I Am Heavy

Nothing can really prepare you, no matter how many times you’ve been down this road before. That is the simplest way I can come up with to try to explain it. I just don’t feel quite right. It’s like walking on eggshells, but I’m cautious of myself instead of someone else. I keep turning each corner while holding my breath. It’s like part of me is anticipating it. Part of me is expecting it to be there lurking and waiting for me in the shadows. And yet, I am not prepared. I am heavy. People say “what was the trigger?” I don’t know. Would you believe me if I said there truly isn’t one? Maybe it is the weather. Or maybe it is because this is a season of transition. It doesn’t make sense, even to me, even though I am living it. I’ve been told on a multitude of occasions, and I’d like to agree, that I am a pretty self-aware individual. But this is something I cannot pinpoint.

Triggers make sense. I get them. I know strategies to avoid and prevent them. I know ways to identify them. I’ve learned how to cope when they happen. I am heavy. The kind of heavy that makes you move a little slower. It makes breathing a little harder. It makes the world look so fast, and makes the thought of trying to keep up with the pace exhausting. Putting on my makeup seems like such an accomplishment. I think the hardest thing is, when you’re known for being nothing short of the energizer bunny on a day-to-day basis, you cause a scene if you are simply quiet. If I don’t make eye contact, crack jokes, or smile, it’ll blow my cover. It’s not that I don’t want to be engaged, present and joyful, it is just that I feel so empty and doing any more than just going through the motions is giving more of myself than I have to give. And yet I continue to do it.

 Because what if I act the way I’m feeling? What if I slouch in my seat and stare at the wall? What if I don’t acknowledge those around me, and I embrace my exhaustion? I’ll tell you what. It causes somewhat of a scene. It causes worry. And the worry often comes with pain. And seeing those who know me on any level feel pain in regard to me, honestly just makes me heavier. It makes it harder. What if someone asks if I’m ok? Do they really want to know? If I tell the truth, will it push them away? Will we both walk away feeling worse? If I smile and say “I’m great” does that really make their concern leave? Does it make my heaviness dissipate? Or will they feel dismissed, and I feel even more alone? My world is racing faster than ever. And I feel sluggish at best. Slow and steady wins the race they say. I do not lack hope. I believe deeply in hope. 

Sometimes I just don’t know how to tap into it. Sometimes I don’t know how to let that carry me. Misunderstanding feels like a theme in my life lately. I feel misunderstood by the world around me. I feel misunderstood by my peers. And yet I don’t know how to help them understand. What I do know, that this darkness has come and gone before. But being heavy makes it  hard to move. And I refuse to move closer to the darkness. I have fallen into that rabbit hole. I will wait out the storm. I’m going to have to choose the uncertainty of hope, over the certainty of pain. And when the sun appears tomorrow, I will move forward and choose healing. And there I will embrace hope again

 

What I want my daughters to know

 

I thought about you this morning. I prayed for you, too, Then I thought about some things that I want you to know about life.

Here is what I should have told you before the —drama, boys, comparisons, trust, embarrassment, pressure, and other tumultuous situations that are unavoidable while growing up


Explore. Don’t stay in one place, get out into the world and see the wonder in it. Even on the tallest mountaintop you cannot see the world. You must get out of your room, get away from the television and computers and walk in it. Walk on the mountains, and kick off your shoes and play in the rivers that are in the valleys.


Go to new places. Try new food. Try new ways to exercise. Hike through new places. Whatever is in front of you that is good, take joy in trying.
Take wisdom with you as you go; and, gain new wisdom as you experience life.


Don’t be afraid of mistakes. Mistakes are like dancing in the rain with an umbrella. You can protect yourself from some of the wet, but sooner or later you will get wet. But don’t let that keep you from dancing in the rain. There can be great joy in dancing in the rain.


Protect you skin. Wear sunscreen. Men become distinguished with wrinkles. Women must plan ahead for old age by caring for themselves early in life.


There will always be mean girls. Take care of your emotional health and do not become one of the mean girls

Your two or three closest friends are really the only friends that matter.


