Imploding

                                   Once again this week I was faced with my need for people to like me, not just that but approve of me and feel included. One of the things I love most about my husband is his wicked sense of humor, his impish way or needing to go wild once in a while. I adore this and encourage it, keeps me on my toes and challenges me to stay witty or at least looking at the world a little more off beat. However there are times I truly would implode if I could when he burst forth and to his delight (and also the delight of most of our friends) bursts forth with jerkdom of the best meaning whimsy. I would like to curl into my elf and implode little a sci-fy imp just a folding in with a little flash of light then gone. There is a delight in the making people uncomfortable that escapes me.

                                 I hate that need to feel accepted all the time, not just me but I need everyone in the group to feel included and excepted. It is a sickness, really even people that I do not know I do not want them to feel left out or pushed off in anyway. I know there are times I have done this and just horrified m self as words left my lips meaning to be casual and welcoming but outside my head just go all bitchy and wrong. Ugh. communication is hard enough without having to worry all the time about if everyone is ok or not. I feel like a dork holding up a "Like me, please" sign all the time. I think Facebook was made by people like this. It's exhausting! Why is there this need to be accepted so much?, Really? Who cares what someone you just met thinks of you? and if they are included: I do, I desperately do. It's an illness, I swear it is. In Grade School there was my birthday party, I had wanted everyone to feel included so I invited every girl in class to my house, making it 5th grade girl hell. I remember sitting upstairs crying up set as the divisions a girl meanness only tween and teen girls can have wondering how wanting everyone to feel welcome had gone so wrong.

                                  I'm at a loss for how to be rid of this. I know it is a long standing  problem for me, in some ways I have made strides, I speak my mind more even if I think it will upset others. In those cases I have tried to be very careful but still be true to myself rather than just being silent because it is easier. Conflict is not easy for me, it is hard for me not to just loose myself so that someone else can feel ok. I had done that a lot of my life standing up for myself, it has been a hard road but for one I am glad I went down. I have felt better since. I am unsure how to free myself from caring so much what other think. I know it's partly my nature as someone who naturally encourages others but I think there is a healthy and unhealthy thing to it too. Just like standing up for yourself; there is the healthy way to say "I love you" or care about you but I can not be in relationship with you while you treat me this way. But, What is the healthy way to step back from caring what others think? I still feel bad with the healthy boundaries I have had to set because I know how hurt people can be because they can not understand your need for it. I do not know what it feels like, but I'm needing to find out.

even if you shake

Ugh I fell like I write this all the time. I get so down on my self when I can't find anything interesting to write about. I feel like I have nothing to say, nothing to offer when the world rears up an gut checks me I loose all perspective. I for get each of us has a view that is like no other my view is my own and sharing it helps me sort it but also allows others to share their views and perspective widening my own giving me a better view than my navel I have been pondering with the limited view life gives. I may not shatter the earth with my brilliance/ quirky voice but I will at least speak.

I was listening to a poet today called Sarah Kay her ted talk, at the end she recited her poem and in it she was talking about Hiroshima and the blast burning the rocks and evaporating the people in the blast and the rocks being burnt except where the people had shielded it with there bodies leaving a white mark of their out line, a positive image. I want that, not to be vaporized but to leave a positive mark. it does not have to be big it can just be an out line but I want when the world finally vaporizes me for the mark that is left is of where I blocked the darkness. for some part to remain where the darkness of life can not take over that because I was here because I spoke because I had the courage to be who I was made to be.

God that sounds good, right? Sounds like someone so full of optimism you would think the world never touched them with darkness that light just free flows from their eyes and finger tips rather than the anxiety laden person who doesn't have the patience to wait for the page to load so she plays a game while she does everything person actually writing this. But is the truth of how I feel inside, no matter how much soul crushing radiative ash making crap life brings this is all I have. Don't get me wrong I have some very good things in my life I would not give up the relationships experiences and things that have formed me into this neurotic women I am, but all I own in my life is that. I can own my voice I can own the time I place into loving well. I may not be the most brilliant my words may be spoken better by others but the uniqueness that is me can not. SO I am going to stand on the words of a person I forgot who they were but not what they said that said speak even if your voice shakes in the hopes that someday even if they can not name me my words will bring that kind of courage to someone else.

