Crying Over Spilled Wine

So this happened tonight. 

And then I sat down in the middle of it all and cried. 

What a shit day.  It started shitty, and got a bit better.  Then it was shitty again, and got better again.  Then it was busy and anxiety filled and and screamy and fighty and frustrating and madenning and then really, really shitty.  This.  Broken mess of spilled everything on the floor.  And also the wine. 

It was my last straw today when I thought the last straw had already been drawn.  And I actually thought to myself - if I don't let my words out I am going to explode.  And here we are.  Me at my keyboard, still crying, and you reading, probably thinking - dude..hot mess alert. 

**And let me tell ya, I am really fucking tired of people telling me what not to write, or that their feelings were hurt, or that maybe someone would see this and be offended or angry or upset... If this is you - stop reading and fuck off. ** 

I sat down in the middle of it and cried big, feel sorry for myself, alligator tears.  I cried for the mess, I cried for the frustration.  I cried for everything no one understands about this business and its hours and the work and the loneliness.  I cried because every day I don't love it, but I everyday I don't hate it.  I hate it today.  Tomorrow I won't.  I cried because there are people every day that make my day beautiful and they make me smile.  I cried because I miss my own people like that.  I cried because I am angry and feeling unheard when I speak, and because today someone made me feel like less that I deserve to feel.    I learned my worth a long fucking time ago, and I cried for that too. 

I slammed doors and threw boxes.  I cursed broken bottles and sharp words.  I replayed loud conversations in my head.  I reheard it all.  And I said nothing - so I cried for that too.  I cried for broken promises and because life isn't always fair.  I cried for so many things today, I am on empty. 

Then I picked up the pieces and moved on... because that's what I do. You know what I do know?  That broken bottle doesn't get less broken if you say "sorry" and throw it back on the ground.  That's what I know. 

Return to Gratitude

I've had writer's block for months.  I've got sentences, but no structure and no continuation.  I've got longing, but no time.  I've got desire, but a wall in my way. I've got wisdom, and I've got guilt.  What?  Guilty that I want to take time to write?  Yes, Ma'am.

I keep looking back on a year ago.  A year ago, my youngest graduated from high school.  I quit my job.  I moved, and not just down the street.  I was about to be living a brand new life, feeling like a fraud every single day.  And I did.  We moved, we took on a business I knew nothing about.  I was without my children, my friends, my family, trying to be part of business I really had no business being in.  How's that for some truth?  I was terrified. And lonely.  And feeling like "fake it till you make it" was my new motto.  I stood on the foundation of "next year it won't feel like this".

I swore I would write.  I would take the time, no matter what.  Another lie.  Who has time to write, or do anything that matters to one's self when they are part of a business that rarely sleeps?  And it's not just me.  No one gets that time.  This business will take it all if you let it.  It will take your time, your mood, your passions, your spunk, your sass... it will take it all and chew you up, and spit you out - if you let it.  Anything will - if you let it.

So a year later, does it feel like "this"?  Somedays.  But mostly no.  I have met some incredible people in a year.  I have filled parts of my soul with mountain air, lake water, 85 year old market volunteers, laughter, challenge, chickens, the friendship of my life's partner, whispers at night, 4 am warnings not to talk about work, sleep in days, travel, reading, learning, letting go, and love.

Today was a day where I said "if I don't get out (mostly out of my own head), I am going to end up in the news".  Today was a day where I needed to stop life from spitting me out on the sidewalk.  I needed to write it all down.  I needed to remember gratitude when it felt like no one else did.  I needed to be alone with words.  I needed to remember to take time to write.  The overwhelming feeling of needing to run away is subsiding, but as always, leaving it's etch on my soul.  Another scratch to try to hide - grateful there are fewer of them than there used to be.

I feel an ever longing need to return to my 365 days of gratitude.  Today was like that.  Find the gratitude.  Write the gratitude.  Feel it, look up a spa, dream about running away, don't run away.  Call the best person you know, quiet a waterfall, write, be quiet, remember that you feel like less of a fraud that you did last year this time, know that moving here and doing all of this wasn't a gigantic mistake, and be grateful.

