Happiness Is…

A good friend and I were having a conversation about happiness.  I told him, “My life might be crazy a lot of the time, but I am, for the most part, happy.”

 

Then I realized how true a statement it was.  When I step away from the events or situations that have caused difficulty or pain I feel a deep contentment.  I have beautiful daughter, fantastic friends and supportive family.  I have a safe home, clean water to drink, healthy food to eat and many amenities that other citizens of the planet consider to be luxuries.  I do my best to be a good person and although I am far from perfect, I am good enough.

 

Everybody experiences hardship.  Everybody experiences sadness.  Everybody experiences frustration.  I have clung to those emotions and made my world about them at certain points in my life.  But what became clear to me last night is happiness is not the absence of those emotions, it is the acceptance of them.  And not a defeated “my life is total crap” acceptance.  A “how would I appreciate the light without the dark” acceptance. 

 

Happiness is not:

 

·         A geographic location

·         who you are with

·         what you own

·         where you have traveled

 

Happiness is:

 

·         a state of mind

·         who you are

·         what you have accomplished

·         peace in your heart

·         acceptance in your mind

·         comfort in your skin

·         love of yourself

 

Nobody can give it to you and nobody can take it away.  You are responsible for your own and no one else’s.  If you do not care for it, you may lose it.  If you nurture it, it will grow.  I for one am recommitting to fostering my own happiness.  I think we all should.

Loneliness

My sister and her fiance came to visit us last night.  We had fun playing with the dogs, they have a super cute puppy named Maisy, and hanging with The Fiend.  After I put The Fiend down for bed we chatted about what their plans are.  They joked about who was going to stay home with the babies and how neither of them wanted to change diapers.  We discussed where they want to live and what type of work they want to pursue.

They are a great couple.  Each of them has retained their individuality while still providing an excellent support system for each other.  They are at ease with each other.  I watched them talk openly and honestly about their fears and concerns about getting married without accusation or anger.  Their relationship is one that works because they work at it together.

After they left I found myself dwelling on how I have never been able to achieve that with any of my relationships.  I found myself in a place of doubt, wondering why I haven’t been able to find that, what deficit in my personality makes me a disposable partner.  I began to question what character flaws prevent people from wanting to put work into a relationship with me.

Of course that’s a two way street.  Have I wanted to put work into a relationship?  That’s not a question I have a good answer for right now. 

There have been two men I wanted things to work with, one a long time ago and one more recently.  I was willing to do certain things, but not willing to do others.  When things got difficult, my default position was ending the relationship.  In both cases that is what eventually happened.

I can’t speak for those two men.  I don’t know if they were willing to work to make things work.   I don’t know if they were ready for that commitment.  I can say I was not willing to work.  I was not ready for that commitment.

Perhaps I was just not ready.  Perhaps I have not yet been worthy of that kind of commitment.  Perhaps neither of these men was the right person.  Perhaps I wasn’t the right person.  Whatever the reason, it was not the time. 

I’m trying very hard to bear in mind the most recent example of my ineptitude with relationships is not a condemnation of my character.  Sometimes things don’t work even when you really want them to.  This ties back to my earlier discussion of expectation.  I have never expected a relationship to work.  I have always assumed that the other person would come to their senses and head for the hills.  And either I leave before I get left, or I get left.

All this is evidence of the importance of developing a stronger sense of self-worth.  By not understanding my own value I precluded a successful relationship by presuming failure.  I have a friend who accuses me of putting potential suitors through all sorts of Herculean tasks, but not to prove that they are worthy of me.  Instead I am trying to show them I’m not worth the trouble.  He tells me that I should put men in my life through the tasks, but I need to change the mindset.  They do need to show me that they are worthy of me.  He reminds me I am worthy.

That is hard for me to accept.  I so often find myself convinced that lovers, partners and friends could do so much better.  I assume that there is a certain degree of pity that enters into all of my human interactions.  Intellectually, I understand this to be utter nonsense.  Emotionally, I have a hard time reigning it in.

