…Happily Ever AFTER

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After what? Hmm? Really, why do we have to wait for after? What if after never comes? I will be happy now in the present not AFTER : I own my own home, or get the best job, or wait until the debts are paid down. Happily ever after is an old timey way of feeling good about living through a rough patch, being greeted with fresh hope for the better tomorrows that may never come. Screw that.

We met at hockey. She was part of the staff of security guards at our local arena/convention center/concert venue. We hit it off. We have had some good belly laughs over the years. We have gossiped, chatted, compared war wounds, and held our heads as high up as we could manage when one of us got our wings clipped ( life decides to throw a curve ball ). She is the one I walk with whenever we both manage some time away from commitments, chores and other miscellaneous happenings.

She has always been the shoulder I seek to lean on when I need to lean. She never tells me to get over myself, or stop being a baby, or “grow up” she listens. She hears me. I hope she feels the same way about me. I try to be her sounding board when she wants to vent, “no strings attached”, no judgements thrown or made. She is indeed a rare find. Her and her hubby have not had the best of it lately. There have been too many doctor/hospital visits in the recent months. Yet, she still manages to be as open, upbeat, and well, her. Everyone takes a beating from life. You just can’t let it beat you in the race. Show up, participate, be your best self. She has taught me so much. Don’t just listen but hear what is said. Take in all of the beauty around you. She is the best kind of friend, in being herself I have become a better person.

I wonder if you realize how brave you are? how strong? how wise? Your life path is headed in a new direction. I will not leave you because that life path has become difficult. It just means that some days I will lead. All you have to do is call… I want you to know how important you are to me, to the people in your life, to you yourself. You are enough. You mean everything to someone. You are loved.

LIFE?

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Is a tough game nobody wins, everyone has to play, and the ending, well, it never goes the way one thinks it ought. I scribbled this note to myself because as I was chatting with a co-worker, it struck me that LIFE…Is what happens when you have other plans! We were discussing how life goes awry. How random, how strange, how wonderful, how scary, how unfair, how infuriating… the reasons never ending. It is a grand undertaking and should be lived full tilt to the best of ones ability. Having said that previous statement I realize my idea of full tilt and your idea are probably vastly different. At my age living full tilt can mean peeling off my bra, flinging it wayward towards the couch, kicking off my sneaks for Crocs, as soon as I cross the threshold into my house, without putting my work paraphernalia down! But, usually I wait to be that bold until after I have had my first cup of coffee = ). Decompress from a stress filled day first then calmly change into more comfortable attire.

LIFE is like a deck of cards. It gets shuffled many times, sometimes it comes up all aces and sometimes you get dealt the joker. What are you going to do? Learn to play the hand you are dealt. Not an easy thing to do and yet, that is the choice. I have spent too many years running from obstacles LIFE threw in my way. The more I ran away the more lost I became. The more unhappy I was. I zoned out of my life and spent precious time on people and situations that I should not have. I learned some pretty tough lessons but I am a better person because of it. I can not be what YOU want or what YOU need. I can only be me. I am probably not your cup of tea and that is okay. It really is. I used to feel badly about all of that but I got over it, mostly.

What does it mean to pity someone? …It’s when you feel sorry for them because they are not up to your standards, whatever that might be. Are you being helpful or hurtful? Or are you simply telling yourself a lie in the hopes that you will feel better about who you are as a person? Intriguing? It ought to be. I have been scorned, bullied, and pitied in my life because I am different. SPOILER ALERT. I was not thin when I was younger. I was not popular. I have odd personality traits. I can not have children. I understand now that inviting sympathy & pity in for a sit and chat was not a wise decision on my part. It is so easy to get used to their company. They give you a false sense of “everything will be all right”. BUT…nothing in your life or about you will change unless you change. Figure out who you want to be and then try to become more like that ideal. It is not done easily. Hell, I am soon to be 58 ( I know, right?) and I still work on who I want to be everyday.

