It has been over two months since my last post, there has been so much going on in my life that I seem to have lost track of what keeps me semi sane. My writing is what has kept me grounded throughout most of my life but I go through these times when I shut down and feel as though I have too much going on to write. Even though I know that writing down my experiences helps me to get past them, I still have times when I just shut down and don't write anything, rarely even reading anything either! Life gets too hard to think at times.
Feeling trapped by the clock, family, work etc. are common among mothers, even if you only have one child, stay at home, and your husband is making bank at some point we all feel trapped in our lives with no way to get above water. This is life, the life we chose when we said "I do". Now, no matter how deep into your mess you feel you are, there is always a way out (or at least that's what my therapist tells me), and the same way we dug our hole and jumped in, we need to find a way to climb out.
I recently had to climb out of what could have been a Grand Canyon sized hole in mere seconds, simply based on the words of someone I almost thought of as a friend. This was not only a challenge that my family and I were able to face head on, but it was something that I will be able to learn from for the rest of my life. Growing up with my father as a parent taught me many lessons, among them the true definition (out of Webster's) of the word "friend". This lesson alone should have prepared me early on for a situation like the one I recently endured, and maybe in a way it did. I was not at all shocked by the situation in itself, yet what did surprise me somewhat was the extent. This only taught me yet another lesson, to not be off guard with anyone whose loyalty, friendship, even dignity are at any rate questionable. As a first step in this new knowledge, I am no longer going to give this situation anymore space in my head, let alone my life, or this blog.
In life more often then not, we find that the only way to get the focus back on OUR life is to step back from everything and everyone we know to reevaluate what is good or bad for us. This is what life is, destroying the bad to rebuild the good. My husband was the first person to introduce this theory to me, and like any good wife, I would give him a hard time any time he would introduce it into a conversation. I really didn't want to destroy any and every relationship (aside for my immediate family) I thought was dear to me, yet this is what had to be done. I am quick to admit that in this I am still just a work in progress, a being seeking enlightenment but truth be told there are not many relationships that I have to destroy, more so myself and whatever relationship that is there. I am the first to admit that I don't have the greatest relationship with myself, low self image and esteem that has festered over years of self loathing, and criticism. It is time to destroy and rebuild myself, from the inside out.
Changing yourself is no easy task. As a 32 year-old wife and mother, I sometimes forget WHO I AM. I have found it very easy to forget that before I was either of these, I was a woman. Granted, I may have been very confused and lost in my own skin, but I was still a woman with emotions that were untapped, and feelings bursting at the seams. The lifestyle that I lived before I became a "responsible" adult made no way for emotions. To show emotion and feeling was to show weakness which would leave a person open to any and everything. I am not going to delve into the Karma of the past, but what I will say is that at any moment in that time my life could have ended in prison or on the street. This is not the life that anyone who meets me now would easily associate but it is true, I lived my life very dangerously. I would love to forget the 10+ years that I lived this way, yet it is not as simple as that. Those years molded a way of thinking, and acting that are not easily erased. I have been told that it should be easy to forget since I am completely out of and away from that environment, yet I am always able to find reasoning as to why it is so difficult to change.
The life a live now requires certain skills that I have and many that I lack. I find it easy to find faults within myself, yet very difficult to find any good. As I grow, I work on changing my own self image so that I can be better in my roles as wife and mother. The take away from all of this is that I myself am responsible for the events and the way I live my life, and I myself am responsible for the change that is introduced and implemented.
