OK, Your fired!

Ok, what’s really needed here is faith. It doesn’t matter what kind, whether or not you have faith in God, faith in yourself, or a spiritual force, faith in your family and friends, or just an optimistic faith in life……….faith is something that we all need to have for certain. The reason why is that everything is so uncertain. And I am not just talking about today’s world either. It’s been like this since man first came about being on the planet. There had to be some faith inside of us to have ventured out of the cave to search for food. Faith that we would survive. There had to be some faith for the many travelers and explorers who quested out beyond the world’s boundaries and sailed the high seas. You need not only the faith to know that you can handle whatever you perceive to be difficult, but faith that you will get through it alive, and somewhat intact. Now you may not be the same afterwards, and you may be a little scarred emotionally, hell maybe you’ll be a lot scarred emotionally and jaded as well…. but if your paying attention and you have learned how to learn from any experience albeit pleasant or NOT……..then your doing pretty good. If you can incorporate that into something that stays balanced within you-then your doing ok. I think people place too much importance on the solidity of any given thing. Their job, or career, their house, their marriage, their bank account (and how much money is in it), how much money they can make and most of their entire image to the world/as the world sees them. That is why some people commit suicide over something that has happened to them. The pain of it shatters their world completely, what ever it was. Someone doesn’t love them anymore. They’ve been caught embezzling, a prominent politician is found out to be gay. Put any label on it you want. Most of it was outside of them……..what they had most put their energy into hiding. Putting all their eggs in one basket. They are living an image. They are not living true.

Now with all that said, lets apply that to a more personal less vague situation, or should I say series of situations that have been happening to me lately. If you look at my previous posts, from the very beginning, even the titles reveal a progression. Definitely a progression in thought. One that is clearly visible to me anyway as I plod through the experiences that have indeed left me rather jaded and at times without faith. But there’s more…..(there always seems to be more), so I will just review it in short for you gracious reader. OK……First of all, my live in lover of 5 years breaks up with me (note that-he breaks up with me). Whoa Nelly, I don’t want this at all! This means I not only have handle that rejection from someone I am still pretty fond of, but now I have to move out-his request, find my own place and start all over again (all I had was my clothes and my books). This left me in a pretty sticky financial situation at the end of it having to buy all the necessities that one requires to re-set up house. We all know as well, the huge and unrealistic costs that are asked for when one move’s into a place. Yikes! If only it was like in the movies where they plop down the credit card in one huge spending spree! Nope, it didn’t go that way for me. I have no TV, couldn’t afford to buy that. No furniture for the first two months….finally had to finance that, cannot sit on the floor at my age-more debt I don’t need. I negotiated the computer, so at least I have music and some sort of communication with the world. Borrowed some money to buy a few other solid necessities and voila! There I was.

So as the previous posts reveal…I’ve been having a bit of a time dealing with those two major biggies. The break up and the move. I have questioned myself, tried to understand, hoped for it all to be undone, and reluctantly accepted that here I am-somewhere I really do not want to be. Looked at it emotionally, looked at myself and my own patterns and behaviors, as well as screamed at the Universe for a reason.

No answer.

I pick myself up, chalk it up to this is the way it is and continue through my day to day. Not trying to push the river, not trying to do something I will regret, knowing better than to go down certain paths and just trying in general to keep my head above water. Working as hard as I can to accept everything that is going on. The internal battle is very fierce, like a hurricane swirling with many differences of opinions. It’s like that final scene in Terminator II where the bad Terminator is struggling in the molten metal, screaming, fighting with its last bit of energy to survive…yeah it has been like that inside me. The inner scream. And of course, I have hated every minute of solitude. Still though not being overly social and retreating into my Ivory Tower from the ravages of work stresses. Longing…lots and lots of longing. Wishing, lots and lots of wishing that I could change things, not only for myself but for those I really cared for so that we could all have a little happiness within the craziness. I realized however that the patterns I had set up at some point in my very early years would stay intact, ingrained into my very cells, and would always manifest if I ever got to be too successful and too ahead of the game. Pessimistic you say? That maybe, but I really was trying to be more optimistic about what was going on in my life. Really I was.

