Questioning Life

Who am I?
What do I want out of life?
What do I expect from love?
What do I expect from myself?

The questions that all of us have asked ourselves throughout our lives... mostly still unanswered. Does anyone ever have the answers? From what I see- the majority of the population struggles with that inner battle of the heart and mind, wandering the world searching for hints, signs as to what they want, who they are. Most of the time when we get what we think we want, we still wonder. When does the questioning end and the enjoyment of life begin?

Who am I?
I am a walking contradiction. I am the girl next door, yet can be quite a diva when things don't seem to be going my way. I am sweet as sugar, but pretty sour when crossed. I am affectionate and loving but need space. I am independent but still needy. I am proud and strong but on the inside I am still the little girl crying for help. I am 'one of the boys' but still cry at chick flicks and crave the fairytale romance. I am a cynic yet still gullible. I trust no one but I still have that blind faith that all humans are good. I am an optimistic pessimist, I expect the worst but still hope for the best. I am a whirlwind of emotion but can come across as a cold-hearted bitch. I fit no definition, I fall into more than one stereotype. There is no solid answer of who I am- yet I just wrote it. How do you see me? How do you see yourself?

What do I want out of life?
I want simplicity, comfort, love, happiness, and fun. I want a real, deep, committed, unconditional relationship. I want to have a successful marriage one day. I want a family. I want the "American dream". I want to be financially comfortable. I want to travel. I want to see things that inspire me and leave me in awe. I want to be respected and to finally be rid of the 'white trash' shadow that has haunted me my whole life. I want to be known. I want to live each day as if it were my last and I want the resources that allow me to do that. I want to stop feeling caged- to no longer be trapped in this town, in this apartment, in this life. I want to love. I want to live. I want to love living!

What do I expect from love?
Again- my expectations are a contradiction. I try to not expect anything yet I always hope for that fairytale. I want to be swept off my feet. I want to feel like a woman and not a toy. I want to be worshiped, respected, spoiled, loved. I need romance. I need surprises. I need to have my breath taken away every now and then. I want to be missed when I'm not there. I want to be thought of. I want to be irreplaceable. I want to be the girl who makes his eyes light up when I walk into the room. I want to be the one that puts the smile on his face. I want to be treated as if I'm the only woman on the planet. I want it all.

What do I expect from myself?
I keep telling myself I can do better than I am. I tell myself I deserve better than what I get. But on the inside I don't think I truly believe it. I settle for mediocre. Why? Is it because I feel I'm not worthy of the best? I ask myself every day why my life has turned out the way it has. And I know it's because I have not pushed myself to my potential. Yet when I think about trying I'm too scared to put any thoughts into action because I have no faith in myself. I don't think I'm smart enough, or strong enough, or good enough. How do we change self-destructive behavior? Do we have to find the root of it to begin to understand it? Is it possible to change?

There really is no point to this note... I just felt the need to write. So with that I shall end this note with a few quotes.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet



"All men should strive to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why."
~ James Thurber


"To the question of your life you are the answer, and to the problems of your life you are the solution." ~ Joe Cordare


"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." ~ Henry David Thoreau


"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth." ~ Alan Watts


"We run away all the time to avoid coming face to face with ourselves." ~ Author Unknown


"Your distress about life might mean you have been living for the wrong reason, not that you have no reason for living." ~ Tom O'Connor


"Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain." ~ Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams


And my favorite- the one that is most inspirational to me right now...
"If you aren't sure who you are, you might as well work on who you want to be." ~ Robert Brault

Memories

Memories. The mind is a wonderous place. It stores things from phone numbers to birthdays to anniversaries to quotes. It stores pictures, and songs, and poetry. It keeps recordings of voices and videos of our life- bit by bit. And it's so funny how they can make us laugh and make us cry- just within seconds but sometimes even at the same time.

I have been in my house for two years now... and wow- there's a lot of memories here! I'll be moving at the end of this month and saying goodbye to my cozy little rental home, but I'll be taking so many memories with me. I've had good and bad times since living here- but nothing I ever want to forget. I've gone through two serious breakups while living in this house, and quite a few tears. I've laughed loud and hard with friends- many that I've met or gotten closer to since living here. I've been so angry I could tear this house down with my bare hands and I've been so crushed that I just wanted this house to fall in on top of me.

It's funny to me how your mind can flash back and take you to a certain moment in the past just by looking around a room in silence. "He would be sitting there when I'd come in from work" or "that's where mom started crying when she walked in on her suprise 50th birthday party"... or "that's where we danced for no reason at all"... and even "that's where he was sitting when he ripped my heart to shreds". And it's funny how your mind can make you see the exact thing you're remembering, and hear the exact things you heard, even smell the things you were smelling at the moment that something happened.

This house will forever hold the last two years of my twenties, the flame of two loves that have burned down to ash, the heartache of a few hurt feelings, the bellows of laughter from great nights with best friends, and the music of a few slow dances frozen in my mind.

