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. 

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.

Three kinds of people...

I am not a fan of categorizing anyone, but in the past couple of weeks I have realized that there are three kinds of people, and I am talking about it in a spiritual sense here, you can basically put each person you meet in one of the following categories:

The "Good" kind:
I put good in between quotation marks because the reality is that every person has a little bit of "bad" or "evil" in them, we are not 100% good and that is ok, but the "good" people have more good in them than they do bad. These are the people who have the ability to make you smile just by them smiling. The people who have an aura, a field of energy, that always draws you to them and when it does you just feel good and at peace with yourself. These are the people that even when they are having a bad day they are still able to make you smile somehow. These people are also ones who like to see the good in the world, the good in everyone, usually they tend to trust more, especially the people that are closest to them and because of that they tend to get hurt more but in the end they always pull back and never lose that hope and faith which always radiates out of them and spreads wherever they go.

The "Bad" or "evil" kind:
Again in quotation marks because we all have a bit of each side right. There are people in the world who are only out for themselves, these are the ones that care about absolutely no one else but them and what they can get out of a situation whether the situation is good or bad. It is about them, there is no remorse in their actions whatsoever, some of you might say: well this is the psychopaths out there and there is thankfully not many of them plus they all end up in jail anyway and I will tell you: yes, the psychopaths and sociopaths are in this category but not all psychopaths and sociopaths turn out to be criminals, some of them go through their lives trying to "steal" the best out of everyone. These are the people who you meet and you always feel like there is something not right about them, there is always this bad nervous feeling and you end up ignoring it sometimes because it usually makes absolutely no sense at all... Some, if not most of us are taught that we have to give people a chance to show us what they are made of and how they truly are, with these kind of people you will always just see what they want you to see and what they need you to see in order to get what they want. These are people with whom you have to be very careful and just be more aware of how they treat others and not how they treat you, it is how they treat others that will show you exactly who they are.

The third and what I believe is the most dangerous kind of people, the Neutral kind:
This is what the world is mostly filled with, the people who can go either way depending on who they surround themselves with. The saying "tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are" is what applies to these people, the good kind of people are not easily influenced by the bad because the good always want to do good, they always weight in the options and what is best for everyone involved, the bad people will always want what is best for themselves no matter what that might be or who it might hurt. But the neutral people, they can be easily persuaded to one side or the other at any given time, these people, when you encounter them, spiritually you don't really feel anything bad or good about them unless they are influenced by a good or bad being in their lives at the time you meet them and even then you don't quite make up the energies they throw because essentially if you are one of the good kind of people then they sort of absorb that energy and you feel as if they are not a threat. And that is why this are the most dangerous people you can ever encounter and unfortunately the ones that you will encounter more often than not. People that are easily persuaded one way or the other and that are usually targets for the "evil" that hovers around because it is easy to use them for your own gain and evil is always looking for those who will easily bring them what they need.

With that said, I started to think if one could ever be completely safe from any of these? I have seen all three kinds and been surrounded by all of them at one point in my life and it has been hard lessons that I have had to learn from each encounter, but each has taught me something and I hope that I never forget it. For the "bad" people I have encounter, I have learned that the majority of times the worst you can do is fight with them, or fight back if they are trying to fight with you, they feed on this energy, it makes them more powerful, more aware of what is going on and makes them extremely careful which in turn keeps you from finding out who they really are. It's best to stay away and listen to your gut when you meet these people and you feel uneasy about them, but if you can then the more you observe them the more you will learn, strategy is the best way to win when it comes to them. With them you just really have to take a step back and pretend you are watching a movie.
The good kind of people are the ones that have given hope back to me, that there are some that really care about others and really want to make this a better place, that there are others that want to inspire, be balanced and look at both sides of situations without judgement and with a lot of objectivity. That there are people that really could change the world if they did not doubt themselves so much. But that is the soul of the good person, they are always thinking they could have done better, they could be better and that everything they do can affect someone else in a way they don't want them to be affected, and they always doubt after they have done something good whether that something was good for everyone, even if it is not good for themselves, everyone else has to be ok. The best lesson they teach is that you cannot always make everyone happy but just because you cannot make everyone happy it does not mean you are hurting someone, that we need to try really hard to doubt ourselves a little less and in the end rely on the faith and hope that it will turn out alright no matter what.
And the neutral people, the most dangerous of all three... Because they are easily influenced by outside factors, these are people that if they are under the influences of a "bad" person or being, they are also able to be influenced by a "good" person, and if you find that they are being influenced by someone bad then while being careful if this is someone you care about you will be able to influence them in a good way. They are not looking to hurt anyone but they have the capability to do so without remorse when someone bad has taken "control", they are able to be cruel just as much as they are able to be caring, they are what you will find the most in this world and because of all of that, these are the people you need to learn to live with and be the most careful of while at the same time be a good influence in them so that they are more of a person that does good rather than one that does bad.