Talk to yourself often and to God. Talk to those you see on the street and listen more than you speak. Here is where wisdom can be gained.


Speak kindly to yourself. Your Self will always believe the worst before it believes the good. Practice telling your Self the good.

Practice believing the good about yourself.

There is a lot of bad in this broken world, but practice finding Good.
Say, “Thank you” often – to God, to people, to the birds who sing outside your window.

“Thank you” helps you to see the good.

Eat a little chocolate each day. It helps,
Don’t obsess about your weight. You’ve probably got my sweet tooth and ability to pack on the pounds, but you know when I got my skinniest? When I stopped being so extreme about what I allowed myself to eat. Try eating a chocolate chip cookie without pretending it’s your last. Then you are less likely to eat the whole box.

Don’t try to look like the women in the magazines. Try to live healthy by eating healthy food – Real food not packaged. At least once, eat peas right out of your garden with your bare feet in the tilled earth.

Never stop exercising every day

Love the way you look. Love your body, with thick legs, or extra thin legs – learn that you were created perfectly.


Wear sunscreen!!!! Don’t wait until you’re thirty-five to realize you should have been taking care of your skin all along.

Love the way you are.


Your body is your body. If you have to go to extremes to change it, it won’t last and it will just take you longer to learn to love it.
Learn that even the things you call imperfections or faults, God calls perfectly made. He made you exactly this way for a reason.


Everything happens for a reason. Even when bad happens.


If you are ever feeling lonely, call your sister. She comes from the same place and understands you better than anyone. If you want a shoulder to cry on or a person to brag to, call your mom. She wants to hear all news— good and bad.


Practice peace.

But, really, get from in front of the electronics and live.

Contrary to everything you previously thought, your mom is pretty cool.


I love you more than you know.

Warning label attached

She is difficult to love, but only in the sense that she has high standards. She is unwilling to settle for one-sided love. If you are going to enter a relationship with her, you need to commit. She is not interested in holding half of your heart or half of your attention. She wants all or nothing.
She knows what she deserves, which is why you should expect her to speak up whenever you disrespect her. She will not allow anyone to walk over her heels. If you hurt her, you are going to hear about it. She refuses to bottle up her emotions because being authentic is in her blood. She doesn’t know any other way to conduct herself.
She has a fire within her that she is unafraid of releasing. When she is angry, she will spend hours ranting about whatever is on her mind. When she is upset, she will cry buckets in front of you. She won’t pretend everything is okay when she feels like her world is falling apart. She will be real with you, even when you would rather hear pretty lies.
If you want her, you are going to have to fight for the relationship. She will do the same, but she won’t do it alone. She won’t be the only person putting effort into your love.
She is not easy to love because she will do what is right, not what is comfortable. She won’t let you get away with murder. When you screw up, she won’t forgive you if it seems like your apologies are inauthentic. She won’t give you a third chance if you have proven you cannot be trusted. She won’t put you before herself because she loves herself.
The thought of being single does not scare her — and that’s what makes her such a force to be reckoned with. If you hurt her, she will not hesitate to leave you. It doesn’t matter how much she cares about you. If you stop treating her well, she will stop coming around. She will drop you the second she gets reduced to your second choice.
Because of her high standards, you might consider her difficult to love, but she is also difficult to forget.
She is the kind of person who will stay stuck on your mind years after leaving. You will struggle to get over her. You won’t be able to find anyone else like her.
After she leaves, you will miss the way she looked at you like you were the only person she saw. The way she told the truth even when a lie would be easier. The way she never let anyone else stop her from speaking her mind.
Long after she leaves, you will still be trying to figure out a way to get her back, because you won’t want to live without her. Even though you felt like she was difficult to love while you still had her, you are going to realize how much more difficult it is to forget her

“She’s like broken
a glass.
Dangerous
with sharp
edges;
but beautifully
complex.”

