There does not need to be bruises in order for there to be abuse.

A 16-year-old girl is beaten by her father.  Her hair is pulled, she is pushed, and hit on her back.  Her stuff gets thrown out of her dresser and she is pushed to the floor to pick them all up.  She is freaked out and wants to call the police.  At this time her father stops and gives her his cell phone.  Scared and knowing that he has done this before to his wife in an attempt to scare her from calling, the girl calls.  The police arrive and see a 16-year-old girl in a panic, all scared, crying and rolled up like a ball in the corner of the room and a man on crutches who is calm and collected.  They talk to him and he says to them that the girl is on drugs and that he did not do anything.  His wife comes out of the car and backs him up.  The police seeing that there were no bruises, only emotional distress walk away and send the girl off with her abuser.

The girl talks to her guidance counselor about this and the guidance counselor contacts children services.  The social worker comes in and takes pictures, there were no bruises.  She visits the father's house, the father calmly explains his concern for his child.  He comes up with a story that the child is around bad influences and well all he wanted was her well-being.  Looking calm and collected vs a girl who was scared to death of what he could do to her, the social worker goes back to speak to the girl and tells her he is just concerned, there are no bruises so there is no abuse.  That is when the girl learned that no matter how hard she asked for help, or how scared she was of someone she should just stay down and keep quiet because help would never come unless there were bruises.  The only thing left to do was to try and protect herself, all on her own and in order to do this she had to become just as calm and collected as the man who abused her.  She had to be in control of her emotions because panicking only means people will not believe you.

4 years later, now an adult, she meets a man.  Instinctively she knew she should stay away from him, but being that people will always say you should give people a chance to prove themselves she gives the man a chance.  The guy was controlling and moving too fast, she never loved him and because of this she thought that she could leave at any time if things got bad.  There wouldn't be a "ohh I can't leave because I love him" statement.  It would be easy.  But it wasn't, she got pregnant and that made her more vulnerable.  Now with a child, her biggest concern was to make sure that the child was well taken care of.  She stopped working and eventually her husband decided to ensure she had no control over finances, no access to money.  He would make sure to ration her meals, if she ate too much he would get mad.  She had no way of communicating with anyone if she was in an emergency because he isolated her as much as he could.  Now it was hard to leave, not because she was emotionally attached to him but because she was in a position where all her power had been stripped out.

Eventually she left, but she left to go back to her other abuser because that was the only one who she thought could help her.  Why? Because the second time around there were also no bruises, no bruises meant no abuse.  When she spoke to a lawyer to see if she could get a divorce, the first thing the attorney asked was: Was there abuse? When she told her what he had done the attorney said: That's not abuse, that is neglect but he never hit you so he never abused you.

For years she thought that was the truth: no bruises mean no abuse.  She always felt like she was over reacting, over thinking, that her fear was unfounded.  When she finally got out on her own she would fear not having enough food, she would fear losing her home.  Her husband had disappeared but the fears and emotional distress never did.  Eventually he appeared again and with him all the emotional distress that she had worked on getting over came back.  This time it was not just because of her but because the little girl they had together would be in the middle of it.

Their little girl was forced to go with someone she did not know only because they share DNA.  The mother in an attempt to make it not so scary for her daughter showed up with her to the first visit.  When an agreement was not reached, his mother (who was present) tried to snatch the child out of her car seat, and then went on to yell that she would physically hurt her mother and then put her in jail.  There were no bruises so there was no abuse.  After that the little girl would have nightmares of her mother being arrested, she would get scared every time she saw a police officer because she thought mommy was going to go to jail and she was not going to see her again.

In order to keep things calm, the mother would tell the little girl that everything would be ok, that all she needed to do is act calmly and be nice even if she did not want to be.  Now the little girl is learning to not ask for help, to keep calm and that if she feel uncomfortable she should not even think about that, just keep it to yourself and hide your feelings.  The mother always thinking because unless there are bruises there is no abuse and she sure as hell did not want her little girl to be hit and hurt.

Here is the thing though, ALL OF THIS IS ABUSE, abuse can come from anyone who is an abuser and it is often not in the forms of punches.  There does not need to be any bruises in order for there to be abuse.  That is the biggest mistake society makes now a days.  It is never the bruises that cause the most harm, it is the trauma that someone is put through that causes it.  We have come so far as to know the signs of an abuser, we know that they only escalate, we know that it is not the drugs or alcohol that make an abuser an abuser; yet we don't do anything until there are bruises.  That is the problem with our justice system, even though we know that someone will escalate and that the escalation can come from just calling the victim names to hitting their victims so hard that they kill them in a matter of a second.  Nothing is ever done before there is a blow, and even if there is a blow, hardly ever there is something done if there are no marks.

Emotional marks never count, but those marks are the ones that matter, they are the ones that make a difference.  They are the ones who open up a circle of abuse victims.  The one girl who was abused and never got help now teaches her daughter how she feels it is best to protect herself: by controlling her emotions and not saying when she is scared because it is hard to be heard and we don't want to be bruised up and hit or even dead in order to be heard so it is better that way.  The system also tells this new child that it does not matter if she feels uncomfortable about someone, she must stick around that person because that person loves them and wants to spend time with them.   Their feelings are not taken into consideration.

What is this teaching them though?  It is teaching them to not follow their natural instincts, those we are all born with to protect ourselves, the ones who tell us that if someone is making us feel uncomfortable we should go ahead and walk the other way, only because this person says they love them.  These kids are being conditioned to end up in abusive relationships, this is how love looks like and it does not matter if you are uncomfortable, they love you so you gotta stick around.

This story is not the only one, there are many just like this one.  Millions of people being abused every day, a lot not asking for help because they do not think it is abuse.  Others not asking for help because they asked for help once and since there were no marks there was nothing anyone could do to help.  They have the choice of either let it escalate to a point where there might not just be a mark but where they will actually get hurt badly enough that they will end up dead or to just keep quiet and continue to secretly be emotionally abused.

The system needs to change some things, if there is enough data showing the signs of an abuser and it has been proven over and over that all they do is escalate, then why is it that we have to wait until they do before we do something?  Why is it that we don't protect children more when there is a cycle of abuse and when the signs are pointing to a new cycle of abuse?  A child who is not comfortable around someone has a reason to not be comfortable, so why don't we listen?  Why do we diminish their fear to it being nothing?  Why do we continue to promote this cycle rather than stop it?

Sometimes the world does not make any sense and one can only hope that eventually all those voices are loud enough that they are heard.  That eventually we can prevent tragedies from happening rather than doing something after the tragedy has already happened.

Randomness

I was sitting here thinking: "One should not spend money they have not yet acquired or spend all the money they have acquired."  That is the problem America has, we are a nation of spenders; every penny we get paid we spend.  We worked all our lives to pay for things and then when the time came to retire we had nothing to live on, so what did we do? We cried out and said: "Government help us." What did the government do? They created Social Security and said well we are going to take money off your paycheck and save it for when you retire because you are not capable of doing that on your own. 

Then the years passed and the plan proved to be flawed, there were not enough money being taken out of one person's paycheck in order to provide for that person's retirement, and people were living longer than government thought they would live.  Now, Social Security is not solvent and my generation will probably not get to ever use it.  Whose fault is that though?

 

Partly is our fault, our society is bred to be spenders.  We live off the idea that we can always get a new credit card, charge what we want and pay it later.  We believe that eventually we are going to make more money and then when we make more money we spend more money.  As I was sitting here thinking why in the hell do we do that? And all I could come up was because we are unhappy. 

It is a human condition to get rewarded for things we don't want to do, we go on a diet and after one week of eating only herbs we say: "Well I have been good this week, let me buy me an ice cream."  It is something that comes from many many generations ago, we clean our rooms because our parents promise that we will get something in return, the reward for stopping what we were doing (having fun) and doing something we do not like. 

And then as we grow older we are marked by our parents telling us how we have to make a living.  A child comes with a dream they have, they want to be an artist and the parent will feed that dream until the child reaches a certain age and then the parent will say: "You are too old for that, you need to think about how you are going to make a living.  You cannot make a living by being an artist."  This gets repeated so much that eventually the child ends up going to college (something they did not want to do) and studying something they did not want to study, and then getting a job they did not want to get. 

The child, now an adult, was conditioned to go and work at a job they will never enjoy but that "pays well."  So they go to work every day, they are miserable because they don't enjoy what they do, at the end of the work day or the work week they go home in all their misery to find something that will make them feel better.  Video games, alcohol, drugs, shopping, food... Anything that will reward them for doing something they did not like to do. 

