Still... Not a Butterfly!

I'm learning that old, tired phrase, "midlife crisis" is a very real thing. Of course, it doesn't have to be a "crisis", should we learn to embrace it... 

I need to imagine myself going through a complete, biological metamorphosis from which I will emerge as my best self. Humans, after all, like all living organisms, go through many transformations throughout life. Some more noticeable than others, all are necessary, and all serve a greater purpose, none however begin or end when we think, say, or suggest they "should".

Things we previously enjoyed, we now find no interest in, things we did not appreciate in the past, we may see from a new perspective and are drawn to today. These changes may be permanent or just temporary, at this point, it matters not. What's important is that are evolving, growing, learning, absorbing and adapting for the next chapter of our lives. 

Others may not receive us well, they can't always be consciously aware of what we are struggling with. Explaining it just freaks most people out. We aren't generally conscious of the personal struggles of others and if everyone just blubbered all over us about theirs, we'd want even less to do with all of it!

Day to day interactions are often uncomfortable for us, we don't feel like ourselves... This shit is as awkward like puberty and embracing the changes can be as terrifying as being forced down the birth canal and facing life for the first time all over again. Regardless of what we think we know, we are headed into a realm of the less familiar, in many cases, the unknown.

There are a few things I feel we can do to alleviate the emotional toll of this terra incognita:

• Listen to your Inner Monologue.

The way we speak to ourselves, about ourselves... Don't DO anything, just listen and identify whether it is kind and honest providing the necessary peace of mind to move forward, or is it harsh and hurtful which might suggest there's likely something preventing us from taking the next step forward.

• Reflect on the Past Free of Judgement.

Ask yourself what you've learned from such memorable mistakes, have you paid your debt or penance for these actions? At the end of the day, allow time for a system of "checks and balances" based on how you feel about your day, your behavior, yourself as a person and what you'd like to do differently or better in the event you are graced with another day on the green side of the grass. 

• Forgive Yourself!

We call all embrace the lesson(s) and put our knowledge into action moving forward, clean our sides of the street accordingly, and finally... cut the emotional cord!
I've caught myself saying horrible things out loud in the shower, actually talking to myself in a cruel and with  angry about mistakes, embarrassing moments,
You may be a fantastic human, but all humans make mistakes... 

Who keeps a photo album illustrating all of the days/weeks/months/years they spent self-loathing? Why carry it around with you for the rest of your days?

• Have Gratitude.

Although things can be overwhelming and we may feel as though everything in life is so much worse than ever...
Think positive, they say... I'm usually positive things couldn't be worse, until they actually get worse!
So today, I try not to focus on the fact that I don't have enough money to book my next vacation. Instead I create realistic, achievable goals for myself, a reasonable time frame, and a plan of action. In the meantime, I think about the number of things I do have, I can do, etc. Gratitude helps get me out of my head, out of the shit, and onto more productive ways of utilizing my time.

If you feel as though you can't find anything to be grateful for, consider everything you have and CAN have, everything you see or simply the fact that you can see. Be grateful for those you care about and those who care about you, for the breath in your lungs, the beat in your heart, for your gifts or abilities, even the smallest of personal triumphs, another day filled with opportunities, or even for clean underwear. Being grateful just feels immensely better!

Words and phrases can easily become pitfalls! It can be very difficult to get out of a negative mindset once we submerge ourselves in one. Our expectations may set us up for disappointment, frustration, and a tremendous loss of hope.

I've found myself telling everyone else what their job is, how to do it properly, and sputtering on about all of what's wrong with the world and what I believe "should" be. Should is a word I try to avoid today, and in my head, I've begun to replace it with, "Not my circus, not my monkey"... If it is not my job to fix (__fill in the blank__), I need to accept it, and if I can influence it, but have spoken up once about it, I have no need to beat a dead horse. I can change myself, and only myself which is hard enough with everything I have invested in me... Why would I even want to try to work on someone else?

The bottom line for me is this; if I feel as though I need to change the behavior of everyone I encounter, the issue is not everyone, the issue is me. Acceptance of the way things are versus the way I wish them to be is the single most difficult bridge I've ever had to cross, and yet somehow, I have repeatedly found myself back on the wrong side of it!!

Ohhhhh yes. I am... very much human, I do try so very hard to 'morph, but STILL... I'm not a Butterfly!

