Perfection is about Perception.

I think I have probably said this one before, perfection is all about perception. What is perfect for you it's more than likely not perfect for someone else and vice-versa.  Unfortunately the world we live in is ran by the idea that what is perfect for most should be the guideline for perfection for everyone and in the end if that guideline cannot be achieved by one of us then we are told: "well, nothing is perfect."

So, wait? Does perfection really exists?

Yes, it does, and yes, it is all about your perception of things. To me, the world itself is a perfect place, you could not make it any more perfect. WHAT? Yes, I know, there are wars, there are things we consider unfair, yes people argue, yes people kill others, yes sometimes we look at the world and think everything is not fair when it should be so we say: the world is not perfect. But there is where my perception comes into place... See without any of the "bad" things that happen in the world, I would be less appreciative of the "good" things that happen in the world and in that same regard if the "bad" things did not happen then I would have no idea of what a "good" thing is, so to me the two go together and while I do get upset and angry to some of the "unfair" things that happen, I also know that I wouldn't appreciate it as much when I saw "fair" things happen.

What about people? Are people perfect? 

Again this all comes to a matter of your perception, and on that note: Everyone is fucking perfect!!! All of you are perfect!!! WHAT??? In my perception of things, every person in this planet has a role, no life is useless even the ones whose life we think are, even that mass murderer has a purpose. We all come here to learn something, and in order for each of us to learn we have to be put through different scenarios in life, and all those scenarios would not be possible without other people, even the "bad" people.

That's why some of us are born to parents who according to societal rules are far from perfect and that should have never been parents in the first place but they somehow became parents and we were lucky to have them and then as we grow older we figure out what exactly our role is gonna be, some end up making themselves better parents, others end up becoming criminals or drug addicts when they attempt to figure out the why oh why life was like that... And with either circumstance our soul learns what it needs to learn (at least I sure hope it does, otherwise it is believed that it will keep coming through the same scenarios until it does). 

There are others who are born to what society will call "excellent" parents, and then just like those lucky to have been born to parents that should have never been parents, they have to figure out what their role is, some end up becoming drug addicts or criminals because they think they have to be like their parents, just as "perfect" or the idea of perfection that their parents have created, while others end up being what society calls "well-balanced" and "emotionally healthy" human beings.  Either way each side and those in between have something to learn. Which is why I say: We are all perfect!!! All of us, our differences make us perfect!

This is what brings me to this question, one that came up yesterday: why is it that people suffer with the idea that they can never be perfect? Everyone is always looking for the perfect relationship, to build the perfect marriage, to raise the perfect kids, have the perfect house and in the end they all end up disappointed with the idea that nothing is perfect when truly we already are perfect! (And I know some will say well if we were then we wouldn't need to learn things, well... that is part of our perfection, we are beings who are always learning and that makes us even more perfect, otherwise we would just be boring know-it-alls and if everyone knew everything then this world would be just plain boring and in my perception of things boring is just not perfect...)

We suffer with the idea that we will never be perfect because we have been taught from the moment we are born of what perfection is, and when it is not achieved we are told: don't worry about it, nothing is perfect. And so then we repeat that to ourselves until we believe it and then just try to learn with it, or we end up depressed because we can never achieve perfection, it's impossible. See, here is the thing I've learned, because perfection is about perception, you have to leave behind the perception of the rest of the world around you, your parents included, and this is one of the hardest things you will ever do! and then you have to figure out what is perfect for you, what will work for you, what will make YOU happy, and then go out and do that, and whatever everyone else says it's just their opinion and not one you should follow unless you absolutely want to. 

Once you figure out what perfect is to you, you might end up realizing that you have spent a shit load of time trying to be the perfect of someone else's standards. All your relationships suddenly become something that either you would have never entered into had it not been for the illusion of perfection of someone else or something you would have never left and would have worked harder to make it work had it not been because it wasn't someone else's idea of perfection. This also applies for jobs and everything you do in life in general. For someone it might be perfect that you go and pick a major that you don't necessarily love or want a job in but that will land you a good paying job once you graduate and that's just perfect for them, but it does not mean it will be perfect for you, you might end up landing that "great" job with "great" benefits and pay but you won't feel fulfilled and it will suck, at which time you will wonder if you did the right thing or not, but let me tell you something... If you are not happy then you did not do the right thing.