The important thing...

Ever wonder how society has raised us to think that money and things are important? The clothes we wear, how much we make, the title we have on our office door, the social status is an important part of calling yourself successful... or so that is what society says.
We grow up under the shadows of our parents or adults who have helped shape and raise us to believe that the way to happiness is to accomplish all of the above, that the dreams we had as children are too hard to accomplish and so we have to have our feet well planted on earth and be realistic to what we are really capable of.
Our wings get cut and our view of life changes, we are filled with fear of failure and we blame ourselves when we are unable to accomplish what we are supposed to be accomplishing, we feel guilt when we do what we want and try to follow our dreams, we believe we are being selfish when we are working towards that which is what we want.
The truth is that the important things in life do not cost money, the way to happiness is not the same for everyone, we are all different and we all make our own way. The truth is that we did not come here to do what our parents tell us we have to do with our lives, their role is merely to guide us and care for us until we can care for ourselves, their role is not to tell us which decision to make but to allow us to make a decision for ourselves.
It is when we follow what others want for us that we become unhappy, the voice of society is so loud that it overcomes the voice of our souls, the voice of our hearts, we stop listening to the voice that will really show us the way to true happiness and we let the world take us through the longest detour and then when we realize it we think it is too late to turn around and so we force ourselves to stay on that same road.
It is never too late to follow your dreams, it is never too late to turn around and get back on the road, it is never too late to realize that the things you thought will make you successful are mere rules of society to try and make everyone look the same, when the reality is that this universe is so diverse that it's unnatural for everything to be the same.
It took me a while to realize all of this, one person that helped me realize this was my daughter, she is only 6-years-old, and while I was working so hard to provide for her all the things I wanted to give her she said to me: mommy I wish you did not have to work so hard so you could play with me or watch a movie... She does not and hardly ever asks for anything other than my time with her and it does not matter how I spend it with her, she just wants time, everything else is not important. She is not aware of a "nice" house, or a "nice" car, or how much money we have, or the brand name clothes, those are things society's shallow nature try to tell us that is important as we grow and that are needed to be truly successful, the reality is that she already is, she is more successful than anyone else around her because she has dreams and she is not afraid to follow them... All I can hope for her is that she keeps that fearless soul of her going, that she does not let the voice of society take over and that she follows her heart, that she does not allow others to tell her what things she needs to be happy, that she is never afraid to be different because the world's differences are what makes this world such a beautiful place.
Most of all I hope she never thinks that her job is to make me proud or anyone else for that matter, I hope I can always make her understand that her only job in life is to do what makes her happy and as long as what makes her happy does not harm her or anyone else then she should always go for it.  I hope that I don't ever fall into the trap of cutting her wings out of fear that she will not be able to fly high and hurt herself because it is much better to fail at something you want to do than to fail at that which you do not want.
I hope I am able to keep myself on track, that I don't let society rule what it is that will make me happy, that I can remind myself that life is not planned but we just go with it one step at the time, that the important thing is not how much you have in life but how happy you are. I hope I am able to keep myself from falling in society's trap and keep myself focused on what is truly important: the time spent chasing my dreams, the time spent with those I love and care about, the time spent dreaming because dreaming is what feeds the soul and no dream is ever too big and everyone is strong enough to break out of the mold and most of all I hope I never forget that in the end people won't remember me for what I have but the words they will then speak will be words about how I made them feel, how many times I made them smile and if I am not happy there is no way I could possibly make anyone else good and smile.