My changing/maturing had nothing to do with the empathy and/or pity freely given either (pity implies tender or sometimes slightly contemptuous sorrow for one in misery or distress). It had more to do with my growing up, realizing I didn’t need to be like everyone else. I did not want to be pitied. There is no joy there, no way to grow as a human. My happiness, my life, my marriage is MY business. I got on with living life. Having children does not make your life magically wonderful or turn you into a better person or make all your dreams come true. It just makes you a person with added responsibilities to tiny humans. I am living my best life right now; because I finally realized my life is better than I hoped it would be. I have friends I enjoy who enjoy me. I am loved. I am enough. I am… no longer worried about sitting with the “cool kids”.

I finally grew up. I am not sorry one bit for my journey. It is true we mature when we are ready. I was finally ready. Never Give Up On The Person You Are Meant To Be

Impossible!?

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or is it I’m possible? Sometimes the things we want to accomplish in life are near impossible to obtain. Things and situations we feel we need in our lives can seem out of our reach: the perfect job, the perfect spouse, THE HOUSE of our dreams, the gaggle of cool friends. It can all be yours. You just have to believe in yourself, that your dreams are possible, and…then WORK your ass off to achieve your goals. I mean, sure, maybe there is no such thing as a perfect spouse but love eventually finds its way to most people. It can feel like perfection if the chemistry is right and both players are not ass hats. I never wanted perfect just someone to love; to love what we made together (our life), and to accept that our road might have twists, turns, adventures, and a never ending supply of sarcasm. I am thankful we both have jobs (far from perfect), we eventually bought a house we both love (not the dream house) and we have some pretty amazing friends.

Right now as I sit in my office waxing on, I can hear my Mr. Right yelling, “shoot the puck!” at his computer. I never used to believe in finding a Mr. Right but rather a “Mr. You’ll Do For Now” as I always seemed to get whoever was left! over. Funny how life surprised me, how it keeps on surprising me. I know he is watching or listening to a hockey game. He is in his happy zone even if it doesn’t always sound that way. I am happy, drinking coffee, planning adventures for the up coming summer season and feeling that my “dreams” are possible. It is possible for me to? do whatever I set my mind to.

Letting go of something that doesn’t fit into my life anymore is hard for me but I am getting to a better place about it everyday. Change what you can when you must. Accept that which is unacceptable. Acceptance is the key to becoming a better version of yourself.

Food for thought? One cannot unfry an egg nor can One drink from an empty cup.

Never Give Up On The Person You Are Meant To Be

Unfettered

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Every Sunday I make my way to Shrewsbury to go to my WWs meeting. I buy myself a coffee, as a sort of enticement for a job well done or at least attempted, from my local Starbucks. More than once I have pinched, swiped, taken or asked if I could have a painted rock from the drive-thru window. I assure you it is okay. The rocks are left there in loving tribute to Zoe Wolfus, a Shrewsbury teen who died by suicide.

I never had the pleasure of knowing this wonderful human. Being a local to this area I have seen the write up for her from the obituary. I have read tributes to her on Facebook. I just wanted to say thank you to the Universe in hopes that somewhere she will feel that little spark of joy on a Sunday which makes all the difference and I am sure not just to me. Her friends and family paint the rocks as a way to pay her life forward. She wanted the world to be a better place.

Any time we choose kindness the world IS a better place. If you or a loved one needs help, ask for it. Someone is always willing to listen. Love is the greatest gift you can give yourself. Trust the people in your life to be there for you. As people we often go to extreme measures to save the littlest of creatures but we are fearful to ask for help for ourselves.

You are enough. You are loved. Believe in your beauty.

You Are Stronger Than You Know.