Reflection

 

My tears streamed down my face, desperately grasping at narratives to try and justify her absence from my entire life. Forgetting that I am now grown, I think for a moment that I can start again and give her everything she never gave me. Sometimes I wish that impossibility could be true. Then again, is it naïve to assume just because someone grew you in your womb that your presence would have a positive impact on your life? It started with a physically absent biological mother and ended with an emotionally absent soul. Both are broken in different ways, they are full of anger and sadness that flow from their neglected inner worlds, and in turn, they can only see their external world through half-empty glasses. Sometimes people can do bad things for good reasons and good things for bad reasons, and sometimes it’s both. But mostly, they are just lost in a kaleidoscope of emotion, unknowingly casting people around them under the same spell. The only way this can be lifted is by looking deep into the anger and pain while catching your own reflection. I like to think I can break this legacy of trauma by trying to understand my own demons so equally I can try and understand yours. The most healing thing is to try and see the mirror image in our emotional experiences because this allows room for empathy and forgiveness. I wish I could have seen myself reflected in the mirror of my mother’s sadness, but I didn’t. 

Trapped, Tribeless &Traumatized

Narcissistic Abuse left me a Traumatized Dysfunctional and Tribeless Hot Mess.

I’m going to write my life story to heal my scars from a life of a Toxic and Narcissistic Mother.

Damaged and broken so long, It’s either time to heal or be bamboozled for more emotional pain which most likely I’ll cause myself.

Trapped a lifetime with deep emotional scars that play in my head over and over again.

Held hostage by a narcissistic mother is like suffering from ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

I’m not very good at adulting. however, I’d like to think that I’m a tough old broad.  

I’ll be writing about Addiction, Relapse, Relapse, and recovery.

Prisons, institutions, biker lifestyle,

Traveling, Interpol, gangster lifestyle,

Deportation from America To Amsterdam

Amsterdam Lifestyle, This is my first real attempt at writing a life story. I have a lot to say, so I hope that you hang in there with me.

Does the crap ever stop?

Does it ever stop? Does the crap ever stop? Does it ever get to the point where everything in your life is going great at the same time for any length of time? Does there ever come a day, when the warm sunny days come more frequently and last longer than the blistering cold nights?

I once thought that if I had the man my dreams and the love of my life all will be well. I also thought that if I had the money, not a lot of money, just enough to pay the bills on time and have a little bit of change left over, things would be great. Nope!

Now, out after overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, weathering devastating disasters, moving through mind-boggling challenges, I was ready.

As a lay in the grass, watching my friends' dollar dog poop on the carpet, I finally got it! Life is about cleaning up the crap and, while you’re doing it, being okay with the fact that you have to do it.  Life is about being willing to take your naked body, your most vulnerable self, out of the warm water where you are comfortable, and clean up the crap without getting angry and losing yourself in the process.

A word of caution. You can’t get caught up in the crap! If you do, you will surely lose sight of the real meaning of life and lose yourself as I have done.  I finally understood I could not get caught up in what looks like, smells like, or how much of the crap is in front of me.

There were days when I would leave the little things in my life undone, or half did, in fear of making someone mad at me, in fear of losing their love. Sometimes just to make myself look tougher than I really was? There were times when I would sulk and cry about what I thought someone was doing or had done to me, believing that I was totally powerless to do anything about it. In many ways, I allowed myself to duck and dodge unpleasant situations in my life to avoid confrontation. This, however, was not one of those days, time, or ways.

I was choosing not to live like that any longer. I had spent enough days reflecting on this, in other people’s bathtubs to know that if you leave even a little bit of crap laying around in your life, eventually it will start to smell really, really bad. There are things in my life and about my life that has absolutely nothing to do with who I am now.  I have to figure out how to read my life of the nagging little struggles, bits, and bouts of confusion, unexpected chaos that continue to crop up.

It was time, to tell the truth. I am damage,  tribeless, with deep scars.  

 

A beautiful yet chaotic mind

Some years you crawl and you swear you'll never walk again.

Then suddenly you're standing and swear, never, will I crawl again.

A kind heart has held darkness,  a brilliant mind has felt madness,

leaving a beautiful soul in a state of emotional purgatory.

Stroking my aggression, in hopes that I can roll my eyes, and forget that it happened again.

How did we arrive here,  knowing we rushed in. 

Scraped knees and all, I whispered let's crawl.