Hobby Lobby

I have been refraining from really offering my opinion on political issues lately simply because I am sort of tired of the debates back and forth and the none sense of it all. With that said, I've been bombarded with this Hobby Lobby ruling on all my social media feeds and I've read everyone's point of view and read all the "outrage" that the ruling has caused and just had so many thoughts about it that hey! I had to just put them all in writing....

Setting religion aside and with the thought of the Constitution of this wonderful country, here I go...

 

1. For all of those who are "outraged" because your women's rights are being violated because a company whose owners don't believe in certain forms of birth control is asking that they should not be forced to pay for it, let me stop you right there... First of all, just like every woman in this country has the right to do with her body what she wants, just like every woman in this country has the right to believe in whatever she wants, and just like every woman in this country has the right to choose what to purchase and pay for (except for now health insurance which every single woman in this country is forced to pay for maternity coverage even if it is impossible for them to get pregnant or they will have to pay a fine come tax season, and I will touch on this later) so does everyone else in this country has the same darn right. Therefore even if in a hypocritical way if the owners of Hobby Lobby want to not have to pay for certain forms of birth control then that is their right and they should not be forced to pay for it, regardless of what any of you really thinks. 

2. Let me remind all of you that the company you work for is under no obligation to offer any of you help with paying your health insurance, it is under no obligation to pay for your health insurance, it is the right of every company to choose what to offer as benefits to their employees just like it is your right as an employee to choose where you want to work, no on is telling you hey go and work here and this is where you have to work for the rest of your life and you are not ever going to have a choice in the matter. So please, if you don't like the benefits a company offers and that is something that is important to you then please quit bitching trying to force the company to offer something they don't want to offer and go find a company that offers something close to what you are asking (and I say something close to what you are asking because you are just not going to find what you think is a perfect company unless you create your own). And yes it is that simple, you don't like it, you have the right to change it, and the company has the same right as you do. 

3. On that note... Stop asking for your rights as an individual to be respected when you are not respecting the rights of other people. Yes, whether you like it or not, a company is not run by robots, it is run and owned by other people, citizens of this country who have the same rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of choice. To all of those saying that this company is run by hypocrites because they do business with people in China where after having one child if you get pregnant you have to have an abortion but the company owners are against abortion; you are all also being hypocrites because you are asking for rights to be respected but not wanting the rights of the owners of the company to be respected. The owners of the company again, have every right to do business with whoever they please to do business with, from a business perspective if it is more profitable to do business with someone in China vs someone in Canada then I will do business with the Chinese person regardless of what they believe in because let me tell you something: that is their given human right to believe in whatever they want to believe in and I have no say in it, it is business. 

4. I hope all of you having this "outrage" also realize that your Women's Rights were violated a long time ago when the Affordable Healthcare Act was passed by Congress and in it stated that you had to have certain kind of coverage under your health insurance plan otherwise you would face a penalty at the end of the year because you did not have the correct coverage. Your freedom of choice just went out the window, not just for us women but for everyone in this country, our government passed a law where it states that they know what is better for all of us and took away our right to choose what we want to pay for and what we don't.  People that rarely ever go to the doctor are forced to pay for plans that they will probably never use or else they have to pay a penalty. Women that are pass the child rearing age are forced to pay for maternity coverage they will not use (and let me tell you that is a big chunk of money on that insurance policy). Women who have had their tubes tied, have had a hysterectomy, or have been declared unable to ever have children also have to pay for this coverage or else they have to pay the penalty at the end of the year because whatever insurance they get was not enough according to our wonderful government. I have seen no outrage on any of this. Our rights as citizens of this country are being taken away by our government every single day and there are only a few of us that are painfully aware of it. Government was not created to tell people what they had to do with their lives, what they could and could not purchase and that is exactly what government is doing right now and it is all being hidden by little issues like this one where citizens of this country are fighting to gain back their rights and because of what our wonderful leaders are doing we, the citizens, end up being put against each other instead of uniting against those who are truly taking our rights from us.