And so there goes the money they make, they believe that they deserve to buy the video games, the alcohol, the drugs, the food, because they did something that was draining and that they did not enjoy.  Every few months they have to take a break from their jobs because "they deserve it", "they've earned it", they have worked so hard for so many months that now it is time to spend money on a vacation.  But wait!  They are still paying off the last vacation that they took, and then what? Well the credit card is almost paid off so we can use it again right now.  Then we will get back to our miserable jobs and complain about having to pay them off.

After this I was thinking: "what if the reason we have so many depressed people and angry people wanting to kill others all the time was that we are all so miserable because we are conditioned to do things that we completely dislike?"

Could you imagine a world where the child is never told that they should just make sure they go work at something that will pay them enough to live and instead we tell them to go follow their passion and put focus on that.  Tell them that yes it will be hard work but that it is something they can do.  Teach them that hard work is not despised when it is something we love to do. 

Then probably we would have less alcoholics, less drug addicts, less angry, depressed, and violent people around.  Because they would be focus on doing something they love to do and not something they have to do in order to survive and then maybe all these different things they spend money on would never be an issue, that extra money could be put away for retirement.  It could be put away to pay off a house so you do not have to worry about paying rent when you are no longer able to work.  It could be invested and made more rather than just spent.  People could even help each other more rather than compete with each other so much. 

Maybe if we learned how to be and remain happy and full of joy then we would not cry and cling for the help of the very people who thrive and advance their lives by making sure we continue to have the same problems. 

FedEx fucking sucks, when incompetence goes way too far...

I seriously can't make this up, after today I am seriously questioning how the fuck is a company like FedEx still in fucking business!!!
A package was ordered on April 3rd, 2015.  Said package was expected to arrive on April 8th, 2015 by 10:30am.  The arrival time was very specific, usually with carriers you see that the time of delivery is by the end of the day on a particular date. This morning I decided to check the FeDex website to see where the package was and if it was in fact on route to my house.  Their tracking system showed the package in Memphis, TN.  The package's final destination is Charlotte, NC.
I went ahead and I called FedEx and asked them where the package was, the response I got from their international department (package was coming from China) was that there were issues with customs and customs did not release the package on time, but now the package was released from customs and it was in a warehouse in Tennessee waiting to be transferred to cargo so that it could be shipped to Charlotte.
I asked when it was released from customs and the lady said it was released yesterday at 5pm.  I told her ok so it would be in cargo sometime this morning and it should be here tomorrow, she said yes it should be there tomorrow.  I said can you assure me that my package is going to be here tomorrow, she said well I cannot assure you of that because anything can happen and then she added: "the plane might not work and that might delay your package even more."
I said: So, you are telling me that the plane might not work and you don't have a different one that you can put the package on? She said: well, the package is waiting to be transferred to cargo so that it can be shipped to the final destination.  I said: Why is it just sitting there waiting? It was supposed to be express delivered and it's not like customs has it so it should be on its way to my house right now.
She had no answer for me other than no one should have promised the package today since anything can happen with the cargo and the plane might not work so the package would have been delayed even more.
I seriously cannot make this up and this is not where the story ends.  The tracking on the FedEx website says the package is in transit to Japan. So I called them again this afternoon.  The lady that answered me in the international customer service department said: Your package seems to be having issues with customs, and it is still in China.  I said: the lady that I spoke to at 9am this morning said that the package was in Memphis and that customs had released said package so it was just waiting on a warehouse to be transferred to cargo and it would be shipped to me so long as the airplane was working.  Cause I am guessing FedEx, only has one fucking cargo airplane that flies from TN to NC.
The lady said ohh no, it looks like your packages are in Anchorage, AK you are expecting two packages right? I said: No, I am expecting only one! She says: Ohh yes yes, it is in Anchorage and the representative you spoke to earlier should have started a trace  to see where the package is, that is when I told her that since the representative that I spoke with in the morning did not do her job and she seemed to have no idea what the hell was going on, to transfer me to a supervisor.
Exact wordings she used after I said that: "It seems like a trace for this package should have been opened this morning and since that did not happen this issue will have to be escalated to a supervisor, would you like me to transfer you to one?"
This is the part where you want to be able to reach through the damn phone and start strangling some sense into people... Finally I get the supervisor on the line, and the supervisor says to me: It looks like your packages are on their way to China from Japan, you are expecting two packages correct? I said: no, it is only one! He tried to fix that whole situation and said: ohh yes yes I was reading wrong, but your package is on its way to China from Japan.  I had to ask how the fucking hell did my package get to Japan, I mean one thing would have been for them to have accidentally sent it back to China right but the package had been in Memphis, then in Anchorage and then in Memphis again and from Memphis the package was sent to Japan, and now there was no estimated delivery time.
I don't know which one was the idiot that said it but at some point I heard: Well, the good news is that it did make it to the USA! Well, you fucking morons!!!! That it made it to the USA helps me fucking none because the package is no where in the USA...
Supervisor said he was going to finally open the trace and investigate where the package was so that I could get an estimated time of arrival, and that someone will be contacting me within 2 hours to let me know what is going on.
I got a call 45 minutes later and it seems like the more you fucking move up the chain of command of the Federal Express corporation the more incompetent they seem to get.  I asked where was my package, yet again... Ma'am your package is in China.  It somehow went to Japan and then back to China.  I said: are you going to tell me when the package will arrive here, cause it is not supposed to be in China, and could you explain to me how the package came to Memphis, and then went to Anchorage and went from Anchorage to Memphis and from Memphis it went to Japan and from Japan you are telling me that now China has it?  She said yes, it seems to have been human error and there is not much we can do about that.  I said so my package is in China now, she said: well we are waiting for China to open so that we can ask where the package is.  So you really don't know where my package is and you are telling me that you've lost it due to human error. She immediately tried to rephrase that, of course I did not let her.
So here is the bottom line:

1. A package was ordered, said package was being shipped from China to Charlotte, NC.
2. Said package made it from China to Memphis, TN in one day, the tracking of it (picture attached to this post) states that customs released the package.
3.  Package was then sent to Anchorage, AK. For those that do not know geography (like some of the people that work for FedEx), Anchorage, AK is on the opposite side of Charlotte, NC.
4. From there, the package was sent back to Memphis, TN to be shipped over to Japan.
5. From Japan it appears to be in transit to China and now we have to wait for China to open (because I guess China is close for business at the moment, even though it was 7am in China when I got the call from FedEx) in order to find if the package is actually there.
6. At this point, FedEx does not want to state that the package is actually fucking lost and they don't have the slightest fucking idea as to where the darn package is.
7.  For a company that only focuses on delivering packages all over the fucking world saying that this is fucking human error and counting it as just one fucking human error not the 4 different errors made while handling said package is beyond fucking unbelievable!!! This is not human error, this is fucking incompetence! Specially when handling a package that has a priority tag attached to it.  The damn post office does a better job than FedEx!!! That is saying something!!!!
9. The excuse that the airplane might not work and therefore it would delay my package a day or two, went out the fucking window when their tracking system states that the package had travel from one end of the country to another and then traveled to a different continent where it was not supposed to ever be in the first place, only to travel back to the original place... Looks like their fucking airplane (because it appears that they only have one) is working perfectly fine!
8. We have to give them credit for something, I mean they were even proud of the fact that the package had made it to the United States at some point, congratu-fucking-lations!!!

For such a huge company to have this mishaps happen so fucking often, is beyond unacceptable, they charge an extreme amount of money to deliver packages and they cannot even do their job right... This is not the first time this happens either, a while ago I had a package that was paid to be delivered on Saturday and said package was sent out within the United States and it was not even a great distance that the package was supposed to travel... Said package was delivered Monday afternoon, not even Monday first thing in the morning... Monday afternoon!!!!  That is the level of incompetence that this company has and in all this mess they cannot even admit the fact that they screwed up and they did it big time!!! All they can say is sorry for the inconvenience, you will receive your package soon... and what the hell do they mean by soon? Well apparently it means whenever the fuck they find it...

Just a small thought...

I was catching up on one of my shows today as I was eating breakfast and a Walt Disney World Resort commercial came on; those darn Disney commercials always make me feel warm and fuzzy inside mostly because I am too much of a Disney fan.  The commercial focused on what most people now call a "traditional family" (mom, dad and 2 children); suddenly it dawned on me that every single Disney Park commercial that I've watched focuses on families made of mom, dad and children.  Before I started to write this I figured I would actually look at other Disney commercials and see if I was correct; to my extreme disappointment, I was. 

