Dreams Are for Sleepers

The live your dreams philosophy is a buncha bullhookey and is based on the materialism that is our world today.  If materialism was a religion, fundamentalist preachers would rule.  If it was a political party...we'd be governed by Walmart, Macy's or any other department store that is popular today. I say, that you can't really live your dreams, you can only dream your dreams.  And in order to do that, you have to stay asleep.  Society today is comatose.

I suppose that to say you can live your dreams is a way of boosting hope in hopelessly leaning...New World Order.  Ministers these days preach with God all things are probable.  I agree that this is what the bible says...but it doesn't say with God, all things are probable...or likely.  We need to think about these things because if you think that by simply asking God to move mountains, you have then mandated God's will.  You get the heavenly buzzer.  Wrong answer!

In order to live your dreams, you still have to meet certain conditions.  Unless a miracle occurs somewhere. I know that this might sound negative to some people but it's not.  I have a dream, I will live my dream, but it's a dream that God has mandated.  And even with his mandate, I'm having to go through some serious spiritual and emotional reconstruction before I am able to follow his command.  I am trying to be obedient.  But, my will is just no match for God's vision for me.  It has taken me years to see this.  Talking about wandering in the wilderness.

I just realized how far I have to go, when I had breakfast with some coworkers this morning.  I realized this because I never make the effort to go out with anyone at work. (Or anywhere else for that matter). Why this was so important to me this time...I have no idea.  But, I went.  I enjoyed myself...I learned some things about my coworkers and I learned some things about myself. 

One of the big things that I learned about myself is that I am socially inept...to a certain extent.  I have spent so much time alone that I forgot how to relate to others.  Not only that, I don't think I fit into the group that well. But, I had fun.  I ate breakfast...and then I went to a twelve step meeting.

I learned the person that was leaving had had anorexia nervosa and overcame that.  Wow!  I didn't know that about her before.  One of my coworkers just told me she was nuts. I liked her but she was kind of moody.  I don't think she knew that I admired her.  I hope she does well where she's going.  She was miserable here.  I am too still at times, but I take responsibility for my misery more often than I used to.  I just don't know what the cure is.  I hate being miserable. I used to bathe in it...Now, I just bask in the shadow.  Can you bask in a shadow?

Anyway...I look in the mirror everytime I look into the eyes of another human being.   I think isolating is a way of avoiding looking at myself.  I still want to go home. 

Which way is it?

Keep It Moving

Tomorrow morning some of my coworkers are getting together to go to breakfast with a coworker that resigned recently.  I want to go, but I'm not sure that I will be able to make it.  I'm sleepy.  Last night, I struggled to post a post while I was at work.  At first, I asked one of my coworkers if I could use his kindle, but that was too hard to use.  It is exclusively for reading...you can't do much else with it and it processes really slow.  Then, I tried to use his phone. But, that didn't work either.

The woman that I took care of at the hospital this weekend was able to go home.  I was happy for her because that's what she wanted.  she was such a sweety pie.  She was getting radiation and it was helping but she was like falling apart in her wound area...literally. Very sweet lady.  she would laugh all of the time.

I am very sleepy.  I might have to cut this short too.

I have not had any coffee....and I am so sleepy. Going to bed. 

How'd I Get Here?

I'm sitting up typing on my computer.  I've just come from work.  One of the clients that I took care of was really sick. But, she is getting better.  I wondered why she is so determined to continue treatment.  But whenI consider choices, and some of the choices that we make, I've made...  Personal choices.  They don't always seem to make sense from someone looking on from the outside in.  Considering this person's history...she may just be beginning to live. 

When you think about it, we are all here for a reason.  We have a chance to fulfull our purpose until the day we die. Some people, don't begin to live until they actually start the dying process.  Some people think that's too late.  But, then...who are they?

When I first started nursing school, there was a guy who was an alcoholic who had pancreatic cancer.  He was dying and he knew it.  He couldn't even eat anything and had a tube feeding.  He talked to me about his life and what it had been like and the things that he didn't know and what he had learned from his experience of having cancer.  I will never forget that man.  I swear I had seen him dirty and lying on the street in Northampton a couple of times. Back then, he seemed anything but human to me.

I was scared of drunk homeless people.

I'm really tired, I'm going to bed, I should have been in bed. Nighty night.

Screeeeeech!

I'm on a glorious journey but,  my psyche has come to a screeching halt.  I'm standing on the edge of a huge abyss. It is deep and wide. As I look down, I don't see any rocks.  I see water...bright, blue  calm.  A waterfall leads down there.  A huge torrent of liquid that splashes violently below as the rapids flow. How can the water down there look so calm and inviting?

