A letter… to myselves
me. then.
Dear Little Me
There are so many things I wish I could tell you that would change the course of the heartbreak in your life. I wish I could share wisdom with you (or even cram it down your throat) to help you avoid the days when the shadows are more prominent than the light.
The problem is you can’t listen to me because you need to do things your way. I mean this in the most loving way possible. You really do need to do it your way because you are becoming you. You learn who you are through trial, error, and paying attention (this means you’ll be making some mistakes.)
Most of the heartbreak you suffer will be coming to you at your own hands. Sure he will hurt you. Yes she will betray you. They will talk about you. Others will laugh at you. Many will leave you. Your thighs will be the wrong shape. Your tummy won’t be flat enough. You won’t like how your tush looks. Your hair will be too something. The real problem is that in those moments you will be harder on yourself than any of them could be.
You will believe you deserved things you didn’t. You will believe you didn’t deserve things you did. You may act tough and rash (or weak and wimpy,) but inside there will be a nagging voice that will turn on you. There is another voice inside you too. It’s the one you don’t listen to often enough, but you will wish you had. The sooner you obey it, the sooner you will find peace.
What can I do to prevent crappy things from happening to you? Nothing. I can’t stop those event in the first place, but we do have a choice and a voice about how long the crap continues to hit the fan. (When it hits the fan, the sooner you step out of the way the less shit will get on you.)
Here are some secrets you need to know….
- you are not the only one who feels the way you do – they may not tell you they do, but they do
- the things you tell yourself you can’t survive – you probably already have many times over
- you will stop crying – it’s guaranteed
- your body will never be just the way you want it – it doesn’t have to be the way you want it to be beautiful, have fun, give, and receive love anyway
- a pair of fat pants is a wardrobe essential
- if he or she doesn’t like your body – then by all means don’t let him or her have your body
- have a backup plan for bad hair days
- change is scary – so fucking what – do it anyway
- if you aren’t kind to you – then you aren’t a kind person – be a kind person
- pursue your dreams – learn more ways to say yes
- if you don’t mean yes – then don’t say it
- sleep is essential – but you can never own too many types of under-eye concealer
- if they didn’t teach you the skills you need – go get them somewhere else
- if you can’t forgive yourself – then you are not a forgiving person – be a forgiving person
it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
~e.e. cummings
The Re-hanging of Titanic The Tribe
in Ditzy Things I've Done, Mindfulness, Madness, & Mumblings, My Mid-life Smackdown | ∞
Finally… visible progress.
I’m not sure I’ve ever drawn a project out for this long. Ooops. Scratch that. My book’s not written yet either! I finally have made visible progress. More, much more to do, but for today I’m saying yay! It’s progress.
Let me just say this about re-hanging the pictures after painting. They don’t go up as quickly as they come down. Hmmmm. I suppose that could be said of certain other things here in mid-life. Better stop while I’m ahead. 
xo,
-the mess
… more on the saga re-hanging the family pics.
Keeping Me Honest
in Mindfulness, Madness, & Mumblings, My Mid-life Smackdown | ∞
I’ll do it ALL BY MYSELF (or not.)
Project “Rehang Titanic: The Family” is officially underway. I am the bonus mom to The Man’s four children (he and I married in 1986.) Those children have gone off and created 14 amazingly stupendous, brilliant, beautiful grand-mini-messes.
We have zillions of family pictures that line our upstairs hallway and stairwell. All of said photos came off the wall during project “Paint The Mess” in July of 2012 (we repainted the interior of our house). Now eight months later, much to my chagrin, these pictures are still waiting to be rehung.
They need some sprucing up. They’ve been hanging around for lots of years, collecting dust, and some of the frames need to be replaced. I could see it was going to be BIG job. (That’s what happens when you can call your family titanic.)
Accordingly procrastination has been my method of choice for dealing with the problem. All of the photos were stuffed in two giant boxes. We shoved the boxes in corners to collect more dust and were successfully (almost) able to pretend they no longer existed. But the walls on which they hung began to look increasingly barren and sterile. The emptiness served as a reminder and my guilt grew.
So a month ago, I took the first step which was to write about my shitty relationship with time, my own self-imposed drama, my perfectionistic tendencies, and the need for baby steps. I said I would hang just 4 pictures as a start.
Flash forward. Still no pictures on the walls. Guilt steadily increased. Meltdown status was finally achieved last Sunday. This caused me to do something remarkable. I asked for HELP!
Yeppers. That’s a big dot damn deal for me! I told The Man I was lost and needed help to get started. I knew that once the project was underway I would be perfectly content to do the arranging and hanging myself. I just didn’t know how to get started. It was overwhelming.