Now a days we seem to be trying to keep focus on what society calls a traditional family when the "traditional family" is becoming more  and more non-traditional; yet we seem to want to keep pushing it through to everyone.  In 2015, it is extremely sad to see that when you search for images of family on the internet the first pictures shown are of a woman and a man with 2 children, usually all of the same race... And we wonder why it is that people are having a hard time accepting the changes that society is going through. 

Print ads and TV commercials have been used for many years to brainwash people into buying something or choosing something over something else.  Even though most of us seem to pay little attention to the commercials and ads we see; they are and will always be a subtle form of mind control and society keeps being pushed to look at things in a "traditional" way, a way that is becoming less and less traditional when we actually look at society and how it has changed throughout the years. 

Families are composed of two parents of different racial backgrounds, with science taking of we now have same sex couples racing children, we have single parent families being raised and by single parent I mean either a man who has decided to rear children on his own or a woman who has decided to do the same.  It seems a bit silly that we are still pushing ads for this "tradition" that is no longer one.  

When I was a child, I was one of two children in my classroom that had divorced parents, it was rare that a child would not have their parents together and even more rare that the parents were not around to raise said child.  I was raised by my grandmother and I remember people actually feeling sorry for me because I did not have a "family".  Truth be told, I had the best family ever! my grandmother and her sister raised me and my cousin (whose parents are still together til this day but because they did not have the means to send her to a good school my aunt decided to take her on and well, she lived with us and we were raised together).  To me, my family unit were two women, who had worked hard their whole lives and had managed to make it in the world on their own, they were not married and did not ever seem to have the need to have a man around the house.  In fact, if you ask my aunt why she never got married, her answer always was that she did not want to be washing clothes for some guy and she wanted to always spend her free time travelling, and so she did.  

My grandmother separated from my grandfather when the guy that I was taught to call dad was very little.  It did not work out so she moved on and made a life for herself and on her own.  Both these women love us so damn much, and always made sure we were taken care of.  The household I was raised in was a house where I always had a choice and whenever I made it I would have to live with the consequences that choice had.  Until these day I still don't understand why people felt bad for us, we did not know any different so for us, it was our norm.  

Seeing these ads keep the focus on a "traditional family" one that is quickly becoming non-traditional because really has Disney not seen who visits their parks?  I am pretty sure that there are just as many interracial families visiting parks as families that come from the same racial background.  What about couples that decide to adopt children from other countries? And same-sex couples? We keep wondering why it is that people have little tolerance for same-sex marriage, interracial families and single parent families.  Look at TV commercials, at print ads in newspapers, magazines and billboards, look in the web and see how many times we actually see an ad that is promoting a vacation or a celebration where an interracial couple or same sex couple or even a single parent and their child is portrayed.  There are very little, and most times if we do see an ad like that we see it for a campaign that promotes tolerance to it. 

Want to see tolerance towards the society we live in now? The change has to start with the soft forms of mind control we are all subjects to, those big companies that say that they support gay-marriage should be the ones to have their ads showing that support, what good does it do to just say it out loud and follow a campaign when all of your ads focus on not just the opposite of it but on something that is no longer a big taboo subject anymore. 

I would love to see Disney create an ad for their vacation packages where we see different kinds of families, because it is not sad for a child to be raised by one parent, or by two parents of the same sex, or of two parents of different races, or to be raised by two parents that are of different race than their child or children (and I could go on).  It is sad to see a child being raised by people that do not love said child and that do not provide a save and comfortable environment for the child.  It is sad to see children being put in situations that they are not comfortable in but because we follow outdated views we force them to be in those situations.  It is sad that our system puts children at risk every single day by sending them back for the third or fourth time to abusive parents.  That is what is sad, but a child who has a parent or two parents or more, no matter the race or sex, that care, love and provide a stable home environment for said child, is not sad; it is something that should be embraced and should be shown to the world.  Maybe if we did that, we would start to see a difference in the attitude towards what society calls "non-traditional families". 

PS: Look up images of family in Google, see what comes up first!

Religion, religion, religion...

What a wonderful topic this is!!! I just love it when I bump into someone that loves to try and feed me the Lord Jesus Christ against my will.
I was on the bus the other day and this guy was trying to convince another guy about finding happiness. I sat there listening to him talk about a book he was holding (no I had no idea what the book was about) then suddenly the guy states how people are so depressed and angry all the time because they are worried about how much money they are making, they are worried about getting a better car, better house, better things and that stress just takes the life out of you.  I had to agree with that statement, we do tend to put a lot of emphasis on certain things that in the end won't really matter, but then he decided to add that one piece of advice that makes absolutely no sense to me, the one sentence I have the most fun with as soon as it comes out of someone's mouth because let's face it... Whether you are a believer or not in a higher power, you can't prove or disprove its existence, therefore when it comes to God, no one out there can say for certain that he/she exists or that he/she doesn't exist.  He went on to say: In order to be happy you must first find God....
Sitting there I just looked at him and said: You must first prove that there is a God, otherwise how can you find something that you don't know for certain that exists?
And so it began, of course he was not able to do that, however his argument did not end there... He decided that he would use Robin Williams as an example of someone who had everything and decided to end his life anyway.  Mr. Williams had bipolar disorder and was also diagnosed with Parkinson's which ended up making things even worse for him.  Education is key when you are trying to argue a point, I don't think people understand that. So then he added: Who gives you the power to go ahead and take your life, who has told these people that you get to choose when and how you die?
Free will my friend, that is the power I've been given, according to the God that exists according to the book a lot of people follow for guidance, we are all given free will.  Free Will means we decide what we are going to do with our lives, not anyone else. As sad as it is to hear that someone was in so much pain that they thought there was no other way out but to kill themselves... well, that is one choice every single person in this planet has, the stigma that you will go to hell when you kill yourself needs to really stop because again first you have to prove that there is such a thing as a hell, and then you have to prove that hell is a bad thing, neither of which can be proven.
On that same note you will also have to prove that there is a heaven and unfortunately its existence cannot be proven or denied, so why do we continue to have arguments over things like this?
The idea is that people need to believe in something, (disclaimer: I do believe in God but I also know that since I cannot prove his existence I have no business trying to convince other people of his existence) we have an innate need to want some sort of certainty from life.  When things are not going the way we might want them to be going we need to try and find an explanation for it, when there is none we resort to things like this.  And that is ok, trust me I am not saying it is not, what it is not ok is to try and change everyone else's view of the world with a view that cannot be absolutely proven, this is to include science (yes I know I will be pushing some buttons here) but hear me out (or in this case, please keep reading)...
Scientifical knowledge starts with an observation, this observation is usually made by a human being, this human being then decides to go ahead and come up with a question about what they are observing and after that they come up with a hypothesis which they then have to run a series of tests in order to prove... Now in order to say that this pattern can give us answers that are absolutely certain, answers that have no option of being changed in the future, one must first believe with absolute certainty that humans are unable to make mistakes.
Some people might believe that scientists are unable to err, there is no justification for someone to believe this because I have yet to hear someone not use the words: "human error" in their vocabulary, and unless scientists are something else other than human, they are just as capable of making a mistake as any other human being.  If scientists are not human then I would like to know what they really are, maybe they are some higher beings in which case we would be coming up with a name other than scientists and would be calling them gods, at which point we would have the ability to say hey gods do exist and these are it.... Being that there has yet to be someone that would actually believe and say that, I am going to stick to the theory that scientists are human and being human means that you are bound to make a mistake.
Anyhow, this wonderful guy on the bus kept at it (I tend to love it when people do that) while he believes there is a heaven and a hell, and that hell is bad and heaven is good, he wanted everyone else to think the same and the only proof to it was "God's word" in this case that meant The Bible.  Humans are so faithful to this book, it is amazing how they don't think about how this book came to be.

1. The Bible was written several centuries ago, by humans nonetheless. I think we have established that human beings are capable of error, therefore believing in the words of this book is to me absolutely illogical. 
2. The Bible was also written in a language that is pretty much dead and then has been translated in I don't even remember how many languages now, by an extreme amount of people (also humans) who have translated it based on what they believe makes the most sense of what they are reading from a language that is not their original language. 
3. After being translated so many different times, the Bible is a book that can be interpreted in so many different ways, which is the reason why there are so many different religions based on that same book, each person read the book and each person decided there was a different way to interpret this book, each came up with their own set of rules and their own view created a new religion based on the same book.
4. To believe that there is only one truth and that you are the only one that holds said truth when there are possibly the same amount of people, if not more, that believe in something slightly different based on that same book is freaking ludicrous! 

I suppose I could list more reasons but really I think these 4 are enough to show that when it comes to religion every person needs to understand that whatever you want to believe in is a personal choice, something that makes sense to you, if someone is looking for their own answers then by all means tell them how you have come up with your own justifications for your beliefs and then let them come up with their own ideas and their own views.  No one has a right answer, not a certain answer and that is ok, the world needs to come to terms to being ok with the fact that the only certainty of life is that is so freaking uncertain. 

