My Life

abandonment.

One Moment at a Time; Looking Out For Yourself First 4/13/13

My blog...what an eclectic mix, sometimes its life experiences and others it is society or wellness.  Sometimes it’s a planned article, other times it is a rant or true blog.  This might well end up a combination of all of the above.

Family; the only people that have the power to make you feel wonderful or horrible until you realize that at the core you are the one who controls how you feel.  I’ve been studying a variety of beliefs and meditations and many tell you; you are the master of your world and feelings.  Others tell you we are all interconnected, how confusing is that?  The truth is people do affect us, particularly those we love, but ultimately we are the only ones that can control how we react, if not how we feel. 

My family, my family, I have a large family, it’s broken and fragmented, and I have three of them.  The one I grew up with, which inflicts the largest pain, and the largest healing, my adopted family responsible for the largest healing, and biological family, who by the time I got to know them I was already broken, and already lost, and already numb so they couldn’t hurt me as much as I had already been hurt, right?

I’m the odd man out, the only one of a kind, the product of a man and a woman that only had one child but had two with every other spouse.  Everyone had a pair, another true sister or brother, everyone except me.  I was raised to believe there is no such thing as a half sister, or step sister or brother, they either are or they are not.  Really this is just an attempt to make me feel like I am not different, like I belong, but I never really belonged.  As mentioned in my abandoning abandonment blog, I felt like an orphan ever since my mom died.  This feeling comes and goes, further exacerbated when my family only sees me when related to someone else.  I don’t exist without my siblings, at least that is how I felt when I realized every time my dad talked to me it was at an event for my sister, or about one of my sisters.  How much of this is me, and how much of it is real?  I couldn’t tell you but it feels very real to me, and hurtful, and lonely.

So here I am at a wedding with for my youngest sister, watching her rehearsal from the porch with my other sister, her true sister at her side as a bridesmaid, and I think to myself, three of my good friends asked me to be her bridesmaid and not my sister,   and it’s all a little more clear to me, my place with my family is drastically contrasted by my place with my friends.  Yet, I acknowledge I choose my friends, and I choose them well the last few years and I am blessed.  Still, I have to smile, I have to be okay no matter how I feel because this day is all about her and her happiness, no one cares about me any other day, no one really paid me much attention until I helped out and took my other sisters kids, and now I’m asked to help her, to enable her to make everything as easy for her as I can, and I’m furious, I’m hurt and I’m tired, but I’m okay, because I am always okay, because I have to be okay, and because if I’m not I am once again the bad guy.

So how do find the way to be okay in the face of all of this, well it’s not easy, and I’m a very facially expressive person, so it’s not easy.  But I realized I had to be okay, and not just on the surface, I have to find a way to be okay really be okay, if only it were that easy.  I would rather run away, far, far away, but I’m here and I can’t run away.  And for the moment I have two kids to take care of, and really that is what it comes down to, this moment, one moment at a time.

When I lost my mom the people said take it one day at time and they were right, you really can’t get caught up in trap of what if’s and you only get stuck there if you look too far ahead, and the bigger the issue the shorter the focus, instead of one day at a time, for this day I am working on one moment at a time.  The sad reality is this, you might be the kind of person that thinks of everyone else, or you might be the kind of person that puts yourself first because you have already learned that no one else will be looking out for you.  But, the reality is, there is no one who will look after you like you do, and even though you want everyone to be happy, you have to make yourself happy first, and if you are happy everyone else will be happy.  So my biggest lesson, which you would think as an orphan I would have learned earlier, is to put yourself first, and do what you have to do, don’t worry about what other people think, don’t worry about anything you don’t need too, it only shaves years off your life and causes disease. 

So my wellness advice, breathe, and meditate, and take time out for you.  Only you know what is best for you, and everyone else will look out for themselves first.  The most successful people in this world look out for themselves first.  One last note just because you look out for yourself first, that doesn’t mean you don’t care, it just means you love yourself, and trust me the same people that lay guilt trips on you to do what they want you too, would not care what you had to say because they are doing what is best for them. 