I want to get across and continue my journey.  I can't stand here for ever. 

What do I do?
Do I attempt to jump across the abyss to get to the other side?
Do I jump into the abyss and swim to the other side?  (I'd have to climb back up.)
Do I ride the waterfall down and pray that I make it safely? (I'm not that good a swimmer.)
Do I sprout wings and fly across?

The last option seems the most viable.  The most likely too.  I am not about to try to jump across or down into or ride on a waterfall.
I have written somewhere in my journals before about my psyche coming to a screeching halt.  I usually get scared and try to jumpstart it with something.  A good book, a new activity going to church.  Something to get my creative and thought juices flowing.  But all of that activity is born out of anxiety.
Born out of the fear that time is outrunning me.  I always put on my nikes and get back in the race. 
Trying to outrun the inevitable has always made me collapse from exhaustion.
You just can't out run the inevitablities in life. So, you just live life. And wait. 
What are the inevitabilities? Hmmmm.  I gotta think that one through.
I don't like it when my psyche gets clogged up with so much stuff that I am too tired or frustrated or anxious or sad to think.  I feel numb and dumb. I don't have the energy to go out and save the world like I'm 'sposed to because I am too busy looking after myself.

I am then required to turn my attention my self and my own well being.  I used to get so frightened when I had these extended brain farts that I would run around in desparation trying to get out of these periods of stagnancy. Then I'd run so far and so long that I'd tumble off of a cliff and smash onto the rocks. Then I'd regenerate myself and patch myself up and find away to do it all over again...like it was fun.
When I act of desparation, I end up doing the same things over and over again and garnering temporary relief.  My thought process is like an internal boomerang. It comes back and hits me in the head. Whammo! It knocks me senseless and I'm off running, time behind me tryna catch up--so I've deluded myself into thinking...

Psyche...screeching...grinding halt. The noise in my head is necessary noise. But, I don't want to hear it. It's valuable information that I don't want to receive at this time.  It is tell me that I am past due to change my modus operandi.  It's like changing your pin number on your debit card.
I shiver.

Just To Be

I'm counting how many days go by before any of my family members call me.  I would call them. It seems crazy, but I always feel as though I am chasing them down.  Maybe, they are just too busy to keep in contact with me, or each other.  But, I know that that's not true.  They keep in contact with each other.  I am always left out of the loop.

This has caused me lots of pain in the past. Being excluded. Back in the day, there were always excuses: "You always startin' trouble." "You jes' like ta fight!" or "You ain't never home."  But,  what I realize is, I have never been thought of as "a part of".  I've always been thought of as" apart from" where my family is concerned.

Take for instance, the fourth of July.  When I chased my family down.  Granted, I was invited to the barbecue the previous week by my father.  One of my brothers was expected to be in town that Sunday. (There are seven of us-three boys and four girls).  My brother's never call me when they come to town.  My older brother had been in town for over a month.  I  tried to reach him on several occasions.  He wouldn't return my phone calls.  My two sisters, who live here in Atlanta with me, always know when they are here.

My older sister called me on Saturday and I'd just missed her call by a minute.  But, when I tried to call her back, she would not answer the phone and she never returned my phone call.  This is not unusual for her, she's done this many times before.  It's a head game that she plays, but she'd never admit it.

So, that Monday, I summoned my two oldest children and we drove to the country.  Daddy, had told me that he was going to be out at his house.  I left town, feeling uncertain about wether anyone would be there or not.  But, I wanted to see my family and so I ventured out.

I was able to reach my oldest sisters cell that day, when we were on our way to Daddy's house.  She was a few minutes behind us.  When the children and I reached my father's house, no one was there.  Everyone showed up a few minutes after we arrived.  It was work not to panic.  I had spent two hours sleeping from having worked the night before.  Not only that, we'd gotten lost on the way there and  that took us about 30 minutes out of the way.  Clarification: My daughter had driven for 2 hours.  The last 30 minutes plus, were the ones that I added on to the trip when I took the wheel.

I could ramble, rave and rant for ten paragraphs about this whole scenario but, it's not the point. Most days I feel like an only child in this family of mine.  I have often worked the hardest out of anyone of my sisters or brothers to be involved. They don't want to meet me half way. It's like calling repeatedly to try to talk to them hollering, "Is anybody out there?" and receiving an eternal echo.  Maybe it'd be a good idea to just listen to myself for once.

When I was a kid, I used to think that everyone in my family was stupid.  Now, I realize that they are just absent. Emotionally. They don't connect with me because they can't.

I have often worked hard to relate to and develop relationships with my brothers and sisters. But...to no avail.  My relationships to my sisters and brothers are inconsistent. Peek-a-boo relationships. Now I see them, then I don't.

