselves. So when we look at our desires, we now automatically try to look at what others want or expect of us and decide if the guilt is worth the effort. Most of the time, if we do risk it, we risk shame from the ripple effects of our actions.

I wondered if I could ever get out of this cycle.

To ask, “What do I want?” instead of assessing each of my choices to see what it would cost me in guilt or shame.

It’s a fear thing, really. Internally, we think that whatever the guilt or shame represent, is the worst thing EVER. But these are bits and pieces from our pasts, and they can’t hurt us if we don’t let them. However, if they’ve been with you a long time, you’ve gotten used to using those “skills” to determine your actions, and essentially become a habit. Those are REALLY hard to break. The paralysis they create within us prevents us from taking any action whose outcome they could be connected to.

The way it works in practice is like this: I am feeling fat; I judge myself for being fat; I shame myself for being fat; I beat myself up for being fat; then I am hurting so badly that I have to relieve some of the pain; so to nurture myself I eat 20 cookies; then I judge myself for eating the cookies, etc. etc.

Shame, to self-abuse, to shame, to serve no purpose but to make us feel unlovable or unworthy.

Obviously, this is a dysfunctional cycle if our purpose is to be happy and enjoy being alive.

Changing our belief system, the one we’ve used to dictate how we react to life, the one we’ve had for years, is very difficult. We have to change our relationship with ourselves, and you may know how hard it is to change a FRIEND you’ve known for years, who’s acted the same way for years. It’s almost like there’s no movement at all, sometimes.

What we need to do, is switch our shame/guilt thought reactions into positive, life-affirming thoughts. “I am so fat!” becomes “I can lose weight!”

“I am so poor, I can’t afford anything,” becomes “If I get off my ass and get a job, I can afford what I need and want.” It’s harder to put these into ACTION, though, if for so long you’ve been the type to just sit and obsess about how badly your life is going.

The guilt and shame aspects of these types of thoughts are pretty profound. You can sit there and think happy thoughts at yourself all day; they won’t change a damn thing in your life if you don’t stand up and ACT on them.

Acting on your positive thoughts will reinforce that, even though you sat there and thought, “If I want to get a job, I have to go and look for one, and my résumé isn’t up-to-date, and it looks like crap, so I won’t get hired, so I might as well not even try.” CYCLE OF SHAME, BEGONE!

If you think you won’t get hired, you will not do the things that will get you hired. Employers can smell a defeated prospect a mile away. If you think you won’t lose weight, you won’t. It really is that simple. 

The action you take should not involve shame or judgement on yourself. “Get up, because you’re a fat, lazy ass and you don’t wanna be that anymore!” is not an effective way of changing your thoughts. It may work at FIRST, but it’s still a destructive way of getting you motivated, and ultimately, you will fail. You’ll eventually get to the point where you stop doing what you were doing, even for as little as one day, and your mind will come back with, “See? You’re lazy and you couldn’t do it for long anyways.” And you'll stop. I have done this, COUNTLESS times.

You want to change your relationship with yourself - you want to LOVE yourself, so why not change your thought patterns to respond in a way that encourages you. Think in a way that supports your decisions, whether they prove to be good OR bad in the long run; they are YOURS.

Most of my problem was that I have a little kid living inside my mind; that little kid wants instant gratification and instant relief from problems. The adult in me knows that delayed gratification for life’s things is pretty much how the world rolls, but MAN, is it hard to accept that some days!

I have to set a boundary between the Little Shya and the Grown-Up Shya. I know that true pride in one’s actions comes from ACTING on my thoughts; from saying out loud that “I WILL DO THIS THING,” and doing it.

True pride is taking credit for the action we have taken to foster, nurture, and maintain those gifts we’re given: whether it be looks, talent, intelligence or for being spiritual, healthy, or sober. We need to set loving boundaries for ourselves in the moment of that desperate need for immediate gratification and to know that - though it is not shameful if we can't do it perfectly or all the time - we need to 'just do it.'

So how to get over these feelings of guilt and shame for not being who you wanna be? Practice. There are so many things you can do to stop feeling like this, the foremost being, TRY ANYWAY.
Face those fears, do what you want to do, and DO NOT let the guilt and shame wash over you and mar the moment when you realize that by doing things for yourself, you are NOT being selfish, you are NOT being an asshole, you are doing something that to YOUR LIFE, seems right.