Same goes with trying to get the perfect house, raising the perfect kids, perfect marriage, who the hell decided to put in writing what exactly a perfect marriage is? For some they have the perfect marriage with someone they only spend 5% of time at peace with and the other 95% of the time they spend arguing and trying to fix the problems that arise every day and for others they find it that it is perfect for them to have a marriage where no one is arguing and everyone agrees on everything. Which one you choose is really up to you and no one else. But it is not until we actually figure out what our ideal of perfection without the ideal of perfection of others (and if I am forced to put it in different words: what will bring us happiness and joy to our lives without the input of others) that we will actually be able to change our perception of the "perfect" world and begin to walk in the path that will lead to our ultimate happiness, it will be then that we can begin to accept ourselves of how we are and we can begin to live a little more freely and with less stress and more joy.

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.

What I learned from a drug addict

So I was thinking about many things today, one that caught my mind was the way people are always telling me how bad they feel that I married a drug addict and ended up as a single mom, well I don't! I don't feel bad at all (I did feel like a complete idiot because I did not know he was on drugs when I met him and it was just so obvious he was on them now that I look back), you may now ask why I don't feel bad about the whole situation, sure I have a daughter with him who he has not seen in almost a year and a half and who does not really know him, I am raising her by myself when is supposed to be different, but I still don't feel bad about it, because I learned a lot from all of this.
First thing I learned was about drugs themselves, it is amazing how much a drug addict knows about drugs, any drugs, how they interact with other drugs, with alcohol, what they do, how they make you feel why they make you feel like that, how they work in your body to get the response that the drug was created for, etc. and to tell you the truth it can come very handy to have someone that knows about all this stuff, when? you may ask, well, I suffer from migraine headaches, they are awful! anyone that has ever had a migraine know that is one of the worst pains in the world, when I was almost 9 months pregnant I got a realy bad migraine and the doctors could not give me anything other than tylenol (anyone that has had a migraine knows that tylenol does absolutely nothing for it) well my walking pharmacist that I had as a husband at that time decided to tell me that the last time I had one of those migraines (before I was pregnant) and ended up in the hospital the doctor had send me some narcotics for my migraines according to my private pharmacist, the drugs that were sent to me that time were a mixture of an anti-inflammatory and caffeine, so a coke (the beverage not the drug) and an anti-inflammatory over the counter drug would do the trick, guess what? it did!!! (yes we consulted with the doctor before taking any over the counter medicine that was not tylenol) so guess what? from then on anytime I have a migraine or I feel one that is trying to kick in I take 2 advils and drink a coke and it goes away, amazing huh?
Second thing, after moving about 6 or 7 different times in approximately six months and slowly losing the things that were either given to us or having him pawned the things we owned so that he could get money for drugs, all of a sudden everything else that happened in your life has a different meaning, you learn to value memories because everything that you have that is physical and has some sort of value is gone, all you have is the picture of that thing he sold for drugs in your head lol, I know appreciate more a good memory with my family and would pay anything to have a good memory with them than to get them a something that may break later, get lost, sold or forgotten somewhere, memories don't ever leave your mind, even if you become totally insane somewhere in your head those memories will exist, no one can take them away, ever! and I am glad that I learned that, it has made me appreciate life in a different way, yes you need money in order to live and in order to have the things you need for every day life, but no you don't need to spend money on a boat that you are going to have to work extra hours just so that you can pay for it, or a big house so that each of your kids can have a room (guess what? your kids won't care about that, they'd rather see you smile everyday than be grumpy cause you have to work extra hours tomorrow so that you can keep paying that big house you don't really need) so yeah I am glad I can see life this way, now don't get me wrong, I do have goals for myself, I do want certain things but I am now not rushing to get them, I am less stressed out about getting those things and I know that because I'd rather create a memory than buy a brand new car I can stop myself and take a break from what I have to do to reach my goals and actually enjoy the little things that happen all around, and trust me is a lot better than what I was doing before...
