When fear takes over...

What do you do when the world seems to be falling apart right in front of you? What do you do when you are full of fear that something bad is going to happen and that fear just takes over? What do you do when everything seems to no longer be going your way? What do you do when you are put in a situation where you have to behave in a specific way, not the way you want to, where you are forced to keep quiet when all you really want to do is yell out loud your own truth?
I find myself usually drawing away from people and submerging myself in work, distracting myself from absolutely everything, I think I feel like if I am not paying attention to all that is going on around me then it will all eventually go away and at some point I will wake up and it will all be better...
But eventually I run out of things to do and the reality settles in, so then what? I know some people say that it's always good to talk about things with others but I've always been one that works towards resolving the issue rather than just one that talks about it, because what is talking ever going to accomplish? For me talking has only just accomplished getting more frustrated, people jump in and instead of listening they provide their feedback and that gets even more frustrating...
Or there is the usual person (and this happens to me a lot) that says don't worry you will be fine, you always are, they have gotten used to you just doing everything and figuring everything out on your own that they dismiss that at that moment in time you are really not doing well and saying that you will be fine like always does not really help, all it really does is frustrate you even more...
But then what? Do you just stopped talking to everyone you know and if ever someone reaches out to you, then you keep it simple? do you keep it to just what I hate the most the pointless and annoying chitchat one does when you are just trying to be polite or do you just ignore the person? I find it easier to shut off my phone, not go in any social media sites or go in the ones where no one really comments on posts or where if you ever do you end up sometimes having a conversation with a perfect stranger and somehow you end up forgetting about whatever it was that was bothering you just for a little bit.
But then it all comes back and it seems to be even worse when you are tired, it's like you can't really think straight anymore, then you get your head filled with doubts and other worries that were not there before... And really most of which you have absolutely no control over so why worry about it?
But we do, we worry and we end up full of fear about whatever it is that can't really be helped at that moment in time, things that have not yet happened but in your head you are going through all these different scenarios of what could happen and you know very well that none of it makes any sense, you know that even if it was to happen that way then there is absolutely nothing you can really do to prevent it or stop it, it's just all out of your control so why worry?
I think sleep ends up working best at that point, because you end up so tired just from thinking that the at some point the mental and even physical exhaustion from all those nights you were up thinking finally take over and you finally fall flat and end up sleeping, and then after a good night's rest all is well again, you can focus again and have the mental power to keep your emotions under control, then you can go back to smiling like nothing is happening, like there is no emotional war going on in your head...
But it comes to a point where you can't have too many people around anymore, where most people bother you just by their presence, where you are trying so hard to focus on not letting any fears take over and trying to not feel the same way for too long because you know if you do then other things start failing, and so then you can't even get yourself together enough to read or listen to other people, where you see everyone else's problems so small compared to yours, and even though you know that to them is something big all you really want to do is say hello? that's nothing compared to the war I am battling and you should be thankful that that's all you have to deal with, but you have to bite your tongue once again and at some point if you talk too much, if you "socialize" or communicate enough while pretending that all is well the cycle begins again and once more you are back to where you did not want to be....
Which is why I have found it much easier to stay away, maybe it's not the healthiest for most but it seems to be the healthiest for me and I guess that's all that really matters, to be able to somehow find a little bit of peace in the crazy world you have found yourself in or at least find a way to keep the faith that at some point it will be over and that at some point it will really be ok.