5. Those so "outraged" are also the ones that preach for tolerance and how everyone else needs to change their views or respect other people's views. Well, how are you tolerating other people's views when you are posting to "boycott" a company because their views do not align with your own? This is the same thing that happened with Chick-fil-A, I am sorry I don't go to Chick-fil-A for their life views or beliefs, I go there because I like the chicken but I was probably put on the you are a bad person pile for going to buy the chicken I like to eat and believing that they have the right to believe in whatever the heck they want to believe in, they were not imposing that unto anyone, they were exercising their freedom of speech and freedom of choice just like you and I are doing right now, so before you start being "outraged" about something that is not really happening please step outside your little circle where the only ones that exist are you guys and where everyone that goes to fight for their rights is completely in the wrong unless they are fighting for the same thing you are fighting for, think! Just think for one minute about who the real enemies are here. Read and educate yourself about these issues, you still have a choice and no one is imposing that choice on you (except again the government and its mandated insurance) and if you preach tolerance for your views then have tolerance for the views of other people, tolerance means you don't attack others for how they believe, you accept that is how they believe and they in turn accept how you believe. Hobby Lobby is not trying to change your views or impose their views on you, all they are really trying to do is get back that piece of freedom our Constitution states we all have. 

Making a relationship work

I am probably the worst person to write about this, I've had many failed relationships and the reality is that I am one of those human beings who is just too damn scared of entering a romantic relationship but I guess I feel that because of all the failed relationships I've had I've learned with each of them what made them fail and I guess if you know what can make something fail then you can sort of figure out what can make it work.
Most people enter into a relationship pretty much hiding themselves behind an image they think will get others to like them, they make the other person believe all this greatness about them and then struggle to keep the facade as time goes on.
Other people do that same thing but they do it just because they think that the idea of having a relationship means that their job is to make every effort to make the other person happy, they don't understand that happiness is an inside job and therefore as time goes by they realize that they have wasted time and effort on an impossible task, it was not their job to make the other person happy.
Which is what brings me to the first thing that makes a relationship work: honesty. Yes, yes, I know, no duh! hello! you all did not need to read all of that in order to know that honesty is one of the things that make a relationship work. But I am talking about being honest from the very beginning of it, from the first conversation, why waste your time trying to impress someone else by not being who you really are, if at the end of the day if  they don't fall in love with who you really are or you make them believe you are someone else then eventually it will all go to hell, eventually either they will find out the little things you do that they can't live with or eventually you will get too tired of pretending and that will be it.... Then you both realize that you were with someone you really did not know and then how do you know you love them if you don't really know them?
I wish people would actually take heart to that first advice, but I know they won't. Everyone will say I will do this, this makes sense but in the end fear will take over and it won't happen.
That brings me to my next advice... As humans we are always thinking about tomorrow, I've said this millions of times, we are so worried about what will happen tomorrow that we forget to live in the right now, we make plans for many months to come and we forget that life can change in a heartbeat. Because of our need to plan out our future, fear tends to take over us, we are always afraid our plans will not come to fruition, we are afraid that we will fail even though we have not tried yet. And so it comes that we fear that the relationships we enter into will fail, we keep thinking that the other person is too good to be true, we keep thinking they are lying to us all the time, we think they don't love us enough, we worry that it will end tragically when it has just began, the wheel of fortune tells us that our fortune can change at any time but life shows us that when that wheel is going in our favor the best thing to do is actually take full advantage of it and enjoy it.