So after my sister left I had a good cry about my inevitable fate as the cat lady.  Then I gave myself a good mental slap in the face.  This is what I am working on.  And this is why I am working on it.  The self-loathing has become toxic.  I have to learn to love myself as myself.  To detached my value from my relationship status.  To recognize that I am worthy.  To accept love.  To fight for it.  To expect nothing less from those in my life.

It is not an easy road to walk on.  Nobody likes to be lonely.  And right now I am lonely.  After the day slows down and there are no longer any distractions it is hard to ignore the space left behind in someone’s absence.  What I have to learn is space is ok.  It is healthy.  It provides room to grow.  Once I can come to that point of acceptance I will stop being lonely.  I will be with myself.

Juxtaposition

I push forward with my legs over the concrete skeleton of a stranger’s labors.

The juxtaposition of a rocky shore on a foggy morning alongside a busy highway.

Me in between.

 

I follow the thin band of beaten earth turning my eyes to the left

Trying to shut out the right

I propel myself with two legs and seagulls propel themselves with two wings and strangers propel themselves with four wheels

For a brief moment I block it out and all that remains is the thin band of beaten earth

Then comes a horn

I am back, trapped between beauty to my left and cacophony to my right

Right left right left

Until I reach the point where the right begins to melt away and the left is all around me

 

And in that moment I am still

 

 

 

I have been thinking a lot about the different parts of self.  The changing faces we adopt to adapt to the various situations we find ourselves in.    I am a different version of myself at work than I am at home.  I exhibit different behaviors when I am interacting with my friends then when I am interacting with The Fiend.

 

In some cases keeping this separation is healthy.  Parts of self that are held separate but parallel.  One example is what I have recently begun to refer to as my “evil twin”.  This aspect of myself is the source of doubt and self-deprecation.  She is the part of me that questions my worth, tells me I’m no good and beats up on me when I make mistakes.  By making her separate I am taking steps to distance myself from self-loathing.  By placing her beside me as opposed to inside me I limit her access to my inner self.

 

It may sound a bit odd, but it has moved me forward on the path of self love.  It has become easier to quiet those parts of me down when I don’t think of them as parts of me.  When those tendencies to be hard on the self move outside of the self they lose power.  Then one becomes more able to follow the band of earth away from the cacophony of doubt to the peace of acceptance.

Inviting Expectation

One of the themes of recent weeks is beginning to understand the difference between wanting and expecting.  This is what I have figured out.  Wanting something will usually only leave you with the wanting.  Expecting something tends to draw it to you.

Let me put it another way; wanting something leaves yourself open to the opportunity to doubt. Wanting something implies that it is someone else’s decision as to whether or not you get it.  Wanting something leaves the getting of that thing to fate.

By changing your perspective you begin to manifest.  By expecting something you believe it is deserved.  Expecting something gives you the ability to decide where and when you receive that thing.  Expecting something empowers you to get that thing of your own volition.

Expectation is something that has held a negative connotation for me for a long time.  I always thought that having expectations was a sign of an over-active ego.  I have realized that the reason I felt that way was because of my own ego was so shaky.  There is nothing wrong with having expectations.  It is not a sign of narcissism, it is a sign of healthy self-love.  Of course that is provided you have reasonable expectations.  Expecting to be queen of the universe might be a sign of megalomania.

A wonderful woman I know often refers to being gentle with herself in her writing.  She, like so many of us, is on the journey to discovering how to do that.  For me being mindful of the difference between wanting and expecting is part of that.  Remembering my own value is part of that.  Knowing that I deserve certain things is part of that.

What are the things that I should, that anyone should, expect?  Kindness, compassion, understanding, patience, acceptance, forgiveness, laughter, tears, joy, beauty and most importantly unconditional love.

