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insight, life, Writing

My Best Friend: Lessons In Commitment and Loyalty

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I’m not much different than most other females who grew up around the same time I did.  We all watched the same Disney movies and obsessed over Wesley in Princess Bride.  We actively consumed the fairy tales of Princess’ being swept off their feet.  Add in some religion, and there was always some illusory man who was suppose to show up and sweep us off our feet.

By the age of twenty-five, if it hasn’t happened yet, the internal worry mixes with the biological clock and things start to get a little weird.

I didn’t start building strong female relationships until about that age.  I started to embrace the feminine in myself and with that came a new feminine energy.  At times I would think that I was the most “girly” out of the group, even though I considered myself far less “girly” than my cohorts.

I’m certain when I went for a dog, I didn’t care what gender it was, but for the first time in my life I was starting to really make female friends and I am sure that played a role in how everything unfolded.

During this time I was becoming very aware of the emotional pain many women carry with them.  It was a suffering that would come from competing with other women more as an unspoken way of being than a logical reaction.   I was going out of my way to express appreciation for women, even ones who I interacted with just in passing.  It could be as simple as saying “You look fantastic in that shade of blue.”  or ” I really love your hair, it looks so soft!”

I could see that women on the daily were not only trying to meet the world with some beauty, but they were trying to convince themselves that they were worthy of love and attention and the most basic way we are taught to seek that out, is by outward expressions of self care.

I knew I wasn’t out there trying to steal anyone’s boyfriend.  I was trying to find some loyal female friends while seeking love, and if you want to get a lady’s attention, give her a sincere complement.

When Claddagh came into my life, it wasn’t complements that won her over.  In fact it wasn’t complements that kept her around.  But while I was trying to figure out how to bring more love into my life via friends, she was sitting right beside me as I hashed things out.

In February of 2009 I received an art commission to paint a mural on the inside of a pump house at a tree farm.  For a week, Claddagh and I camped out while I painted the mural.  In the evenings I would sit by the fire with a headlamp writing about the various musings I may have had over the day.

Here are my scribbles about “What the fuck the roller coaster of love is”;

  • Doesn’t know what love is but aches for it, due to fairy tales and day time drama.
  • Meet someone who likes you and you couldn’t care less for as an individual.  Sometimes it matters not, for the first timer. It’s the wanting of love so badly that most novices force it based on lame criteria.
  • Settle into that “like-ness.”  For some this happens faster than others.
  • Grow personally or experience partners growth.   Get annoyed with everything you previously adored as “quirky.”
  • Jump knee deep into the dramatic experience of separating ways and the fucked up boomerang that always brings you back.
  • Wrestle with emotions vs. a need to get laid, enduring attitudes turn into pet peeves and the struggle to stay seemingly sane through the process.
  • Question life; it’s meanings and what could possibly be next.
  • Waste a few months feeling bad for yourself and procrastinating making a big decision.
  • Finally settle on something, perhaps the easiest thing….
  • And just when you think you are on the money…..
  • The Universe says “I’m sorry, actually you are going to do this ____.”  Which was your least favorite option from the options you initially had to choose from.
  • Just when you resign to your new circumstance, this new, interesting and attractive person comes in and because you haven’t lost all your hormones yet, your body says “HELLO!”
  • Knowing that you just experienced “love” and you have a lot to deal with, your mind says, “OH NO!”
  • Undoubtedly you spend time with this new stranger and your hormones won’t quit screaming “OH YES! PLEASE, PLEASE!”
  • Since you realize we are all animals who are most responsible to responding to our physical instincts,
  • Consciousness takes a back seat in decision making
  • Cave in and let hands graze nameless places- get high on pheromones.
  • Act like sad orphans literally dying to experience affection.  Once is never enough.
  • Realize that all of a sudden this indulgence and connection produces a a desire to satisfy something primal.
  •  Intimacy becomes a third party to rugged and animalistic behavior.
  • Start feeling things for a stranger while temporarily avoiding the recent void of failure, hoping to be re-filled.

Claddagh sat there as a silent bystander as I purged what could be seen as the worst flow chart for “love” to ever exist.  But what do I learn from this when I go back through it with that knowing?

My views on love have been quite askew.  Claddagh showed me another way to love, and it wasn’t based off of some unrealistic script that we are fed through entertainment.  This is why it hurts so badly.  We didn’t follow predictive programming in the unfolding of our friendship.  Even up into the minute I had to choose to let her go, I had no idea what I was doing and I was simply hoping for the best for both of us.   There was an undeniable trust that we were doing the best we could.

I learned that I need to further listen to my instincts.  Love doesn’t really exist in one-sided affairs and one sided affairs have seemed safe.  It’s easier to reject than to be rejected.   But what does it look like when both parties love?  It is harder to walk away, and I have been good at walking away… but I couldn’t walk away from Claddagh.  She made me look at the worst parts of myself, and she could have disappeared at any point in time to find a new home, and she didn’t.  She pushed through my wreckage.