Never Give Up On The Person You Are Meant To Be

 

The Tale of the Kiss and the Slap

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Or why the pain of rejection lingers. If a magical being flew into your life blessed one palm of a hand with a kiss and the other with a sharp slap which would you remember longer? Most might say the kiss because it was innocent, sweet and well, magical while the other was rude, disruptive and hurtful. Which one? It’s easy…the one that hurt. Pain whether it is physical or emotional tends to linger. We try to figure out what we did to deserve it or we waste energies trying to absolve ourselves. If you are an overthinker, like me, you turn over every minute, dissecting every detail. I have to tell myself to stop obsessing. When I was young and experiencing life on my own without the safety net of family, I did not know how to make friends. It is a skill set that, let’s be honest, we work at our whole lives. If you are blessed to have one close friend in your adult life, that you are not romantically involved with, congratulations! You have won the lottery! Sometimes relationships just stop working. We all enter into relationships because there is something there we are drawn toward. We need (OMG I SAID THE NEED WORD) to feel like a part of a larger picture or there is something we want that we might never have experienced before, or there is a beauty there we fall head over heels for. (THE KISS)

Why do relationships break down? BOREDOM? infidelity, having different life goals, age, maturity ? Yes, all of those things. I am saddened to say that sometimes there are other darker reasons : abuse, neglect, alcohol or drugs, betrayal. (THE SLAP) The relationship must end for the health of all involved. Some are successful with the breakdown while others spiral out of control. I use breakdown because no one feels up after a relationship ends. Well, I never do anyway. I used to be the one to spiral, not anymore. I know what I am worth. I want more for myself than what I used to settle for.

I am also not the same person I was before life slapped me around, lol. I am enough. I am a good person with a big heart. As I sit here writing this I realize that Once Upon A Time that wasn’t true, I was not a good person. I hated myself and things I wasn’t a part of. I carried around anger, hurt, disappointment … like they were accessories for my wardrobe. Often I was rude to people, disagreeable, because I was so unhappy with who I thought I should be instead of just being who I am. My younger sister taught me to see the vulnerability of life. If you look at something hard enough you learn to appreciate the work that went into making it a piece of art. My Dad thought the best of everyone he met, a rare quality. My husband was brave enough to scale my “wall of scorn” to learn who I was. I love him. He loves me. Our life together is no one else’s business. Have your opinions, I live my life. I love my life. I have learned to be a better person because of the people in and around my life.

Everyone who lives has regrets. I have few regrets. I love with my whole being. I am human, sometimes I am a queen sized ass hat. I try to own it all, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I offer apology when it is offered in return. There have been people in my life who chose to be passive/ aggressive instead of working through a rough patch. I get it. Avoidance means that a person does not have to accept their roll in the souring of a friendship. It makes it easier to sell “the innocent victim roll” to everyone. I have been there and done that. It is an empty feeling because somewhere in middle of all that anger is the truth. Walking away takes strength. It is ok to be sad when you have a loss. Rest a bit, take stock in who you are, where you want to be and then go live your life. Go after whatever sparks JOY for you. GO after it. What ever that IT is.

Never Give Up On The Person You Are Meant To Be

3,TRI,TRY,TRIO,TROIS,three

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I buy my produce in threes or multiples of three. I am two out of three in a series of siblings. My first name begins with Tri. I have always liked the evenness of this odd number. Prime numbers fascinate me. I was born on the third day of a month. I guess three is my thing. There are many great things about three. It can be a tie breaker. It has the ability to make a heart emoji. Did you know that there are actually three sides to a conflict? There is my truth, your truth and the ACTUAL truth. Perspective is a funny thing.

I am sitting in my office waiting for our Nor’easter to hit. I hate big storms that trap me indoors but there will be plenty of coffee, books, and insipid TV programming to keep me entertained so I should be okay, well, at least that is my plan. In a little while I will venture out to our local convenience store to play this weekends lotto numbers early, stop into the pharmacy to pick up RXs and then to our favorite Chinese take-out place to pick up late lunch vs our usual Friday late night supper. I am happy, maybe even content with what is about to transpire over the next few short days. So far our winter weather has been pretty uneventful outside of the frigid temperatures we seem to keep getting pulled into.

The months in 3s

January is a month of Mondays. February is when I miss her most. March is for Spring.

April is for showers so May can bloom and June brings Summer time… soon

July is my favorite month. August is for long walks at the beach after the tourists have all gone home. September is my hubby’s BDay and our Big E adventure.

