Gains

 “Would you still be here, if there wasn’t the business?” the words finally came out of my mouth, after some 3 hours and 2 years of trying to find the correct tone, the correct words, the correct moment.

The skin is the largest organ in the body - it protects us.
Holds us together.
Literally lets us know what we are feeling.
The skin can be soft and vulnerable.
Highly sensitive, easy to break.

One of my saddest memories is that of a woman I’ve only recently seen in person, telling me how I was supposed to be the “winning ticket”, the person of influence who would turn her family life around – bring them out of the rags and back into the riches. It is the saddest because the person who told her that, her husband, was also the man I love.

– verb (used with object) 

• to get something desired, esp. as a result of one's efforts
• to acquire as an increase or addition
• to obtain as a profit
• to win in competition
• to win someone to one's own side or point of view
• to reach, esp. by effort

Amanda told me that one time, how she thought that decision of mine was a big mistake. Perhaps she knew how my mind worked more than I do. Perhaps she just knew me. That I would be standing at this question mark, all my life. Perhaps she even hoped that someday I would have the guts to bring it out to the open, hoping that I would have grown in strength to do such a thing, knowing I never did before.

I’ve fumbled through life enough. Been over-indulgent when I shouldn’t have been. Been over-compensating when there was nothing to make amends for in the first instance. Been collecting dust bunnies when I haven’t an inch of space to spare.

– verb (used without object) 

• to improve; make progress; advance
• to get nearer
• to draw away from or farther ahead of the other contestants

We’ve watched enough movies, read enough books to know that there is a fine line that is drawn between celluloid fantasies and daily realities. We can try as we may to reconcile ourselves with the past, and make peace with the present. But we all know that what is accomplished in months of script writing, years of planning and shooting, and mega-millions of dollars in marketing – does not come to real life even with a thousand positive thoughts and many hours of mental strengthening.

We may think that we’ve made progress – we have seen the pits of hell and licked the devil’s cauldron – everything else is bumps and bruises only. And because we want that peace so badly, we cannot let today be the bad day. We cannot say put off saying ‘tomorrow will be a good day’. And what do we get at the end of that day, if we do that?

– noun 

• profit or advantage.
• an increase or advance.
• gains, profits or winnings.
• acquisition.

“I never thought I’d still be here. And even if there wasn’t the business, or if that one ran its course, I would still be here. Cos each time I see you, there is something to be gained.”

No matter how thick skinned we try to be, there's millions of electrifying nerve endings in there.

What could have been quite possibly the worst answer anyone can give me in that given situation, has in fact, achieved the opposite effect. In another life, it would have possibly driven me to finishing the 3 bottles of whiskey that sits on our lil make-shift bar – though we all know that would have only been the surface of what I can do, and have done.

Open and exposed and feeling way too much.

But it had to be done. And as you exasperatedly declared - it took me so bloody long to come out and ask, because the result could be so otherwise scary. Knowing there is a fifty percent chance that you would prove to be my haunting of my worst nightmare. Knowing that my old adage holds water - if I stay very silent and very still, I can let it pass me by another cycle of the moon.

Try as we might to keep from feeling pain, sometimes it's just unavoidable.

Everybody uses everybody at some point in their life, be it for financial, spiritual or emotional gains. Some do it intentionally, some do it without knowing. Yet, all achieve the same result – gaining.

The most important thing that I have gained from this insane yet stable adventure is not the mental and emotional growth. It is not reaching a paradigm shift.

I’ve gained back trust in my life. Trust in myself, and trust in someone else.

Sometimes that's the only thing left - just feeling.

Gratefulness

It has been a long time since something moved me to my desk; compelled me enough to have to unclog my thoughts from my head before I drown in them.

It's really two things actually. And while they are not related, it comes back to the key of tonight's thoughts ~ Gratefulness.

The first was when a young girl I have never met but have made the acquaintance of, shared with me online how her family has been utterly torn apart and is in chaos. It makes me sad, that the laws that are suppose to uphold the innocence of her childhood is not doing its job in her country. It makes me angry that her dad (my so-called friend) can be so warped that he forgets, he is father to not one but five. And that the other four needs him.

I do not know how to begin to tell a 10-year-old that the silver lining in all this is that both her parents are fighting to have her in their lives. Which is better than some other kids, whose parent could forsake them, wiping them clean from memory. I do not know how to say that without having this powerful surge of anger come rushing through. Which I'm trying very hard to stem cos the dead can no longer do anything about it.

Apart from struggling to be at peace with the fact that I still bear this source of this anger which I thought was laid to rest so many months ago, I am no doubt grateful that he then chose to walk away without even a peep backwards. Cos then, today it could be my kids asking the same questions and having the same pain. I am grateful it's happening to someone else's child and not mine.

As for the second, it's been all over the news. 

Some two hours of flying time away, a modern city lays somewhat smoldering. The latest update from Reuters Live has the count as forty-two dead and three hundred over persons injured. 

Bangkok was the first city I navigated on my own at the tender age of twelve. And since then, I have gone back a number of times. Thailand has never been a place that struck me a violent and filled with terror. Even in their desperate hours post-tsunami, you could still feel the love radiating out of the devastation that the waves brought.

5 years of unrest finally came down to today's impasse. And the whole time as I watched intermittently for news updates.. and as a  Thai friend pleaded over Facebook - please pray for us, please pray for our beloved Thailand... I just kept thinking - please God, do not let this be another Tienanmen Square. 

I am pleased that the leaders of the opposing faction had the sense to surrender themselves and their cause so that more lives would not be lost. But as the news updates comes in - the passion of the angst has been stoked to a level where they are like a wild fire - beyond any one person's control. 