  

Guilt is manipulation, remember, so if we want to do something that benefits us, the fear is of having someone telling us that we are bad or wrong, because they would have preferred we make the effort, spend the time or use the energy on THEIR behalf, not ours.

What's the worst that can happen to you? Probably nothing as serious or as terrible as you think. Are you going to allow that fear to paralyze you?

Be who you are and say what you feel 

because those who mind don't matter

and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss

Let those fears rise to the surface, make peace with them and then confidently move forward on your path, knowing that from your point of truth everything is possible, and when you stand in that truth, the worst never happens.

“Patience and fortitude conquer all things”

[Warning: This may get intense, folks. Also may seem like it's rambling. No need for alarm.]

I like coming to these realizations, like uncovering shiny things in the sand at the beach.

For a long time, I regarded patience and tolerance as the same thing. I am very open-minded as far as what humans do with themselves, each other and what makes them feel good.  (Looking only at the positive aspects of said “good times”, of course.)

What I have realized lately is that I have to work on patience, with those around me. Whether I am friends with them or not, I tend to have very little patience with them when or if they are slow to act, or do something they know is destructive, and come to their own conclusion that what they’re doing isn’t good for them. My stock response is usually something along the lines of, “Ok. So… stop it. Hurry up and get over it already. Fix it.”

I keep forgetting that getting to the place I have, myself, has taken a long time and a lot of work from the time I had the same realizations. If anyone had said to me what I say to people, I wouldn’t be very open to advice from them anymore.

 “Kay, stop doing drugs. Now. What's stopping you? Geez.”

At the beginning, I was a very sullen, grumpy asshole. I knew what I had to change, but saying what you want to change and actually committing to completing that change are two very different things. For one thing, it’s really easy to tell people things you’re doing. If you’re not changing and are just telling people those things in order for them to look at you as if you’re succeeding, it eats away at you. It destroys your own self-confidence in ACTUALLY succeeding.

I did that for years.

YEARS.

I knew what people wanted to hear, what words to tell them that would make them look at me in admiration for the success I was getting, but I WASN’T SUCCEEDING IN ANYTHING., except for lying to people, and to myself. That had to stop. It stopped in 2009.

May 22, 2009. Dramatic Type Story that Occurred in My Life.

A girl I had been talking to online through a mutual friend, (let’s call her B) while talking on MSN, informed me that the reason my boyfriend (G) wasn’t at my house yet (I had been waiting for him to come over, as he said on the phone he was heading out to “get some”) was because he was on his way to HER house. I hadn’t even been aware that they knew each other. I can only  describe what happened next as some sort of breakdown.

I know there was rage, crying, despair, and no small amount of hatred towards this ‘friend’. I actually felt like dying, and drank a large amount of liquid codeine I had been taking for a tooth abscess. If you’ve ever had too much codeine in your system you know exactly what happened to me. Felt sketchy, like my whole body was made out of  twitching TV clips, I was itchy ALL OVER and there was something wrong with my hands. All I had wanted to do was go to sleep and not wake up.

I got really scared and called the Crisis Outreach and Support Team (COAST) and told them the whole story. Why I had done it, and what was happening, and that I really wanted help. The woman on the phone was very good at her job, kept me from doing anything worse, and told me that I wasn’t alone, that there were people to help me. She was sending some people out the next day to talk to me, and I ended up going upstairs to hang out with my sister and her boyfriend.

I found a note from them saying they were out til late to see the late movie at the theatre, and because I was all stressed out, I called the only person I could: my best friend at the time, Lance. We hadn’t spoken in about 8 months, for other drama-reasons (his girlfriend was a crazy person who hated me, more on that some other time). I called him, he answered his phone, and I said, “It’s Shy. I need you.”

His response: “I’ll pick a fight with her and see you in 10.” That’s friendship right there folks.

Lance showed up 10 minutes later, took one look at me and said, “Let’s go for a drive.” It was about 10pm, and we ended up driving around for 2 hours, listening to music that just seemed to break apart all the chaos I’d been living with for the last 4 years. I cried, and cried, and there was blubbering and snot and all the unattractive things that accompany epiphanies: puffy, red eyes, swollen nose, throat-clearing snot noises. Aww yea, I was sexy.

Anyway, the night ended with us vowing not to allow SOs to keep us from being friends anymore, and that I was done with G forever. So many signs and portents and all the symbolism and realizations that smack you in the face when you finally allow the scum of your relationship to leak out and the wound to heal.