October is for all things FALL/and HALLOWEEN! November to be thankful, December is the end until January when it all begins again.

Wait for it…

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Lately I have had a lot of things to think about. I am a woman of a certain age (and yes, I hate that phrase) and being in that range I know it is time for me to take steps toward the kind of life I wish to have for my later years. I am getting my 401k into better shape. I have been paying off debt. I am TRYING not to make any new debts. I am mending fences where I feel they should be mended and walking away from things that no longer spark joy. There is something to be said for the wisdom one gains from the pain of being alive.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was afraid of her own shadow. She hated the silence of a dark night and the loneliness of a rainy day. A short lifetime ago I was that tiny child afraid of almost every thing. We are all born with the same potential for greatness. Circumstance and surroundings change that. No one person is better than any other person. One just has to learn to be brave enough to go after the life they want to live.

I am sitting in a hotel in Gloucester MA composing this post today. I have been waylaid from my midwinter adventure due to a snowstorm. I still managed to cross something off my bucket list. Watching a snowstorm over the ocean. And…if being at the Beauport Harbor is as close to the Atlantic as I can get I am okay with that. I wanted to go someplace warm but with the winter surge of Covid it was tough to get a room with flights that were not getting canceled or moved again and again. I am in unchartered territory for myself. I have never made overnight travel plans for myself before but I am a fast learner. I chose to stay close to home this round. I booked a great room overlooking the harbor. I tried new to me restaurants, Mile Marker One and a great breakfast spot, Mom’s Kitchen. I managed to hit up Zeke’s Place on our arrival. I started following Good Morning Gloucester podcast during my last jaunt to this town in the late Summer of 2021. I am not disappointed. It has been a wonderful resource for finding new spots for me to check in on. Shout out to the locals who have captured my heart.

I want to get my passport. “It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Albus Dumbledore

There is so much more to see before the curtain comes down.

So you might be asking yourself why I warned you to wait for it. Like, what am I waiting for? Well, what are you waiting for? GO LIVE YOUR LIFE! Meet new people, make friends, be kind, love the people in your life. WHY WAIT?

So? What Happens Now?

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Life moves forward. After the apologies have been made and the silence overcomes the emotion you know the answer. There is no returning to what once was. An egg can not be unfried. The only thing in the world that returns unto itself is water. So I will move forward. I wish you the best life I truly do. I hope someday the moments we had will make you smile instead of angry but that is beyond my control. Often I find myself smiling over a shared memory or a trinket or an outing we took. Thanks for all of it. Thanks for teaching me how to want more out of my life. For a while a very short while I was not going to post my blog anymore in deference to your anger. BUT… that goes against my principles.

SO? What happens now? I don’t really know. Life only comes at anyone moments at a time. I am at a different juncture in my life. I am setting up for the time when I retire and am able to live apart from a work environment. I am not so worried anymore about if people like me. I am more concerned with how I treat myself. There are plenty of people in the world still left to meet. I am ready for adventure.

SO? What happens now? When you are a part of my life I enjoy every moment we have together, the laughs, the food, the places we go, the things we see. When you are not with me I still speak of you with a fondness for who you were to me. I sometimes still slip and tell people you are my best friend. There is a you shaped hole in my soul. “Just because you lost me as a friend doesn’t mean you gained me as an enemy. I’m bigger than that , I still wanna see you eat , just not at my table.” Tupac Shakur
― Recognize-the-special-people-youve-been-blessed-to-know

The Light of a New Day

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There is a soft sound coming from somewhere near by, sweet and melodious but I can’t discern where it might be coming from. I am in that state between a dream in sleep and waking. I open my eyes. My room is still bathed in the shadow of early morning. My cat is sleeping beside my upper left thigh rolled into a ball, head tucked into tail. I carefully free my arm from the warm layers of blanket it has been cozy in to sneak a quick scratch to the cat. She lifts her head to look at me. I am greeted with a quick chirp. I love this cat. Hubby and I rescued her during the Big Life Shutdown (Covid-19). I can still hear the tune that stirred me. I am able to hear my inner voice quite clearly and I am sure it is me thinking about a song that I just can’t get out of my mind. I am awake in the light of a new day.