I, myself, am one of those that will think of the worst, in the end I like to be pleasantly surprised than to be sadly disappointed, my soul, my heart, my intuition, all of it has always had a way of guiding me but when it comes to other people I have sometimes led myself be guided by logic and really that has not helped me at all, lately I've been learning to just follow that intuition and "hunches" that "gut feeling" when it comes to other people and it has not steered me wrong, even this past time when at the end I lost someone I love very much, but that thought logically (just like I once did) about life. And even though I was hurt that everything just sort of ended and I tried to make all these rationalizations as to why it would have never worked out either, even though for some reason I felt like if we just kept going day by day neither of us would have ever regretted it. We were just friends and that's where it was left. I know I followed my intuition and my heart and I know that my mind had played a lot of tricks on me before and I know that I used to be one of those people that would listen to everyone else and not myself, trying to make life rational and logical when it is neither.
And the mind this time continues to do so, it is the way it wants to protect me from being even more hurt. Constant battle I would say, that's how I know I was correct, because my mind is trying to make some illogical logical... Which is what brings me to my next advice:
Don't try to rationalize love, don't try to have an insane amount of set rules for a relationship you want, life has shown me that a good relationship flourishes in the most illogical ways, it is when you start to try and rationalize it that you will end up failing at it because love is not logical, it is a force you just feel and that's it! You can't explain it, no one can, you just feel it and it's magnetic, always magnetic. If everything else is working and you have one or two things you think that will just completely ruin everything, think about it again... Do you and this person have good communication? And in saying good communication I mean, can you two talk about things without getting into huge arguments, or if you ever get into arguments can you guys settle them promptly and calmly? Can you talk about what bothers you without the other person getting offended?
If the answer is yes, then it does not matter what things you think will make the relationship not work, you can talk about those things and I believe you will be pleasantly surprised at how things end up working out.
That brings me to the most important thing of all... Communication! Communication is the key to every successful relationship, whether the relationship is just a friendship or a romantic relationship or even a relationship with your kids, if you are not able to communicate with another person you will never have a chance of the relationship working out. Communication is the base of every single relationship, it is what allows trust and respect to grow and that trust and respect are the base for love. As the picture shows, it is not love that we start with, is communication... A long time ago, I had a great relationship, I was 18 years old and this guy and I, we were able to tell each other almost everything, I learned that the more we talked the more we trusted each other, the more we respected each other, 2 years later we forgot this is what made the relationship so great, we never argued, I think in the two years we only had 2 big arguments, and while for some people that might be boring, it was our ability to talk to each other honestly from the very beginning that made all the difference. The last argument we had was what ended up causing the breakup, as stated we had forgotten to talk to each other and he started to mix in that fear of failure and because of lack of communication he started to not trust me, and in turn that ended up making me not trust him, so he started to think logically and decided the best thing was to plan his life out without me and without me knowing, by the time we actually sat down and talked and realized we loved each other very much, it was too late, we had lost (or at least I did) that trust and it was only a matter of time before respect went away with it, and of course the communication between the two of us had already been damaged, so we had two choices we could try again or we could go our separate ways, after a month or so we decided we needed to go our separate ways, mostly because I was just not in it anymore, I could not get over that he couldn't talk to me about the fears he was having, even though I was always open and never judging and that was an even bigger betrayal than if he had gone out and cheated on me. (yes I know that is weird but it's true)
Just like that relationship failed because of lack of communication, so did all my other relationships. Some were never going to go anywhere because the people involved could not ever talk truthfully to each other, or when they did the other wouldn't listen and would just try to make themselves believe something different.  That's what happened with my ex-husband, he was great at talking but everything he said was a lie, I never followed my intuition and so I decided to just go with the logical approach, it turned out that my intuition was right, and the reason I could never seem to trust him was because he was not telling me everything, sure there are things and secrets people should keep to themselves but not the ones that will affect the other person, when you are in a relationship you are a team and if you can't trust the other person with all the things you feel, fear and the things you do that might not be socially accepted then your relationship is doom to fail! If you don't have the courage and strength to show your true self to the other person then you have nothing. And if you have the courage and strength to show yourself to the other person and that other person decides that they will judge you for it then it won't work either.