Every so often,  I feel loved and embraced by them. But, sometimes I wonder if I was found on somebody's doorstep. ( I know I belong to someone.)

I've decided that I need to just live my life to the best of my ability and forget about my sisters and brother,  whether I can relate to them or not.

It is a burdensome thing that really weighs me down sometimes.  I've spent my entire life trying to convince my family that I am not crazy.  Now, I am trying to convince myself that they are the sane and rational human beings that I always thought they were. Then, again sanity is relative to your reality.

I liked it better when I thought I was nuts! Maybe that's insane.

I'm not angry or anything about it.  I just need to accept facts.  My sisters and brothers and I are just different.  I don't see the world the same way that they do.  (I don't see the world the same way many people do, by the way. Thank God!)  I need to detach from approval seeking mode and move on.

Move on.  That's what I'm working on.  Moving on...

Just to be.

To Move, or Not to Move?

I was dead set on relocating.  I still might.  But, I am reconsidering.

I went home to Boston this summer and had such a joyous time.  I always enjoy going to Boston.
I can't say that I loved coming back here to Georgia.  I had to go back to work. I don't really enjoy my job.  I don't like it.  I have been in Georgia for  17 long years and feel as though I have struggled every step of the way.

I came to Georgia to get away from the chaos in my family.  My mother constantly fighting with my grandmother and her sister and her brother.  The tension was just too much.  I had just gone through divorce and was dealing with my aunt siding with my abusive husband.  I couldn't stand being in the middle of all the family dysfunction and having my children used as pawns. I didn't get along with my mother either.

So, I left.  I can't say that I have enjoyed monetary prosperity here, but I have had a more peaceful life than I would have had I stayed in Massachusetts.  Not to mention the fact that my children were able to grow up not being pushed and pulled by family feuds and fights. And I stayed out of my ex's reach.  (By the way, after years of not being there for me or his kids...after starting a new family...after breaking numerous promises...he came to my daughters graduation from college and tried to behave like we were old friends.  He gets the buzzer!)

So...my mother is deceased. My grandmother's gone.  I miss them and appreciate them much more than I did when they were here.  I understand them better. I've had to learn to love and understand myself better.  That's why. And...

I want to go home.

I feel like a piece of my internal workings is missing.  I feel like I need to find it.  What good will going home do?  I can go downtown to the big library, like I did when I was in high school.  I can visit Harvard and Davis Square. I can go to Boston Commons when I get miffed, like my mother used to do and sit on a bench and engross myself in deep philisophical pensation. (Is pensation a word?)  I can enjoy the beautiful snowfall in the winter and go to New York on the weekend.  I can...I can...

What would I do differently?  I don't know.  Would I work harder? Or would I spend my time reminiscing and trying to recapture old times?  Would I be in an environment where I could focus on and hone my writing skills?

I don't know.  What would be better?  Have I changed enough to go home and deal with the issues that await me there.  Am I strong enough?

Do I really need to move?

For Blogging Sake

I am still tired.  I blogged again...today.  I don't feel that these little tiny bits of posting help much.  I need to blow off steam...this is kind of a way of blowing off steam.  I'm blogging for blogging's sake.
I just like writing...Okay? Anything...I can just write anything.

I am still very concerned about the state of this country and the world for that matter.  I think that's why I have a hiatal hernia.  It hurts when I am stressed...it's killing me. Really. Not only that...

My friends  cat, Pebbles, is very sick.  She can't keep anything on her stomach and she keeps crying. I heard her crying over the phone. My friend didn't have enough money to take Pebbles to the doctor. (And I couldn't send her any because some jackass jacked all the money out of my bank account last week and the bank hasn't replaced my funds...oh, I'm so pissed!) So, I told her to crush up some of her pain medicatin that she had left over from a previous surgery.  I calculated the dose from the internet. She crushed a pill and gave Pebbles a portion of it.  It worked! It made poor  Pebbles fall asleep.  She said at first she got scared and tried to climb into her lap. But, she made her lie down.

It's sad. When your pet dies it's like a person dying. 

When my 10 year old son's hamster died, I felt sad too. I handled my grief a little bit better.  My son was hysterical for about 24 hours.  He said that he never wanted another pet again. I'm kind of glad because I was the one who took care of the hamster anyway.  They are messy little creatures.

She was funny. She would escape from the cage and then come looking for me. The cat was scared of her!

Anyway, one day I was sleeping after working one of those horiffically long night shifts and my son came into my room screaming. He woke me up screaming, Lora's dead.  I was sleepy and I kept telling him to come lie down next to me so I could comfort him.  I eventually just fell asleep and stayed that way.