The day after, I was online, and happened to start chatting with a buddy on  World of Warcraft. I’d met him due to the fact that he was a skilled player who also didn’t take the game so seriously that he wasn’t above making people rage, for fun. He had a unique way of doing it. He’d talk about himself in the third person. I found this hilarious (after I also stopped taking the game so seriously), and we chatted randomly at vague intervals.

He said that day that if I needed someone to talk to, he’d be there, so we did. The conclusions I came to, after our chat, was basically that G was selfish, and an asshole, and he’d kept me caged inside my own insecurities for too long. I was encouraged to go outdoors, be a person, be MYSELF, and have fun: rollerblade, Parkour, dance, sing. I did just that. I went rollerblading. (You may remember this scenario from a previous blog.)

I stayed with G (and B thrown into the mix) for 2 weeks after that. It was the wrong way to go about a polyamorous relationship situation, I know, but hey, it was there, and I was still stubbornly sticking to what I knew: him. I’d hoped he could change, since there was such a fundamental change in myself. I was wrong. New girlfriend meant new opportunity to impress, and he spent every cent, and every waking moment, on her.

After my birthday weekend turned into a great big floppy donkey, I called my sister to come get me in Toronto, and stormed off. I didn’t speak to him before I left, except to say, “She’ll spend all your money and cause you grief.” I was right; she did.

But back to me! It happened like this: At those times you think you can’t get through, because of the severity of the chaos surrounding you, once you’re past it, the WHOLE WORLD is bright and shining with promise! I felt like a 500lb weight had been lifted off my soul, and the world was new, to do with as I saw fit!

This picture was taken when I got home. I felt like my face was going to split, I was so happy.

Once I got past the chaos of being held down in my depression and insecurity, once I realized that I DO deserve to be happy, sexy, and well-liked, I worked hard to change myself. I met a guy through my research of Parkour who seemed pretty cool, so I went to meet him that night. This was the person who would (within a week) bring me to Sault Ste Marie. We hit it off, there were sparks, there were promises, and there was romance, and connections and… This person started life as a female. So? Who cares what the plumbing is when feelings this strong are involved?

I know now that my life was opened up to change once I accepted that it needed to.

I believe I was lead to Sault Ste Marie, to start my life fresh; to leave behind me, the doubts and insecurities that created the basement-dwelling near-soulless creature, living in blindness, that I had been.

Once I kicked myself in the ass and started to change, it became easy to ignore and forget the long, long journey it took me to get to where I am now. Now, I seem to have no patience, and without having gone back through time, to remember the things I did in the past, I don’t think I’d have been able to say that I CAN change that about myself.

There are people around me now, that remind me of who I’ve been. Unfortunately, up until now, those people have gotten the blunt end of my patience, and for that I apologize.

I promise, I will have more patience and compassion for what you are going through, than I did in the past. I hope you can forgive my brush-offs of your pain, my impatience at your suffering, and my insensitivity at your struggle.

I will be a more caring person, more understanding of what you must be going through, and hopefully, be the person to you that I had from Jason, my best friend. He has a bottomless well of patience, that man, and kept me sane through my own struggles this past 2 years.

I know you can get through your chaos, because I got through mine. Let’s help you become who you should be, together

Yay Life!

Be the Change You Wish to See in the World.

Isn’t it interesting, to look back on your life at certain points, and realize that what you thought was so very difficult to get through, was actually a very good learning experience? Going back and re-examining points in your life with new skills you’ve learned is pretty interesting, and sometimes helps you get through things you never thought you could.

Like deciding that despite your fear, you were GOING to college, dammit.

You’ve never done this before, and it’s terrifying, but also a little exciting because Change is Scary, and the Unknown Can Be Anything At All!!

I remember that feeling of the week before my first day of college. I was jittery, and worried that I’d look stupid, or that I’d feel overwhelmed being around a lot of people I didn’t know. I WAS afraid, that first day we were expected to talk about ourselves. I was shaking inside, but nobody saw it. I spoke as if I knew everyone in the room; that I was friends with them all, and that we were enjoying a random moment of insight into our summer activities.

“I’m Shya, my favourite meal to cook is Spicy Asian Spinach Fettuccini, and this summer I started going to SCA events.” An explanation of what the SCA was, and I was done. Sat down and felt sweaty and nervous and … rather stringy, like old jerky.