Some times life changes in ways that is unexpected and unwanted but it happens so pull up those big girl panties and show up. I am changing. I am not the person I once was. The person I strove to be in my younger years I now find distasteful. I surprise myself with how unready I was to be a grown up. Silly fantasy instead of planning a life. I could have gone to college. I could have been anything I wanted to work for but I chose a different path. I have no regrets. The less travelled road often reaps the best hidden gems; BUT, I can not undo the years where I felt like I was less than everyone. Was I not as intelligent, not as wise, not as beautiful as everyone around me? Maybe but unlikely. What was I? Complicit. No excuses. My sisters and I were raised without much expectation so I rose to that level. I was complicit in my own failure to achieve something greater than I had been exposed to .

I tried to never have any friends. I rarely reached out to family. I liked to pretend I was all alone in my misery. I really desperately wanted to be seen but I was more afraid to experience any more emotional pain. In my adult life I managed to find love and get married. I let my wall of defenses down long enough to allow myself to find love. Life changing in so many good ways. I think it is the real reason I have allowed myself to grow as a person. I was accepted as I was; not as a token to what I might be or what I could become. Just me, warts and all. I have love and I am still married.

People are so simple and yet so complex. We will do anything to make a friend and then everything to make them go away when they get “too close” or a conflict develops. Someone I was once very close with recently told me that over the past few years I had become increasing hard to be friends with. News to me. There were no warning flares, no “hey! you are being a bitch”, no “this isn’t fun anymore”…. just avoidance, from both of us. I think we both knew in the back of our minds that our friendship had seen better days. Our friendship started to feel like an old married couple who don’t want to face the truth of their dead love; we dragged our friendship around, until I made that step. I committed the worst deed. I spoke up. I fancied the idea of chasing after her, to make things better, to right whatever wrong I may have done; but, I stopped myself. I am better than that. I have learned how to say goodbye. I know what I am worth, what my time means to me. I am no longer interested in trivial bullshit I had no hand in creating.

In the light of a new day I know I will make other friends. I know I will let others drift away from me and I will be drifted away from but at the end of my days my life will still be better for all of it. The memories, the laughs, and yes, even the tears. I will miss her. She taught me many lessons, some life changing, some soul burning, some life affirming. You can’t make anyone like you. It has to be a gift freely given. No regrets.

In the light of a new day? I am enough just as I am.

Where Are You Going?

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March 3,2021 was a tough day. The sky a beautiful blue with sparse fluffy clouds and just the slightest of winds. Funerals are never on anyone’s to do list. This was a funeral I had to do. Once in a lifetime you are fortunate enough to meet someone that awes you. Once upon a time ago I was aging away from being considered young when I started dating my future (still mine) husband. I was VERY against “meet my parents”, “meet my family”. I could barely handle the oddness of my own family without trying to navigate new folks that ultimately had the power of judgment on their side. I was newly entranced by love. I wanted nothing to do with the possibility of losing him to an unhappy relation who felt I would NEVER be GOOD ENOUGH.

Our first big venture as a couple was to the Big E in Springfield MA. Somehow my future hubster convinced me to go to his Grandmothers house after for Sunday dinner. It was to be the last Sunday gathering there. This old family home was being sold. Nana was getting ready to embrace her new journey into elderly housing. It was on this day that I met Debbie for the first time.

I was asked about myself. I was showed into the house. I was welcomed and I am sure judged by many that day but she herself had an easy smile and a friendly way about her that I instantly liked. She invited my hubby and I to her house many times for gatherings over the years. She never wavered in her manner. She was always gracious to me. I will/do miss her. Never underestimate what you mean to someone. Debbie always made me feel like I belonged. She loved her family very much. I am a better person for having known her. When I find myself in front of her resting place I always stop, say my hellos, and I say a silent hopeful pray that she knows she is loved and is missed.