love – Page 5 – Site Title

Letting Go vs. Letting Go (Archives)

There are two kinds of letting go, perhaps there are more ways of doing that but I’m going to talk about two kinds here that make letting go more than a nightmare.. The kind that is of a temporary nature and then there is the more permanent kind. In the temporary kind, you have every intention of letting go but when you do, it is only a matter of time before you go back to the same person. It doesn’t matter how bad the person has treated you, how you were almost invisible in their eyes, how they never had any time for you and you were never the priority but still, you hope and wish that things could have been different. Here’s the problem, it never changes because what they’ve shown you is what you get, nothing more, nothing less. Instead of showing them the door, you keep it slightly ajar just in case they decide to walk back in and do the drumroll all over again and you bow to their every wish.

“It sucks when you know that you need to let go, but you can’t because you’re still waiting for the impossible to happen.” Unknown

The other “letting go” kind is doing it permanently. You realize that the person you were seeing or dating has a lot of the qualities above and you see them for what they are. Maybe it is narcissism, maybe it is selfishness, maybe it is a lack of integrity or character and maybe they are just too full of themselves and think they are IT and everything revolves around them. It’s time to cut the cord because the relationship is not going anywhere and you also realize that you deserve better than what is being handed to you on a worn-out platter. It’s time to do a major change and to take out the trash.

“Letting go does not mean you stop caring, it means you stop trying to force others to.” Mandy Hale

There are many lessons to learn in life and one of them is, you can’t force someone to change. You can only change yourself and take control of who you are, what you deserve and who you want to be with.

“The hardest part about letting go is finally realizing that there wasn’t much left to hold on to.” Unknown

The problem with letting go and why it doesn’t work at times is because we keep looking back at a non-existent relationship and we romanticize it to the point that the guy comes out looking like Prince Charming when in actuality he is a toad or a turd! We come in with the “if only” scenarios hoping and wishing it could be different. Changing someone’s character is next to impossible, it might work for a while but then the real person shows up again and it is only a matter of time before that happens. If he is a cheater, you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll do it again. If he is a narcissist, he’s a lost cause and if he’s someone who shows no empathy or compassion, well, that is not going to change either because it is built into their DNA. Pay careful attention to what they show you because you’re looking at the truth right there.

“If he’s stupid enough to walk away, be smart enough to let him.” Unknown

That is good advice because if he wants to go, let him go. Don’t keep wondering who he is with, what they are doing together and what he is up to. If you do, it makes letting go a very hard or almost an impossible thing to do.

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.” Oprah Winfrey

Take Ms. Winfrey’s advice, the lady knows what she is talking about. Stay in the moment and give him enough rope to hang himself but YOU keep moving forward. Rest assured that whoever he is with or whatever he is doing is not far from what he was doing with you because people never change and they don’t change overnight and start smelling like a rose either. It is not for you to wonder why, just know that perhaps it was for the best.

LET GO & JUST LET IT BE.

Have an amazing day.

Needle in a Haystack (Archives)

Looking for the needle in a haystack is defined as “something that is almost impossible to find because it is hidden among so many other things,” or it could mean that you are very unlikely indeed to find it.

Someone once said to me that I choose to be alone. If I didn’t want to be alone, I would already be in a relationship. I disagree with this assumption. Choosing a partner needs to be a well-thought out, well-planned affair. Grabbing any guy who comes along is easy but that one elusive person, the one who fits the mold and the one who offers long-term is really hard to find. The needle in the haystack is elusive, impossible to find and at times the end goal is disappointing and yet I keep looking. Am I trying too hard? It has been said that when you go looking for something, you never find it but when you stop looking, there it is right before your eyes.

“If you hunt for a needle in a haystack you don’t find it. If you don’t give a darn whether you ever see the needle or not – it runs into you the first time you lean against the stack.” P. G. Wodehouse

Perhaps there is some truth to this quote but alas Mr. Wodehouse, my problem is that I keep missing the haystack altogether! I want to zero in on that haystack where the needle is hidden but each haystack I find seems to be the wrong one and I walk past without exploring further. Picky? Definitely. I have this “perfect guy” image etched in my mind and that right there is the problem. He is in my mind and the others don’t measure up. At this rate, I don’t think I’m going to find him no matter how many frogs I kiss not that I’ve kissed that many. I walk off before the kiss happens and look towards the distance for the next Prince Charming to come riding in on his white horse but it never fails, they are missing one thing or another and sometimes they ride in with no horse at all!

How do you find that needle in the haystack?