When the world seems like it's against you,
when everyone seems to have desert you,
when the little light you saw at the end of the tunnel
and you thought "ohh I am so close" but suddenly it was all dark again
that's the time when we start thinking about those tender moments
the ones we never really asked for but that happened
that hug that was given without being asked by someone special to you
that kiss that was stolen by that same person
the special words that touched you unexpectedly,
thinking of those times when you were with someone and said nothing
but there was nothing needed to say because more was always said by actions
you start thinking about the safe places,
the times when you were little and all you needed was your mom to stroke your hair
then suddenly all the bad things that happened that day would go away
Sometimes we need a moment like those to make us feel just a little better
the world will always be a struggle, no matter what we do, there will always be something
something to fight for, something to struggle towards
it is in those moments when we wish we could go back to those tender moments, just for a little bit, just enough to remember that they do exist
that maybe one day we can have another tender moment
that one day we won't be so busy working towards a goal
working towards making our lives better but that we will actually realize
that it's better to live life, that you cannot purchase someone's true smile
that happiness is not about how much we have but how much we've lived
that the reason we feel like we are struggling is because we want more
and we forget that we are so lucky to have more than what we actually need,
hopefully one day we will realize and hopefully it won't be too late...

My thoughts about religion

First of all let me begin by saying that this is in no way a post to try and convince people of one thing or another, I respect everyone's beliefs and it is my firm belief that everyone should respect the beliefs of others, with that said, here are my thoughts about religion:

Religion is a personal thing, I will never understand the arguments around religious beliefs because no matter what your beliefs are, there is no way on earth that you can prove you are 100% correct.  Let me explain a bit further... If we are talking with an atheist (someone that does not believe in any higher being) they cannot give me a 100% certainty that there is no higher being that exists, yes they can say that science has not found anything that states that there is a God, Spirit or whatever you want to call it, but just because they have not found anything it does not mean it doesn't exist... All it means is that they have not yet found evidence and maybe they will not find any, maybe one day they will but there is always the possibility.

On the other hand if you are a firm believer of God, then you cannot possibly prove to me that God exists, there is no certain way of proving God's existence, and of course those who follow Christianity will say well the Bible is proof that God exists; well let me tell you something, while I respect the Christianity's beliefs that the Bible is a sacred book, it is in the end just a book and nothing more than a book that was written years and years and years ago and it was written by mere humans who stated that they talked to God and that God told them all of this...

Let me add to that, that a human being even when an almighty God is talking to them and telling them what to write, they can and will make a mistake, or they can change what is being told to them... And if I were to add even more... The Bible has been interpreted in way too many ways, to make me think that those were not words from an almighty perfect God, because if they were then we would not be able to interpret them in as many ways or more than we do with the law.  It is that simple...

Now I could go on and on about why religion is a personal thing and it should not be tried to be force fed to other people, or even have argue about it to the point of creating a fight between two people,  because no one will win, it is a waste of energy and time, yes I love having a good conversation about how other people believe and what they believe in, I mean I like to hear their stories and I have been lucky enough to find people that are open minded enough to have a philosophical conversation about it, that they will listen to my view and I will listen to them and then we just learn something more about the other person.  But not many people are like that, there are too many people that get so worked up about it that wars were created, and still are being created over it.

Why? I will never understand why, I really wish I could understand some of the human behavior that makes absolutely no sense to me! ohh and if you ask me if God exists, yes to me God does exist, he/she exists because I believe in him/her not because anything else, I can't prove it and I won't ever attempt to, if someone asks me why I believe that God exists well I will give them what some call testimony, but I don't expect anyone to believe me, my testimony could be something that I made up in my mind or just things that happened out of chance.  However what I can really say is that my faith rests on the fact that I know that I might be wrong and I choose to believe in something bigger, and I have my own way of practicing it.

If anyone asks me if I pray, I will answer no, I don't pray, why? because if I believe that there is a higher being that is watching over us, if this being only wants whatever is good for us then it does not matter how much I pray, I will be put in whatever path I need to be in order to get to the point where I need to be, and it will be the correct path, and even if I choose to go the other way, then it will probably take me a little longer to get to the right one but in the end I will be in the right one... Even if it is a path where I encounter sickness and a bit of suffering, even in those times when the darkness is bigger than anything else, if I believe that there is a higher being watching over me and making sure I do ok and go where I want and learn what I need to, and if that higher being is completely and absolutely in charge then it does not matter how much I pray, it won't change anything, so why pray?