Family

The past few months have been a true test and one question has always come to mind: what does it mean to be family and what makes someone your family?
I guess there is a conventional definition of family where family is someone who has some sort of blood relation to you or a legal relation to you through a piece of paper.  The bond, especially the blood related bond has been taken into a level where no matter who you are, if you are related by blood to a person whose views or actions you don't agree with then it does not matter that you don't agree with them or that you don't want that around, the convention states that because they are related to you by blood that you are supposed to put up with all that bullshit!!!!
Unfortunately this is not something I agree with and this is where society and I collide.  In the past few years I have learned that those who are blood related to me are people I don't necessarily want to be around, they are people I can't change and that have different views or ideas about life than I do.  This disagreement has caused a constant battle between these people, one battle that I realized I will never be able to win, and while it is sad because some of these people I love with all my heart I also realize that if you are going to be in constant battle with someone then it's better to stay away.
There is a saying: "You can't divorce your family", I was told you can't say "I am your ex-family", the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard and read.  For one, you can divorce a family, there are many different ways that a family is created and one of those is by marriage of two people from two different families and if that marriage does not work then the two people file for divorce and well you divorce the family you created.  Now, if we are talking about family that is related by blood to include: sisters, mothers, fathers, brothers, grandparents, etc... Well, no you can't literally divorce them, but you can stop being around them.  You can just say: I have no family.
And yes they will throw a tantrum because they are being ignored and for some reason whenever they need anything from you they use the: "I am family" card to try and guilt you into helping them.
That "I am family" card is one of the most overused and illogical emotional blackmail moves I have ever fucking heard in my entire life.  This is something that comes up when the sister that decided to be a fucking loser felon gets out of jail and suddenly mom and dad want the other sibling to spend time with the family and accept the sister back making believe that everything is fine and dandy and she did not do anything to get herself into trouble, so let me go ahead and say: well, she is family, she is your sister... and? So what if she is my sister? Has she actually proven that she has learned her fucking lesson or is she going to continue to be a fucking felon? I can forgive someone but that does not mean I have to let them into my life and sorry but the "they are family" card is not logical enough to make me change my mind.
Or the son that is a drug addict, has stolen numerous times from his parents and suddenly comes back asking for help, the parents are told well... he is your son and he is family, you have to help him... mmmm how about: he is your son and you have tried helping him by giving him money in the past and that has failed numerous times so the help he now needs to is to actually fall flat on his face and maybe he will actually find his way into becoming a good member of society.
I've had my family blast my fucking phone because they needed something from me and when I did not answer right away I was seen as the bad guy and as the person who always wants to create problems.  These people don't realize that they are not priorities in someone else's lives and when they figure out that they are not a priority they get pissy and they use the "well I am family and I should come first" mmm NO!!! NO!!! NO!!! AND FUCKING HELL NO!!!! Here is how I see family and people may or may not agree with me and that is fine and dandy...
For me family are just people, they are persons you came to know not by a personal decision you made when you were finally able to make a decision about who, what, when and where people would be allowed in your life; therefore you got stuck with them until you are finally able to say look these are the kinds of people I want around me, and if they are not one of them then tough fucking luck for them.
The people you surround yourself with should be people that add something good to your life not drain the good you have going from it.  They shouldn't be people who drag you down and try to emotionally blackmail you because "they are family".  You should be surrounded by people who love you, the good kind of love the one that does not ask for anything in return, not by people who are constantly throwing it in your face how much they've done for you; yes this is to include your parents!!! As a parent it is my responsibility to provide for my child, make sure she is fed and clothed and well taken care of.  Having a child is a choice you make and you don't get to grow older and say to said child: ohh I did this for you or that for you! That was your fucking responsibility so if the child grows up and decides to not show any gratitude for it, then suck it! It would be your fault for not raising a child with manners although, they don't have the obligation to say thank you to you for anything!!!
So, if your family, those blood related people are causing you more pain than anything else, then stop talking to them, go out and find people that are like you, build a new family, there is no need to keep people that drag you down around, seriously, in life there will be enough of those that you might end up being forced to deal with because of a job you want to do, or a school you decide to go to.  Family is not people you were able to choose at the beginning of your life but they are most certainly people you can choose not to have around when you get older, if they don't bring anything good out of you, why the hell have them? I mean I could see keeping them around if they neither added or took away from your way of life and from how you want to handle your life but if they are taking away more and giving you more pain than joy then don't feel guilty about not talking to them. It is not an obligation to be around people you don't really want to be around, it is not an obligation to try and make their lives better, make your life better by getting rid of those who, as much as it hurts to say it, have done nothing more than hinder yourself from moving forward.  Let the guilt go and go form new relationships with people that are actually worth your effort, the people that don't ask for anything and that don't use emotional blackmail to get their way.
I promise that after the hurt of realizing how useless it is to say one has a family, it will get better, you will attract people like you, people that have same values and eventually you will have the opportunity to make your own family and instill those good values in it, however when your kids grow up and they decide that they do not want to be like you or go with the values you have taught them, then... let your kids be, they are only given to you to care for until they are old enough and capable enough to care for themselves, you will always love them but that love is not something you should ever ask in return.

Let's keep the talk going...

I am glad that there are still people talking about depression, because the reality is that everyone has gotten depressed at some point in their lives but we all have had ways of dealing with those feelings. Everyone is different, so everyone will react different. 

I have talked to many people through the years and a lot of them will say how selfish it is to commit suicide, you are not thinking about the people that love you but you are only thinking of yourself, at some point in my life I thought that it was an act of cowardice to go ahead and just end your life because it is easier to die than it is to keep on fighting. 

Then I put a lot more thought into it and realized how is neither selfish or an act of cowardice, it takes a lot more courage to end your life than it does to live it because we are born with the drive to live. A newborn cries when he/she is hungry because they want to be fed, they need to be fed in order to survive and everything we do throughout our lives is mostly done because we have a need to live. 

Most people are scared of dying, most will not even talk about it, we grow up thinking we will live tomorrow when we fully well know that we really don't know that. We plan our future because we want to live until that point... So, in order for someone to go for it and end their lives, they have to be in so much pain that they start to feel that ending life it's the best option. For me, there is no other explanation for it. 

But what causes people so much pain? Why are we now living in a world where depression and suicide rates are so high? I kept thinking about how we are asking people to speak up if they feel lonely and sad, and maybe it's just because I have this ideal that there are things that can definitely be prevented if we don't wait until the last minute to say how we feel, and maybe I am looking at this the wrong way but I feel we need to look deeper and find out why it is that people are getting so depressed. To look at the world around us and maybe make a difference before getting a call or having to make that call saying I can't handle any of this anymore and there is too much pain so let me just end it. 

We live in a world that has forced us to prioritize things in a way that shouldn't be. We are raising children in a world where what matters most is money and things. We are living in a world where we are disconnected from nature and more connected to devices. We live in a world that has handed us devices that make us think that we have more time to do more things, to talk to more people and give every single one of them our undivided attention. We live in a world where those devices have become such a part of us that some of us have experienced panic attacks because we forgot our phones at home, in fact most of us will go back to the house to pick up their phone even if they are running late for a meeting, and the phone is not important to us because we might get a call from someone, the phone is important to us because with it we entertain ourselves, we ignore calls and instead we text numerous people, we think that having 3 different conversations going is absolutely great and we fool ourselves into thinking that we are truly paying attention to everyone we are "talking" to. 

We give importance to the wrong things. We work so hard to have certain things in life, we want the house, the car, the saved money in the bank, we tell ourselves that once we are "financially stable" then we will be happy, but we continue to struggle with it, because the more we earn the more we want and the more we spend, the more debt we get into, the more we become slaves to money and things, because we think that we have to reward ourselves with the better car, the bigger house, the better phone, the new computer, etc etc for working our asses off in a job we really did not want to do in the first place but that we took simply because we were going to make enough money.

People become truly miserable living that way and yet they ignore it, they ignore it by repeating the above, when I get this I will be happy, when I get that I will be happy, meanwhile they are missing out on the things that really do make them happy. Those little things that fill you with so much joy that you shine, those things end up getting ignored because we are focused on the next thing, the next goal, the next raise. We forget to chase our dreams because we want to chase money, we dream of money, we have been brainwashed to think that all of our problems will be solved with money and we forget about the people. 