The answer – “the way you find an actual needle in an actual haystack – is to burn the haystack to the ground. What you’ll be left with is the needle, because metal doesn’t burn.” Jennie Young

If that fails, “Needle in the haystack’s easy – just bring a magnet.” Keith DeCandido

Fine and good and even funny to an extent but that guy living rent-free in my head needs to materialize in front of me so that we can ride off into the sunset together. Please universe, if you are listening make it happen before the next frog rolls around with his lips puckered for that all elusive kiss!

Have an amazing day.

Cute & Cuddly!

By now, you know who I’m talking about. If you don’t, he’s my best buddy and my little love. A furball of love and insurmountable cuteness! He is called Chachi, sometimes Einstein, and at other times Little Macho. A little British short-haired cat who thinks he knows everything and one who has lived some interesting lives.

He was a gift from the friend who passed away and believe it or not, they have the same colored eyes. Green and clear. His coat is speckled and he has the cutest little face. We have conversations together and he listens quietly and sometimes he lets out a meow as if to say, “Enough already!” He loves waking me up early in the mornings and I mean early! Scared to go downstairs by himself, he waits around until I go down the stairs and he follows. Lately, I think he is more of a scaredy cat than a macho.

He claims to have been in Cleopatra’s court and knows beauty rituals like you wouldn’t believe! He thinks I’m doing it all wrong like Cleopatra did. All the masks, the milk baths and so on are no help at all, he says. “Just be yourself!” is his mantra. He has something there but when has that ever stopped me?! I love beauty rituals and weekends are for relaxing and taking care of myself. He says that’s the path that led Cleopatra to being unlucky in love! Hmm….well, I’m no Cleopatra and when I ask him what he did there. His reply, he was a eunuch, not that his luck has changed much in this life either, he adds!

Chachi, the cat, is very much a part of the family and he knows it. He is loved, adored, and spoiled rotten, all part and parcel of loving someone or at least in my world it is. I can’t wait to find out what other lives he has led. It will be more than an eye-opener for sure.

Daily writing prompt

Describe a family member.

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Glennon Doyle (Archives)

She is an American author and queer activist and her podcast “We Can Do Hard Things” won two webby awards. She is empowering, inspirational and her quotes speak to and touch the heart. It has been said that when Glennon Doyle speaks, women listen and I’m one of those women.

“When a women finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.”

Exactly where I’m at now.

“I looked hard at my faith, my friendships, my work, my sexuality, my entire life and asked, “How much of this was my idea? Who was I before I became who the world told me to be?”

I’ve asked myself the self-same question and the answer is, I was free as a bird!

“This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. There is no map, we are all pioneers.”

“I do not adjust myself to please the world. I am myself wherever I am, and I let the world adjust.”

I know this journey well. I am in the midst of it.

“I have met my self and I am going to care for her fiercely.”

Doing exactly that and I am seeing the benefits.

“We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, our job as parents is to protect our children from pain, and our job as friends is to fix each other’s pain. Maybe that’s why we all feel like failures so often – because we all have the wrong job description for love.”

This one made me stop in my tracks and to take a good hard look at what I’m doing.

“What I want to be, girls, is beautiful. Beautiful means ‘full of beauty.’ Beautiful is not about how you look on the outside. Beautiful is about what you’re made of. Beautiful people spend time discovering what their idea of beauty on this earth is. They know themselves well enough to know what they love, and they love themselves enough to fill up with a little of their particular kind of beauty each day.”

Beautifully said. What’s inside makes you shine on the outside and it can beat physical beauty hands down.

“Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale.”

I haven’t done much inhaling lately but boy am I exhaling!

Have an amazing day and YOU ARE ENOUGH!

Principles That Define My Life

There are several principles that define how I live my life, but there are four intrinsic values that I adhere to. They are honesty, integrity, empathy and kindness.

These four make up the cornerstone of how I live my life. Honesty is important and I try to be as honest as I can. There are times when the “white lies” creep in but those moments are few and far between. However, those “white lies” do come back to haunt me. I am learning to be more straightforward without being hurtful.

Integrity is a must as far as I am concerned. I stand by what I say and when I promise something, I do it. My word is my bond and it really is with me. It basically means that “a person’s spoken promise is a serious and unbreakable commitment, just like a legal bond.” This signifies the highest level of integrity. I know many people who don’t stand by their word. It seems to be a norm these days but I do stand by what I say and you can count on it.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It is about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes and it means to understand and consider another person’s feelings and lifestyle without judgment. I try but sometimes I fall short. It is a work in progress.

Kindness is important. I try to be kind, generous, friendly, and considerate to others. It makes for a better world and one act of kindness is all it takes to put a smile on someone’s face when they’re having a bad day or to show them that someone cares.

Those are the principles I live by. There are others but these four are front and center when it comes to defining how I live my life and they help to guide me on the right path and to keep me grounded.

Daily writing prompt

What principles define how you live?

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LOL!