It was a full moon yesterday.  Tomorrow will be calmer.  I will be grateful for that too.

 I found these tiny flowers down by the river, and I could hear my friend, Shelly, marvelling at how pretty they were in their tiny simplicity and I smiled.  Her beautiful soul always makes me smile and remember gratitude.  Tiny, simple colors that made me smile.  Grateful.  

Time Out

Anxiety is a bitch.  If  you don't know the awful effects, I am, truly, deeply, happy for you.
(funny side note... I started writing this post months ago and stopped after this sentence.  I didn't see a point of starting a new post, seems perfectly simple to pick up right where I left off...)

I spent a good part of last night staring at the ceiling replaying sentences in my head begging for a waterfall to shut it all up.  In fact, it's the only way I finally fell asleep.  I pictured myself standing in front of that roaring waterfall, where I couldn't hear anything but rushing water, including my own thoughts.  I woke up exhausted and quiet.  It didn't go unnoticed.

But even when prompted, my throat closed and my chest squeezed.  I can't talk.  It's a silence that grips hold of all of my emotions and chokes it shut.  I want to say it all, believe me.  I want to, I just can't.  I wish it was easily understood.  The fear that grips a soul, even a soul that is normally shiny and bright with optimism, is real and it's an asshole.  It's a liar, but Lord, it's convincing.  It's filled with words I've heard before, thought I over came and left behind, but stand in the face of staring them down, wishing them away.

Waterfall...waterfall...waterfall...

I am enough....

Waterfall... waterfall...waterfall...

You're not alone...

Waterfall...waterfall...waterfall...

Escape.  Get out.  Run.

Waterfall....waterfall...waterfall.

...Breathe...

Waterfall...waterfall...waterfall...

In and out... one step, then the next.  Move. Forward. Breathe. Music - loud, loud music.

Time out.

Country Girl? You Bet Your Ass I Am

You know how sometimes, you can be driving along, and it's kind of quiet, and a thought sneaks up on you?  A memory slips it's way past that deep buried spot you've had it tucked away in, and you can't stop smoldering about it no matter how much you try to push it back into that dark place it stayed for sooooo long...

So here I am.  I've been thinking all day about this being the first day of a new year, and I haven't written anything.  Not a post of gratitude, not a tidbit of wisdom.  I was wondering what (or when) I was going to write about - or rather, where to start.  And then, driving home tonight, in the dark, the hood of my jacket rubbed my neck and I took a look down at what I was wearing... and I smiled.  

It's sort of a long time ago, no so important, not so very long story, but ohhhh the impact... About 20 years ago (wasn't that a lifetime!), I remember having a conversation with a (long since removed from my life) "friend".  It was all about where we would like to live ideally.  I had said I would love to live on an acreage, out of town, where the stars are bright and the nights are quiet.  I remember saying it and being scoffed at.  "You? On an acreage?  City girl like you, in the country? Not likely..."  and then... snickered laughter.  I remember the sting then.  

Fast forward 20 years.  I live on an acreage, or rather a small farm.  I wear hiking boots outside, and more often than not, I declare today to be "sweatpants day".  I wear baseball hats, and keep my hair tied up or back.  There are days my face doesn't see make up, but mud.  And... this is my place.  I love it, and I'm good at it.  

I've always found it challenging when we outgrow people in our lives.  It's a sort of break up with what you knew, what was acceptable, what you tolerated, and what level that proverbial bar is set at, yet I marvel at the lessons that make us move it up a notch, knowing some things (people) are better left behind.  The problem for me, I suppose, is that I am a gratification girl.  I like to be patted on the head ( I know at least two or three of you that just smiled).  I like it when I prove people wrong and flash a little rock star, but when you leave people behind, sometimes they don't get to see it... and I like it when they see it.  ( You know why.  It feels good to be better than "I told you so".) So this post, right now, sitting in my sweat pants and baseball hat, hiking boots by the back porch door, looking out the window to our little farm, makes me smirk.  Yes, Sye O'Malley, I am a farm girl, and a damn good one, and this post is for you and every single "friend" that got left behind out of sheer necessity for my own good.  