DIRTY LAUNDRY BLOG: Grab Some Pussy... and Everybody Wins ...

As we enter the future discussing subjects like which age will be appropriate for a child to choose its own gender, I can’t help but wonder how many people think of the consequences we face everyday for the thousands of shitty decisions we’ve made to get us to this point.

We used to live by a code of ethics which was paradigm. Whether biblical or simply moral, there was a fundamental difference between Right and Wrong, or shall we say Good and Evil. In most families this code was strictly enforced in various, often physical manners carried out by our parents (or the nuns) depending on which school system you were enrolled in.

This was a time when there was ONE rebel in the classroom the other kids were terrified to act against the code. They all feared their parents’ wrath… until...

Television became the babysitter:

Both parents forced to work, more single parent households, alcoholic parents, whateverthefuckever. Most parents didn’t have time to review their kids’ daily activities. Reflecting back I’d simplify it by saying, ‘The more time kids spend watching TV, the more their minds are exposed to. The less you can shelter them or protect them from…’ 

When kids acted out, parents found out and usually set them straight with a swift kick in the pants… Suddenly a day came when a thing called a, “Time-out” took the place of a well deserved smack on the ass. The unexpected shift in control would lead to our rapid decent down this fucking rabbit hole.

The subsequent rebellion would later lay the groundwork for a new phenomenon known as the “cool parent”. This is where parents make efforts to become “best friends” with their kids, which would inevitably evolve and give birth (breach birth) to the “everybody wins” movement which formed a thick layer of bullshit around the whole cause and effect thing, which completely inverted our... well, REALITY.

Since we were escaping reality and no longer had a need to work toward our achievements, and with nobody to control us, the internet appeared, catapulting us into the future of limitless irresponsibility... 
This was television to the millionth power. The world wide web mutated radically like an infectious disease from “Information Superhighway” to, “Everything you can think of and a ton of shit you wished you hadn’t read about”, while becoming our most necessary evil. Today, our social existence, world infrastructure, and black market rely heavily if not solely on the internet. 

So we whine, we blog, we rant, we complain. We write negative reviews of businesses with free products or services the ultimate goal. We criticize the world but we continue to do little or nothing to improve ourselves. After all, there’s got to be a restart button or a pill we can take to make us bonafide grown-up when the time is right, right?

A pill because you’re too sad or too anxious or too hyper or too tired. A pill to make your unruly 5 year old sit still and stay focused, a pill to make you lose weight between your celebrity recommended ice cream and cupcake diet. A pill to make you feel, or a pill to make you not feel, but nothing to make you cope. How the hell do we cope… with loss, failure, rejection, success, expectations? Do they teach that in school? 

I was raised to suck it up, understand there were no “do overs”, which brings me to my personal anguish: 

After years of misery, infidelity, shame and humiliation, my father left. He married a woman with 3 kids. He got his “do over”, a whole family. He was such a success, bringing order to a disorderly single mother’s life. Family vacations and a whole new life. I was a teen at the time, today I’m 44, so I would have or at least, should have, made peace with it by now, and I have, or so it would seem… until... This past week Dear ole Dad was in town for the holidays with his “family”, although we had plans for dinner, he blew me off... I spiraled into a nightmaric depression, it felt as if all of those old scars were wide open and fresh, I couldn’t eat or sleep or speak and this blog was born.

… and since I mentioned my father…

My mother has always had her own method of dealing with things. Lie about everything and wash it all away by devoting your time to the church. Uncomfortable subject? We don’t talk about such things... An answering machine plugged directly into the phone jack for screening calls, if my mother feels like returning your call she will plug in a phone and call you back, but don’t hold your breath. I once spent 2 weeks in a hospital, the staff had been leaving messages, but she never returned a single call. She got her “do over” by manipulating my daughter into her deceitful story. The woman hasn’t taken my calls for years and even though she has my phone number, she tells people in town that she has no idea where I am. 

Not all of the evil lurking in the wings of the Catholic church is in the form of pedophile priests.

I honestly grew up thinking there was something terrible about me, that I wasn’t worthy of being loved, not even by my own parents. I was on a reckless path, often suicidal. Many of my friends’ parents took a liking to me. Some of them even took me in over the years, I am eternally grateful to those people and their families for treating me with unconditional love and respect, even when I didn’t respect myself. I may have been an adult, but emotionally I was still a helpless, rejected child. I not so secretly filled the void like so many before me, with sex, drugs, and heavy metal music.