And then… out of nowhere, after a stressful month at work that was a kin to the agony of a childbirth experience, I get fired from my job. Now if that wasn’t the topper! It came out of nowhere, and everyone around me, well all of our jaws just dropped. The reasons of course were lame and fabricated, but the reality that reared its ugly head was that I was now on my own, really on my own with no income. It could not have come at a worse time, living alone in a swanky apartment that I was booked into for a year’s lease. Up to my neck in credit card debt once again, I mean this was not a good thing. Everyone was really good around me though, I had a lot of emotional support. Even customers I had served phoned me up to see if I was all right. No one agreed with the decision and tried to reinforce to me the usual tripe “when one door closes another opens”. Yeah OK, spare me. This is my life you’re talking about here, and I am not 21 and cannot just spring into another job.

Not three days after that episode I had a milestone birthday. You know, the 21st, the 30th, the 40th and the 50th (I'm not telling!) It made me really wonder once more if I had any control at all and definitely started the year off with a bang. Three decisions made for me, totally out of my control because if I have had my way I would still have been there with the Mr., living in the house with him, and working away at this job. It all changed in four months time. Now I don’t know if it’s a sense of denial that over came me right from the beginning of all this…but as much as I have hated everything that has happened, I have really not been worried about making it.
I was living alone, totally alone and paying for it myself, every penny for the first time in my life ever and I mean since I was 21 (being far from that now). When I got fired, which was the proverbial icing on the cake, sure I was pissed off about it, and rather on the floor for a day or two…but again, I found myself calm inside and walking around with this mental filter on. A filter that had me not worried in the least about being unemployed. Does this mean that I finally have some faith like I did when I really young? I use to say to my mother when I was a teenager, “oh don’t worry…something will come up” and I use to believe that back then. I don’t know how I lost that. Along the way somewhere though I lost that unbreakable faith and as life went on for me I would be overcome by some of the many unpleasant experiences I had. Unable to function and paralyzed from the pain I felt, physically sick, and at times in a mindset of suicide. But I got through it, though not un-scathed, but here I am. No longer thinking or feeling bad now. I have always felt graced, like I have some sort of built in safety net that seems to emotionally catch me when I am about to step off of the cliff. Buried faith? Unknown inner strength? Those dam’d angels who have been sleeping on the job? Denial? Something…because I am not worried, and I really am OK. Maybe not about the love affair breakup thing, but I’ve gotten through things like that before. I’m not going to get all positive about this loss of income thing right away, until I see that door right in front of me waiting for me to turn the handle and walk through to something that is supposedly better for me. I have to trust somehow that it is, because when I have tried to control my life in the past, it has failed to succeed more often than not. These decisions were made for me that is for sure, and I am going to give it its chance to prove itself to me. Don’t worry, I’m going to be watching for the signs, and watching for the results. The faith test is on! I am challenging those invisible forces to come through for me. Meanwhile I better get creative because although I need a miracle right now, I am not one to believe in them. But at least I have some faith-because I have been in corners before and always gotten out of them.

We’ll see.