I feel like that almost every time I’m to speak in front of people. Even people I know! It’s been a hard road, but I feel I’m getting a better handle on public speaking.

Which takes me back…

Time-warp!

I don’t have many memories of my childhood, but I do remember making the conscious decision (around age 12) to stop being shy. Growing up with a name like Shyanna (“Oh that’s such a pretty name!), I was called “Shy”, by everyone but my teachers. And without fail, any new person I met would greet me with THIS EXACT QUESTION:

“Your name’s Shy? Hu-Hu-Hu are you shy?”

I’d had enough. The problem was, up til that point, I WAS shy. Or at least, very quiet. Watching people and listening to them talk seemed way more interesting to me than participating. Also, remember that nervous, jittery feeling I mentioned? Way worse back then.  By the time puberty hit though, I was full up to HERE with that question, and I fought my shyness.

I’d had self-esteem issues and almost crippling shyness for so long, and I was tired of it. We were really poor growing up; I remember once having a spoonful of peanut butter for dinner because we had nothing else. The hand-me-downs I wore to school got me picked on a lot, especially since it seemed I had absolutely no sense of any kind of cool fashion. Basically if it was brightly coloured, clean, and kept me warm, I didn’t really think about it too much. My passion was watching the world and drawing it in my sketchbook. When kids found they could get a reaction from me by calling me names, or calling me fat, they continued for a long time. No matter that we moved around a LOT; it seemed everywhere I ended up, I was the outcast, the loner, the weirdo who people could safely pick on. Until I was 12.

That’s when the fighting started. I fought back, against my fellow students, and kids in the neighbourhood, when they touched me. I bottled up the rage I felt when they called me names, and I unleashed it if they got close enough to shove me. What I only now realized is that when they called me fat (From age 12 I weighed about 80lbs, to a max of 120 when I was 19) I wasn’t crying because they hurt my feelings. I knew I wasn’t fat. I was crying from suppressed rage.

I knew fully well that I had a serious disadvantage to the kids making fun of me: I was alone. One small girl with no fighting skills and barely able to speak to people is no match for a posse of self-righteous little asshole kids. One strikes out, and they all get in on it. Mob mentality. So instead of shoving my way past them and getting out of there, I would try to walk away, crying with rage and frustration, so I wouldn’t get physically hurt.

It happened anyway. Becky Pauley was my first real fistfight. She had moved into the neighbourhood and was the same age as me, so I tried to make friends. She was loud, crude, a lot bigger than me, and seemed like she knew what she wanted in life. (Yes, at age 12. Lol, so worldly.) Our relationship was one of Friend/Enemy: Some days she was my friend and we had lots of fun, and others, she hated me and everything I did, so we’d be at odds. One memory I have of her, during one of our “off” weeks, was of her on her bike, about 20-30 feet in front of me. I was walking. She looked behind her, saw me, and promptly fell over, falling off her bike and scraping her knees and hands. I was baffled at this behaviour; what was she doing that for?

I headed home as she scrambled up onto her bike, burst into tears and rode home. About a minute after walking in the house, there was a knock at the door. Becky had told her mother that I had pushed her off her bike! She recommended that my mother keep her “little trouble maker” away from her daughter, and her and Mom got into a yelling match that ended with Mom slamming the door in her face, and me being grounded. (You get in trouble a lot when you don’t talk much; I guess people believe the quiet ones are more capable of being assholes.)

Pictured: Sheer 90s Awesome! (Read: Bully-Magnet)

Not long after that, I got my new glasses. They were huge, clear plastic with black and red lines across the top; I thought they were spiffy. (This was back in the 90s; they'd look cool now but these were a huge embarrassment for most kids) Certainly they were the coolest that Welfare glasses had to offer. And of course, new glasses means, “Time to pick on the quiet kid!” She waited til our teacher left the room at recess, and then it started. I don’t remember clearly what she said, but I do remember finally snapping, jumping out of my seat and mowing her down with a right jab to the face. What followed ended up with us on the floor, her under my desk with me banging her head off the floor.

I was suspended and transferred to another school. I KNOW there were other incidents involving that girl specifically, but I can't remember them. When you’re an honest person up against a practiced liar/actress, nobody hears the part where she taunted me for weeks, every day, before I snapped and punched her lights out.