People are what matter, not the quantity of people we have around but the quality of them, the dreams we have are what matter not the money that you will get from reaching those dreams but the satisfaction that your soul gets from doing what you love. We are sitting here telling everyone to reach out when they are sad, and about to commit suicide but most of what I see being posted is a phone number for the National Suicide Line, and I keep thinking: boy! the world is changing in some way that I really don't like, we are saying here is a phone number of someone that will answer the phone because the persons you love the most and that you want to reach out to were too busy to pay attention and the likelihood that they will answer the phone is so low that we need to have a dedicated line of certified counselors (that don't know you at all) try to convince you why you are important in this world and why you need to keep living, because the people that should be reminding you of that every day got too busy chasing money and fame that ignored the signs of depression you started to show months or even years ago. 

I feel we don't just need to ask people to speak up, we also need to ask ourselves to listen. I feel that we need to pay more attention to the people we love. I feel we need to start prioritizing differently. We need to change the way we do things and we need to start living life, so that we don't get to that depressing point of having to reach out to someone for help when it could all have been avoided. While it is true that depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain, it is also true that we are creating that imbalance not just by focusing on the wrong things but also by thinking we can do more than we actually can. We are now in a world that allows you to somehow (and this is the only way that I have of describing it) collect people, we now, in some part of our brain look at people like things, without realizing it. Our children are being raised in that world, how many teens are on Facebook and looking at their "friend" count? How many adults are doing the same? How many put so much emphasis on it? The more we have the more popular we are and somehow we tell ourselves that will makes us feel better when it really doesn't, we are living in a world surrounded by people and feeling the loneliest we've ever felt and we ignore it. 

There is a famous Robin Williams quote that says: "I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone." That is the world we live in now because we are putting too much emphasis on the how many rather than on the quality of people, and to me that is one of the biggest recipes for disaster. I am not saying to you quit social media and focus on the people you love, I am just saying focus more on the interactions you have with people, focus more on the people that really matter to you, make the people you feel are important in your life feel that they are that important to you. Don't let them feel like they are alone, give them time, there is no better way of showing them that you love them than by giving them your time. When we start to realize that a job is really not that important, that things are really not that important because the reality is that you can replace both those things but you can't replace the important people in your life, that's when the world will start to be different. When we actually start doing things to change this behavior of slavery towards things rather than just telling ourselves that we are going to do that, then we will see a change in the world. When we start changing ourselves rather than waiting for the world to change, that is when the world will start changing. When we stop ridiculing people for following their dreams and not the money. When we start doing the things we love rather than saying hey let me work right now as much as I can right now, save money for retirement and then I can do the things I love while ignoring the fact that we don't know if we will get to live to that age and we should start living and doing the things we love now. When we start to be grateful for what we have rather than being focused on getting more. When we stop talking and start acting, then the world will change. 

I really wish people would pay more attention to those around you, those you consider important in your life, I wish we stopped using the "I'm too busy" excuse to not make that phone call, I wish people didn't just say "you are important in my life" but actually showed it, if we did that then maybe the world would be less depressed and less people would commit suicide or even attempt it. I wish people would encourage others to really follow their dreams and what makes them happy, maybe then we would have less depression and more happiness. I wish that we spent more time actually talking than typing a whole conversation out.  Most of all I wish people would actually look at themselves and have the courage to admit when something is wrong rather than ignoring it until it becomes too heavy to bear. 

So not just tell people to speak up, they need someone to be there to listen, someone that they know and that really cares about them, the ones you love need you more than your boss, the ones you love need you more than they need the things you will be able to buy them for Christmas after all the extra hours you decided you needed to work. The ones you love need your time and you need theirs, don't fool yourself thinking that when you get that next raise you will be happier, that the people you love will be happier not being able to spend time with you because now that you got that promotion you have to work more hours. Show them that they are important and let them show you that you are too, don't ignore the call for that person you love, it does not matter who they are, mom, dad, significant other, sister, niece, nephew, cousin or dear friend... Stop getting so caught up in living to work and start working on living, I have a feeling that if we all did that we would be a lot happier and a lot less depressed...

Because everyone just keeps talking about it...

For the past few days people have been bombarding the talk about suicide and depression. I've read many different articles that were written just after the passing of the dear comedian Robin Williams, everyone saying how we just don't know how much pain someone is in, he was someone who dedicated his life to making other people laugh and yet he somehow could not make himself happy. 

I've read an extreme amount of articles on addiction and depression and mental illness. All of which appear sometimes to be three different things and others they appear to be looked at as the same thing but with different names. 

People keep pointing out that if you are starting to feel sad or depressed you should reach out to someone and talk, the national suicide line phone number has now become a constant post that appears on every post about Robin's death.

And while I believe that is great to bring awareness, I also think that we are all missing one big point here which I mentioned on my last post, and that is that we are all living in a world that fosters feelings of depression. 

We live in a society where we are bombarded by sad news, depressing news all the time, what makes it to the news are the guy who stabbed his whole family because he says that was his destiny, the woman who threw her newborn down a cliff, the war that is going on between two countries (a war that has been going on for many many years), the beheading of children because they are of a different religion.  How can someone not get depressed when we are constantly reading or hearing stuff like this. 

Then you add the ideals that society has set as standards for living a full and happy life. Standards like you must have a house, you must buy a nice car, you must get an education, you must get married, you must make this kind of money, you must have good health, you must keep a certain amount of money in the bank, you are only successful when you keep moving up the corporate ladder, etc etc... A society that has the standard that says: everyone has to be the same but at the same time everyone must be different.

Have you ever stopped and think about how fucking hard that is? You have to follow certain guidelines which, as society says, will bring you happiness, and we go on and work on dreams that other people have had, we work so hard to get to that next step, to have the money in the bank, to have the family, to buy the house and yet when we get all of it we are still unhappy because the reality is that that was not really what we wanted to do in the first place. We put so much work and we stress out over the things we have not yet achieved and that society says we should have achieved by a certain age that we forget about what we really want. 

We listen to what our parents and peers have to say on how they've lived their life and we think because it worked for them (even when we see that they are not really happy) that it will work for us. We forget about what we want and we give more importance to the voices of other people rather than our own, and when we finally realize this it is either too late or we end up feeling alone in the world because we decide to do things differently and everyone else has decided to judge us. 

We are also living on a society who has been completely disconnected from human relationships, human contact, we no longer know how to read someone's body language because we are not around anyone to actually practice reading that. Our instincts that once would tell us that someone was in trouble or in pain are not being used anymore and therefore we are losing the capacity to go and help someone before they actually come to us and ask for help. 

Think about this... I don't know if it is true but reports state that Robin Williams wife left the house without seeing him that morning because she thought he was still sleeping, on a different room nonetheless. I keep wondering what would have happened if she would have walked in his room before leaving the house and actually checked up on him, not that I am blaming her because it's not her fault but what would have happened if we were more connected with each other rather than with devices?

We live in a society that has stopped listening because we are too busy reading and thinking that we can have 20 different conversations at the same time, we ignore the people we are surrounded by and that are right in front of us because others are trying to catch our attention. We decide that we will go ahead and use a text message to speak to someone we care about while we are also working or doing other stuff that does not allow us to actually stop for one moment grab the phone and talk. Basically we live in a society that gives less importance to people and more importance to things. 

So how can we be so astounded when we see that the rates of depression and suicide among Americans are rapidly rising through the years, we have done this, we have created this! How many of you actually put your phones away or actually listen to someone talk anymore... I get irritated because most of my friends now find it easier to text than they do to talk and it always feels when a conversation is not continuous (because that is what happens when you are texting, you get distracted and stop the subject and then try to pick it up later) like it is not important for any of them to actually take the time and stop to talk, yet here we all are asking everyone to speak up when we don't even want to give the time needed to listen. 

This society has also been teaching us that we must be strong, that we must get over things, especially things that society has classified as silly, even though things affect people in different ways, we expect everyone to react in the same manner to the same situation. The most ridiculous thing that I have yet to experience, not everyone is the same and while we hear that over and over we still expect everyone to be. And while it is true that you cannot help someone who does not want to be helped, it is also true that you cannot tell someone who is seeking help that they are seeking help for something that to you is silly because to them it is not.

We live in a world that judges us for the emotions we feel and that we show and yet that same world that laughs at us for what it believes is a silly thing our minds have created is now calling out for us to speak up and tell it when we don't feel right. That same world that has become a playground where everyone plays on their own and where everyone ignores everyone is now telling us that we need to speak up because it is ready to listen. 

The worst part of all of this is that this great awareness that has been created over the suicide of someone who lived to make others laugh but was apparently very sad inside will start to fade out in the next few days, and suddenly everyone will go back to their old lives and keep running towards things that will not matter when you die. They will continue to ignore and will continue make things a priority. They will go back to being unhappy and pretending that they are, they will go back to making fun of others' emotions until once again someone that touched so many lives will do the same and then the talk will be reopen, but it will all just be talk because not many will actually change their ways. 