Third, mmm well this one is a little more personal, I decided to study what I am studying thanks to him, you have no idea how a drug addict can manipulate you, how much power they can have on you, how many lies they can put together, and how much they all act the same, drugs have like a special effect on people that abuse them, it makes them all the same, they seem to think the exact same way, so I got interested in psychology, at first I wanted to study Child Psychology and work in the school system, as a counselor or teacher, but then I took this Personality class, and that just changed my mind completely, I wanted to know more about human behavior, not just for children but also for adults, especially criminals, so I decided I will go more towards Criminal Psychology, then I found out all the really cool jobs one can get with a degree on that, so guess what? is even more exciting for me, now he was not the only one that inspired me for all this, my dad did too, how? you may ask, well believe it or not there were many similarities between my father and my ex-husband, and that got me thinking even more, because my dad does not do drugs, so why where these two people so different yet acted in a similar manner? I still have to figure that out but maybe that will become a good subject to research in the future (and yes I have looked at their behavior and it is very similar, their personalities are, maybe is true what they say that one ends up marrying someone that reminds them of their mother or father lol).
Fourth, after you live with a drug addict and you find out that they are doing drugs and they go to rehab but they decide that they will lie about the whole rehab thing (yes he did that too) you become more aware of what they tell you, and you remember everything they say, because the story they will tell you on Monday will be repeated on Tuesday with a little twist to it :), I can definitely say that I have become a little bit of a human lie detector lol, yeap, it is so amazing how much you can learn from someone constantly lying to you, their stories never add up because people never remember a lie but the person that was told the lie has the power to remember it, so guess what? now I can tell when someone is lying and I don't even have to ask them to repeat the story another day, people that lie have this energy to them is hard to explain but once you have been around a liar, you can spot most liars in a heartbeat!
Fifth, with him I also learned to accept things the way they are, if I don't like them after I accept them I can change them, (this is actually true) a drug addict cannot stop consuming drugs until he or she has accepted that he or she is an addict, that also applies for everyone else, you cannot change what is wrong with your life if you don't first accept that something is wrong with it, what??? ok here is an example, I was still together with him and I was telling the world how good things were, how perfect things were, and I was denying that he was still taking drugs, to me he was clean, I did not wanted to accept that the family I always wanted was being destroyed by something I could not control, so it was not until I accepted that living in a rented room with my husband, having practically no food, no phone and weighting 85 pounds while breastfeeding my child while he made enough money to feed the three of us was absolutely not the way that a family was supposed to be, I mean if you are making enough money to pay for an apt and good food and still have enough to save but somehow out of the 5000 dollars a month that come in, you only see 1000 and instead of things getting better they keep getting worse, things still are being pawned, food that is given to us is exchanged for less expensive food so that it can last a little longer and still you end up having to control every single bite of food you eat and there are days of the months where all you eat is cheerios and milk there is definately something wrong with that picture, once I accepted it and accepted that the only person that could make a change in my life and my daughter's life was myself, I made the call to change myself, and I did, and no matter how hard it was to deal with a person that could not accept that something was wrong (cause I had to deal with him for months) I knew I would continue to get better, and I did, I had help of course but I got better, I went back to school, I sort of made a new list for my goals, and I have been reaching them little by little, after that I also became too honest, I tend to say things just how I see them or how they are (which can get me in trouble, so now I have also learned to keep quiet and think before words come out of my mouth or are written to anyone most of the time it works, I mean I am still human, especially when one is angry about something).
Another one of the things I learned and one that everyone should learn is to trust myself, I learned again that the little voice inside you, whether you want to call it intuition or you want to say is God talking to you, that voice is always warning you and if you trust it and turn where you are told you should turn that road will take you where you want to be, and with no stops, so now no matter how crazy an idea seems, I follow it, and somehow things come out just the right way, which is pretty interesting (maybe one day I will figure out how all that works).
So now you might say wow... that is a crazy perspective, others might say how much positivism from something that was so negative, but I say to myself, how can I be negative about the situation that allow me to become what I always wanted to become, a mom! (even though my dad and stepmom say I never wanted children, which is not true, I always wanted them but I had my own ideas on how they were going to come to the world), which is the best job in the world, and the one that is the most rewarding, no matter how tired I am at the end of the day, no matter how many times my child does something that frustrates me, seeing a little one grow, watching them learn every day and having them look at you and tell you they love you and you being their hero, the one that to them knows it all, the one that protects them and they can always count on; her presence will never let me see the situation as negative, because my baby girl brings only positive things to my life and that is enough for me to look at all this the way I do.