Speaking of Sex...

Like it or not, Sexual misconduct is a cornerstone of American behavior. Best selling books, movies, TV shows and the jokes we laugh the hardest at, even our favorite songs; shamelessly objectify women and suggest an open platform to talk about it. We sex up our child stars and wonder why they grow up so fast. Celebrities, sports heroes, public officials have been the center of scandal since the beginning of time. We elected for president, a man who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, for fuck sake. We can’t turn around and play the prude, becoming outraged and offended when a comedian asks for a hand job!

Speaking of pussy grabbers:

Donald Trump as president is the answer to our corrupt government as releasing wild predators into a middle school cafeteria is the answer to our opioid epidemic. 

Repeating half ass bullshit that we hear from half ass sources or drawing our own outrageous conclusions from creative headlines does not count as research. We’ve become lazy. We aren’t accountable for our own actions or mindful of the role we can play in things to come. We just sit on our asses and watch shit happen then we feed into it like mindless drones, because we just want to be entertained.

Chew on my thoughts:

• We won’t put an end to racism by tearing down monuments or building walls. 
• We can’t be lazy while complaining about lack of job or money. 
• While arguing your constitutional rights, respect my constitutional rights.
• Don’t be a sucker for catchy headlines and propaganda.
• Nowadays it's counter-intuitive to single out a group of people and expect them to follow separate rules or laws. 
• So if you’re offended by a word, stop using it, then encourage the people you hang out with to stop using it as well. 

What was once paradigm has violently shifted to become our paradox. Selfishness is the root of our society today, it’s become necessary to use evil to achieve good or at least what’s good for me in the moment...

OK So the moral of this ridiculous collection of fragmented, manic-depressive rage induced rants, is that we can’t have it both ways… 

Sacrifice is when you give up something today in the interest of something better for tomorrow. What we’ve done isn’t a sacrifice, we’ve abandoned our morals to be socially accepted. We still want people to think we are “cool”. Which is not cool, we’ve made it known that we are blissfully ignorant, easily distracted, and pathetically predictable. 

A classroom full of wannabe rebels who grew older but never grew up… 

My wish for 2018 is that we will band together and learn to respect and embrace each other’s feelings, ideas, cultures and differences, so we may strengthen the moral fiber of our future and actually work together toward bettering the world we live in.

Surreality: When Your Country is Having a Manic Episode

When people lie and contradict themselves do you call therm out or do you silently watch and listen just to see how far they'll run with their bullshit? I used to watch, then I started calling people out, today I'm at a loss, I'm tapping out, admittedly powerless.

A fatuous, rich guy spews outlandish claims, false accusations, contradicting promises and mundane catch phrases. His local audience once entertained, suddenly can no longer get a grasp on how to process the absurdity of his antics.

When that same obnoxious, rich white guy becomes the leader of a nation, a now global audience stands paralyzed, watching more closely, unamused, horrified.

What seemed so surreal before, so ludicrous, so impossible; has indeed become an irreversable work of historical nonfiction.

This kind of reality warrants escape. The convoluted web of selfish, greedy, closed minded, hate mongers that make up local, city, state and federal government is too tangled to cut through. Let Washington fuck up Washington.

Resurrect the hippy movement, organize peace rallies. We must gather together with positive people who truly care about the well-being of The PEOPLE.

Abandon the pull off social media, trashy television programming and soulsucking video games. Focus on our children, teaching life lessons and lost skills... like patience, tolerance, work ethic, accountability for ones actions, and how to cope... with loss, with life and with general disappointment.

It does not matter what color your skin is, who your parents were, what country you were born in. If you stand for peace, freedom, love, honesty and kindness, you are one of us.

We can join together and become large enough to make a difference in this crazy world.

Faith Based on YOU

Faith is not something that need be proven.

One either has faith, or does not.

No Faith is ever wrong; all Faith is equal.

Where you place your Faith is your business.

No human can strip you of your Faith.

Faith judges not, Faith hates not; Faith declares no war.

Faith is not religion, Faith knows no bounds.

Faith is Hope, Faith is Love; Faith is Grace and Dignity.

At times we are overwhelmed; we may not see a way out. Faith is what allows us to let go of the excess weight of these burdens and accept that whatever comes next is a necessary part of our journey.

