Light and Dark

 I want to be a writer.  It has always been a dream of mine since I was a little girl.  My mother fostered the idea by making me write Voice of Democracy essays when I was 9 or 10.  It was a VFW exercise for seniors in high school.  I'm at a crossroads in my life and I have to decide whether  my dreams of being an artist and a writer get put on the back burner while I go get a "real" job that will allow me to escape my current situation.  Or my second option is to just take a little break from my oh so crazy life and I figure out what kind of job I can get that will still allow me to be who I really am and take care of myself for a change.  Doing my second option also allows me to follow my dream and write my blog , embroider my art and unclutter my room and my head in the bargain.  At the moment I've chosen option 2. 

They say write what you know.  I know I am still a little bit of light in a world filled with darkness.  I know I accept every person I meet in the same way and that is a blessing for me because when you just talk to people you find out the most interesting things about life that make you feel a little less alone.  I know I smile a lot, genuinely smile.  I love to laugh at everything including myself.  I hope I can say I leave everybody I come into contact with feeling a little better then they did before I spoke to them, well almost everybody anyway.  I write a lot of personal stuff on my blog which makes some people wonder what planet I am from and why I did not learn the cardinal rule of keeping your secrets secret.  I look at it two ways, the first is that if God wanted me to keep my secrets secret he wouldn't have given me so many secrets to hide.  The second is if one person out there anywhere is feeling bad about themselves and thinking that maybe life isn't worth living they can find someone out there who's life sucks more then theirs does.  I'm even making people happy with my sob stories.

Outdoors I  am this wonderful little light thing that everybody knows.  The cashiers who know my son liked Encore lasagna, the girls in the pizzeria treat me like Norm from Cheers, it's kinda cool I have admit.  And no I don't eat pizza every day just once a week on Friday like I have since I'm like 0 years old(perhaps 1or2).  It's lovely to be one of those people that just talks, really talks to anybody who will listen.  I found out the cashier has a son who works in the supermarket too and the beautiful girl in the pizzeria is an artist who paints the most amazing paintings of the characters in Batman.  I mean they are freaking amazing and she is just a lovely girl.  I secretly hope my son will meet her someday.

I guess that's what it means to be a genuinely nice person. That is until I open the door of my home where darkness descends.  I've always lived in homes where darkness descends, I grew up that way and nothing really changed it until this past December.  I think becoming an artist allowed me to open up my mind and my heart to a different way of living.  That is where I am today.  Digging out.   Opening the cupboards breaking out the disinfectant and just cleaning up my act, trying to bring light here before I leave.  Unless of course I am prematurely pushed into Option #1.  So there you have it I am a serial clutterer and I spend too much time on the computer not writing my blog or embroidering both of which are a hell of a lot more fun then uncluttering.  Peace be with you and start sharing some of your secrets, you may just find out as I did that people are very accepting and that even if you think you are not worthy of love and friendship they think you are.  Thanks to all my friends and family who have been quite supportive of this time of my life. I'm ok. Just hoping and dreaming until I figure out a more suitable game plan. Blessings to all.

PS if you want to know the dirt go back a couple of months it's all there right out in the open.

Kindness

This is a closeup of Blue Eyed Blues, it is available in my Etsy shop.

I don't feel any closer to my destination or even figuring out where my destination is, but I do know one thing I am.  I am kind.  I have always been kind.  It is part of my dna.  I like people till they give me a reason not to and I am kind to everyone including those who have hurt me the most.  I feel that there are so many problems in the world that everyone needs someone to be kind to them. 

I have been blessed lately by the kindness of my friends who took care of me when I couldn't really take care of myself.  I have been blessed lately with the kindness of strangers who give me the confidence to write my life and hope that I help someone with my words. I have been blessed lately with my relatives and friends from my school days who seem to know when I need a phone call or an inspirational quote.  I have been blessed by the kindness of everyone who has come into contact with the rather bedraggled me lately.

But unkindness has also been a visitor at my table.  I do not for the life of me understand people who take delight in making others miserable.  I guess it fills some sort of need in them.  But for myself in my unkind moments it makes me feel lousy.  I hate to be unkind, it feels like I am not honoring my true essence.  The essence to be kind.  So I am trying a little harder to be kind to even those who don't treat me the same way.   To thine own self be true.

So although I am no closer to my destination I realize that I am kind.  I like to  bring a little  bit of sunshine into everybody's day, because kindness can sometimes do powerful things and being unkind can also be that last straw, the one that breaks the person it is done to.  Be nice, be kind. 

Most importantly make sure you teach your children kindness because that is the gift that keeps on giving.  We need a kinder world and children are our future.



The B word (BULLYING)

I was going to write about something else, but I feel compelled to write about children and just how important it is that we remember they are children even in this troubled world we live in.  Things that happen to you when you are a child stay with you for the rest of your life.
Children are not mini adults who can rationalize everything, they are little innocent beings who can be scarred for life by some stupid action we take or don't take.  They can be scarred for life because some unenlightened monster bullies them in the cafeteria or tells them they are ugly.  They end up thinking they are not good enough or deserving of anything because when they were a fragile child someone made fun of them.  I was one of those fragile children who basically grew up thinking I was all the terrible things some little bully said to me. 

They called me Alvin the Chipmunk.  They laughed at me when my clothes were dirty or I was unkempt because my mother was going through a major depression. They called me Chunka and made up a wonderful song from the school house rock theme, Conjuction Chunka what's your function, I east all day and get real fat, because I was slightly chubby.  My weight was  nothing compared to the children of today who now need even more food to protect their souls from their ugly little peers.  I wore pink toughskins so you guessed it my nickname for months and months and months was toughskin.  They made fun of me from the first bell to the last bell of school my entire school life.

I'm kind of amazed I can remember some of this awful crap but I guess it proves my point that things that are done when a child is little can traumatize them the rest of their life.  Believe it or not I sort of consider the fact that I was traumatized a blessing.  Children of today have to live with these monsters when they go home too.  They have to live with Facebook,  and Myspace and Formspring, where these little monsters can follow them home and make their entire lives a living hell.   There are stories after stories of these poor children who take their own lives  because they just can't cope with the constant bullying of their peers night and day.

Another aspect of this post is the aftermath, the problems all that horror brings to your adulthood.  You make terrible choices. You walk around with a closed heart.  You feel you have no value.  That there is nothing important you can share about your life that will mean anything to anyone and you allow people to make all your decisions for you and never trust your own abilities.  Kind of a lot to put on a the shoulders of a little monster but someone has to say it.

So teach your children that it is never ok to elevate themselves by stepping on the backs of those less fortunate then themselves.  Remind them that for the grace of god, that poor child they torment could very well be them in the next class or the next school or the next lifetime.

And I give thanks and gratitude that I have finally seen the light and found myself under all the pounds and bad decisions and garbage I carried around for my lifetime.  And richly my main little monster at my 10 year high school reunion told me how sorry he was for making my life miserable.  Well your welcome, I hope you read this and realize it was written about you.  And if it makes you just a little sad and a little ashamed, welcome to my world.

Please treat your children well and have a constant open discussion with them about what is happening in their school. And give them a hug every day.

I've decided on a theme for this particular blog, children.  I think finding the wounded and invisible child in all of us is my purpose in life.