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Archive for the ‘Thankful’ Category

Into The Unknown

There are numerous women in my life that fill numerous roles and I’ve had a carefully crafted organization system in place for years that keeps each in their zone.

However……

They have started to move about the cabin freely without me turning off the seat belt sign, and to be completely honest, I’m not liking it.

I’m a big fan of clear cut lines and rules. This wasn’t always the case, but over the last decade or so it’s become helpful for dealing with my anxieties and insecurities. I like to know what to expect and from whom I can expect it.

In my attempt to “take control” of the direction my life is going in, I somehow overturned all the boxes, lost the labels, and shook up the etch a sketch road map.

I am excited about the future and the possibilities, but at the same time I’m feeling unmoored. My love life is completely up in the air. There is a big “we’ll see” over my relationship status. My “flirtationship” has been on the fritz like a wonky radio signal I lose just about the time I make out the lyrics of my favorite song. My female friends have morphed into my family, and the few I’m leaving behind in Ohio feel like an impending death in that family. Ohio is “only” 1000 miles from Oklahoma, but when you live on a strict budget that may as well be on the moon. My soon-to-be roommate has been my friend for almost 30 years and we couldn’t be more opposite on 99% of our opinions and I fear our new arrangement will cause issues there. (I’m mouthy and opinionated on a good day.) The women that have been friends I flirt with from a safe distance will no longer be at a distance and that worries me a lot because I’m all flirt and no intention with all of them so I have to pull on my big girl panties and draw some clearer lines there. I’m going to be moving closer to certain people I’ve been able to easily put in my rear-view mirror because of the distance. I want to keep them there, but I’m not terribly adept at being the asshole when I should be. For the first time in 11 years I’ll be able to rebuild a relationship with a young woman that, though born to another mother, was my daughter from the moment she took her first breath. After falling out with her biological mother she was kept from me as a child, but now as an adult I’m not sure where I fit into her life and that is an unpaved road that leaves me feeling like I need a GPS and a seeing eye dog.

It’s all so messy. It’s a lot of unknowns. It’s a lot of insecurities. It’s a lot of building, rebuilding, reevaluating, reconstructing, and self-reflection. I say I’m patient, but in truth I’m not when it comes to myself. I want all the answers and I want them now.

The thing they forget to mention to kids who are in a hurry to grow up is at no time in your adult life do you get the key to the library that holds the book that has all the answers. You don’t even get the cliff notes. Adulting is more like a self-guided study on theoretical physics just after having grasped 6th grade science and math.

Also; Packing sucks and if you can pay someone to do it for you I highly recommend it. Unfortunately I’m flying solo on that as well.

Category:

#perspective, Acceptance, Adulting, Aging, Alone, Anxiety, Blogging, Blunt Talk, Boundaries, Change, Control, Controlled Chaos, Courage, Crazy, Daughter, Depression, Discovery, Disorginized, Distance, Family, Fear, Female Relationships, Flirt, Flirtationship, Follow, Friends, Future, GPS, Gratitude, Growth, Happiness, History, Holding Back, Hope, Lesbian, Library, Life, Living, Love, Moving, Oklahoma, Overwhelming, Packing, Parenting, Passion, People, Perspective, Possibilities, Reality, Relationship, Relationships, Roadmap, Romance, Rules, Second Chances, Self-acceptance, Self-aware, Self-realization, Sex, Sexuality, Single Life, Support, Taking Chances, Thankful, The Past, Uncategorized, Women, Worry

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Titles Are Hard

Every time I sit down to write anything, whether it be a blog entry or a poem or a story, the first thing I try to think of is the title. I type a word or two, erase it, type another, erase that, stare at the screen for several minutes, and then start the process again.

I hate titles.

Now that we’ve covered that small(ish) issue; here’s what I wanted to write about…..

THANKSGIVING

Someone eventually asks “What are you thankful for?” at some point during the day nearly every year. This year I decided to preemptively answer the question. It’s harder to answer than you might think if you don’t count the standard “Family and Friends” answers, but last night I spent my nightly hours of staring into the darkness with my mind racing while I should be sleeping working on this list.

  1. I’m thankful for unconditional love. Let me be a bit more specific; I honestly don’t think humans are fully capable of truly unconditional love. However, those 4-legged members of our families; the cats we accidentally lock in a closet for an entire day and the dogs we make pee outside when it’s so cold we won’t go outside ourselves without nine layers of clothes that still greet us like we are the best thing about their entire day/life/world. I have 4 of them. They calm my anxiety, they cuddle me at bedtime, they kiss away my tears, they keep me company when I’m not good company, they don’t complain about the documentaries I watch, they don’t talk to me when I read….well that’s not entirely true because my Siamese cat, Ziggy, talks to me pretty much all the time, but he doesn’t seem to mind that I mumble, “I know” or “Is that right?” while really not paying attention to what he’s saying. Do you know any humans that do all of these things? I surely don’t. I’m so thankful for my furbabies and how much love they bring to my daily existence. (BTW, Today is also the 9th birthday of my youngest chihuahua, Jasmine Rose. Happy Birthday, Punkin!)
  2. I’m thankful for medical science. Without it I couldn’t stand my own company, leave my house, get out of bed most days, sleep at all most nights, breathe around my beloved furbabies, hear out of my non-working ears, see out of my non-working eyes, or deal with half a dozen other things that don’t work properly on my genetically disadvantaged self.
  3. I’m thankful for authors; more precisely authors who continue to astound me with words that open new worlds, plots that make me think about things I never pondered, and while taking me out of my reality remind me I’m never truly alone as long as I have a book. Thank you, Authors, for continuing to share your gift with the world.

Happy Thanksgiving, My Friends. Be thankful today. If you can’t think of anything to be thankful for just remember we now have Google and that’s certainly something!

Monique P.

 

 

Category:

#Read, #reader, Anxiety, Authors, Book, Books, Cats, Chihuahua, Furbabies, Google, Humor, Life, Living, Love, Pets, Read, Readers, Science, Thankful, Thanksgiving, Titles, Uncategorized, Unconditional Love

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