Bitter Cat Lady?

She says yes with tears in her eyes and they live happily ever after...

right?...

"they don't tell you that she drove the prince crazy with her compulsive need to clean the castle." One of my favorite lines in "The Mirror Has Two Faces."  Which should be mandatory watching material for anyone getting married.  Along with this book.  A jerk isn't just a dude.  Women also can be jerks.  I speak from experience.

Our society has molded us into little emotionally dysfunctional children.  We don't like taking our time.  We don't like being vulnerable.  We don't like being honest about our feelings.  We don't like to wait on good things.  We throw tantrums when people hurt our feelings.  We stomp around and throw things when our team loses.  We are emotionally immature.  But most of our decisions are based solely on our emotions.

What a complete cluster-----.

Our relationships have suffered enormously because of our ill-equipped ability to use our heads.  We marry just because we "love" someone (whatever that means).  We ignore red flags because they hold our hand during movies and are nice to our cat.  Nevermind that 70% of our time is spent in agony over the relationship.  Nothing about myself infuriates me more than this need to "feel good" at the cost of using my brain.

I am just pissed.  And perhaps a Bitter Cat Lady (sans the cat).

Recently I was told a friend was getting married after dating her beau for 2 months.  I had such a physical reaction I wasn't sure I would make it to the bathroom in time to hurl my breakfast.  After the illness passed, I just became really sad.

What is it in us that is able to ignore our brains?  Why are we so intent on belonging to someone that we completely neglect reason?  Why do we appear seemingly blind when we are "in love"?

It's because we have done it all backwards.  We haven't followed the basic rule of thumb for relationships because we weren't ever taught to follow it.  We jump into bed and then create intimate relationships out of chaos and idiocy.  We stifle the voice of reason (we'll call her Mathilda...that's just a good, solid, mature name) in order to get our temporary needs met.  Our voice of emotion (let's call her Helen after Helen of Troy who launched a thousand ships ... let's all take a moment to bask in this ridiculousness) wins.  Most of the time.  Damn Helen.

There are countless books written on the importance of controlling your emotions and using your head.  But none that come close to the brilliance of this book.  Here's a model that he uses to gauge relationships:

The healthiest relationships know more than they trust, trust more than they rely, rely more than they commit and commit more than they touch. 

I don't know about you, but I was basically doing it backwards.  Helen certainly had me fooled while Mathilda remained silent.

So please, for the love of all our children and our future, instill in yourself and your kids this principal of what HEALTHY relationships are supposed to look like.  I may be 40 with two failed marriages behind me, but I'm not too old to dance a jig once again...and this time Mathilda is my dance partner while Helen rides the bench.

Backwards Bicycle

My homework this week (assigned by my therapist) is to talk nicely to myself.  I apparently have an issue with slandering Rebekah.

When we work through issues, the resounding theme is apparently, "I'm a screw up. Get it together. You DO NOT have this."  This is quite opposite to what I tell those I love.  I can dish it out for everyone else, but I can't eat my own damn pie.

I find that when mistakes are made, there is a battle going on in my brain.  Do I fall prey to the harrowing effects of self-defamation or do I forgive myself and take it for what it is.  I typically choose self-defamation.  

It's interesting what your "self-talk" does to the state of your happiness.  Good things are slower to come.  Positivity has to fight its way through all sorts of obstacles to find you.  Success has climbed a mountain and is taking a break.  Peace has just totally given up.  

All because of four small words..."I'm a screw up."

An engineer taught himself how to ride a bike that was backwards.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0) The wheel went the opposite way when the handles were turned.  It was comical watching him & others attempt it over and over and over again.  He had the knowledge but knowledge is NOT understanding.  After 8 months, he was able to ride it.  It took his son TWO WEEKS because children have more neuroplasticity in their brains than adults.  And even when the engineer did learn to ride the bike, if he faltered at all from focusing, he would wreck because his brain took him back to what had been embedded for 30 years.

Our brains are old dogs who are wary of new tricks.

I have been slinging mud at myself for 40 years.  It may be time I learn to ride a backwards bicycle.

Atlas Shrugged

I wake up almost daily and do the same thing.  I mix my Plexus, take my Accelerator/Vitalbiome, turn the kettle on, open the blinds, then putter back to my room to make my bed.  While I drink my coffee I write in my journal or blog.  I function best when I'm in a routine.