I tell you what I do though, I listen, I go into my own world and I listen to what a lot might call your inner voice, others will call it intuition, others will say is God talking to you, others will say it's your guardian angels or a messenger of God, whatever it is though I listen to it, most times I can listen to it very clearly and I am able to go ahead and follow the path I am being told and I have to admit that when I do exactly as my inner voice tells me, all ends up well....

So to end this wonderful post, I will never understand people arguing over religion, I will never understand people swearing that the Bible is such a sacred book because in the end it is just a book, I will never understand people getting irritated by other people believing in things that they cannot prove and I will never understand why everyone believes that they have and that they are absolutely sure that their theory is the only correct one and that there is no space for any error for any other theory, just their own...

Who is in control?

I woke up today with a weird thought, you are not in control....
At first I was like what? of course I am, I am in control of my life, the decisions I make, I am the one that decides where I am going to go next and what I am going to do next... Then I kept thinking how much of a lie that is, because while I am able to make my own decisions, while I am able to say hey I am going to go left rather than going right, I cannot possibly control the outcome of my decisions, yes I can do whatever I want but in the end I am not really in control of the outcome.
Some people will say that God is in control, this force that they believe in, the almighty and powerful, the one that sees it all, whether or not that being exists is up for debate among many people, most will argue that he exists because there is a book that specifically tells stories of his existence, a book that speak his words and what he intended for us to do.  It is a weak argument to state that a being of that nature exists only because a book says so... yeah the book is too many years old but that just means that someone somewhere along the lines made sure that it was passed on and kept in a way that part of it (because what the churches have in that book is not all of it) was saved enough to move masses of people in one direction, to give people something to believe in.
Personally I don't know if God exists or not, I don't know if it is a God or Goddess, I don't know if it is just a plain ball of energy or just a spirit, I choose to believe though that there is something greater, and this something greater is not good or bad, but has the capability of guiding us towards whatever it is that deep inside we truly want, that which we don't tell anybody, that which we don't even realize that we want.  And within that thought I am fully aware that it might be a fallacy, that there might be absolutely nothing else out there guiding us, that this is all we are and that there is nothing greater than us.  Most people won't consider those thoughts, they are afraid because one book says to them that this supreme being does exist and therefore they are to follow the spirit's words, so a lot do, they read the words and they go on their life pretending that they are doing everything exactly the way it was intended, reading the Bible every night and going to church every Sunday.  I don't read the Bible, I don't believe those words come straight from this higher being, I think they came from a group of men trying to explain their existence, trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong, a book of stories that started the rules of society, rules that have the power to change because society as a whole changes every year, with every new discovery, with every new generation we all grow and change our views even in a small amount, no matter who you are.
But back to who is in control... If there is a supreme being that watches us all and that knows what is best for us and guides us into that path, that same being cannot make us go to that path, we can see all the signs, we can go through all the motions, we can do exactly what we are told, that being can come down and say if you go right you will encounter chaos so please go left and we can still choose to go right instead of left so the being is not truly in control just as much as we are not, because yes we can also say we are going to go left and follow the path that is given to us but when we go left someone else decided that they were not going to go through the path they were given and suddenly they cause chaos in our path.
Because of all the variants in life, because we are truly not alone even when we think we are, we are not in control of anything, we have power over absolutely nothing, I know some people will look at this and think hey you know what that is the most negative way of seeing life, that just takes away from the things you want, if we are not in control then what is the point to keep going? Wanting to be in control of everything is where the negativity come from, why? because it's a fallacy, we are not in control, and when we believe we are and things don't go our way then we get upset and we get stressed out.  A good example of that is time, the idea that we can control time merely by measuring it, so we wake up at a certain time everyday because we have to be at work or school or start our day by a certain time so then we give ourselves every day a list of things we have to do and every day we say this is what I will accomplish today, I am in control and I can do it.  But then it so happens that even though the day before everything seemed fine and everything was going according to plan your kid wakes up and he/she is sick, suddenly the to-do-list has one more thing that needs to be added to it, either you have to take care of your child during the day which might also mean you have to take them to the doctor and so the whole list changes, things are added that will take time away from the day and others will just not get accomplished, why? because on your way to the doctor there was an accident and you got stuck in traffic, then the doctor woke up late, because even though the doctor does not have any children of their own, they cannot control the fact that even though they wanted to get to work on time and attend to their patients in a timely manner, their power went out in the middle of the night and their alarm clock did not go off because it was reset and now it had the wrong time.
We are in control of nothing except our own thoughts.  There is a quote by Rene Descartes: "Except for our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power." I guess that is where I am getting at, we can try all we want, we can tell ourselves all we want that we have the power to make things happen the exact way we want them to happen, the fallacy with that thought is that there are a lot of other factors in play, we don't live in a world where we are the only ones that exist, there is not just other human beings but there are also other living things that can affect our lives, whether it is in a very small way or in a big way; to add to that we have other forces, natural forces that come into play and can change anything we do in a matter of seconds.
So are we really in control? No, we are not and the sooner we accept this, the more aware of it we become, the less stressful our lives will be, because if we are not really in control of anything then when things don't go our way, it is not our fault, it is not anyone's fault, it's just the way things are, and there is no reason to stress over it, there is no reason to get upset, only a reason to smile and then keep on going because the next step you take might not go the way you want it, but it might turn out to be the best thing that happened.