So, if you find someone who is truthful to you, someone you are able to see all of their flaws and weaknesses, someone that makes you fill up with joy only because they are so happy, because seriously no one can make you happy but yourself but if there is someone who lights up when you light up or you light up because they light up in joy that's it! Someone with whom you can communicate in the best ways possible, someone that somehow makes you want to be better, that pulls out the best of you and sometimes the worst in you but you know that pulling the worst out of you means that they give you the chance to better yourself without judging you, and they give you the time to either accept yourself the way you are or change it if you want to and in the end they accept whatever decision you make, someone that something inside you just tells you that they are not lying, that you should just give it a shot, even though this person might not be what you thought you wanted in life, then take a leap of faith and jump right in, you will be amazingly surprised at how great things will end. Listen to your inner voice and don't be scared of it, don't give into fear and run away, I know it's hard to do and takes lots of practice, I, myself, continue to struggle with it but I have faith that slowly but surely I will come to just follow my gut feeling and nothing else, because every time I follow it, it never steers me wrong.

F**** AT&T

And so here I am once again complaining about a company which I should have just seriously gotten rid of a long long time ago but only because their reliability of the actual service has been excellent to me I haven't gotten rid of them but after today I am more than sure that reliable service means absolutely nothing if you can't get an excellent customer service experience.

After 4 long years of having the same account and transferring it from location to location every time I moved (mind you I've moved a lot in the past 4 years) and having an issue with AT&T every time I moved because someway somehow they could never check that the dates they were given for connection were not correct, or that there was no line going to the property I was moving to, or they decided to have the wrong address put in so I would end up having to wait for days to get my services while spending countless hours on the phone with 20 different idiots all of which would give me a different story and then finally having to after getting so damn frustrated with them talk to their cancelations department because guess what no matter which company you do business with, it seems like unless you end up in their cancelation or retention dept you never get any help. Which brings me to another thought...

Why in the world have all these other departments if in the end the ones that will do all the job will be the retention dept? From a business perspective it seems like it saves them money to have 1 out of 10 calls be able to be handled by the monkeys you have to talk to first that work in the regular customer service side of the business, they earn less and therefore getting them on the line with you, the consumer, cost them less.

Now don't get me wrong, I have been a customer service rep myself for 10 years and while I will admit the customer is not always right, I will also admit that one of the biggest challenges of my job has always been that I've had to deal with the mess my fellow co-workers created for a customer that would cause the customer to see me as much of an idiot as they were and really I never blamed them because seriously I would have done the same, so for those reps that actually have the brains to do things right, I'm sorry but you are gonna be put in the same group as all your fellow peers because there is just more idiots working with you than competent people and I truly feel bad for you because the ones that do a competent work actually should be better rewarded than the idiots that cause customers like me to insult you all.

It is a shame though, a company that has had such a reliable service but whose customer service level just keeps going down every time I call them, so much so that in the past 2 years there has been a brand new trend that has been happening, the social media trend, customers now go online and bash the companies they do business with because they are unable to get a positive result when they call the company directly, so AT&T has decided to have a social media customer service department which used to work wonders, they could get things done quickly but it is my believe due to recent events and recent contacts with them that the social media dept is getting bombarded with issues that their idiot customer service reps can't handle because they are too stupid which in turn has made the level of quality service of their social media dept has gone down rather than keep it at a level where more customers are satisfied with it.

What does all this mean? It basically means that AT&T is losing money, before you had the customer service side, tech support side and retention side, now you have to add more people to solve simple issues which costs more money which at some point gets pass along in the customer's bill.