There are days that I don't do this and I'm all discombobulated most of the day.  I find that these are the days that I allow to overwhelm me.   I want to stay in bed.  Turn my phone off.  Eat bad things.  Waste my time.  Productivity is not anywhere close on these days.

Life is a series of small decisions.  And those small decisions dictate our path.  When I was younger, I definitely did not understand this.  I made hasty decisions.  I did what I felt like doing in the moment.  I lived recklessly.  Not much carried significance.  I was just going with it.  My brain was in neutral.

An employee told me once that she couldn't believe how calm and methodical I was in the middle of a hairy situation.  I was in a heated meeting between employees and there were tears and loud volumes.  I gave the verdict of the disagreement and ended the meeting.  I was not at all upset by the exchange.  I just wanted the facts in order to make a good decision.  Who was I and what had I done with myself???

I believe that being a boss has helped me develop diplomacy.  I am able to make rational decisions in the middle of irrational behavior.  At work, at least.

In my personal life I have to try hard to slow down.  Trauma therapy has helped me in this area.  I now pay attention to how my BODY feels about something.  Your body tells on you.  It will increase its heart rate when you are upset.  It causes you to breathe more quickly when you feel endangered or ashamed.  Your stomach gets queasy.  It's alerting you to pay attention.  Learning to slow situations down and be curious around my responses has been an intriguing journey to finding out how I truly feel.  I use this tool often.

I realized when I was upset over something seemingly small that it was my heart telling me something.  It was something negligent that shouldn't have been mentioned much less poured over.  Yet pour over it I did.  Because my body responded harshly to the situation and I knew to listen.  After uncovering the reason behind my response, I was able to adjust my thinking and my behavior.  But it was only because I have learned to do this that the outcome was favorable.

In the movie, "Split" (which incidentally I love) the psychiatrist tells her patient that she was erroneous in glossing over a small incident that happened to him.  She says that perhaps it carried more weight than she had realized and triggered a response in him that made the other personalities surface.

Granted, I don't have multiple personalities lurking beneath but I do have multiple reasons for my actions and emotions...which I suppose seem like multiple persons.  Had I not learned to listen to my body, I would be continuously living in a state of upset and confusion.  And making poor decisions as a result.

My routine may seem insignificant, but they carry the weight of my world.  If I let that slip, my world falls off my shoulders.

Solo cup

The last time I was settled and at peace I was 22 years old living as a nanny in New York.  And only then it was a partial attempt at peace and rest.  It wasn't my home or my family or my car or my city or my state or my kids.  But this was the last time I was settled.  Pretty shoddy attempt.

For the past 18 years I have been living in a state of discombobulation.  I lived with my parents before I married the first time in 2005.  I suppose that was a firmer attempt at being stable than being a nanny in a different part of the country.  But it was still shoddy.

I had three years of a tumultuous marriage.  Katrina hit in 2005 and for the next three years we moved multiple times, finally settling into a house that we renovated.  During the time of renovations, we were living in the upstairs Master suite (the only thing that was upstairs) and had our kitchen in an RV behind the house.  And along with all of this was our difficult marriage...we were two very different people under a tremendous amount of stress.  Even the best of marriages could not have made it through that without scars.  I prayed for three years that I would have the peace to stay or the peace to go.  One day I woke up and the door to leave was standing wide open.  I walked through and didn't look back.

I lived with my parents for a few short weeks, then with a friend, then on the seminary campus, then found a house to rent.  I met my second husband immediately.  I had a roommate and we moved into another house a year later.  I was married two years after I left my first husband.  I moved into another house with my second husband.  We bought a house and renovated it, moved in and had Brady shortly thereafter.  We stayed in that house until our marriage dissolved into a sad puddle that could not be soaked up with Bounty. The duration of our marriage was again a tumultuous time.  During all of this madness I was building a business.  I had two little boys, a step daughter and a husband that I did not get along with.  My brain was on overdrive.  

I have lived in 12 houses in the past 12 years, 17 in the past 17 years.  I am tired of moving.

When I moved in with my parents after leaving my second husband, I vowed to stay until my brain had calmed down again.  There was no better place for me to take a time out.  When I thought of my happy place, it was in my parents' living room in front of the fire.  I was finally in a position to heal.

And that was what I did.  I fought it for some time by being in yet another unhealthy relationship.  But God smacked me in the face and forced it on me.  He knew better than I what it would take for me to recover.  And that was the absence of a significant other.

