Friends & Family? Obvious choice, but no.  I am thankful for my capacity to forgive. I don’t hold grudges. I harbour no ill feelings towards others. I can get really angry, don’t get me wrong, but I always try to understand and even when friends tell me to walk away or give up, I will always forgive.

I don’t find it difficult. Maybe it’s a gift. Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe even foolish and possibly detrimental to myself. Whatever the case might be, I will always forgive.
I have even forgiven my rapist.  Just like me, he also has to live with what he did. But not as the victim. He might have turned his life around. He might not. I would like to think the first is true. And if he has, he is feeling the guilt of what he did and he has to live with it for the rest of his life.

I forgive friends that don’t understand or lack the capacity to fully comprehend what I’m currently going through. It’s not their fault that they don’t understand.

I forgive the friends that have turned their backs on me. Yes, nobody knows my faults and short comings better than I do, therefore I can understand a friend reaching the point of not having the energy to deal with me anymore.

I forgive the ones I love the most, for hurting me the most, because I hurt them too. I forgive the words spoken in anger because I speak them too.

I’m thankful for my forgiving heart.

I started reading a book about self esteem. Reading it tonight my eyes were opened by the explanation of what self esteem is. Without quoting the entire book, it states that we assign value to events from our past and these values, influences how we see ourselves.

This is really the core of my self esteem problems. The thoughts I have with regards to events from my past and the value I’ve assigned to them. I just read a post that talks about acceptance and how thoughts and the state of mind you put yourself in, is not permanent but fleeting. Just a moment. How I feel now, but tomorrow there will be different thoughts and a new state of mind.

I seem to have started the really bad process of focusing on bad events from my past. Thoughts of these events. Replaying these events in my mind, like a kind of groundhog day movie mind experience.

But for every one bad event, there are a hundred good ones. There is! I have so many happy events to remember to help rebuild my thoughts. To get out of groundhog day and get to independence day! Will Smith is much cooler than Bill Murray, accept for Ghostbusters 🙂

Events I loved. Many many happy events growing up. Family reunions, holidays at the seaside. Graduating with my entire family there and a killer party with the cousins and friends afterwards. Being promoted to office manager and leading a large team of amazing people with whom I grew and came to love.  Receiving a reward for my work and leadership. Moving to a new country and discovering new cultures and ways of living. The birth of my daughter and how her face was the most beautiful, perfect thing I’d ever seen. Making decisions, hard decisions, but in the hope of a better life. Making friends that will be with me for the rest of my life. Being strong enough to accept where I am and that I need help.

These are the events that shaped me and are still shaping me. These are the events that I will focus on and build myself up again.

I’m good at helping people. I always have been. I’d like to think I encourage others, or used to at least.
Now it’s I who need encouragement. There is such a big difference between encouraging and trying to change a person.

I am very much misunderstood in that regard. When others try to tell me what to do, I block, I withdraw, I isolate. Maybe I’m stubborn. Maybe when you already think so little of yourself and someone points out how you need to change, it doesn’t encourage, it destroys.

There is not much left of my self image. I seem to lose little bits of it every day. More so recently than other times. It’s the many times I have been reminded that what I’ve invested in, I’m not good enough for. What I’ve given, is not enough. What if you gave everything you have and exposed yourself and made yourself vulnerable, only to be told you’re not special enough, not right enough. What then? You start to doubt yourself. Every time it happens, you doubt a bit more, until you doubt everything about yourself.

I’m building myself up from nothing. I know I’ll get there. I sometimes wish and hope for someone to hold my hand and help me through it. But that’s life. We are ultimately alone in it. So tougher than ever is how I will come out the other end.

Please encourage each other.

And here I am on the fourth letter of the alphabet. Determined. That’s a word I would have always always called myself.

I’ve always been determined to do my best, be the best Mum, be the best friend to others. But lately, I’m failing.

I read other stories on here. I see how people have had it much worse than I have or ever will. I see people overcoming and succeeding. I find friends no longer have patience or understanding. And I grow tired of explaining or trying or living.

I don’t want to be negative. It’s like an uncontrollable force within me. I see the beauty all around, but no longer inside me or even on the outside. My face, my body, my soul. Not ugly, but not beautiful either. No matter what people say, I don’t see it. Why? I don’t know. I wish I did.

So, determined I will try to remain. It’s somewhere, I hope, within me. Underneath the garbage and baggage and hurt and disappointment in myself.

I can’t help but cry for that girl I used to be. The one I lost. I guess I’m building a new me, but many more tears to cry, for how long does it take to mourn the loss of oneself.

Tomorrow is another day

Variation on the word sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary

~ Margaret Atwood

I wasn’t well today and slept most of the day. Now I’m awake and I remember the above poem. I used to read a lot of poetry. In fact I looked forward to English class as a student so we could read and dissect another poem. Poems are powerful. They can invoke feelings or say things that speak to you in a clearer way than the directly spoken words people use when conversing.

The last paragraph. How beautiful, how powerful. Saying that you want to be as necessary to another’s life as air is, but at the same time, unnoticed. Unnoticed in that you don’t bring burden or effort, but that being with you, is effortless.

My poems have meaning too, but I am not as good at hiding the meaning within subtle alliterations and similes. It’s a way of expressing with words that which I can never say out loud. I had a dream today.  My Mum was standing next to my bed. Speaking urgently. I couldn’t hear. I kept asking how did she get here? It felt so real. She was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t make out the words. Just recognised her voice.

Sleep, bitter sweet

Fleeting, yet hours have passed

Thoughts decide to overwhelm

When dreams wish to rule

A nightmare intrudes unexpectedly

A walk, a terror, a word

A scream that never resounds

A person standing next to your bed

Urgent message

Not intended to be heard

But felt, I did

What is the meaning of our dreams?

Merely a mirage of our deepest

hopes and fears