I truly wish we could all sit back and accept how different we are from one another, how our differences is what makes this world so perfect, I wish we could all realize that the set standards that society has given us will not make everyone happy, it might make some happy but not all. I wish we had the courage to go after our dreams and not after someone else's, following our dreams and our hearts will always fill us with light. I wish people wouldn't judge others and cut their wings when they decide that they are going to take a leap of faith and follow that dream that everyone said would be really hard to achieve. I wish we could all fill our void not with worry but with faith, and most of all I wish we paid more attention to the people in our lives rather than the devices that surround us. Maybe if we did that, we would find less people depressed and more people happy. 

What can we learn from the Savannah situation on Mistresses

Here I was watching Monday's episode of Mistresses and while I really thought they would not be able to keep this season as interesting as last season and after agreeing with most everyone that after last season's cliff hanger the first episode of the second season was really not that great, the writers have managed to keep me coming back and keep on watching.  

With that said, while watching Monday's episode it suddenly dawned on me how much the show can teach us about interpersonal relationships and out ability to actually have and keep one going.

Let me start with Savannah and Harry, perfect example of how a couple that has been together for several years can fall apart and the relationship be completely destroyed because of lack of communication. HUH you say? She cheated on him with her co-worker, what am I talking about right? Well, why did she cheat? how did she end up in the hands of Dominic (by the way I really don't like him at all, I don't care how hot he looks), she had an argument with Harry and Harry was not really ready to talk about what was going on in his head so he decided to close himself up to his wife and in doing so his wife felt like now everything was gonna be over and therefore well the moment she had with Dom ended up being something that turned out to be super messy.....

Now, I am not giving Savi a free pass, she definitely made a mistake and she made a big one! Breaking the trust of the person that has been there with you for all those years and who has been loyal to you is just not right at all... But shit happens and once it did then what? After Harry found out and the reaction he had, which let me tell you something anyone that said that it was bad to react that way and ask her to choose between him and her baby, just put yourself in that situation for one moment... Your wife comes to tell you that she is pregnant with the child of another guy after having sex with said guy just one time and after you and her have been trying to get pregnant for a long time and after you were just told that it was not your wife the one with the problem but that it was you, how the hell would you react? Do you really expect anyone to react any different? This is why it is called a reaction, you really don't think about things when you are full of confusion, sadness and disappointment. 

Which leads me to another thing this teaches us, something all of us should already know but because we are human we really don't apply it much to our day to day lives: NEVER, I repeat NEVER, make a decision or talk about something while you are still having all these negative feelings flowing in you, and NEVER, I mean NEVER, push a person to talk about an issue if they are not ready to do so, you will end up hurt and might end up hearing words that you won't be able to get out of your head, something else that you will have to overcome. 

And that brings me to this: In everything you will encounter in life, every problem you encounter, and with every relationship you will ever have one of the other key components is how much patience you will have to handle it.  No one can expect someone else to get over hurt and sorrow and a break in loyalty immediately, it takes time to heal and when trust has been broken it takes a lot of time to over come that, some people are able to do so and others are not, but it is whether you have the capability to wait and see if the other person comes around, if they are worthy of you waiting, especially if you are the one that messed up, then you wait, and you stay put, but our inability to do so is usually what drive us to make the wrong decisions and fall into the wrong situations. When you don't know which decision to make is best to make none, eventually I promise you that you will find the clarity and the answer will come.

Savi did not wait, she wanted Harry to get over things quickly, and then when the car accident happened and Harry came around she decided to push him away and stay with Dom, she was hurt because of how things had been and instead of waiting to heal, she chose in a moment that was clouded by emotions and not thinking that sometimes it takes something big to happen in order to make another human being realize what they have, it's a shame that that's how life works but it's how it works.  Sometimes just the idea that that other person is no longer gonna be there with you or for you ends up making you realize how much they mean to you and the rest ends up being insignificant.

Let's touch a little on the Savannah and Dominic relationship...

Any relationship that starts with one person knowingly deceiving another person is bound to fail, now I am not saying that it is not possible to make things work, but think about this the mistrust that Savannah pointed out to Dominic at the beginning of season 2 will always be there, it was still there, she did not trust Dominic, I think she really does not trust anyone at the moment, not even herself so how can you expect anyone to trust her. I was kind of glad that the episode ended the way it did, it brings me to another lesson, no matter whether you are the one that hurt someone else or the one being hurt, you have to take time to be with your own thoughts and figure out exactly what it is you want. Savannah never did that, you can't go from a relationship that has lasted years and jump right into another one, you have to have time to figure what the hell happened, even when you were the one cheating, why did you cheat? did you cheat because you were not in love with the person you were with anymore or did you cheat because you were feeling that there was something missing that it was actually there before? In either case you have to learn about it and it takes time to do so, it does not happen over night and you will definitely not figure it out while you are investing your time in a new relationship. 

All in all, this situation that has been presented in the show, which I think a lot of people can relate to in one way or another and it's why the show is (in my view) very powerful, shows us that interpersonal relationships take a lot of effort, a lot of work on both parts, a lot of patience and an extreme amount of understanding of the other person to make them work. The trust and loyalty you build with another person is priceless, getting to know someone in a deeper level takes a lot of time and communication, you never really stop learning from them and every situation that might arise will give you further insight on them, their reactions will not always be what we expect because in order for us to know exactly how someone will react we first have to put that someone in that situation and if the situation has not arise before then you won't know, they won't know and if they don't know then you have to give it time, the question in the end will be: Is this relationship worth saving? If it is then it is worth the wait, and if it is worth the wait then you should do just that, wait. If it is not then you should take time on your own and slowly move on, and if you are focusing on having the next relationship, the next encounter and worrying when it will happen then you are not really spending time on your own, don't jump into the next relationship thinking that the next person will make all your doubts disappear and make you happy, that is a lot of responsibility to put on someone, especially when that other person will still be working on making themselves happy. Always remember that the only person that will ever be able to put your mind at ease and that can truly make you happy is you. 

In the end everything is alright...