And finally express yourself, don't be afraid to cry, my moms favorate place to cry, the shower, apparently mine as well, give it a try!  Take care of yourself!

If you like the author's in this blog check out the site www.writingliberty.com and feel free to check out the author's other books;

Abandoning Abandonment and Moving Forward 4/12/13

Periodically throughout my life I have moments of great clarity, where I think I have magically solved one or more issues and I have moved forward.  Sometimes I have, and other times I have not.  While am woefully aware of my issues and shortcomings I have come to accept that I am human, and as such not perfect.  Really I am nobody, I am going nowhere, I read a book titled something similar on Buddhism.  Don’t misunderstand me, I am very successful in the eyes of some of my peers, I overcame obstacles and bought a home, a car and a motorcycle the three things I always wanted.  Still, even with all the “things” I set goals for achieved, I was empty, missing something, I always wanted to be a singer and songwriter, maybe that was it, so I made a point to focus more on my passions.  Still, something always seems like it is missing.  I’ve looked to the outside for it when I ought to have been looking within.

I’ve a strange past with trauma and loss, don’t we all, and it can be easy to disregard or overemphasize the importance of this past and the events within it.  Yet, you cannot easily move forward if you do not learn from your past, in fact you may not move forward at all if you cannot learn. So you learn, or you think you learn, you try to learn, and sometimes you relearn. 

I’ve taken a look at my past in an effort to heal and learn and leave the past in the past.  Everything you experience leaves an imprint on you, the more significant the event the larger the imprint.   I used to say my mom was the only person that was with me since birth, until her death, but even that is not true, not if I am honest about it and how I feel .  My mother was there since I was born that was true, and she left the state seeking to heal and grow herself, my biological father had next to no contact with me, he came to visit one time, and I was too little to remember.  So right away I was abandoned by my biological father, but I was taken in by my Dad, but later after Nana and Papa died when I was 11 or 12 Dad left.   He would take his two children to visit him but not me, I was abandoned again.  I couldn’t know, as a child of 12 to 13 much more than how things appeared and how I felt.  When I was 13 my mom packed me up and sent me away to meet my father, it took two hours, I was devastated.  My mother had abandoned me too.  Now I was acting out, I wanted my dad back, I wanted my normal life back, I hated the guy she started dating, I hated that my dad was gone, I hated everything.  I was thirteen, what would anyone expect. 

So I went to a new state, losing everything I had ever known for all of my life that I could remember, and I went to live with my sister and her mother at first and not my father, until she didn’t want me there, and so I felt abandoned all over again.  In my now somewhat grown up mind I can understand she was 13 and wanted her things and her space, but as a thirteen year old I couldn’t understand that then. 

It seemed the sky would fall on me, everything kept going wrong, bad things happened all the time, I couldn’t figure out what a relationship should really be, I just wanted to be loved.  For YEARS I just wanted to be loved.  I didn’t realize that the emptiness I was feeling couldn’t be filled from outside, I didn’t know it had to come from me.

Finally I reached a point with my Dad where we began to heal, and I felt loved, and part of a family again, and though the emptiness and doubt remained the healing was steadily working.  I was able to see what I had been missing and the loss and how it affected me, but I still had not learned my lesson yet.  I was still looking for someone else to, my family, to help fill that void.  I have great sisters and brothers, some are spoiled, some are punks, some are eccentric and some think themselves better but I love them, I will never not love them, they are all different and all love differently, they can’t love me the same way, but they do love me.  Even if they don’t does it matter, should it matter?  If my dad didn’t love me, if he didn’t want me as his child would it matter.  I’ve carried this abandonment for most of my life.