Thanks to her, I can sift through it, and see more of what she was showing but I was only recording in passing. Thanks to her I can see love outside of that wreckage.

 

insight, Writing

Team Project

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dbu4zqhpgyRemember, Once Upon A Time… in school, when eventually the teacher would require a team project.  One in which you were not allowed to pick your own group.  Everyone was assigned to their group by the teacher.

Kids like me, hated this.

Kids like me, knew better than to “team up” with just ANYBODY.

No, I was a hard worker, which meant that I wanted to work with the other hard workers… even if they weren’t my favorite people.  I could still admire the fact that they knew how to get down to business and get things done.  I may have no real social entanglements with my team partners, but we were assured a good grade.

Then the project comes along, wherein, all that blows out the window.

In this assignment, everyone has a slacker on their team… except for maybe one lucky team, who coincidentally usually ends up with less people in the group, and they all happen to be highly intelligent and driven.  I would always wonder why I didn’t get selected for that team.

The project would begin, usually with a slower start.  The people in my group would be use to my directive nature, and sit back, and relax while I take the reigns.  I would provoke participation, only to meet a brick wall; knowing in the end, nothing I could say would change their desire to participate.

After all this I would feel used, and drained.  I would feel as though people were taking advantage of my intelligence, drive, creativity, and follow through.

I hated it.  It filled me full of resentment toward both my peers and my teachers.   Especially the teachers.

I would think, “What the hell is wrong with these people to make them think that this assigned group shit is worthwhile on these terms?”

Things like this continue to happen as we get older and out of school.  The boss who takes credit for the work of an employee, the plagiarizer of work done by great artists and thinkers, left to copy and paste into whatever the slacker can not seem to produce for themselves.  I feel like this about artists reproducing the art of someone else, exactly.

Okay, great, you can copy what some one else did, and make it look very similar, perhaps with just a tiny twist of individuality … BUT HAVE YOU NO MIND OF YOUR OWN?  NO STYLE or PERSUASION?    Are you but hollow husks painted to look like a  full head of corn?

This feeling has run into my spiritual life, which I take far more seriously than any of the bullshit we deal with on a mundane basis.

I have been very consciously aware of my connection to the greater whole of humanity for most of my life.  It is that connection alone which leaves me feeling so disconnected at the same time.  It’s as though I was born half in this world, and half in another; and most of the people around me are not interacting with that “other world.”  They don’t understand where I am coming from, or what I am perceiving.

At times it feels very heavy, because it does not just influence me, it influences us all… I just seem to take it harder than most.

In my spiritual world, I have a job.  But it has nothing to do with money, or notoriety, or even happiness.   It is a job much of being a messenger.  Sometimes I have goodness to share, and other times I am the barer of bad news.  And many times, it feels like “DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER.”

I don’t make the rules, I don’t plan the scripting….I just show up, take what I am given and disseminate it to share.  People like me are scattered all over the globe with a tedious job of taking the reigns and leading peers to take a gander at the bigger picture.  To start participating on a higher level.  But we feel in the midst of slackers, who are taking the message too personally and retaliating with spiritual sabotage;  which is such an Earthbound response to knowing that the self is wrong and needs change.

I have to deal with two sets of requirements like taking an Advanced Placement Course.  I have to still mingle with those who don’t grasp the headier concepts.  I have to find patience in dealing with their avoidance.  It really fucking wears me out sometimes.  Imagine living life 24/7… no breaks.  This is the spiritual emotional job I have.  Sometimes people think I am callous, but really I just have little patience anymore for purposeful ignorance.

Now maybe the teachers who are setting us up in these groups… whether physical or spiritual, know something I have not yet grasped.  I mean they must know who strives , and who the slackers are.  They must observe how people catalyze one another, whether for better or worse.  And perhaps it is their experiment toward some sort of social change…. maybe they just think it’s a sick/funny joke.  Either way, we are told, that we will never be given more than we can handle.  I am waiting to see how THAT plays out.

Lately I have felt a tipping point.  I don’t want to help the slackers any more.  There is no excuse for their slacking.  I want them to see that their slacking effects us all, and it puts extra and undue stress on those of us who are already trying to keep balance.  I want to trust that the teachers really know what they are doing, and that they are doing what is best for everyone… but at times those waters are murky.    Lately those waters have been murky.  I want to cash in my chips and to say to hell with it.

But I can’t.  I am not allowed to.  I have to “follow through.”  It’s getting harder, not easier.

If we could all just agree that we are in this together, we all have a spiritual job to do, and show up for… my life would seem less like a losing battle.  I bet you yours would too.