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

Three women went to Mexico one night, had too much to drink, and woke up the next morning in jail. They were told they would be executed, but none of them could remember what they had done wrong.

The first woman, who had red hair, was strapped into the electric chair. When asked if she had any last words, she said, “I went to Grace University, and I believe that God will protect the innocent.” They pulled the switch, but nothing happened.

Everyone around dropped to their knees, begged for her forgiveness, and let her go.

Next, the second woman, a brunette, was put in the chair. She said, “I went to the Creighton School of Law, and I believe that justice will protect the innocent.” They pulled the switch again, and once more, nothing happened.

Again, the people fell to their knees, asked for her forgiveness, and let her go.

Finally, the last woman, a blonde, was brought in and strapped into the chair. She said, “I graduated from the University of Alabama in Huntsville with a degree in Electrical Engineering, and I can tell you right now, this thing isn’t going to work unless you plug it in!”

😂😂😂

The Moral of the Story is…

A woman cheats on her husband after years of happy marriage.

Realizing her mistake, she starts praying to God, “Lord, I know what I did was wrong, but my marriage is the only thing that gives my life purpose and joy. Please, don’t let my husband find out.”

Suddenly, she hears a voice from above. “Okay my child, it will be, but on one condition: years from now, you will die by drowning.”

The woman hesitates at first but then responds, “Alright Lord, if it means he’ll never find out, then so be it.”

The next years of her life are happy and wonderful. She starts a successful business and lives in comfort with her husband, however, she continues to cheat on him many times, having forgotten her conversation with God.

One day, she decides to book herself a vacation on a cruise ship. A few days into the voyage, a loud BOOM rocks the cruise ship, and it starts to sink. Suddenly remembering her agreement with God, she is stuck with grief and begins praying frantically to God again:

“God, you’re not gonna drown an entire cruise ship full of people because of me, right?”

She hears a familiar voice. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been working to gather all you cheaters here for years!”

BOOM! It may take years but it all comes back eventually and HOW!!!

This Thing Called Love (5) Archives

There was a darkness within her,

A storm behind her eyes,

She was complicated,

But simple,

Brave,

But terrified.

She had the heart of a mighty lion,

But deep inside she cried,

Her face was full of beauty,

Her head was full of lies,

And although the outside was pretty,

She was dead and empty inside.

Julie Addicott

Recognize her? I do. I was like her, one of the “walking dead.” We walk the earth as living, breathing human beings but inside, we are dead as a doornail. We are the ones who can’t let go and the ones who hold on to a past that had us in its grip in more ways than one. The ones who believed that love was forever and when it broke apart, we died inside.

I was that person. My eyes smiled but the inside was a cold and barren place. There was an iciness that no fire could thaw and no love could set ablaze. It was done and I moved slowly taking each day as it came, the guardian of a heart that no longer beat even though it was alive.

It took some time, a long time before I felt the thaw. Life was slowly being breathed back into me again. I don’t know what changed, I only know that I wasn’t afraid to embrace the unknown and I was ready to move forward, slowly but surely.

Then he walked in. We clicked immediately. My insides screamed that I knew him and I knew him well. I put it down to the similar experiences we had shared. He was a world traveler and we could talk for hours about a lot of things. Or could it be the gentle way he looked at me or even the way his hand would reach for mine when I wasn’t expecting it. Sometimes he would reach out and stroke my cheek or even the way we could sit for hours side by side without saying a word but feeling at home there. There was something about him that tugged at my heart. Could it be that he was hiding secrets my heart didn’t see? It was a dance of getting close, and moving apart. It was lovely, chaotic and beautiful all rolled into one. Those feelings I had left behind were front and center again and after having been in the desert of nothingness, I was coming alive with him by my side.

Then one day, he said those words. The ones that made my heart skip a beat. “I LOVE YOU.” It wasn’t said in haste or as an afterthought and it seemed genuine enough but the next day, I would know why he had seemed familiar. He was one of the “walking dead.” When he realized that the feelings he had let die was now taking hold, he ran. I was ready but he wasn’t. We would carry on this dance of reaching out and pulling back, of wanting more but we knew that it was a fire that could sear if we let it burn. We went our separate ways only to return time after time. “We always keep coming back to each other and you’ve always been the one.” Those were his words.

A few weeks ago, he called and we talked, strangers once again. “I need to figure this out,” he said, his voice tinged with confusion. I understood it well. I had been there not too long ago. When he uttered those three little words, I knew that it would be just a matter of time before he would run in a different direction, one that didn’t involve feelings, this much thinking and one that wouldn’t include me. Love is scary when you’ve experienced the destruction it can bring.