For once I reflected on it all, and I realized, I was my worst enemy.  I hadn’t been looking into myself for love.  It was crazy, I’ve been feeling alone, like I didn’t belong anywhere, like I was an orphan for about 10 years before my family in NOLA helped get me on the path of healing, they did that by being there, not giving up on me, and encouraging me.  Then my other family really began to heal as well, but all that healing means nothing if you hold on to the abandonment.  Of course you don’t mean to, you don’t even know you are doing it, but you are.  I often go between feeling like I am all alone, and completely blessed to have such a large and wonderful network of family and friends.  I had to address the issue.

So I decided to abandon my abandonment issues, because they do nothing but hold me back, and because I can only find true peace within myself.  I am the only person who truly knows me, no one else has been there, I am the only one who can decide to heal, move on, or let go.  How do you abandon abandonment, you just have to make a choice.  There is no doubt that it shapes you, it does, but don’t let it have you, take yourself back.  Because, everyone feels abandoned and the people that did the leaving might have no idea the damage they did, so it is up to you to heal.  It is up to you to say to yourself, yes I felt abandoned and yes I am afraid it will happen again but I won’t let it change me, and I won’t live in fear, and in the end I will find solitude and peace within myself, I will love myself, because no one else can give that to me.  I am abandoning abandonment, I will find my solitude and my peace, because only I can give it to myself.  

People will come and go in time, nothing is promised for tomorrow, so let go, free yourself.  

If you like the author's in this blog check out the site www.writingliberty.com and feel free to check out the author's other books;

Breakdown 2/11/13

I suddenly realized with everything that has happened, this was my first breakdown, and although I told myself over, and over, that I would not break, I did break down.  I didn't breakdown when my life was abruptly disrupted in August, when I went from a baccalaureate that lived more like a bachelor to a single mom. I didn't miss a beat.  I took it all in stride, I knew what I had to do, and I did it.  I loved my niece and nephew like they were my own kids, after all I was never going to have kids, so they were my pseudo kids, well now they were going to be much more than that.  I didn't cry, scream, or throw my fists in the air and curse whatever god you hail, no, I made plans, made arrangements.  I took down my newly finished music studio to make room for miss princess, and cleared the remainder of my clothes from what was going to be my study for my prince.




In September I took a job working from home so I could be there for them, after all they had been through a lot, and I wanted to be here.  I remember all to well being abandoned repeatedly when I was a child, and the aftermath was not something I would wish on anyone.  I didn't break, or breakdown, I just did what I needed to do.  I knew this new job was more risky, I knew that the people before me never made it, but I had my work ethic, and my love of learning.  Then the inevitable happened, I lost my job in January, they couldn't afford to have a trainee position, but still I didn't break, I cried a few tears but I picked myself up determined to move forward as positively as I could.

I was not broken, I was not breaking down, until today.  Finally I broke down completely, sobbing, breathless, and almost broken but not quite.  As I knelt like a poor beggar girl sobbing, it occurred to me, that I have changed jobs 3 time, took custody of my sisters kids, and lost my job all within 8 months.  I couldn't help but think of a quote from a movie about quicksand, in The Replacement the coach asks about fears, Falco says quicksand and then elaborates, "You're playing and you think everything is going fine. Then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another. You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can't move... you can't breathe... because you're in over your head. Like quicksand."  That is how I feel, for the past month I have been turning out web pages, doing photography and trying to work on my music, my passion is music, and it seems like I am working ten times harder and spinning my wheels.

I am angry with my former employee, angry with myself, angry that I seem to be spinning my wheels but going nowhere.  I am sad, I am alone, but I am not truly alone and I know that, I wrote an article called Fighting the Downward Spiral earlier in the week, because I was fighting a breakdown, fighting to stay positive.  Yet the floodgates opened and like a dam that burst from the pressures that had been hammering at it un-quelled I broke down, yet I found release, it was like at that moment I was embracing all the anger, frustration, fear and sadness and by doing so I was releasing it.

So here I sit writing because I can't sleep, and writing is my release, it is my therapy, it is what helps me process everything.