Looking back, I realize that I started changing myself, but my view of the world never really changed with it. I always believed that people, for the most part, were good inside, they just did things because they were following others. Understanding now that there were a lot of insecure people around me helps me realize that I made out fairly okay! And also made me see it this way: people are threatened by those they perceive as greater than they are, and if you are one person against many sheeple, you’ll get trampled unless you can fight your way clear.

From “Shy”, I became outspoken, cheerful, optimistic, giving, loud, funny and .. I almost wrote cautious but that’s never really been a part of my make-up. I speak without thinking, because I don’t have anything to hide. The older I get though, the more I have to shut up; the word has been so taken over by the media that people are trained to believe what their televisions, Internet videos and searches, and “news” tell them, and never really think for themselves what they’re doing. They don’t like being reminded that they have no real thoughts, goals, or skills anymore. They get offended when you try to help them be better people, insisting they’re not flawed.

See that box? Who said you had to live in it?

Who said you had to only take in what it gives you?

If you’re dissatisfied with who you are, STOP BEING THAT PERSON.

If I can help, I will.

From here, the next challenge I have, the one I'm feeling jittery and nervous about because I've never done it before, is starting my placement at a restaurant next week. I've never worked in a real restaurant before; only at Tim Hortons. I'm hoping I won't screw up too badly.

This blog post is a bit rambling and long-winded perhaps, but I’m doing this to set down my memories and thoughts, not write a book. (Maybe…?)

The point is here, what you thought you couldn’t do, can be done, and what you’ve been in the past, can be changed.

Change is inevitable. Roll with it or it’ll roll over you.

Every day it'll rain.... But the sun is that much more dazzling when it comes.

Toxic people.

BAM!

Right in your face like a large, wet dog while you’re wearing white.

Toxic people suck the happiness out of life, like Hexxus, the spirit of destruction and all that is toxic to nature. Actually, that’s a good analogy, if I do say so.

 FernGully: The Last Rainforest was a pretty good movie. Batty was awesome.

Back to the toxics. Or rather, back away from them. Back away, and then run. Those people who suck the fun and happiness from your life need to NOT BE in your life.

Until I was introduced to this concept back in 2009, I just allowed things to happen. I let people tell me what I should do, think, be, say, and feel. For the most part. My spirit was strong enough to occasionally rouse itself and say, “Hey now!! That’s not right!” and something was briefly lit.. and then went back to sleep.

Until I was introduced to the topic, I never thought very much about who was around me, what I said, what They said, and how I should change it.

I used to be (and still suffer from this at times) severely depressed. I would hide in my sister’s basement (where I lived; yes, most of the time in a basement), play World of Warcraft, and ignore the outside world. I didn’t know a thing about politics, my family’s lives, what fun things there are out in the world. I neglected my friends horribly, for YEARS, and as a result lost touch with almost all of them. I WAS the toxic person.

Luckily I reached a breaking point in May of 2009. I’d befriended a man on WoW who encouraged me to go outdoors, try Parkour, listen to loud crazy music and BE A PERSON. Subsequent events showed me I was really very unhappy with my life, who I was, who I was with, and what I WASN’T doing.

Once I moved to Sault Ste. Marie, I discovered more joy and love of life in myself, and it caused me to seriously examine my life. With the introduction of this term “toxic people”, I looked back on my life and realized who was who and who was useless, who I learned from and who I learned NEVER to be. I started to change myself, beginning from the realization that the person I was (that slack, lazy, depressed wad in my sister’s basement) wasn’t a person *I* would spend time with, let alone wanted to be anymore. I took charge.

I kicked myself in the ass, kicked my useless and selfish partners to the curb, practically FLEW towards my future.

I started with roller blades.

Now, you must realize, I hadn’t been on roller blades since I was 16. The way I learned how to stop at THAT time was by running into stuff. Mailboxes, poles, cars, my sister…

So after having dug out a pair of roller blades I’d had for a few years, I strapped those puppies on and began. It was a lovely spring day, the birds were all tweetling and life was grand. Almost snapping your own neck going about 1/8 km/hr is a feat of strength, and I should get a medal.

I made it about ¾ the way around the block around my sister’s place, when, upon the BUSIEST INTERSECTION OF THE AREA, I wiped out in an absolutely stunning display of flailing limbs and twitchery.

I laughed the whole way down, while I sat on the ground, and then back up onto my feet. All I could think of was, “If I’d just seen me do that from across the street, how friggen funny would that look?” And then burst into laughter again. I made it home, giant bruise on my ass, happy about the whole experience, and life changed for me.