This is a new year post.  Last year was a challenge.  I cried - a lot.  There was  life to deal with, and much of it wasn't easy.  There were hard decisions, and triumphs.  There were glories, and extreme proud moments.  There was fear, there was uncertainty... and there was love.  Above all else, there was love; love of it all - the experience, the people, the loss, the gain, the failures, the successes.  2018 was life and 2019 is, of course, all about the moving forward despite what or whom we've left behind.  We really have no other choice.  This year is going to be all about a farm girl's "rockstar" life and not about anyone's I told you sos.  

Here we go.  This is our Happy Place. 

Saying Prayers

Sometimes,  when it all gets too loud, and I just can't even sort out my own thoughts, I turn to the only other place I know. I don't really know if I can call it praying, but I sure do faĺl asleep having some complicated conversations.   My mom always used to say if I fell asleep saying my prayers,  the angels would  finish them for me. I sure hope she's right....

 

I had a day yesterday.  One of those roller coaster, what the hell is going on,  really badly need to lay on the floor and feel the earth still, just let me take a deep breath, someone hear my words before I go crazy kind of day.  And then he came over, looked at the necklace settled around my tired neck, and slid the clasp back around to where it's supposed to be. "Someone's thinking about you", he said quietly.

 

"Lord, I hope so".

 

 

Humble and Kind...and Enough

In the last half hour, I saw a  picture of a girl who bullied me through three of my teenage years.  She was the gem that met me at the corner of the building I had a class in, and threatened my life - daily.  She loathed me, and was pretty vocal about it.  She never laid a hand on me, but held all the crippling power in a mere suggestion of it.  Daily.  She was, then, then epitome of evil to me.  She made me afraid to go to class, to school, leave the house, have friends, go anywhere possible she might be.  She made my stomach turn in knots, and made me want to be physically ill.  She was ugly inside. 

Twenty seven years later, I am on the brink of 42, and the feeling has switched from anger and hurt to curiosity (okay, and truthfully still a little anger).  My stomach still knots at the memories.  I actually scrolled through her facebook profile.  There's a baby, and a fiancé.  There is a smile that seems not to be fueled by someone else's pain.  There is a post that reads, ironically, "always stay humble and kind", and I actually scoffed out loud.  I blurted out an iconic Alicia Silverstone "AS IF!".  And sitting there, staring at her, I wondered if there was any chance she actually believed that now.  I wondered if she learned.  I mean, really... don't we all?  But Lord, do I want the answer to that question.  Does she really, truly, from her soul, feel that kindness matters?  And does she even have a clue as to what she did?  Was she ever sorry? 

And then, I thought - does it matter? The fact is, I'll never know the answer.  I am a successful, beautiful, confident woman that was affected by bullying.  It doesn't make me a victim.  It makes me a God damn survivor of terror, and good for me for being raised with skills to make me better than her.  It also made me a better parent eventually, a better friend, and guess what?  It made me kinder.

A few years ago, I did some public speaking in schools all over Alberta.  I had created and presented a program called "I Believe In Me".  I talked about the power of confidence growing up believing in yourself and empowering other people to do the same. I used her as an example of who not to be and secretly wished she could hear it.  It empowered me, it empowered children.  I won.

I know now, as an adult, that her behaviour was some sort of internal struggle with her own confidence and her need to be more powerful than someone or whatever the thing was that ate at her from the inside out.  I know she had no real seeded reason for her hatred.  It wasn't really me.  It was the threat of me, who I was, what I was, where I was - and it was everything she wasn't, but maybe wanted to be.  Today, right now, my hope is that she really did learn that she was enough, is enough, and doesn't need anyone else's pain to make her feel it.  I hope she finally feels "enough".