He called his older sister who came home and helped him give the hamster a funeral. Talking about "Mommy guilt"!  What kind of mom would sleep through the funeral of their son's first hamster?

Me.  I was just too exhausted to get up.  I didn't even know his sister was in the house.  It's a good thing it was his sister. 

I still miss the hamster.  But, I've decided to hold off on getting anymore pets for a while.

I'm Awake?

Is this day three or four...3 or 4 of my new journey challenge. I'm still tired.  I looked at my blog today and I think I need to change the picture on it or decorate it or something.  I'm not sure I'd want to read this if  someone else had written it. I re-read yesterday's post.  I was so sleepy that I don't remember writing it and it wasn't finished either

Work this weekend was unsatisfying.  I have this uncanny urge to just fly away like Peter Pan and go live with the lost boys. I love distractions because they give me an excuse not to deal with the issues at hand. Work, for me, is a distraction from real life.  I get to try and solve somebody else's issues for a whole 12 hours a day.

It's amazing how judgemental young people can be.  How uncompassionate. Like congenital Republican extremism.

I was talking to my young coworker. I will call her Ruby. (Why Ruby? I have no idea...it just seemed short enough and easy to remember).  I mentioned to her this weekend about an older coworker, whom I will call Inid, who just resigned and who I will miss dearly.  I told her about how much fun I'd had with Inid and  I suspected that she was illiterate.  Ruby felt that the Inid should not have worked there because she was a danger to the patients because she couldn't read.  I told her that the job should have offered her classes, instead of ostracizing her.

Ruby didn't feel that it was the job's responsibility to offer her classes.  I didn't either.  But, I've worked for employers who offer help  resources to employees who need it for things like illiteracy or high school diplomas. It makes the employee and the employer that much better.  On a job where the business is to help people how can you not help the people that you hire to help people?

It doesn't make sense. 

I stopped talking to Ruby because she didn't understand. And she was getting on my nerves. I told her that the conversation was over.  I was exasperated.  Okay...that's not all.  I talked about how my who Inid resigned was treated when she first came on the floor. Ruby still, thought that Inid should have worked somewhere where she didn't have to read.

The thing is:

Ruby was treated awful too when she first came on the floor, but she didn't remember that.  Hmm...

I can't even attach the word perfect to my name. But, I know that in most cases, I'm compassionate.  The quickness in which humanity detaches itself from being human is scary.  Our definition of compassion is incorrect and dysfunctional because we think that compassion is synonymous with pity.  Pitying someone doesn't do anything for the other person except reinforce the pitiers illusion of superiority.

How sad is that?

Anyway, my young friend thought I was mad at her and she kept telling me she loved me throughout the remainder of the shift.  I repeated to her "I love you too".  Just to let her know that there were no hard feelings about what we discussed.

Day three or four...day 3 or 4?

Consequence

I'm sleepy but I keep doing things.  I kind of feel like if I go to sleep, I will miss a vital event.  Khadaffi has had it in Libya, but that wouldn't really phase me on an ordinary day.  Would it?  Who am I writing this for? Day three.  I've taken a bath.  Harrassed a couple of people on face book.  I ate a scrambled egg sandwich...it wasn't the most satisfying meal that a person could eat, but I gobbled it down anyway. 

It was hard for me to leave work this morning because I had to come to grips with the fact that I wouldn't be dealing with anyone but, myself once dropped Dante off to school.  It hasn't been that hard so far...but I realize that I am constantly looking for distractions from what gripes me most days. 

What gripes me most days in living in a world that sucks these days.  the lack of compassion that people have for one another is daunting.  I won't keep tryna figure it out because it threatens to drive my totally and irrevocably insane.  I

I have a couple of things I want to do today, but I don't know if I will do them.  I was looking at the green trees inside emory's building and noticing that it was shedding its leaves.  I tried to step on a couple of leaves on the floor because I like to hear the crunch and crackle that they made but, to no avail. I don't know how

I Refuse...

I must be really sleepy because, I was thinking how strange the word "refuse" sounded.  Refuse...I refuse.
Why the word tickles me or anyone else for that matter is beyond me.  But, I'll take it.  It's warm outside, but it wasn't hell hot like it has been. I refuse to worry about the ice caps melting. It's not worth it and what can I do anyway.  Refuse.  R-E-F-U-S-E.

RE: do over. FUSE: a thing that you light on fire.

It never sounded funny before.  But, being sleepy has a way of distorting my time space continum. So, maybe my perception is off. 

