Guilt

My children's paternal grandfather had a fall Monday of last week. I was informed of it on Wednesday. I had the whole weekend to do something - drive and visit by myself, take the kids on a pseudo-outing to visit - a whole bunch of stuff I could have done.

This morning, the text came in to alert that he has passed on. And the whole bunch of stuff I could have done became as it is - stuff that I could have done BUT DID NOT!

As I got ready to leave the house, I was washed with grief - funny considering I was never close to him. Yet, in my heart at that moment in time, and even now, I knew him to be a man who tried and gave his best. He never wronged me, nor did he ever fault me for keeping his grandchildren away from him. Even in the last 2 years, despite me promising that I would take them to visit and not fulfill it, never once did he chastise me on it.

As my mum rightfully explained to my kids last week - his blood runs in them. That is a fact that we cannot avoid nor deny.
 

I always pride myself for being one to do things so that when I go to my grave, I will go without any regrets. But my inaction, for whatever reasons they may have been, will cause me to take this one to my grave.

These are the things we beg for.
A root canal, an I.R.S. audit, coffee spilled on our clothes.
When the really terrible things happen,
we start begging the god we don't believe in to bring back the little horrors,
and take away this.
It seems quaint now, doesn't it?
The flood in the kitchen, the poison oak,
the fight that leaves you shaking with rage.
Would it have helped if we could see what else was coming?
Would we have known that those were the best moments of our lives?

I can only pray that God gives his soul rest and peace, and that over time, I can learn to forgive myself.

3 Sets Of

I went and made duplicates of my new house keys today, weeks after moving in. And for once, I hold 3 sets of keys when it has been the traditional 2.

I have the extra set in the key-ring and all that. And then I tucked it away at the very bottom of the drawer so that I do not have to see it each time I open.

I realise something today. That there is a name to all this madness of the week past. And this name comes with its own colour ~ green. No prizes for guessing correctly. Insomuch as I said to my mother - there is no shame in saying "I'm jealous" for when a cat is a cat, no other name can be used to disguise it.

It is such a difficult feeling to admit to because it means that we are dependent on someone else. And we (my mum and I) - we never like to admit that. We have no qualms to admitting to anything else in life - I am poor, I am fat, I am angry, I am disappointed - but NEVER to being the green-eyed monster. Pride? Perhaps. Shame? Maybe to an extent. But at the end of the day, it is because we condition ourselves to never have to need someone else.

How did I come to realise this? Quite easy and out of the blue really.

I started to compare myself with this phantom figure - this person from yesterday whose name I do not even know. And I started to feel less-than I already am. Feeling of under-achieving, being inadequate... True I have dreams yet to fulfill but it doesn't lessen any of the dreams I have already reached, touch and hold in my hands.

So that was when it struck me - how could this person - this person who was allegedly successful and upcoming - put me to stand only 6 inches tall? How could this person make me feel that everything I have today is less than sufficient when Lord only knows what it took to climb out of the bottom of the devil's cauldron.

I am glad I realised this today, even though I said we need to talk about this next week. Because I will know then what I would say, and what I would do. And if I didn't reach this conclusion on my own, it would be no different from before and those are mistakes I do not want to repeat.

I am my own person. And I am God's gift to this world in my own way. I am special and I am unique. And I should not allow someone else to make me feel any less than. Or rather - I should not allow the threat and insecurity of someone else to make me feel any less than.

If Amanda were still talking to me - she would be so proud to see me come to realise this ALL ON MY OWN. So if you're reading this my dear dear friend - yes, it takes one big step forward to make me see things the way you've always been trying to tell me. But hey - you've always known me to be like this, never one really for small baby steps. And maybe that was what was holding me back from loving me, myself and I.

And as you always say - until I can love myself, I cannot love someone else.

11 Minutes

I have been troubled. I have tried to brush it off, sweep it under the carpet, surrender it to the heavens. But nothing is working. When it is quiet and the wine has worn off, the maggots come back again and in gusto.