I remember my brother telling me when I was considering moving in with this erroneous mate that I needed to establish stability for my boys without anyone else assisting in this.  At the time his words scared me and slightly infuriated me.  I remember thinking that he had no idea what that meant...to be a single mom and be solely responsible for your children.  Not just financially but in discipline, health, their spirituality, their emotional well being, their education. (side note: they are with their dad 50% of the time so this fear was only about when they were with me.) It was too much for me at the time to consider doing alone.  I desperately needed a partner.  Or so I thought.

Those words ended up aligning completely with what my picture of health would be.  (I hate it when my brother is right... just sayin'...love you Poops...)  It took my brother being honest and what I felt was slightly insensitive (at the time), and a man I was interested in telling me that I had too many red flags to date seriously to make me look at what I was terrified of facing.  That I had chosen to walk a path that required my full attention and stability.  And I ALONE had to fulfill this task.

I love my alone time.  I crave it.  I get grumpy when I don't have it.  But actually being alone...not so great.  I rely very heavily on the approval of others.  I need affirmation more than I should.  I can't make a decision about much without hashing it out with someone.  So why in the world would I choose this solo road?

Because being solo is mandatory to my healing.  God wants to arm me with the ability to make decisions without assistance.  He wants to be the one who makes sense of my chaos.  He wants to be the one to calm my tumultuous soul.  This is no one else's task but His and mine.  And whether I was aware of it or not, my decisions have brought me to this place where I am able and equipped to do this.

He is the one holding this Solo cup.  I'll drink to that.

S'mores and raw fish

Apparently a lack of passion also means a lack of energy.  Passionate people therefore are more productive and confident.  

Divorce knocked the passion out of me.  It's sneaky that way.  You wake up one day and realize that you have absolutely no idea what is happening and no idea where you are supposed to go.  You just know that you are in an empty house without a fire or wood to even start one, but mouths to feed.  Confused, devastated, hopeless you drag yourself from where you were to discover new territory.  You now have the task of creating a new homestead for you and your kids.  But as much as you try, you cannot get the damn fire started.  I wasn't a Girl Scout, so making fires is beyond my expertise.  (If I was stranded on an island homegirl would be freezing but fit because my diet would be limited to raw fish.)

After months of no success, you finally see the beginnings of a flame.  And with everything you have in you, you protect that thing to keep it from going out.

That thing is passion.  The passionate energy that it takes to pick yourself up after a devastation and carry on.  With or without help.  With or without wood. Passion is "any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or 

hate" on dictionary.com. 

I think it's curious that EMOTION and FEELING are what makes us productive...passionate.  Emotion is unreliable and testy...or so we've been told.  We are taught to either stifle emotion or learn to not have any.  The only really acceptable emotion is Joy, like in the "Inside Out" movie.  My favorite thing about that movie is that it took Sadness to reconcile the situation.  

Brady and I have had moments where we both just cried because divorce is just sad.  I told him that it was OK to be sad and that it probably wouldn't stop being sad.  But it was important for him to recognize that this isn't a great situation and to deny sadness would mean the situation would not be reconciled in his heart.  And so we cried and were sad together.  Sadness saved the day.  And it was Sadness that once again started the fire of our new home. 

The flood waters that devastated homes and businesses in Texas sent most Katrina survivors into that time when we were lost and without direction...passionless.  You can feel it in the way people are behaving...you can sense it in the grocery store.  The cashiers, the customers, probably even the produce is emanating the memories of the flood.  You can see it on the news when the local anchors and weathermen/women reported the news.  You can feel it even on social media...the sadness and overwhelming loss of control.  I can't even look at pictures of the flooding from Harvey.  If I did, I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room and I had forgotten how to breathe.  Strangers were joined by this one feeling.  Our city was bound together by Sadness once again. 

So if emotion is necessary to ignite the fire of Passion, it is therefore also a necessary component of energy.  It's what separates the successful from the unsuccessful.  Chew on that for a bit....EMOTION drives us to produce.

This is a common theme in business also.  We do not buy because of the product itself but because of the WHY behind it.  I love Plexus because it has changed the kind of mom I am and whether or not I can provide for my kids alone.  I love Jesus because I would be lost without Him.  I buy dry shampoo because it gives me more time to spend on what is important...not my dang hair.

Passion makes me want to buy some marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers.  Passion is a big ol' smore.  Without it, my fire would never have gotten started (and I'd still be eating raw fish).