The trench

                               Why is change so friggin hard you think in a world full of flux we would all be so used to it it would seem weird without it. Sigh but it is not that way. I had a friend describe changing habits this way the other day. "we all have ruts in our brains deep ways we do everything in our lives. as we try to change those we are digging new ones it is easy to slip back into the old ones." I like a loath that idea: it describes how uncomfortable we feel while making the changes but also leaves us in a pit once in a while. this oddly has given me new motivation. As the idea of being confined in a trench in my mind is not appealing to me. not many pleasant things happen in a pit or trenches for that matter.

                               Change is a part of who we are or should be. I love the commercial with the grown man with the bike helmet on on one of those push scooters saying these streets are all I have ever known.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnCSY8YHDEA
It cracks me up because what if we all had chosen to stay there? With every new thing we do there is risk but the risk of being a 40 year old living like that guy is so much greater. We would miss out on so much of life if we let it.

Paradox

I am still so distracted about the trip next year I put pictures every where on the computer it is my cover picture my screen saver my wall paper. I have gone southern mad. I am not sure what it is about the south I loved visiting there as a child the glossed over history and the dark underbelly, beautiful flowers plants air plants that add mystique, old plantations beautiful and sad with history of oppression, The beaches and wildlife, the iron work and just how different it feels from here. I love it! I am so excited to get to go there and see a house that belonged to an 3 or 4 time great grandfather of mine. Tom has been wanting to take me there since we found out the place existed. I was not sure I wanted to be do really want to see it see where they walked see where they lived what they were like.

                    It is weird to think of them being slave owners and doing horrible things that went with that. Finding my family history has been both very fun and not so much all at the same time because of finding people like that in my past where their lives were fascinating yet they were not people of great moral values. May be more a product of their times but it still feels wrong to a person who believes in freedom and honoring and respecting others so much. This will be the first time I have been back down south since I have known about this I wonder if it will change my view. AS a child the drama of gone with the wind filled my head with the dreams of a different time. I did a hell of Scarlet impression, my mom loved it got me out of a lot of tuff spots. But as I grew older and learned the history I was so embarrassed of how much I loved it. There is so much good about the south not just the food but that is high on the list. the music and richness lives there Alligators and dolphins. so much history and so much new that is good too. I don't know if I will ever get over my love of the south but I am in good company so many artists and musicians never have either. There was a part of the book I was reading with my book club that talked about paradox and how that is where interest lives spark of life, I think the south is that for me. So much beauty so much darkness so much life so many ghost tours. (Hee hee hee ) I am excited to see how I see this word as an adult and see it for the first time in my husbands eyes.

Should I stay or should I go now

FOr those that do not know I am Dyslexic, now there are many types of dyslexia mine happenes to be eye hand cowardination on
top of moving letters and numbers around. so sport and physical activity has always been torcher for me. Gym class was a nightmare. Exjock jerks running the class with drill sargent mannerisums and sencitivity of a sociopath. Not exactly the warm friendly place that invited one to try and fail or try and not do as well as you could. To top that off I grew up with a sister who was very athletic and just naturally good at those things. Never able to live up to the sister I admired and so wanted to be like, but never could. I started to view those kind of activities as torcher. Competion became viewed as someone standing over me saying you suck and stomping my throught. So for most of my life  I have avoided those type of activities and became kind of judgmental about those that took part in them. I so had the Revenge of the Nerds view of the world. Oger was going to humiliate me if I ventured out and tried so why try.