As I write that, I turn to look out at the sky, hoping to see the flaming redness that has been hogging it the last couple of evenings, signaling the pending rain. Praying for the families who have lost someone today, in the last six weeks is one thing. Having the fear that a place you once thought safe and familiar was and still is held tightly in the bind of terror is another. But the guilty one would be heaving a sigh of relief that no matter how much we may condemn our own country, we know that it is unlikely we would come to such a state.

As Tara of LivesayHaiti rightfully says: It is not encouraging to hear that the major change in someone's life was that they were glad the bad thing happened elsewhere.

And that is where I stand. Have been standing. Afraid of the good that lies just beyond the horizon not because we've never been blessed. Everyday, we are blessed. I AM blessed. But more because I am afraid of what I would do with this great abundance of blessings. 

And more importantly - would it change me from the ME that I have come to be and love, to the ME that I was caught in before.

In writing this, the news has updated that the death toll in Bangkok has upped one to forty-three.

In writing this, I have lost another day to grabbing my task by the horns and taming the bull.

In writing this, I have come to realise that while my gratefulness, on the surface, is that rotten things are happening to other people and other places. The deeper bit that has come is this: I am grateful that good things are happening to me BECAUSE it will empower me to go beyond just writing about my frustrations in not being able to pay-it-back. I will finally, be able to do more than just tell someone else's story in the hopes that someone who is in the position to help will. 

I will finally be able to be that someone.

So take my hand and lift me higher
Be my love and my desire
Hold me safe and honor bound
Take my heart to
Higher ground

For that realisation and clarity of thought and purpose: I am grateful.

In the dead of the night

There is something about suffering from insomnia. 

It allows you to scare the living daylights out of your counterparts, especially when they send emails after their hours and you're there to respond immediately - kinda make them wonder if they are in the right timezone.

It also allows you to think, except that when you're lost for clarity, it adds to the stress and grief ala "why is it not coming to me?!" Instead of focusing on what's at hand (and at stake!!), I instead allow my mind to wonder to the occasional passing of cars on the highway yonder ~ wondering who the occupants are, where are they going or coming from, and why in heaven's name are they out on the roads at this hour!

It's not raining tonight. But when it does, I can hear the howls of the wind, the rattling of the blinds and the rustle of the trees. And the sky turns a ambery red, making it look almost as if God has taken stock of the deeds of those asleep and we have incurred His wrath.

It is the 2nd week running now, that I have not had a proper night's rest. Once upon a time, this was a common place occurrence. But then, there was always work to fill my time. 

Why I do not consider the big assignment before as work, befuddles me. I really should. Perhaps then, these silent hours could be put to better use, instead of being wasted buying useless nonsense on a virtual farm that I would never become rich from.

I would kick my own arse if I were that flexible.

I know you would too!

Monsters Inc.

"Don't make me quit my job and run the company. I can't do that." said Ben when I hit his limit of tolerance and my usual Barb's good sense.

In that moment, it hit me. That the only way I can lose this, is if I threw it way my own self. And I have been. Looking at the comments that two independent and highly successful persons have given me on my marketing plan tells me so. Cos I did not go back to basics. I did not cover all my grounds.

Normally, I would catch the ball from his hands, him having pushed the button and ran with it like my life depended on it. But today, I was stretched to the max that it manifested itself in one of the worse migraines I have had in the year. To add to it all, a full day of sleep has wrought nothing but stupid dreams.

I'm having dinner with my brother later cos I need some serious counselling as to where all these is coming from. I am sitting here, looking at  the misty skyline outside my study window and wondering, what happened to me that brought me to this point?

Am I having some PTSD that is now coming to light? 

I want to be rid of my demons once and for all. Cos by the end of this week, I have to deliver to myself, my plans for the next year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years.

As much as I hate to say that I'm still dark and twisted, not shiny and happy - I am not. I do not want to have imaginary monsters in my closets anymore.

Fistful of Glitter

In recent weeks and / or months, all you've been reading about is this dread that I've been carrying around. It has been a rather dark period, as oppose to be being a time of joy, quiet anticipation, much like Christmas. Yet, it felt more like a Good Friday - when you're so entombed with the negative, you cannot see ahead to Easter Sunday morning.

Perhaps, a part of me felt that Murphy's Law will rear its ugly head and someone will pull the rug out from under me. Yet again. It has happened once too many and I do not think I would be able to survive through another bout of the same. The same of doing everything right and playing by the rules, only to be told that I lost in the end.

I'm not very good at games simply because I do not understand the concept of trying, yet still losing in the end. As I told Ben over dinner last night, "If I do not try, I do not run the risk of failing. But the minute I get off the starting block, I reduce that odds to a 50/50 chance." I'm the sort, who would tell you that in not running the risk, you're effectively not losing. 

I am frustratingly, pessimistically stubborn. But you must understand, I just don't want to put my energies into this and not have it work anymore, FOR ME.

Yet, if I don't do this, I would not be doing anything at all FOR ME. I know that for a fact.

Question is - how do I get past my own worse adversary so that I can hold a fistful of glitter in my hand?

Depends

I realised today that I have become far too dependent on a certain somebody to shore me up when I'm losing my marbles. I don't know about him, but I'm personally finding it disgusting (yes, I am disgusted at my own self).

It's not so much the fact that being dependent is a sign of emotional weakness (or to some, strength). But because from where I see it, if someone were to understand me even a fraction less than required, it would seem like I'm some needy sod, in need of constant assurance!

I hate being a bloody needy sod.

The Request

I'm exhausted. Mentally & physically. It's been a grueling week which needed to be done. I don't think I'm losing my touch, my spark. I'm just plain paranoid and fearful. I've managed more than this. BUT never my own. And that's killing me. I'm not looking for votes of confidence. I'm just needing a push off this precipice. I know once I'm airborne, I'll do alright. So go on - La Push baby.