In my desperation to survive the next 7 days and night, I turned to Paulo Coelho - the one author, who God seems to have destined to be His Voice of my reasoning. It was a book that I put off reading - thinking what has a book about sex got to teach me through Mr Coelho. I was so wrong.

The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly. And the person who loves wholeheartedly feels free. That is why, regardless of what I might experience, do or learn, nothing makes sense.
For the past 5 months, I have been meandering - trying to figure out why I went all the way to the north of Spain only to come back and have my life do such a big turnaround. I had expected to come back, feeling more love than anything else - because when you have been rung of everything there is in you, there is only one way to fill it all back up - thru love. And if that is so, why have I instead been burning my bridges?

And if I was suppose to learn patience and surrender to a higher will and being, why am I finding it so hard to accept what is in front of me? Why is the faith, the trust, so difficult and long in coming?

I've learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you're with my, even when you're not by my side.

I have been troubled. I have been running through in my head snippets of conversation that could exist, that may exist, that could very possibly never ever take place. I have been fighting down the urge to pick up the phone and write away till my heart's content. But then I ask myself - what do I want out of doing that? And because I cannot answer that question, I refrain from doing so.

I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I'm a housewife and a prostitute, both of living in the same body and doing battle with each other.

Objectivity. That has been hard to come by - burnt the bridge to my one and only objective-looking person in life. And though I have the name and number, pride stops me from asking. Shame stops me from screaming "I need you." Fear stops me from saying "tell me it is not just in my own head."

Someone told me that if I believe that what was said and what is happening is my answer from a knee-mail, then I should not let logic win. But yet, my logic has been my greatest struggle in the last 6 days. The thought of "people always say things they do not mean" has been plaguing my soul.

If you live your life intensely, you experience pleasure all the time and don't feel the need for sex. When you have sex, it's out of a sense of abundance, because the glass of wine is so full that it overflows naturally.

I should be happy. As I said in 2 posts ago. I should be overjoyed. Yet, something in me refuses to let me bask in the warmth of the joy and the "love" if you can call it that.

So tonight I pray to God - let me find withing me the capacity to love. Because if I don't - I will never believe nor deserve any of the good that comes my way. Simply because I will fail to recognise it when I should.

I have had more than 11 minutes for the last 3 1/2 years and from what I have been told - I have more than 11 minutes even when we are old and grey.

Fonts in italics are excerpts that from the book
11 Minutes by Paulo Coelho.

Patience

Every once in a while, I get smacked with an earth-moving situation that requires me to sit very still and do nothing. And over the course of yesterday, after 2 days of being in a very dark place- I have come to conclude that this is another one of them.

I have no control whatsoever over how this will play out. And so, why should I spend my days fretting?

I just need to remind myself, every second, every minute, every hour, every day that this is a lesson in patience.

I Should Be...

I should be happy, over-joyed, elated even that you trust me enough to tell me what may possibly exist today in your life. That you feel I should know and that to some extend my opinion on it matters.

I should be happy, over-joyed, elated even that you get along with both my children so well and how each have taken to the other so well. That Luke looks up to you and Lydia does not cut you off.

I should be happy, over-joyed, elated even that 2 years is to far ahead to make plans. That we should get away as early as we possibly could afford to.

I should be happy, over-joyed, elated that you think where I have moved to is not too close. That it is somewhere you think you could live in.

I should be happy, over-joyed, elated. But I am not.

Simply because I am always the one left-behind.  And I am afraid that after all this happiness, joyfulness and elation - I would come crashing down to earth and break open into a gazillion pieces.

When we were beautiful

"I think the storm has cleared. All you guys need is the opportunity, is all," Des said over a glass of wine.

To ask for her to take the first step is pure selfish and I wouldn't come to that. This is it is all at my end - there is no compromise.

If there is to be a resolution to this stalemate, I'd have to eat crow and take that first step.

In many ways, all the other things she mentioned was also true. But the fear is there. Cos at the base of it, if the one person in this world who accepted me as I was rejects me now, then that will say it all about me.