Today The Man formulated a plan. He took all the pictures out of the boxes, wiped them off, and laid them out in the guest bedroom so I could actually see what we had. And then my engine finally turned over. I began sorting the pictures. I want to hang them in some sort of loose chronological order. In a few minutes, The Man’s help was no longer needed. I was breathing regularly and sorting through things. I finally had a vision for where I was headed.
Beautiful messes inside sometimes have a very difficult time asking for help. Our independent do-it-yourself nature can bog us down to the point of paralysis. It will be a while before the ”Titanic: The Family” pictures are back in their places of honor, but important steps were taken today. I can see where I’m going. And I find myself able to breathe again. Who knows? This whole asking for helping thing might just catch on…
xo,
~the mess
The Key to Trust
in Mindfulness, Madness, & Mumblings, My Mid-life Smackdown, The Shit Life Can Hand You, Wicked Awesome Quotes, Worth 1000 Words | ∞
Acceptance Without Exception
We all battle with trust. We’re scared to death to let go and trust someone. Ironically, Duchovny gets it right here. The KEY is to trust people to be who they are – not who we want them to be.
We create expectations for others based on our own standards and then get pissed when our expectations aren’t met.
As much as I hate to admit it… the majority of breeches of my own trust came because I “expected” someone to live up to a standard of mine when the reality of who they were had been spelled out over and over again by their actions. Yes. Many times they said the words I wanted to hear… and in some cases the words I demanded to hear. Who am I to act astonished and disappointed when they prove to be who they were all along – when they prove to be the person I knew – not the version of the person I wanted to believe existed.
Sadly I suspect the same is true of me. I know I’ve let people down. People who wanted me to be the me they thought I was. Even when the real, human, flawed, beautiful mess inside me stood right in front of them. But they didn’t want to see me – they wanted me to be her… the illusion they had created for me by focusing only on my gifts and refusing to see my flaws. In each and every case where someone has refused to see my flaws… I’m certain I let them down terribly.
When you are placed on a pedestal there is only one way to go… down.
I’m weary of being let down my own expectations. The question is when am I going to be able to trust myself to see things clearly and accept what I see standing in front of me with no exception?
xo,
~the mess
Saturday Morning
in Mindfulness, Madness, & Mumblings, Miscellaneous Oddities & Schtuff I Dig, My Mid-life Smackdown | ∞
It’s about me dammit!
I’ve always been a night owl. So sleeping in isn’t really a new deal for me. But lately I’ve become a super sleeper. For some reason that invokes guilt in me. I think I bought into the meme “the early bird gets the worm”. One of my bonus kids even calls my sleeping habits “rockstar hours”.
I prefer to think of it as being a good mother. Can’t you tell these beagles don’t get enough sleep. They need me to rest with them while they nap!
But seriously, I do wonder why I feel guilty about sleeping? I feel guilty when I don’t get enough rest. I feel guilty when I get too much rest. It seems like perfectionism can haunt me even about something as basic as my sleeping habits.
I swear one of these days you are going to hear me screaming at Dr. Oz “I don’t sleep to make you happy. My sleep schedule is about me – “NOT YOU! Take normal and shove it up your rectum!’
Oy, that took a lot of energy. I need a nap.
xo,
-the mess
Self-Imposed Drama
in iPhoneography, Mindfulness, Madness, & Mumblings, Miscellaneous Oddities & Schtuff I Dig, My Mid-life Smackdown | ∞
…and my generally shitty relationship with time.
Want to know what’s been on my mind ALL year? All 48 days of it? I’m struck by just how much time life takes. I know we all comment about how time flies and we are always wondering where time goes. It’s occurring to me that I have a very unhealthy relationship with time.
Back in July (yes July of 2012 some 7+ months ago), The Man and I had everything but the bedrooms in our house painted. Neither one of knew what a huge job we were undertaking. After all, we hired someone else to do the painting. Surely it was just a matter of taking stuff off the walls and letting the painters work their magic. My plan was to take our time putting things back together so we could clear clutter and get rid of outdated things. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I’d be sitting here in February (working on the January Newsletter) with pictures still needing to be hung.
– Titanic: The Tribe -
And I’m not talking about one or two nails worth of pictures. I’m talking about over 50 family photos that adorn our stairwell and upstairs hallway. I call our family “Titanic – the family. The kids took the biblical injunction “go forth and multiply” very seriously. 14 grand peeps later I think we can say they were extraordinarily successful. Hence we’ve had lots of “Kodak” moments around here and have essentially created a museum to honor them!