I'm going to miss my quaint little ranch house. I'm going to miss the things I'd hoped for while living here but realized weren't feasible. I'm going to miss having my roommate to bitch to and about, joke with, and even punch in the nose on occasion- even though he drives me insane and I'm anxious to be by myself again. I'm going to miss all the guys coming by before work to play the Xbox even though it's been a while since that's happened. I'm going to miss the privacy of a house- even though I hate mowing the yard that goes with that privacy.

I still don't know where I'm going when I leave this house- but I am looking forward to another new start. I know that with the people that are close to me and the new ones I will meet in the future, even more terrific memories are going to be made in my new place- wherever that may be. I'll be turning 30 in my new place so I'm hoping that with the new place comes a wiser Meesa. Well... a girl can hope, can't she?

"It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time."  ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

"We do not remember days; we remember moments."  ~Cesare Pavese, The Burning Brand

"Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember."  ~Seneca

"Memory is a child walking along a seashore.  You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. " ~Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal

Writing Is My Therapy, My Soul

Okay, okay... so going to see the sappy, tearjerker Dear John has my head spinning again. My mind is often in a tornadic state but with so much going on from day to day I can rarely figure out one thing to focus on in order to clear it out of my head. From the stress of dealing with work shit to trying to be there for friends and family to just trying to go into zombie mode so that I don't think about things- I rarely ever take the time to think about what the hell is going on with myself other than the stuff that is directly in my view on the day to day.

Doing things like watching a sappy movie suck because they make me do the one thing I hate...cry. But they actually help overall because they make me stop to think about things. Like tonight.

This is a weird week for me anyway. Those of you that know me very well know my thing with 22 and 222. Today was 2-22 and thankfully nothing crazy happened. (Whew!) I still have yet to figure out what significance that has but still weird either way.

I
"It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief . . . lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it's not so overwhelming."
— Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)

This Saturday is the three year anniversary of my dad's suicide. It's so hard to believe it's been 3 years. Tomorrow is the three year mark of the last time I spoke to him. It was my ex's birthday and we were on our way to Olive Garden. I was pregnant and so hungry and my dad called me from my grandmother's house in London. He was talking about going into rehab and asked if I'd come see him if he did. He was being pretty repetitive, as most people are when they're intoxicated. I felt like I was being rude for staying on the phone on my way out for a dinner date with my boyfriend so I was trying to rush him off the phone. He went on and on about how proud he was of me. I remember asking him why because I felt like a complete failure. I didn't have a career- was going through a divorce- and was pregnant by a man who was not my husband. But he insisted he was proud of me anyway and told me about a dream he'd had about his grandchild I was pregnant with at the time. He had had a dream of taking him fishing and said he was definitely going to be a boy and was going to be chubby and be "Papaw's boy". Before we hung up he told me he loved me. I would have never dreamed that that moment would be the last time I would talk to my daddy.

He didn't say anything hinting to what he was going to do and even seemed like he was in a decent mood, but he had made suicidal threats before and I believed that bullshit about "if they threaten it they'll never do it, they just want attention". I found out 4 days later that it's not true. When someone threatens suicide they will do it at some point when they finally reach what they think is more than they can handle. On February 27, 2007 my daddy took his own life in front of his alcoholic mother with a .22 Ruger (there's that fucking number again). I was 14 weeks pregnant. He left no note.

So now, three years later, I sit here with tears running down my face missing my daddy and wondering if there is anything at all I could have said to make him change his mind. Did he feel like we didn't care? Did he think we hated him? Did he think his baby girl was too grown up and didn't need him anymore and that I didn't want to talk to him? Did I break his heart when I rushed him off the phone to go to my oh-so-important dinner date? The path of destruction from a suicide is an unexplainable one. A hole left in the souls of the people left behind that nothing will ever fill and a hurt in me no man will ever come close to healing. And none I have met yet that are brave enough or strong enough to even try.

II
"Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can."
— Nicholas Sparks (At First Sight)

February 27th was the end of the world to me. The man I always thought was superhuman showed me that it's not really true when people say God won't put more on you than you can handle. He gave my dad more than he could handle. If it were true that God wouldn't do that then no one would ever feel the need to end their own lives. And just when I thought I couldn't handle anymore my life took an even more tragic turn for the worse.

A few weeks after losing dad my doctor was trying to put me in a better state of mind for the sake of my health and my baby. So she did a 'sneak peek' ultrasound and I found out he was a boy. I was happy about that yet it made me sad because I couldn't call my dad with the great news that he was going to have the grandson he told me he dreamed about. I wanted so bad to pick up the phone and tell him that he was right- but I couldn't. But still, I was happy. I had been trying to decide between a few names and finally decided on Aiden Blaine. I thought it sounded so masculine yet modern and like a hero from a novel. I couldn't wait until my official 20 week ultrasound so that I could record it and show my mom and sister.

