saying goodbye

One more post for the day (on a roll, huh?)

Recently I left a group I have been in for years. I got to the point that seeing interactions/non-interactions was a negative experience to me. Let me emphasize: to me. It's all about my perception and what I could handle. Individually, they are fantastic women. Even as a group, just wonderful. But the particular dynamics weren't something I could handle in my life at this point.

I didn't want to leave in a huff of drama, like I have seen others leave email loops. The melodramatic good-bye posts are often really a ploy to get others to beg them to stay. So I just quietly left, figuring nobody would notice/comment for awhile.

What was there to say? No matter how I say it, it would seem like an accusation. Ya'll aren't meeting my needs at this point and I would like to move on instead of trying to live in the past and recapture the golden years. But that reads wrong, since (as the old break-up line says) its not you (all), it's me. It's my lack of the social ins and outs that other women seem to have. It's my fear of asking for help while intensily longing to have very close connections. I don't expect anybody else to meet my needs as I often don't even know what my needs are.

I just wanted to leave while leaving was a strength for me. While I was doing it for the right reasons, to decrease the negative feelings I have. The only problem, is because I have seperated myself so quietly, and I already have a habit of not reaching out, I fear that I have cut myself out of their lives completely rather than just this aspect of it. And par for the course, I don't know how to fix it.

Who I was, Who I am and Who I Want to be (Part Four)

I look at the women in my life, past and present, to discover who I want to be.

I want to be like my Gram, who had so much affection in her marriage, even as her life faded from her, her love for Boompa was still strong. She saw who I really am and still loved me. I still hold her unconditional love to my heart. Her life was sometimes the only thing that kept me alive and her death nearly broke me. Knowing that she saw the reality that I lacked a childhood still touches me to no end. She loved me enough to notice, even living thousands of miles away for much of my life.

I want to be like my third grade teacher (well, one of them, the second one I had after moving to Alaska). Her self confidence and strength were uplifting.

I want to be part of a close-knit family like my close high school friend, B. It could be frustrating, but she knew there was always someone there for her. I want to be interesting and have many topics I can talk about like my friends C. and I. They are women who have lived, who are intelligent and witty and not afraid to be themselves.

I want to be a patient mother like J. and R. Also, R. is just so accepting of who her children are, and works with them at their need levels. She also has the patience and fun attitude that I admire in G.

I want to be confident as a wife and businesswoman and mother like K. She knows what in her life works.

I want my faith to shine through me like T's does. She is the embodiment of what a Christian is to me. She lives the Word and holds it close to her heart. S. is striving for that too, and I just admire her so much for finding a resting place in her life and letting go of the torment of a sad childhood, so much more than I have ever been able to.

I want to be like M. She can be negative (er...a realist), but has such a zest for life that it more than makes up for negative spells. Of all the people I have met, she comes closest to reaching back to me. To just accepting me as I am.

I want a marriage with steady companionship like C., she's married to her high school love and it has not faded with time. I want a marriage like I's, who found the strength to leave an abusive husband, even with two children. And then found even more strength and loved herself enough that when a good man came along, she was able to accept that she deserved love and joy. I want a marriage like M. She can talk to her spouse about anything and not be judged. When they are feeling weak, they lean on each other and grow stronger.

I want to deserve love- and know that I deserve it. I want to stop hating myself, my very being. I want to one day celebrate the day I was born and mean it. I want someone else to celebrate my life and mean it.

I want to create. I want the confidence to put myself out there. I want to know what I want to do when I grow up. I want to find my bliss, instead of just taking the safe path. I want to go to my death knowing that I have found as much joy as I could. I want to wash away my regrets, or at least have fewer in my future. I want my children to look back at any point in their lives and think, "I really liked my childhood."

By inches and ounces

Two revelations today. The first was that if I had stuck to Weight Watchers I'd be my ideal weight by now. Or at least at a plateau near my ideal weight.

At the steady-ish 2lbs a week I was losing, I could be within spitting distance of a body I can live with in 6mos and a body I can be proud of in a year. Isn't that much better than hating myself for squeezing into clothes, because the fear of buying up would be permission to gain even more weight. So back to counting points it will be. You be sure to remind me of this!

Today, C and I had an argument about the TV. At one point C smacked me. My first reaction was to hit him back. And third, fourth and sixth reaction. I managed to hold it in, but felt bad for the way I responded otherwise, including yelling.

I know that how I treat him directly reflects how he treats us. Never is it more clear that my childhood causes these urges, and I don't want to breed that into him. If you've read my AP page, you know I don't believe in spanking. But putting it into practice when you know hitting is hard. So I have slipped and spanked and hit C. I beat myself up everytime.

My realization today was that when I do resist that urge, instead of overlooking that and berating myself for the yelling, I should first be proud for resisting the urge. Look at the positive- what I have changed. Then look at what I should change. I'm hoping that change will happen faster when I give myself the positive reinforcement. I have to learn to treat myself nicely, not just the kids.