Today AT&T made me even more aware of this, the company could really care less about their customers (I should say their employees could care less about the customers, I guess they forget they are customers too) I spoke with a supervisor today, her name: Jaquita Chappell (or so she said that was her name), in the past four years my bill has always been paid in full and even years before that when I had to cancel my account completely because I either moved somewhere they did not have service at or was going to be out of town where I did not need their home phone or internet service, I've always paid my account, never asked for any credits from them, even when the services were interrupted and not connected because they were idiots and did not check the addresses right, never asked for anything... Today all I asked for was for them to reage my account, in the past two months things have been hard and today the account was disconnected, my fault and I admit full responsibility for it, but because it was the first time this has happened I figured hey, I've been with this company long enough, they are always asking for my loyalty even when they don't deserve it and I've kept being loyal to them even though every time I call they make me question why I'm still paying them over 300 dollars a month between all of my accounts (cell phone, home phone and internet) when I could certainly just take my business elsewhere and do what most people do: switch from one company to the next in order to pay 19.99 a month for internet and 10 dollars for phone service, it is easy and a hell of a lot less expensive on my part (now I feel like a total idiot) but I said today I need help so I will ask the company that I've been loyal to for the past 4 years to help me this one time and see if they really appreciate the loyalty or not...

It appears that they do not, see even though they are able to reage an account and they are able to set payment arrangements for at least 30 days, they refused, why? Just because they could refuse, then after speaking with them and the first supervisor told me that they would go ahead and reage the account but that they couldn't do a payment arrangement for the time I was requesting even though they actually can do that but it is up to the supervisor to do it, once I said I was going to speak to the office of the president and complain about this, said supervisor wrote notes stating that there was to not do a reage on the account ever and that this was told to me... I seriously wish I would have recorded the call, they have the power to type on the notes anything they want and no one will question it... From then on it was 3 hours of hell... Of course once I got to the cancelation department it was not 1 but 3 reps that I spoke with who confirmed that they could do the reage but it was a matter of them wanting to do so, apparently four years of asking absolutely nothing from this company is pointless, never did I ask for credits to my account, never did I ask for reconnection fees to be credited back, it was my mistake but I just needed help at that moment since I work from home and needed my internet back on.

I then decided to go and do the social media thing and got a response a couple of hours later, I keep track of who tweets to AT&T and the issues they have and yeah I realize those poor social media reps have more than they can handle when it comes to customer service issues, some of which could actually have been fixed by my 5-year-old but because their customer service department seems to hire people with no brains and that have absolutely no care for the actual customer, someone else with a higher authority ends up being grabbed and dragged into the whole situation ousting the company a hell of a lot more money.... Then eventually it ends up being escalated to the office of the president, which last time I spoke to them for a technical issue (which their tech support dept is another one that leaves much disappointment) it took them 3 days to contact me vs the 24 hours that it usually takes, that just tells me how many issues they are having to handle and I'm sure most of them could have been avoided if they had competent people working in their customer service dept.

It is a shame that a company so big as AT&T that knows the cost of getting a new customer vs the cost of keeping one they already have, one that rarely calls (which btw every time you call any of the companies you do business with it costs them more than it costs you) has employees who have no idea on how the business runs, it is a shame that a company so big would much rather employ 30 different idiots and pay them for a job they don't do, that they won't empower their employees and teach them to research the accounts and figure out the best ways to negotiate and help the customer and lose money in the process instead of actually taking more time to hire people that will actually get the job done and pay them accordingly. It is a shame that a customer would notice how a company so big could be making more money and keep their customers around longer but that the company does not see it and makes absolutely no effort to change it's ways for the better.

How sad is it that all these companies thrive to try and get as loyal of a customers as they can get, that they ask for loyalty from us the consumer but that give no loyalty in return. How sad is it that even after everything is paid to them they still take over 24 hours to reactivate your service because hey! It's easy to click and deactivate it but we won't go ahead and activate services again that quickly for you, it's better for you to learn a lesson and really you are not worth out efforts. And this is just one example, I have a friend of mine who after being with AT&T for 13 years decided to switch over to a different internet and phone provider because AT&T decided to screw up her account and when they asked for help they receive none, took them 4 days to figure out what was wrong and it was something so simple as to just check what kind of account they had and what kind of account they actually needed...

I'm sure that just like my friend and I, we are not the only ones that have ever felt like this from one of these big companies, worst part of it is that I know nothing will actually be done to change any of it, worst part of it is that even when I do switch to a different provider they won't really care, all they will offer is more credits even though we are not asking for any, and the customer service that we actually deserve and want to get will never really be there, in fact it will continue to keep getting worse.