The washing machine is making this low pitch base squeaky humming noise.  I guess that's what washing machines do when they are washing.  I refuse to worry about that too.  I'm tired.
I'm happy that I can write this blog and not really care about ...uh... refuse, to care about what anyone things.  All kinds of people write all kinds of things on the internet.  I refuse to read and get upset about it.

I want to go to bed, but I said, I promised, I vowed that I would write something everyday.  I drove home vowing to take, my neighbors youngest son his book bag that he left in my car but my foot refused to let me drive to their house.  I was just too tired and my eyes refused to see everything clearly.

I could have sworn that the hot bath that I took, took about a half hour, to take.  But, it looks like only a few minutes have passed.  Damn, that time space continuum.

It's really hard to write with your eyes close.  I know the fingering on a typewriter or keyboard, but I'd like to see what letters land on the virtual page.

My kitty Stormy, didn't come back after running away the Friday before last.  I'm kinda glad she's gone.  I don't have to feed her anymore or clean up her stinking cat box.  But, I miss her and if she does sho up at the door, I'm going to get a swithc and whip her but. 

Good night y'all. I refuse...YAWN!

The Beginning

One of my favorite sayings or quotes is "Go until you get to the end and then stop!" I swear, that's the best advice I ever read...and it came from a children's book by Louis Carroll. 

I thought about ending my angsty blog and starting a new one. I've actually fallen in love with this blog...this one.  I started to end it and start a new one but I have decided to extend this blog by starting a new one.  I have decided to blog everyday for a year and call it a year in the life of my angst or angst too.

That's a catchy title.  I am going to blog everyday for a year.  Even if it is just one little eentsy teentsy word and an exclamation point or period or question mark...  I will try to write something everyday.
Try.

I realize that I will never get to the center of my angst...it's just too damned big and everything causes me ass itches in this messed up world we live in.  I've decided also, that I AM my angst...now how the heck do you get to the center of that?  well, saying that I  AM my angst is kind of exaggerating.  I can with much certainty say that I am the source of my angst.  Everyone is the source of their own angst.  The the majority of us won't admit it.  I can prove it. Just get up in the morning. Go straight to your bathroom mirror and stare at yourself for sixty seconds...  See?

There is not an emotion expressed that does not begin within the individual. How difficult a is that to  pill to swallow.

I find I get frustrated a lot at work.  I feel like I work with the clueless group of people that I ever worked with in my life.  More clueless than my coworkers at the infusion center that I worked with years ago that I was unjustly fired from.  I thought they were the most clueless people I had ever met.  That's not to say my coworkers are dumb.  They aren't.  They just have no vision... no clue.  Why am I stating this?   Out of frustration.

I get frustrated when I want things to be a certain way and find out that not only are they not that way, but that it is pushing the very limits of reality (and sanity) to ever think that they will ever be the way that you want or even think they should be.  (I realize that this is a very long sentence and that most Americans disdain long sentences. I guess because most Americans are illiterate).

Well, I guess I'll turn in and lie down and take my daily weekend nap and blog tomorrow.

Luv ya

Another Word for Merry-Go-Round

If today is the first day of the rest of your life...or mine for that matter, it better improve.  Having a difficult time facing myself today.  What that means is, I don't like or appreciate where I am.  Don't want to accept where I am.  Don't even want to see where I am.  Why? I don't know.

I hate when I wake up on these days and just feel angry and want to curl up in a fetal position and go to sleep.  Even coffee doesn't bring me out of these funks.  I just sit there stewing in my own juice, fantasizing about living the lifestyle of the rich and famous and being ungrateful.  I don't think the rich and famous have it all that good especially reading all the dysfunction that they have.  It would seem that with all the money and bling they'd be able to buy themselves out of their misery.  But, nope...!

Anyway, I'm exceedingly grateful to be alive.  Even in the midst of my enigmatic despair.  I guess that's where this blog comes in. I thought I had cured myself of all of life's question marks.  Ha! Gotcha!  I knew better than that.

I guess it's better to wonder and think than to just go through life and never ask a question.  Then, maybe accepting everything at face value is bliss.  Maybe.

I'm working at accepting where I am.  Trying to fix my hoarding behaviors.  Trying to deal with my issues instead of running away from them.  The days of lamenting my childhood have disappeared into the whirlwind of the past and I now must continue on the journey of taking responsibility for cleaning up the debris.  Not the debris that I blamed my parents for creating but for cleaning up my own. 

I've unpacked the luggage that I was saddled with as I left home and flung the virtual contents all over the room of my life.  I need to clean this crap up! I'm working on it. Man it takes time. Time I don't want to take.  I'd rather go riding off into the sunset on my carousel horsey and forget about swinging from the golden ring.

Smooches!