Letting Go and Moving On

The older I get the more aware of the passage of time I become.  Not a particularly unique experience I know, but something that I have become painfully aware of in the last month or so.  It cuts both ways.  I can look back fondly on my experiences and accomplishments one day and the next feel overwhelmed by all that I haven’t done.

One of the things overwhelming me lately is my horrible relationship track record.  For a woman of thirty I have had very few long term relationships.  The majority have been of the ships-passing-in-the-night variety.  There is a desire in me to have a long-term meaningful relationship.  Something like what my parents have.

My parents married young and everyone was convinced that their union would be short lived.  Thirty plus years later they are still together and happily at that.  It certainly isn’t a perfect relationship, but none are.  At the end of the day they are for each other.  They can count on each other.  They lift each other up.

I have found myself repeatedly becoming involved in relationships that can’t seem to get there for one reason or another.  By all appearances I am a self-assured woman who has a strong sense of her own worth.  Sometimes I am. But sometimes I’m not.

I find that in relationships the latter is more often than not the case.  I find myself questioning what it is that this other person could possibly see in me.  I feel certain that it’s just a matter of time before they recognize how flawed I am and run screaming.

As a result I consistently put my needs on the back burner and make things about the other person.  I say yes to things that I know I shouldn’t.  And then I end up feeling misused.  In all fairness the emotion is probably an overstatement more often than not. There is a degree to which making yourself less leads to you being less.

I do not want to be less.  I want to be more.  I want to feel confident in my value.  I want to be for someone and have them be for me.  And this can only happen when people are honest with each other while remaining true to themselves.

It is a process of letting go.  Releasing behaviors and relationships that do not serve me.  Leaving behind things that can not be.  Accepting that it is ok to have reasonable expectations.  Articulating needs clearly.  Refusing to be less.  Expecting more.

It is a matter of finding the strength to draw lines and make definitive statements.  To declare this is what I am worth.  And if someone doesn’t agree going separate ways.  It seems so simple, yet it is so hard to do.

Emtpy Rooms

After so many years of just me and The Fiend adjusting to having Babydaddy in the picture has been a challenge for all of us. There is a lot that is truly wonderful about the situation.  The Fiend now has a strong relationship with the other half of her.  She gained not only a father but a grandfather.  She and I get to have a break from each other, something I didn’t even realize we needed until we had it.

There are certainly challenges to the arrangement a well.  I don’t want to focus too much on those things.  I feel like acknowledging that they exist and trying to move past them or learn to work with them is the best way to handle them.  But one thing that has cropped up recently is a purely internal challenge.

Babydaddy started taking The Fiend overnight on Tuesdays and Fridays back in February.  This was the first time since she was born that there has been a regular diet of time to myself.  I had been a 24-7 mama for four and a half years.  At first it was lovely to have the time to be myself without the mitigation of motherhood.  And don’t get me wrong, it is still lovely.

The interesting thing that has happened the last few weeks is the emptiness.  I don’t notice it at first.  Then it’s there, at the edges of everything.  It’s not overpowering at that point, just present.  But as the minutes pass it encroaches until it becomes suffocating.  It’s so quiet. 

And in that space that is created the evil twin appears.  She starts bringing up all the worry and insecurity.  She starts second guessing and down playing.  She starts questioning worth and direction.  And there is nothing to distract her.  I’ll wash dishes or fold laundry or sweep floors.  I’ll read or paint or write.  I’ll put on a movie or listen to an audiobook or turn on music.  But nothing chases her away.  Eventually I find I can’t stay in the house.

So I find reasons to leave.  And I stay away until my eyelids droop and I drag myself home.  I crawl into bed and fall into brief but blissful sleep.  I’m always relieved the next night when the rooms are filled again with all the wonderfulness that is The Fiend.  She has become a ward against my worst enemy, myself.

I recognize it isn’t sustainable.  I need to find a way to face the twin and address the doubts that she throws at me.  I have to learn to hold onto my value in all circumstances.  I have to remember how to be myself when I am alone.