I began to change my way of thinking. Instead of thinking about the negative things life had set in front of me, I would think about ways I could get around those, or ignore them and focus on the positive things I could do instead. It was REALLY REALLY HARD. And it still is. Some days I feel terrible, and now.. Now life seems up again, so I’m going at it as hard as I can to keep it there.

Those toxic people who tell you the things your Inner Critic tells you all the time: get rid of them. What’s your Inner Critic, you ask? Some people refer to it as the “chatterbox” inside your head that sometimes does their best to undermine your self-confidence and diminish your self-esteem.

Challenging that Inner Critic is the HARDEST thing I have done to better myself.

THE HARDEST.

Because that voice is the one with you ALL the time, you can’t get away from it, so you have to pester it with truth and damn right, Willpower! YOU are stronger than that little wimp in your head.

Basically what I did to help me was to write down the things that I’d been circling around in my head. Were they fair? Were they legit? Were they the truth? If it isn't the truth, then it's a lie. 

Alison Finch said it the best way, actually:

“Think of your inner critic as having a personality of her own. If that personality is rude, obnoxious, unfriendly, cruel, insensitive, prejudiced against you, subjective in her assessments, out of control, unbearable, a nuisance, aggressive, destructive, then it’s time to eject her from your mind and replace her with a personality more worthy of sharing your life!

For example, I’ve known women who have lived for years with an inner critic who says horrible things like: “You’re just a big, fat, ugly lump of lard. I hate you. You are pathetic. It’s no wonder no one loves you. I wish you’d get your act together and stop looking so miserable”. Well, if your inner critic is similarly harsh, then it’s definitely time to find within yourself an inner critic who is better motivated!

If you want to BE a better person, don’t try to shut up that inner voice. Work with it, remind it of the truth you want in your life, not the negative, self-doubting, demoralizing words it speaks.

When it comes to toxic people, no matter who they are, do your best to avoid them for awhile, if not altogether stop being around them. Those people who spout “I’m just being realistic,” and then go on to tear down what you are, what you want, or what you can be, are not worth your time, energy or care.

YOU create your reality; create one you love.

Life, the Universe and lots of Things.

Writing a list today, to remind myself of the various paths I’ve taken towards being myself, I was reminded strongly that in pursuit of each of these “explanations” of who I am as a person, I’ve neglected the one thing that makes me happy: creativity.

I have put aside projects I was initially excited about, that got me all fired up, creative juices flowing, because I suddenly found myself reading something or hearing about something that made me think, “Wow that sounds like me! I should go research this exhaustively to see if it’s true!”

Each time, whether through paganism, Wicca, Christianity, Asperger’s Syndrome, deciding if I was an alien, a robot, or both, Buddhism, deciding maybe I’m an Atheist, maybe no, I’m an Agnostic, it lead me to another idea, another source of information. I never seemed to get a definitive answer, which left me more knowledgeable about the world, but less so about myself.

The conclusion I have come to, after the MANY paths I’ve explored, is that I am a spiritual being and I like making things that make people happy. It makes me feel warm and proud to create something from my own vision of the world, hand it to someone and have them go, “WOW! You MADE this?? This is amazing!” , and knowing they’ll treasure it. I have pushed aside the creative part of myself constantly and consistently over the years, but I want it back. I will be working toward that as much as I can in the coming months.

Looking too hard for answers as to who you are, to cram yourself into one small box, only to look outside your little box and see another one that looks like you might fit into better, ultimately leaves us feeling unfulfilled and uncertain. Focusing so hard on those boxes and labels is what helps us neglect the things we genuinely like to do, the things that make us happy. Because everyone knows, if you don’t know who and what you are, obsessively to every detail, you can’t be happy… /sarcasm.

Obviously I recognize the problems I face in my life. Sometimes I worry that people see me as a flighty, kind of dumb but cheerful doofus. I’m always hoping that someone will see deeper than that and know that the things I’ve lived through, SURVIVED, and accomplished, mean something important in the end. Those things mean that I tried; where others are content to sit gazing at their navel, filling their lives with emptiness in front of a big glass screen, I went looking for myself to see what the Universe holds and where I fit in it.

“I always knew I'd never reach perfection
And if I ever did then I wasn't trying hard enough
'Cause there is always something more to reach for..”