You

The thought of losing you scares me, it scares the shit out of me to think that maybe one day you may walk away from my life.

I couldn't begin to tell you or describe to you how important you are to me, how much I miss you when you are not around, how much I want to be with you and share with you every joy, every smile. 

I don't think you could ever understand how much of a change you've made in my life, you've made my life messier and better all at the same time, there is no one else in this world that has the power to make me so mad that all I want to do is slap them silly and then at the same time I can't help it but to end up smiling and wanting to kiss you and tell you how no one else in the world irritates me as much as you do but I wouldn't wanted any other way because the reason you irritate me is because I love you so damn much and you know me so damn well. 

You know my soul, you don't let me hide, you make me stand out and be myself and you force me to feel, I was numb until I became close to you.

Somehow you have won my heart, somehow you are able to push through the walls, and come in to that place that no one else knows because no one else has had the stubborness and the patience and mostly the stubborness to keep on pushing, and I know that you don't even know that you are doing it, I know you get tired of it, I know that it irritates you and when it does it scares me that you will once again walk away like everyone else has.

Maybe it is that you think I am not good enough or maybe you think you are not good enough but to me you are worth it all, everything in this world, everything I can give, because there is no one else on this world with whom I feel the way I feel when I'm with you.  I am safe when I'm with you. 

What I really would like to say to people...

Today I woke up extremely early, too early for my taste to be honest, especially on a day when I did not have to really wake up early at all; anyhow when I realized that I was not going to be able to go back to sleep at all because this darn cough is just taking over, I decided to go ahead and turn my phone on.

First thing that comes through is a text from an old friend, I had sent my yearly Christmas card the night before and he was texting saying thanks and of course most times after people decide to say thank you they also start trying to make conversation most times just to be polite because for some reason they can't just say thank you for the card and happy holidays to you too, they also have to add how are you? Or are you doing alright? Or  if the last time you spoke you said you were having some sort of trouble they ask you are you doing any better?

Yes I know that a lot of people truly do want to know about you and they truly care about you but the majority just ask the questions to make small talk and to tell you the truth I hate small talk, I can't stand it!!! This is when I got myself into trouble because now I am thinking about it and I realized one of the reasons I hate small talk (ok maybe in the end I will end up having written more than one but hey that's me!), the first reason is: I never know how to answer those damn questions!!!