My son's father had to work the day of my official ultrasound so my best friend Mel went with me. It was Tuesday, April 10, 2007. Six weeks to the day exactly of when my dad took his life. After waiting for what seemed like forever in the waiting room we finally got called back. They don't do VHS recordings anymore so Mel had my digital camera and was recording the tv screen that the ultrasound was showing on. After a few minutes the tech asked her to stop recording and left the room. What seemed like another eternity passed before the tech came back with the doctor close behind her. Moving the machine around my abdomen again for a few minutes, the doctor got a disturbing look on her face and told me my son no longer had a heartbeat.

My choices were to either wait it out and let nature take its course or be induced and give birth to my baby boy at 20 weeks. I was admitted to the hospital and induced and my sleeping angel was delivered a little after midnight on April 12. His cord was wrapped. They estimated he had already been gone for at least a week so he wasn't even developed to the full 20 weeks yet. They called it a 'miscarriage' instead of a stillbirth so I didn't even get a death certificate or a funeral. It took weeks for him to be buried and for me to find out where. There was no closure. No chance to say goodbye. And the only photos I got are of his hands and feet because when the nurse asked me if I wanted pictures of his face I was too doped up to give it any thought. I was already crushed and this was the final blow.

I went back to work a week after losing my father so tragically and now I was going back to work a week and a half after losing my baby boy. I couldn't afford to take the time off I probably needed. When I went back to work I had an email that said "I know you're going through a lot but this is a crucial time and I need you to be on top of things." Yes, I'm serious.

So not only was I crushed and destroyed but I was angry and didn't even know who to be angry with. I had no time to deal with myself and no time to figure out how to grieve. Sure, I cried. But for the most part I did it when I was alone because no one else wanted to hear me. I was angry to the point of not even being able to be around my mom for a while other than an hour or so at a time because I couldn't deal with her talking about my dad. I couldn't handle her pain because I wasn't even able to handle mine. I felt like my son's father didn't really care and even wondered if he was relieved. Honestly, as time has passed, I've come to realize I was probably right.

What I would give now to hold my son. To know what color his eyes would have been or the color of his hair. To be able to kiss his dimples he would most likely have inherited from me. To be able to hear him say 'ma ma' or 'da da' for the first time. To be able to tuck him in at night. To have the 'boring' life of staying at home to cuddle with my baby boy and watch cartoons. He would be 2 1/2 now and although he'd be in his "terrible two's" and I'd be exhausted I'd give the world to have that chance.

III
"I finally understood what true love meant...love meant that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be."
— Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)

Love. Undying, unconditional, real love. Most of us have had it at least once in our lives. And most of us let it go without realizing it until it's too late. We always think the grass is greener on the other side and that there's more to life than what we have at our fingertips. We always want what is beyond our grasp without realizing what we hold in our arms already. There is a part in the movie where John and Savannah are writing to each other looking at the full moon knowing the other is too- and thinking about each other so it's almost like they're together. That part of the movie took me back in time. I had a love like that once. But our 'full moon' were electric poles. (I know it sounds silly but think about it... almost all electric lines in this country are connected.) That love and I would talk on the phone when we were many miles away from each other and each go outside to touch an electric pole at the same time. That way we were connected physically and not just on the phone. We were young but it made perfect sense at the time. And to this day when the thought crosses my mind I still wish I could go touch an electric pole and know that I wasn't alone. At that moment I was home... and God how I miss that feeling.

But now, years later, past loves are happy in their own lives and are creating new memories. As for me... well, I'm not so sure. I've come to the conclusion that I have been going through a rebellious phase of some sort. I've tried to do some soul searching to try to figure out why I've turned out like I have but with no answers. I even question if I will ever be able to truly feel anything for anyone again. That is yet to be determined... I'm still waiting to feel 'home' again. I keep repeating in my head and it's become kind of common in my writings that "Home is where the heart is" and I know that until my heart is healed from whatever it is that keeps it in this state I'm destined to be a wanderer. Until then I'll just remain broken and live each day trying to put myself back together. I just wish I knew a better route than the one I've been taking.

IV
"When you're struggling with something, look at all the people around you and realize that every single person you see is struggling with something, and to them, it's just as hard as what you're going through."
— Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)

I know that the more I think about these things throughout this week and the next few weeks, the more emotional I will get. The slightest things like the weather being the same as the day things happened will spark an anxiety type feeling and possible brief tears. I know that throughout these next few weeks I will carry on and laugh as I always do and possibly not even show if or when something is bothering me. This is why I write. I sit alone in my apartment and can cry if I want to without feeling like I'm burdening anyone with my emotions. I can blog on this note without worrying about what someone is thinking of me and my inability to properly deal with my own issues. I can rant and rave in writing without being interrupted or having to deal with anything else in the world except my own thoughts. There are no pitiful looks of sympathy, no cheap words of how 'everything happens for a reason', and no awkward moments of people not knowing what to say.

This is my therapy.

Psychiatrists? Who needs 'em?

I have a keyboard.