Ohh the uncertainties of life...
Life is amazing and painful all at the same time, it comes with ups and downs, sometimes though it seems like there are more downs than ups and that is usually because it is in our nature to focus on the downs, because somehow we think that focusing on the downs we will be able to get the ups faster and be able to keep the ups around longer. I mean we are creatures that learn from their mistakes (usually if we are smart enough). Naturally when we burn ourselves for the first time we try to not do what we did the time we burned ourselves a second time. We learn from the mistake and by thinking about what we did wrong we in turn avoid getting hurt again.
But that's not how everything in life works. We live in a world where we are not in control of anything (I have written this before), we are at the mercy of not only our decisions but the decisions that others make. The idea that everything will be alright in the end is our idea of hope, it is the idea that even when we do make a mistake and we get burned eventually the burn will heal and we will grow new skin and then everything will be ok. It is our idea of faith, whether you believe it is the work of a supreme being or the work of just how things flow naturally in the universe.
Lately I've been repeating those words to myself because lately I have been feeling that everything is not going to be alright, that things are falling apart and because I can't see past a few steps from where I am standing and because I don't have a full picture of the puzzle of my life, I am not able to see the outcome of it, I can't see the how the pieces fit or what part of the picture they are making. And that is why we get anxious... Because we want to see the final picture, we want to see the puzzle put together, we want to rush it and not wait the time we need to wait in order to see it form, it is one of our greatest faults: our inability to be patient, especially after a period when everything was falling into place, or it seemed like it was and then something sudden changes and it either stops the flow for a little bit or some of the pieces that were given to you are taken away.
So what do we have then? All we can really do is hope... For me I have had to go back and see how my life has unfolded, from the moment I moved to this country, leaving the people I loved the most and that would always protect me no matter what and ending up with an abusive father who I thought I knew but it turned out I didn't.
Then I see myself ending up with a drug addicted husband, and ending up with a 9 month old baby living in a room with no phone, no internet, no way of communicating with anyone and at the mercy that my husband would not get too high so that he would remember that he had to come back and get us so we could eat because we also did not have food in our fridge...
I go back to all those times and I think to myself: hell I have been through a lot worse than what I am going through right now, and back then all I had to do was listen to that little voice inside which ended up guiding me to better things... I listened to that voice and I was able to get out of that room and was able to see my baby grow, and to keep her with me during those first years of live.
I remember when I had lost a job that was covering my expenses and how after I lost it I had no where to go, and then I remember when I worried the most all I had to do was try and keep quiet and just listen to the universe and the answer would be given to me right on time... That is how I found a different job, one that I needed at the time, I needed to work from home and I needed a salary and I needed benefits so I went to sleep and I said this is what I need... I kid you not the next day I woke up and I felt like searching for work at home jobs on Google, the very first company I saw, I had not seen ever before, I applied and got the job. Few weeks later I wanted to move to an apartment on my own, not just a rented room like we had at that point. And so I went where I felt I was being called to, I don't know why but I just followed that feeling, two months later I was moving into my very own apartment, it was not the best place in the world but it was ours.
6 months went by and I visited a different city, I had driven on a Friday all day after having little sleep the night before, I got to my hotel and totally passed out... The next morning I had this feeling that I needed to move at the end of my lease, not something I wanted to do at the time, not the city I wanted to move to eventually, and most definitely without having any money to move to a different city. So I said well, what will be will be... 6 months went by and I came to the city I am now living in again, somehow the money was there to travel and look for an apartment, I did not even know where it all came from, being a person that lives month to month like most people these days, I really had no idea how I was going to pull it off and even less of an idea of how I was going to pull off the move, one thing was spending money on going to look for an apartment, another thing was to actually spend money on moving.
After I applied for the apartment I got a call a few days later, I had gotten approved, the deposit that was needed for the apartment was less than what they originally told me it was going to be and as an added bonus it was exactly what I had additional in my bank account after I had paid all my bills that month. It somehow worked, I had no idea how but it did, and so I just went with it... Things just worked out, I had no idea and I still don't have the slightest idea as to why I am in this city... I have tried to figure it out, sometimes I thought it was because the schools are better than back where I was, other times I think is because of the people that I've met so far, other times I think it is because here is where I will be able to find one more piece to my puzzle or maybe a few more pieces, I really don't know, it made absolutely no sense and it still doesn't.
All I know is that for this moment this is where I have to be, ups and downs don't matter because every up gives you hope and every down somehow brings you to another up and to another piece of your puzzle, you just don't see it right now, because we can't see the destination yet, we are not there yet. Life is like traveling, you can only see a few miles ahead of you, sometimes you see that there is a bad storm ahead, because in the highway you can see the clouds at the distance and you think how you are going to have to drive through that and then you reach the storm and only go through a couple of miles of rain, but we could not see past that distance...
So here I am again, closing into a storm and worrying about it while I don't yet know if it is just a mile of it or if it is a few miles of it. Here I am worrying about how everything is turning even when I felt like it was not going to, when the ride was the smoothest, now I am hitting a lot of bumps and getting hurt and exhausted by them... But that's when I have to stop and I have to think about how life has worked out before, how I am still on the road and the road is not always bumpy, how I have to learn to separate the fear of not knowing the next thing that will happen with the hope of what I want at the moment and with what my goal or purpose in life is which in the end is the only thing that matters. What we want to achieve, that final picture, the one we are being given the puzzle pieces to, the one that will give us the greatest joy, that is all that matters and if we forget for one moment about that and we decide to focus on what we want at this moment in time, or how we want the bumps of the road completely gone we will end up taking a detour and finishing that puzzle will end up taking a lot longer than we expect.
Don't listen to the fear of the storm, don't worry about the little bumps, listen to your voice, is this right? where the directions that you took correct and this is part of the road to your greatest happiness or did you take a detour because you decided that what you wanted right now was more important this moment in time than your final destination? You always have the answer, it is not always logical but you always have it, don't let fear consume you, don't let it get the best of you and don't let it force you to immediate gratification because immediate gratification always ends quickly, it never lasts. Great things and great places take a long time to make and a long time to get to.

How I found me again....

It's funny how sometimes we never think that we will ever feel like we don't know ourselves anymore, we get depressed and unhappy, we lose that joy we used to have and if we cannot find that "light" we naturally have we then feel lost.
I felt like that for quite sometime, in between all the stress from work, finances, new schedules, new adventures and having new people around, it is amazing how all of it combined can become so darn overwhelming that you just don't know where to go and sometimes don't even know what to do, I even got to the point where I was starting to feel lonely, I had forgotten what that word was, the last time I felt like that was when I was living with my husband and it wasn't until I left him that I did not feel whole again, I never understood that, I mean how do you feel so alone when you have someone by your side?
This past weekend I realized why, it was not such a bad thing and it was not a great realization either but it helped find myself again... So here is what I have realized....
In the past few weeks I have probably been surrounded by an extreme amount of people that have offered in one way or another to help out whenever I need, my usual self would just never even take a second look at those offers, I would just always not expect anything from anyone but myself because in the end you can't really control what other people do but you sure as hell can control what you do, so why ever put any expectation that one person or a group of people would ever do anything for you, why expect them to be there at all??? whether it is for them to be there for moral support or because you actually need them to help you out with something?
Well a few months ago I decided maybe I should expect a little more from people, maybe I should have a little faith in them I mean all cannot be bad right? Maybe one of them will really truly come through for me so I decided that I was gonna give them all a chance... well I guess in my head, my brain was not set to also just not get disappointed when they did not come through because in reality they owed me nothing, they did not have to offer any help and they did not have to help me out at all, but I guess the fact that I figured maybe it was gonna be different brought me more disappointment than I thought I would have ever gotten...
And that's when it started, that was the beginning of me becoming completely and absolutely lost, depressed and the beginning of me feeling like I was never going to find my light again....
I hated feeling like that, mostly because I know negativity is contagious and now I had all these different people around me and I really did not want them to end up in the same rut I was in.  A lot of time was spent thinking what the heck happen, where did I go wrong and what did I do to feel this way? Then a lot of things started piling up: bills, personal issues and finally what always ends up happening when you are being negative and end up stressing out: I got sick!!!
The tiredness, the sleepless nights, the stress, all of it added up to horrible migraines that lasted weeks!!!! It's amazing how much your body is affected by stress, it can literally kill you!
It was not until the end of week number four of terrible migraines that I realized what had happened, that was when I was so darn dizzy, throwing up every time I got up, I could barely walk from the pain and even the pain killers did absolutely nothing but seemed to make the migraine worse... That third day of this I was laying in bed, crying from the pain because it was extreme, I mean the pain was so bad that I would have rather thrown myself off a balcony than keep feeling it, I called those that had once offered help, I knew then I needed it, I really needed help, I had reached my limit, I could not stand the pain and everything I had tried has not worked, I needed to go to the hospital and someone needed to take me because I could barely walk and I did not think I would have survived a bus ride.
So that's when I started calling people, I could not stand the light of my phone at all, that's how bad it was, but everyone was either busy or did not answer... I cried some more, this time because that lonely feeling filled me up, my daughter was not with me, and I felt like there was no one around that would force me to be strong for, it is amazing how your kids feed you so much power, so much strength! So I kept crying and in my crying I asked God, the universe, the Spirit, whatever it is that you might call it, I asked why I felt this way, I asked why was I so alone? I asked why everyone was not around when I really needed them??? And then the answer hit me! It was like I was hearing someone loud and clear telling me: What do you mean you are so alone? You have always been on your own, never have you needed anyone and the times you have needed someone you have gotten someone there... That's when I called 911 and asked for help, one of the scariest things I have had to do because I feel like even though it was an emergency there should have been another way for me to get there, but there really wasn't so it was my last resort.  I got to the hospital and the doctor thought it could be something more serious than a migraine so they did a CAT scan and a lumbar puncture, that last one hurt so much, they pretty much put me to sleep when  I got there but for the lumbar puncture I had to be awake and all I gotta say is: THAT HURT!!! and while I was sitting there having a needle inserted in my back, I thought once again how nice it would be for me to have someone I loved and that cared about me there holding my hand making me feel safe, and how much I probably needed that at that moment, but then it hit me again!!! This is was not the first time you have gone through something like this and it is not gonna be the last time even though I secretly hope that it is, I really hope that I don't get a migraine that is that bad again, but hell if I do, I know I can take care of it myself!
I was alone and once again I felt lonely and I started missing those who had really been there for me before and who had actually kept their word when it came to that, and then I realized how the times I really needed someone there was always someone there, so this time maybe I did not need anyone and that was ok, it was ok because it reminded me of how strong I can be, how even when I am scared to death I somehow find it within me to keep going, how I always figured things out on my own, even without my daughter because one day she will leave and will have her own life and that's ok, that is how things are supposed to be, we are born alone and we die alone and any company we are ever able to get it's just supposed to be added joy.
The next day, even though my back was still hurting but I was glad it was just a really bad migraine, I found my light once again, that light I had lost when I put my faith in other people and not myself, that light that had been slowly turned off by every disappointment I have had in the past few months, and each one of them is no one's fault except mine... Yes, my fault for expecting more from people, rather than continue to not expect much and just be extremely delighted and surprised if they actually did anything, my fault for forgetting that the only person that has the power and that can make a true difference in my own life is me and no one else, my fault for allowing others to make me feel this way because in the end you are in charge of how you feel and while you are allowed to feel angry, sad, depressed, etc, you have the power to not allow it to consume you to the point of making you so sick...
Yes, I still have a ton of things to figure out, I still have a lot of things to get used to, yes there is still a lot of things that will cause stress in my life, but there is one thing I know for sure: I don't need anyone to help me out, I wanted people around but I learned that is not always possible, and while this is sort of a sad realization because some will say how sad it is that you have lost your faith in others, I say yeah it is sad and probably if they all knew that I am not expecting anything from them anymore, that I really don't expect them to ever come through for me, and I really don't think they care that much and if they do well that's great, maybe they would be disappointed in me but you know what? That's ok, because that would be their own feelings to deal with, they would not be mine.
In the meantime I will continue to be the person I know I am, the one that can pull through anything that is thrown at her and that will always be there for everyone not just promising that I will be there for those that I love, but actually being there when they want me there, because I know that the times they need me around I know for sure I will be there, that's the kind of person I am, and I truly hope I don't ever forget it again, life always puts you in certain situations not to make you stronger but to remind you of how strong you really are and now I can start working on climbing out of the hole I had fallen into and I can't wait to get completely out of it one step at the time!!! :)