I have a tendency to excuse bad behavior and this was more than that. He was unavailable and instead of staying in his lane, he crossed over. Luckily, I had been on my journey of self-discovery for some time and even though it hurt, it didn’t destroy me because I was emerging as a much stronger person than where I had started from.

This thing called love wears many faces and sometimes it hurts like hell. It is also not a, “one size fits all” kind of thing. It has its quirks, it has its ways and sometimes just when you think you’ve found what you’re looking for, it pulls the rug from under you. There’s no rhyme or reason for why this happens and there are no guarantees. Perhaps, it’s because some of us love too hard and go all in only to find that when love leaves with no goodbyes, we die a sudden death, one that leaves you breathing but dead inside.

Sad but this too is a thing called love.

The Death Sentence

This is an issue that still grips me today. I used to be against the taking of a life and the death sentence was a no go as far as I was concerned until the day someone took my mother’s life.

My world got turned upside down and at the forefront was the issue of the death sentence. I was so sure that she (the perpetrator) would get the death penalty. I was so wrong but the problem was that I was sitting on the fence wanting it to happen, the death penalty to be handed down, and at the same time I wasn’t so sure. It was a time of deep unrest and turmoil of the worst kind.

I changed from someone who was against capital punishment to someone who thought that “an eye for an eye” was the way to go. Since I couldn’t do it myself, believe me I wanted to, I would let the justice system mete out the punishment. SHE deserved to die for what she had done! That was my rallying cry at the time.

The decision was not in my hands. The verdict was manslaughter to a lesser degree. Outrage? Absolutely. Why? I don’t know. Some technicality, it was said. Anyway, at some point in time while I was raging about the unfairness of it all, I looked in the mirror and saw someone else emerging. A person filled with anger, rage and revenge. I didn’t like what I saw.

I’ve changed my views on the death penalty since then. It’s a matter of survival for me. I needed to let go of the “demon” holding me in its grip. Rage and revenge had no place in my life. My mom is in a better place and so I decided to let it be. Basically, capital punishment does not deter crime but more importantly, the death penalty would not have brought my mom back to life.

I’ve changed my mind and I’m back to where I was in the beginning. No death penalty. One source says that capital punishment “constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, which is prohibited under international human rights standards.” I still ask the question, “Did my mom get the justice she deserved.” The answer is a resounding NO! However, capital punishment would not have made it better either.

Daily writing prompt

What’s a topic or issue about which you’ve changed your mind?

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I MISS YOU

I don’t know what brought this on but it seems like I’m grieving all over again. It could be the changing of the season where the days are getting shorter and darkness is coming in earlier and staying longer. Enough time has passed and it should have made it better but there are too many reminders that trigger those memories, ones that I have put aside in order to move on.

Your brother called and he checks in on me not as frequently as he used to do but once in a while. Today was one of those days. He sounded concerned about the test I had gone through and was really relieved that all turned out well. Then he said, “If there is anyone who deserves good things in her life, it is you.” It went straight to my heart but he didn’t see the tears rolling down my face. I got off that phone call and I felt the familiar strains of memories trying to fight their way back in.

Last week, while on my way to the fields, I saw a neighbor and she started up a conversation. It was strange because I never really liked her and we never made small talk before and yet there she was ready to strike up a conversation. It started off about our kids, she has a daughter the same age as my son. Then, it came. “What about …….how is he doing? I always liked him. A nice guy.” So I told her and her face dropped and then she gushed with sadness and condolences. I answered, “Thank you and yes he was a good guy.” Then I went to the fields and you were right there walking beside me, quiet and calm as you always were.

Then for some reason, the Teddy Swims song, “Let Me Love You,” came on and it took me all the way back. It was the third song you sent me and I stopped what I was doing and listened as emotions came rushing back up. Remember, the first Christmas when I invited you over for Christmas Eve dinner and I had my ex there as well? You showed up all dressed up wearing a tie but I could see the nervousness on your face. My ex was shooting daggers at you with his eyes because he felt you were encroaching on his territory but he forgot that he gave it up for a roll in the hay or two with someone who was the spitting image of Olive Oyl, Popeye’s girlfriend or was it his wife? Anyway….

Later, I asked you, “How did it go? Was it ok?”

YOU: “Oh I didn’t mind because I only had eyes for you!”

That one sentence catapulted my self-esteem back to where it should be after having felt “ugly” for months on end when he tossed me aside for everything that moved on two feet! My ex had grown out of his “nerd” phase and was ready to make up for lost time. He took the saying, “Too many women, too little time,” straight to the heart and practiced it religiously!

It has been a hard weekend. Thoughts of you still linger and sometimes it is a song that triggers it or a mere mention of you or just because and I am back to where I shouldn’t be. They say time heals all things but it sure is taking its time.

I wanted you to know that I MISS YOU.