Back in “the day” (exactly what day I don’t know). I was the kind of girl who moved into a new apartment and had the pictures hung before I went to bed. That girl is appalled at my lack of motivation. Yeah sure I tripped and broke my ankle so I was laid up for 2 months, but it still seems slovenly to her. She’s an under-estimator and thinks it’s a quick little job which can be done in an afternoon. I know it’s really going to take the better part of the weekend. She’s the one who would start the project on Saturday afternoon and be in tears at midnight when she still wasn’t finished.
Frankly, I don’t have the energy or the will for that sort of self-imposed drama these days. I have more important things to do like sleep late, nap and see the movies nominated for best picture. But this doesn’t mean all of me agrees with decision to delay. She’s back there… judging me… and she has deemed me worthless. This is what I mean by having an unhealthy relationship with time. I don’t seem to know how to be realistic about it. I clearly have a tendency to under-estimate the amount of time life takes. And then I beat myself up for said underestimation.
While I was typing the last paragraph one of the multiple processing units in my brain said… “did it ever occur to you that you could hang up a few pictures without having to hang up ALL of the pictures?” Er. Uh. No. Actually it didn’t. I’ve got the “any job worth doing is a job worth doing well” and “finish what you start” memes playing in my head. I think I might have just had a breakthrough rather than a breakdown.
I can’t stomach hanging ALL of those pictures, but I certainly can manage to hang 4 of them. How’s that for a baby step?
Thanks for indulging me in a random moment of self-awareness. Being more realistic about the time it takes to get things done can be very freeing if you are gentle with yourself in the process. It can also be disheartening if you let “she who judges” have her way with you. So I’m inviting “she who judges” to take a break. Maybe I don’t get things done fast enough for her. Maybe I’m not as efficient as she’d like me to be. But I am a whole lot more realistic than I used to be and I don’t have as many midnight breakdowns either!
I’ve also noticed that “she who judges” doesn’t get much done. She’s so busying bullying me that I end up feeling like a worthless piece o’sh*t thereby enabling me to procrastinate. Hell had I chosen to hang just 4 pictures 7 months ago, I’m pretty sure the job would be finished by now!!
My task for the rest of this month is to work on my relationship with time. I think I need to give it the respect it deserves and be more honest about just how much time I need. I suspect life would treat me a lot better if I allowed myself to take all the time I need and use some of that precious time to be nice to me.
xo,
~the mess
Sleep. Eat. Move
My own version of Eat, Pray, Love. We’re 5 days into the new year. Is your life completely different? Nah. Mine either. I haven’t abandoned any of my resolutions either. Why? Because I didn’t make any! I’m in the midst of my 55th orbit around the sun, so to say I’ve been around the block [...]
Time on My Hands
One of my favorite things… You can see the wear of time on my hands. Yet the love that has held this hand for more than half my life is still strong and growing. Why? How? Probably because neither of us quit at the same time. ;-) Music that Moves Tweet Pin It
Days 30 & 31: Strength & Energy
Ahhhh. That’s the sigh of me finishing what I started on the 1st of October. Here are my final contributions to Mused’s October Creativity Challenge. Enjoy…
Nuff said.
Dislocated, fractured, surgerized ankle and all… the search for understanding is the energy that propels me forward even when I feel like quitting. I don’t have my shit together, but I’m pretty sure I know where most of it is. If you’re looking for me and I’m not here, I’m probably out trying to solve a few more mysteries
xo,
the mess
What’s the October Creativity Challenge?
My friend Michelle at Mused is running the October Creativity Challenge. I love things like that and I’ve been missing clicking pics. The scenery around a woman laid up at home with a broken ankle doesn’t seem very stimulating, but with Michelle’s daily photo prompts I think I can make something happen here. I’m “motivated” to get my IPhone’s shutter moving!
Days 28 & 29: Adventure & Courage
Yes I know it’s November and I’m still finishing up Mused’s October Creativity Challenge. Better late than never? Heck I don’t know. I just wanted to finish what I started, even if I didn’t deliver the goods on time. Enjoy…
Thanks goodness I don’t have to know exactly where I am going or how to get there. Putting one foot in front of the other seems to work pretty damned well, especially when I’m stuck!
It takes a lot of courage to show the world who we really are… brown spots cellulite wrinkles saggy boobs warts and all.
xo,
the mess
What’s the October Creativity Challenge?
My friend Michelle at Mused is running the October Creativity Challenge. I love things like that and I’ve been missing clicking pics. The scenery around a woman laid up at home with a broken ankle doesn’t seem very stimulating, but with Michelle’s daily photo prompts I think I can make something happen here. I’m “motivated” to get my IPhone’s shutter moving!