If you'd let me...

Life has been a little hard sometimes, which has turned me a little cold, but deep inside I am full of love.
If you'd let me I would love you more than anyone could, I would care for you more than anyone would.
If you'd let me I would be the best friend you ever had, the one who would not leave your side, that friend that would always be there no matter what.
I know it seems odd to say all this after so long but if you'd let me show you I know one day you would not want to let me go.
If you'd let me show you, you could see that I'm the one for you, if you'd let me love you and care for you, you'd know I was telling the truth.
Too bad pride always gets in the way, because if I could tell you all this to your face maybe it would make a difference one day.
I'm sorry I was so cold and distant, it was not my intent, just know that I do love you and I wish you the best.

One of my greatest fears

The fear of being loved, that sounds so crazy and odd at the same time, I mean who the hell fears being loved?
Well I do, yeap! I recently came to the painful realization that I am afraid of being loved and cared for, if I have someone that even starts showing the most remote sign of loving me, I want to run as fast as I can in the other direction, and when I can't run I just push them away because it is easier for them to walk away rather than me running.
I started to ask myself why I was this way, after all most people are usually afraid of falling in love and not of being loved, human beings want to be loved and cared for but I, I want to love people and for them to not love me in return? What a weirdo I am! So I kept thinking, my mother says I think too damn much, but I needed to figure this one out because recently I have pushed away some really good friends and I see a pattern developing that I might not like and I came to the conclusion that the reason I don't like or want people loving me is because I don't want them to be disappointed, I don't want to disappoint them.
Yes, I fear that once they love me I will end up doing something to them that will disappoint them, and disappointing someone that loves me and that I love back would hurt me more than me being disappointed by someone I love; I mean I have learned that the greatest thing you can do is love someone, even if they don't love you back you should be glad that such great feeling grew inside of you, and that you should always love without the expectation of being loved in return because love is free, it is truly given and it is pure love only when it is given without the expectation of it being returned; however I know that most people don't think like that.
It has always been my motto to spread love but then when it came to someone loving me ohh gosh that's when I would be absolutely and positively scared. And so now I ask myself why are you afraid that you will disappoint someone that loves you? In fact why would they get disappointed in the first place? I mean if they love you they are gonna love you with all your flaws and virtues, they should know that you are not exactly perfect and will be bound to make a few mistakes (hopefully not unforgivable mistakes) and that you are not gonna try to harm them on purpose.
But see, that's where I realized that my years living with my father have screwed me up more than I could ever imagine, see I know my father loves me (in his own twisted way) but he does love me, however throughout the years there have only been a very few times that I actually thought I was making him proud, everything else was a constant criticism, it was all wrong and I could always see the disappointment in his eyes, and that hurt me more than anything, that I could be so imperfect that I would end up hurting someone that way. So then I thought, why am I wanting to be so perfect, what is perfection anyway? And perfection really is a matter of perception; for me something or someone might be perfect but for another human being they will not be, and yeah we all say we are humans we are not perfect but I like to think that we all are, is just that we are all so different that there are certain of our traits that others will not like and in the end when you are in a relationship you pretty much decide which traits you are able to live with and which ones you are not, but then again why do I fear not being "perfect" and it goes back to the disappointment someone will have, what will they say and how will they criticize me. My father would always let me know all the bad I did, never pointed out the good and that hurt me too, again because I was not good enough and in turn I taught myself well if I am not going to be good enough for anyone then I might as well make sure that I spare them the feeling of disappointment (which I had felt with my father also when I realized how he really was) by keeping my distance when they showed any signs of emotional attachment.
And so I have gone through the past few years of my life doing exactly that, I have to add that my ex-husband did not help my cause either because when we separated he decided also that he would criticize everything I did, and suddenly I became for him the worst mom in the world, worst wife, worst friend, worst cook, worst everything (yeah he is a drug addict and insane but still it plays with your head and psychological well being).
The past few weeks I have already stopped talking to one of my best friends because he had said to me that he was sad that he only got to see me for 20 minutes when I went to visit my sister in the town that they all live in, I felt like he was so disappointed in me and it was because he loves me so much that he really expected to spend more time but since I couldn't and was so focus on other friends I made him feel left out, he tried talking to me and I found myself being rather cold and short, yes I went back to reading how I answered and I realized that was my way of saying ok I am not doing this again I love you but I don't want to disappoint you so I am walking the other way, don't come any closer.
I was also sort of seeing this guy and I guess you could say maybe we both mixed everything that was going on at the time, I really liked him but me being a single mom there is only so much time that I can give to anyone, at the beginning (like it always happens) this guy wanted to spend time with me, and while it was a nice feeling, I was absolutely scared of it, because what if he did not get that I did not want more than what we had and then decided he wanted more and I couldn't give him more, he would be disappointed and maybe he did not care about it too much and he was just going with what he felt but I just decided I would push away, so when it was offered for me to spend the night I said no I cannot, then when it was offered to go out I said no I cannot, and just kept on going until one night and maybe I am absolutely wrong on this one but I think things changed there because words like "typical girl" were texted and while he says he was in a good mood and maybe I totally misread his texts (which is why is always better to talk in person or over the phone and be clear with your words) so I took it as well there goes another disappointed human being, I tried to be me without building too much emotional attachment so that disappointment does not happen but it did, the problem is though that again I'm not afraid of being lovable, I'm afraid of then being like that with me, however I do understand that if you show affection for someone, sometimes that is reciprocated and you can not really expect for someone to just accept your love and not show you some affection in return, unless you are friends with a sociopath.
Same happened to me with other people, I mean I have moved as far away from my family and friends as I possibly can and every time I meet someone new that wants to either help me or just genuinely care about me I freak and I run. I met this guy when I went to visit my sister, and yes the universe has a way of putting the perfect people in front of you at the right time, he is divorced, has a kid and works 12 hours shifts three days in a row and then has his child for four days, he had such a keen interest in me, and of course everything was fine, of course he knows he lives in a different city and lives too far and knows I will not move and neither will he, but he started with this whole I would love to date you, and I kind of miss you (first of who the hell misses someone they have not spent any time with other than just texting on the darn phone) and suddenly the urge to run the other way started, and I thought, hello! He is not here, you are not going to ever be I danger of him loving you but I had to say to him: you do realize that this thing you want will never happens, because I will never move back down there and you are not going to be here ever so... And then I thought to myself that was probably not the best or nicest thing to say to this individual, who was genuinely just expressing what he felt at that moment in time and from then on I became as cold as I could possibly be.
With my family the same reasoning was applied: as long as I keep my distance I will not disappoint you, you will not see what I do, what I don't do, what I have and what I don't have, what I have accomplished and what I haven't and it will all be good, you will love me and never be disappointed because what you cannot see that I might be doing wrong will not hurt you and of course that will also keep you from letting me know that you are disappointed and making me angry when you tell me how I did every thing wrong, so I guess in a way this is all a mixture of not wanting to be criticized and not wanting to hurt the people that love me, which leads me to how extremely insane I can be, and makes me wonder if there are people out there that feel exactly the same way but just don't say it because they are also afraid that it coming out will disappoint someone that they love.