Here's how I'm going to leave this all:  You know when you hear someone say "it's okay..." after an apology?  First of all, I'm never getting that apology.  I'm not that naïve.  But I am never going to say it was or is okay.  I understand your shitty behaviour.  You were a shitty person.  I hope you've become less shitty, and live now to rectify who you were. I hope you are both humble and kind. 

Blurty Brand New Year - Same Ol' Me

Happy January 2, and welcome 2018! I've been thinking about this post for some time now.  What should I write?  What should I address, who gets my attention, and who do I just simply leave behind?  It's been consuming my brain a bit.  I think I've written a post in my head thirty times or so, never actually sitting down with the words.  I don't know how to make it all flow.  There's so much to just blurt out there so it's said and I'm not carrying it in this brand spanky new year.  So I decided to just do that - blurt.  In no particular order other than how it comes out - blurt.  Blurty. 

Dear friend that left my life in 2017, good bye.  I've wasted enough energy thinking about it all and wondering just how our friendship twisted into the silent nothingness that it is now.  I've spent enough time being blamed, angry and hurt, disappointed and confused.  I'm tired of missing pictures, and thrown away moments, I'm over wondering what everyone we know thinks about it.  You made your choice, it had nothing to do with me.  And though I miss you dearly, the damage is done and it will never be the same regardless of what is said now.  Know with absolute certainty that I wish you well, and I hope one day you are healthy and happy and that your soul is fulfilled.  I treasure so much of what was us and understand many lessons I learned along the way.  I can't be part of any more of your journey - and that is my decision - not my fault. 

Relationships are hard work.  Every single one of them.  And I want to clarify.  Love is NOT hard.  Love is easy.  Loving is easy.  Being loved is easy.  It does not hurt or twist.  Love does not need effort.  Love is easy.  Relationships are not love - love is a facet.  So is patience, and compromise, and sacrifice, and hurt and struggle, and laughter and tears.  Truth, growing, communication, assumption and lack there of - all facets.  Effort - that is the working tool of relationships, and I like to think it's fueled by love.  Remember this in your relationships - your friendships, your family, your partners, the people in your life every single day.  Fuel your effort with love.  Feed the relationships that are good for you, and leave behind the ones that no longer bring you joy. 

I will be forty two years old this year.  I plan to be amazing, and my intention is to just become more spectacular as I age.  To hell with eye cream, cutsie hair cuts that promise to be "easier" than they ever are, weighing the perfect amount, or worrying about who is running when I am not.  Yeah, I buy my clothes in a size that isn't a six.  And?  I look great in them!  My feet are a size nine (ish) and no, I don't need high heels that make my feet hurt five days a week.  If you're lucky, once or twice a year, for about two hours, you might catch me in a pair, but don't go holding your breath for that glimpse.  No, this isn't my proclamation of being the next granola eating, razorless Yetti of Walmart.  I just mean to say that I'm going to be me -whatever size that happens to be that day, whatever outfit, hair in a bun or blown out long, cargo pants or jeans, sandals or boots, dashiki or moo moo.  The point is, social media sucks at letting us be ourselves.  We have to be stronger than what's expected of us - the bar, is in fact, way too low as I see it. 

Gratitude is a fleeting trait. So is appreciation.  Complacency and entitlement seems to be replacing them.  Please do your part to prevent this and remember how much of your life could be different. 

I am lucky to share my life with some pretty amazing people.  Thank you for what you share with me. 

This year ahead is full of potential.  It will be filled with changes and growth.  There will be learning and newness.  I am so excited!  This year, there will be struggles - because nothing good comes easy.  There will be challenges and rewards.  There will be accomplishment.  There will be fear, and uneasiness, there will be uncomfortable longing.  There will be hellos and goodbyes.  And there will be an abundance of moving forward.  I am praying for gentle grace in it all.

I can't wait, and I can't wait to tell you all about it. 

Thanks for still being here.