Someone asks me how am I doing and I think to myself I don't know how I am doing, in order for me to know how I'm doing right now I would need to compare myself to either another human being or another time in my life or I would have to compare myself to the me I wanted to be right now but years ago in which case the answer to the question would vary from I'm doing alright to I'm doing extremely terrible, then there are days when I'm not good when I really know that I could be way better and I feel like I either have to lie to the person that is asking me how I am doing and in turn lie to myself or open up myself for a conversation I really don't want to have. So when someone asks me that question all I really want to say is: that is such a general question, how am I doing? How am I doing in what? Life, work, how am I doing in comparison to what or who? And if I have to compare myself to something or someone else then I really don't want to answer that stupid question because really it's irrelevant to anyone else's life, I'm doing however it is that I'm doing and since I don't compare myself to anything, anyone or even go back to where I thought I was gonna be at today five years ago... Well I really don't know how I'm doing...

That same person that texted this morning also said to me that I think too much, well duh!!! My philosophy professor once said that the brain is there for you to use it and think, if I don't think then it would be like buying a car and not driving it, why would you buy the car and not drive it? The car was created to be driven... Then again there are people that buy cars and never drive them but I guess they don't think as much either... Ok now I feel like I'm contradicting myself but this friend is not the first one to tell me that and I guess after the last few paragraphs most people would agree that I do tend to over think certain things like why not just say I'm good thanks and leave it at that? Well I'll tell you why: because most people expect you to ask them back how they are doing, it's society's way of starting a conversation and when you just plainly answer: "I'm good, thanks" most times later on you will get a message that says: are you ok? And then the whole thing starts again... I don't know if I'm ok, am I ok with what? So most times I say: I don't know, and then they say how do you not know... And it's so hard to explain why I don't know if I am ok or not because let's face it, answering that just takes a lot of energy to explain my side of the deal and in the end no one really ends up understanding me so why even bother trying to make sense of it to someone else???

The other one that I love, great conversation starter for most people and usually a great way to avoid actually saying or asking what you really want to ask or say to that friend works just like how are you or how are you doing and that is: what's up? To that I usually want to say: well apparently a lot of things, currently my neighbors seem to be up, my daughter is up, there are cliuds up in the sky, I'm sure I could find some airplanes there too, and I guess I'm up since I am writing this....

Yes I know they all ask asking just as you would ask: what's new? But really what's new with what? I don't know, I have nothing new around really, then they go: no what's new with you? And I'm thinking are we wanting to know everything new that has happened since we last talked? Cause something new happens every minute and to tell you the truth I don't have time to list everything nor do I want to and possibly I would probably have forgotten of all the new things that have happened and in the end I end up with nothing is new...

I hate small talk... Small talk to me just sucks! I'd rather really not communicate at all than talk small talk and I have realized that as I grow older it gets even worse, it's like look there are more important things to talk about and really I would rather just save my energy for those things! Maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to find a group of people that are a bit like me, that really don't know how to answer those questions and that think they are just a ridiculous way to socialize, they have no true purpose other than make you talk about things that end up being irrelevant in knowing the other person... Maybe one day... Until then I guess I will continue to be the odd woman out and just be thought of antisocial or not interested and I think now that I've taken the time to think about it a little more... I don't mind that at all so long as in the end I end up avoiding meaningless chitchat that I really don't have time for or really want to do, I'd rather read a book.... 

The idea of you with me, the idea of us and what we can achieve together is what makes me keep getting up in the morning, just the idea of all of it, even though I know that it will never be true, that our time passed, I still have that little light of faith and hope that maybe one day you will realize how much love I have for you and you will come sweeping me off, holding me tight and kissing me the way only you know how, letting me know that I am the only one for you.  That thought just made me smile once again.  I can't look at you in the eyes anymore, every time I do all I want to do is kiss you and hold you, I want to tell you how much I love you, how much my life has changed because of you, I want to tell you that I would not have wanted my life to be any different than it is at that moment in time.  I want to tell you that every moment I have been with you has been the best moments of my life.  They say that love is surrender and I think I have now surrendered, surrendered to the idea that I will be whoever you want me to be in your life, for the first time I have released all control, because I can't control how you feel about me, I can't control what you think we can be, I can't control your fears, all I can do is be here for whenever you need me, I will never stop being here, no matter what you do, I will always be here. You hold the key to my heart.