I have met a few people that chalenged my mind set people with huge hearts that ran marathons and took on physical chalenges just for the chalenge. A part of me always waited for the inner Jock from the 80's movie to come out and regect me as the art geek or just plain geek. This is so imbarising to actually write down but it is what is going on in my heart every time I choose as a women with more fluff than stuff to step out and face excersize and the riducual I was sure to face. So 4 months ago I asked the Lord to help me with this, I was ready to step out and make some healthier changes start to walk every day I really wanted to. So the next day a friend of ours asks my husband to be a part of the tough mudder. Incase you have never
heard of this it is 10 mile run laced with 25 crazy obsticals that are stupid hard like 12 foot walls not just wall WALLS, run through
fire, climb a greesed half pipe, and elctroshock staion and so much more things I never want to do. So my husband who had never even just taken a walk for fun started to train for this. I was afraid of so many things first that he would change from the loving funny warm hearted man I fell in love with to Oger who would abandon me for a short little beautiful blond bimpo after mocking me to a bloody stain on the floor. Needless to say my part of the "I will do this with you" happened so much less as the fear rose up in me. He would faithful get up almost every day and head to the gym or for a run and I would both cringe and be proud of him waiting for the shoe to drop.

So four months later we are heading for the event. He is all ready to go in full Nacho Libre costume on I tyed off the mask and he runs 3 miles to the starting line of the 10 miles race with 25 obsticals while I pay his parking pull out my chair to watch. I was with my sister, my soul sister and their children. After finding out how far away the start is and registration It slowly dawms on me I am not going to make it all day and my husband just gave me his keys, money and glasses 2 of which he can not drive home with out. I
enjoyed waching the chalenges and seeing people help each other  over very hard things they could not do alone but the stranger or team memeber next to them helped them do it. So my sister takes the kid to find a bathroom while my soul sister and I walking slower start off in what we think is the starting line, but soon becomes more a death march for me in the heat. We flagged down one of the carts driving around and I was going to ask for a ride but as I walk up looking in the eyes of the jocks sitting in it I was
unable to ask my voice shrank backand I froze up and they looked at me and said "we are working no people on the carts." and drove off. In my mind the laugh minacally as they did so.

So we marched on unknown to us taking the longest way posible to the next obstical and I was done. there was shade there so I set up and my soul sister went off to find the kids, my sister, food, water, and the start line. a few min later a clever sassy text for a friend of mine that was uable to come pops into my mind so I go to pull out my phone to find it gone. Alone with jocks and no smart remarts to be typed. I really started to watch I saw a few people I was dreading run by but the majority were people helping each other cheering each other on chalenging and celbrating togeather. I was shocked the first time I saw this at the greezed half pipe but convinced my self they were just helping their friends and it was a fluke. But as I watched the people I noticed some of the strongest people giving a hand to people they odviously did not know. It turns out watching this that the thousands of people who signed up to torcher them selves spent the time helping everyone around them running jumping and over coming fears. It was the best example of comunity I have ever seen. My husband came across a 70ish year old women taking on this chalenge and she was
stuck on a high jump unable to jump down in the water her friends had all asked her to jump with them and jumped she was stuck up there he held out his hand and said I am a super hero jump with me and she did, she let go of her fear and took the leep.

Wow what an example of life and how we are suposed to live.
So sitting on the sun watching this we had to leave before my husband finished I was just a short time away from hitting the ground and not getting up again. Littereally as we went to the parking lot I felt my eyes closing and I was going down. My sister dumped water on my head and the air in the car revived me. When I talked to my husband and I heard all the stories and how he finished I cryed I was never so proud of anyone ever in my life. He then told me he had called my phone and one of the mudders was going to mail it home to me, I hold it in my hand now a few days later.

So now I am left with a chalenge to my Ogger jock look at sports and those that do them. I am left with the chalenge to take up the chalenge and run at the wall trusting someone will be there to catch my arms and help me up.
 Can I venture on to the course?
I  am willing to try I am willing to trembling step by step venture into a world that has mocked me and made me feel small all my life? 
Could this mudder type world be for me too or just for others but I can watch but never be really excpted by.
This is the place I stand do you feel this way in places of your life like all the wall is there and your bloody from running into it but there is no way around it. I feel the thunder as I step on the feild with a close up lens on the camera each blade of grass curling around the shoe the contrast of colors very evedent will I dare to go?