Meltdown

I can hear the wind calling, on this humid summer evening. I am sitting inside my apartment, away from the heat, away from the world outside, away (finally) from my work, but alone with my angst…there is no escape from it…it’s within me and without me as well. It fills every crevice and cell inside me. Like the air, it’s everywhere. The wind starts gently at first, then becomes more restless as I strain to listen. Maybe it will rain I think to myself. That would be perfect. I would like that…but no, it’s just the wind-restless at heart like me. The subtle sound of the rustling leaves seems to call me to the window. I get up from the computer, just like in a movie…mesmerized by what might be “out there” and I walk over to the window to look. For a brief minute I see the beauty of the night sky and the bright illumination of the full moon lighting everything up with it’s brilliant gaze. I see the shadow of the moonlight on the leaves……and I feel the stillness of the night. Then I see myself standing there, unable to enjoy it. My small patio on the second floor is like a hollow hole in the wall, uncomfortable, and definitely not nature friendly. And I stand there alone. The trees start to sway side to side, and the leaves and branches are tapping at my window as if to beckon me to something waiting out side. But nothing is waiting outside, at least not in my mind. There is nothing outside but the insane world that I deal with every day. A world that is truly not my home, but I live in it and I wake up here each day. I wish I was somewhere else.

I am on the verge of a breakdown in my ivory tower. The Queen’s crown is falling. Total Meltdown.......All the things that I feel could go wrong have gone wrong, all my insecurities and needs have risen to the surface, and the mudslide I feel that is controlling my destiny continues. My world is a flood, and I have become one with the mud. But it’s only the things that are my own personal pitfalls, that I feel are important, that may not even trouble someone else, and they dig into me like a burr under my saddle. It’s like the fat that rises to the top of the pot when boiling meat for a stew…it has all just come to a head. I am boiling underneath, and creating all this “uck” that is showing up on the surface. Feeling lots and lots of “uck”. Including of course the after effects of the recent shift in residence and in love affair (or lack there of). I am both physically sick and deeply troubled by where I am. I am overwhelmed by anger. Overwhelmed is an understatement. I would say the same for the anger, so very understated and valid only to me but it is indescribably fierce at the same time. I cannot smile. Everything and everyone bothers me. I think of where I am and where I would like to be. I think of how trapped I feel, and I think of the people who keep telling me to get over it. How could they say that not knowing why? And how could they expect me to just snap out of it? I think of London, my original home where I was born that I loved so much. And the London rain. The sound and feel of rain comforts me. The sound of it falling onto the concrete….the drains on the roof spilling over with that waterfall crashing to the ground sound. Why doesn’t it rain tonight? Of course it won’t, I am in the desert. Why am I even thinking it will? Like everything else I want, it just doesn’t happen. I catch my thoughts rambling away and I go outside and brave the 100 degree heat. The heat doesn’t bother me. Indeed, summer is here, but inside me I am in the middle of a winter storm. Time to make tea. In England, where I was raised, when ever something needs to be worked out, a crisis presents itself, or someone comes round to visit, it’s always tea time. I grew up with the notion that a cup of tea would sooth just about anything. Calm the most savage beast, and relax you despite your troubles. So still to this day, I put the kettle on and brew a cup of tea every day of my life. Trying to comfort myself in the middle of a mess, in the middle of the hot summer, in the middle of my own personal crisis. There is nothing else to do. There is nothing that can be done. There is nothing I want to eat, nothing I want to do, nothing I could buy and no one around who would understand, just my restlessness as I search for the comfort. There is nothing else that I want than the feeling of a loving embrace inside a place of love. To stay there a little longer than intended, to be in the glow and spirit of love. And to know my life will not continue to be so painful, so dull, and so jaded and such a struggle. Something about that would make it easier to continue out into the world we live in day to day. I need that inspiration and that love for without it there is no foundation. I have become so strong over these past 10 years so…..no this won’t break me. No, I won’t loose my grip, sure, I can still carry on…..and I will carry on without heart. Because the way it is right now, I can’t resolve it, I can’t resolve it. And I cannot get it to go away. It’s something I am not willing to forgive just yet. Even if I try and forgive myself.

If there are angels among us, then they need to put the neon light above my head, as a beacon for the other angels…to say ”hey, this one really needs us right now, though strong she is.” Send me an Angel. My attitude is not going to instantly turn around to positivty by itself. Not at all. I am going to need some solid loving, wonderfully magical experiences to lift my spirits up from this last dragging behind the horse. Send me an Angel right now.