Faith allows us to brush ourselves off and take the next step. Our enlightenment shows in the way that we carry ourselves through and out of life’s difficult days, the way that we reflect back on our struggles and what we learn about ourselves from the process.

Enlightenment can last for moments but no award or trophy can be displayed, it takes action to maintain. It is seen by others as spiritual growth, positive light, and serenity. I see it as a power of example.

Above My Pay Grade

Most of my life, I have been told to “let it go” or to “practice acceptance”. Some things are just the way they are; I ‘can’t fix it, change it or influence it’. I’m wasting time and energy on things outside of my control. (Yes, you probably did utter one of these phrases to me at least once before).

This may very well be true; however, I’m not comfortable throwing my hands in the air and going the opposite way of my own moral compass.

It has been sanctioned, “a win is a win”, and “passing is not failing”, but the facts remain, an A is still better than a D. We continue to underachieve to a point that somehow, “fuck it, good enough” has become the common goal that we set for ourselves to reach.

I can’t see hating someone I never met, believing in something I haven’t witnessed, or selling something I haven’t tried, but that’s my choice. I’m not suggesting anyone follow my lead. Perhaps knowing our own limits is half the battle. How low are you willing to go? Be honest with yourself when answering the following:

1. Do you have standards or will you settle for anything that works in the moment?
2. Do you encourage yourself to learn new things or would you rather get told about things from someone else’s angle?
3. Do you read about current events, foreign relations, international news, or science from reputable sources, or do you just skim over headlines in social media before you react?

I’ve found many people are exhausted, they don’t know what to believe or which way to turn, who to believe. Opposed to the idea of trust, people are emotionally drained… subjugated, too tired to read or even to think. This struggle is real; we are intellectually, beat-down… Life is spinning in so many directions at once, we can’t stand still and when we try to catch up, we fall down. 

When we open our eyes, our real is so overwhelmingly surreal; our industrious minds are struggling to conceptualize the time passed, as we often feel its impact in miles per hour.

It just doesn’t make sense. Such a defiant society it is; doing the exact opposite of what we were taught. We strive to have no responsibility, but yearn to feel needed. We want to be credited and compensated for a positive outcome, but claim zero accountability for our behaviors’ negative effects. We compare ourselves to [what little we know, but think we see in] others. Still, with the fiercest entitlement, we expect that we can gain something great for doing absolutely nothing good.

The harsh reality is that we can’t have it both ways. We certainly aren’t doing America any favors by paraphrasing a catchy social media headline, taking the pulpit, and spewing forth our misguided opinions. If we wish to have information fed to us, we need to demand the information come from all sides. If we aren’t interested in hearing or seeing the information from other sides, we need to learn to have no opinion and practice some restraint, because without those facts, we have exactly nothing to offer.

This foolishness has been proved to be above much of the nation’s pay-grade, and clearly a job for the President. 

Didn't Get the Memo

I woke up one morning and realized the bar had been lowered. Mediocrity was the new standard we were setting for ourselves.

I later moved to Florida.

They had raised the bar.
... just high enough to trip over.

It can't be real, I'm stuck in a parallel universe... right?!?

How the @%!# did I get here?

I wanna go home!
... to a time and place that didn't include seeing the faces of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton day after day.

I've been in mental hospitals with less depravity than this!

Get me outta here!

If I Should Die Before I Wake

Things to know about me.

I have always felt alone and helpless.
Since I was 7, when my mother watched me press a butcher knife against my own throat. Her reaction was not to help her child, but to hide the truth from the rest of the world. This would ultimately fill me with shame, far too young to understand.

I never felt like I fit in where I grew up.
I wasn't white, I wasn't black... I was mixed
I didn't have straight hair, I didn't have curly hair... I had frizzy hair.

My mother appeared to be ashamed of her heritage. UNLESS of course there was a way she might benefit, as with her career.

I grew up with no culture or education of my ethnicity.

I was raised in a small WHITE, Massachusetts town.

Today, I don't fit in with the people most like me, they don't understand me, they seem to know more than I do, my ignorance embarrasses me and causes me shame.

I don't know who I am supposed to be and I don't feel like I am worthy of love.

I guess I just feel like I don't have a beginning or a foundation... and I know that nothing without a foundation lasts for long.