Finding voicefulness......losing......finding.....practicing..

[Meh]

I said yes to a volunteer event that I should have said NO for, I didn't think it through, and when I say Yes usually more interesting things end up happening, this time though I'm annoyed that the originator of the idea is going to devote no time working on this project ( an idea that I think has a pointless outcome ).....Whatever.

It's going to be another one of those "Doing less than I am Capable Of" Experiences....the flip side is I could be capable of more....but again where are the other people who all want to take credit for this project....where are their capable hands? So I just do my little part---as befits me and not make my part larger then life....I'm just one working for nothing volunteer...on a project that my heart is not into....well actually it pisses me off a little. Geesh....just another thing to get through. I can DO IT.

I burden myself with believing I have a lot of responsibility even when I don't. The other areas of my life need to be nurtured also.

Really I should look at it this way, this is a lame gig, the director should be happy to have anyone doing it because she really just needs it to happen, and I'm going to be there all night interfacing with people in theory.....that in its self is a big STRETCH for my personality.

I have blue ink under my nails. I seem like a flake (I think). And I'm distracted.

The Do- Know is telling me to keep doing constructive things even if I don't get paid for them or the outcome is yet to be seen or if I am cynical...the Do-Know tells me to keep on....communicating and living the best I can.

The Do-know....

Oh hey, My beans "for the community"....so one bean per person....get yer knife and fork....well they popped up this morning!!!!!
YAY.....

The most blessed event that happened to me all day was seeing the little bean plants coming up through the dirt.

Then I got to tell a bible thumper who was trying to start a conversation with me while I was having a conversation with my N-mother via my phone--- to sort of tell her what I thought.

(Gosh that's a big toss up....who do I talk with... Nar-mother or Religious Fanatic   )

I had to tell her three times "I'm on the phone and having a conversation".. then I said "Good bye" to her face.....before she would go away and she was trying to shove literature into my hand but I wouldn't grab it....then when I got off the phone she came up to me again and was still trying to give me the religious brochures.... I told her that I thought she was being rude, I told her that I was having an important conversation...
She told me that her brochure was very important too.....I said "it's not important to me, maybe it is to you".... I got that last part from a therapist I'm certain somehow that last bit came from therapy somehow.

I would describe these people as having an internal dialogue about their religious beliefs that is so pervasive and overpowering that they can not hear other people at all. I could see it in her face that no matter what I said she had an internal come-back to my every NO. Oh well.
NO, NO, No, NO, NO....IS a GREAT word .

Anyways, it was my weird moment of the day of practicing voicefulness, I told her how I felt, that it was rude for her to interupt me and try to stick stuff in my hands. I still felt uncomfortable having that conversation....I started to feel like the people around us were starting to pay attention even though both of our voices were still normal talking voice I guess I was obviously uncomfortable with her...because she wasn't going to take "NO to her religious group" for an answer. But I still said NO and I didn't take her paper.

It's really little things that are assertiveness experiences...weird but telling an aggressive bible thumping woman "NO" is enough to make my heart race..and that's a pretty mild "conflict" really.

Think the hard thing about the assertiveness is not just the words that are spoken but it's the physical sensations that go along with having to say NO or to express displeasure to someone. Because no-one is ever going to be receptive to negative feedback...or displeasure...

[Meh]

Last evening I was thinking something about Voicelessness & Emotional Survival and what these things even mean to me if anything.

Voicelessness as a concept is easier for me to grasp in a functional way compared to Emotional Survival, the Emotional survival part is something that sounds more like nonsense in a way. Maybe because there is nobody really that I share my emotions with in 3-D that cares about my life.

I can be an active listener to some strangers story and every thing they want to tell me about something, when they in turn ask me a question they listen for about two seconds to me and then they get distracted doing something else.

Obviously these people want to talk and be heard but rarely does anyone really want to know about other's or care. Only to the degree that it's self-serving are humans interested in other humans.

Doesn't that leave me with my own emotions being a private and internal affair with myself....that is how I have always seen it.

Today, I don't even know what my emotions are, my back is sore I know that, my neck is stiff....

I'm worried....it's a kind of anxiety that I sort of suppress because I would be flipping out if I was to be fully into my emotions.

Survival sometimes depends on not acting on emotions. Survival also isn't enough.

I'm tired of just surviving. I could be in a car-crash-induced coma and that is technically surviving if my heart is still beating, but who is going to pay attention to my beating heart if my complaining mouth is paralyzed and can't speak and even if it could who would care.

"Who Cares".....is a comment that I heard a lot from one of my old co-workers and is sort of stuck with me.

If some people have a space that is filled with love by other's....there are some people like myself who have a space that has to be filled with "love" for myself---by ME.

So I think some people fill this space with television and food and stuff.

I fill my space with writing, and crafty stuff sometimes and food sometimes and maybe thinking that results in nothing.

What if I only allowed myself to think about essential things for one day or one week or one hour.

Back to the question "Where is the Do Know".......always taking the mystical route...asking self questions.

The Do Know is related to a confidence that the SELF has or does not have. A confidence about being OK in the world, have space and a place even if the scenery in the window passes by. The DO-KNOW is not the scenery. Its in the car passing through the scenery.

I've had way too much scenery lately.

[Meh]

I was doing very good with acting like I was not-depressed. Keeping myself busy with all sorts of stuff.

Now that I have been reeling myself back in a little bit and doing less because of my foot...I have been sleeping more...and I don't want this to be the start of another depression-episode thing.

Sometimes I just don't know what to focus on in life anymore. I'm sort of dumbfounded with where life has taken me....and the things that went wrong along the way were not all a result of me just deciding to walk down the wrong road.

The whole FOO problems is a wrong road to start out on.

The other day I was volunteering with the kid's program and I watched a father playing with his two kids, he was shaking a wet tree so the water would fall on the kids as if it was raining....and I guess this was great fun for them, he was walking down an alley with the kids between puddles and showing his son some weird way of walking sideways....and I guess this was great fun also.

I have a hard time watching these things a little, I guess they make me sad, it's not only a sadness for an event or a loss of the past but it's present also. I think that's something that some people don't get the past is not always the past. Sometimes the present is the past as much as it always has been.

[Meh]

So, again I am suppose to meet with my mother (missed/avoided her on Easter).

Maybe I should ask her if one hour is enough time. Make it short. Well, I don't have to ask her I can just have that as my personal goal. AND then afterwards to celebrate that she is gone I will go get one of the very best cupcakes that ever existed on the face of the planet all by myself. AND since it's her stupid Birthday, I found a used scarf that I will offer to her, that is the best I can do, afterall I'm busy and poor person eh hem sound familiar ma? She has given me broken used junk for my birthday before so I can do the same for her...problem solved. Life is so much easier for Narcissists since they never really work too hard to make other people happy....if I work as least as little as she does it helps me out a lot.

On a totally different note I'm starting to wonder to myself if volunteer has really filled any gap in my life.
I can honestly say that IT IS NOT ENOUGH.

That would be the DO KNOW speaking a little the DO KNOW says NO it's not enough it is just another branch on the tree but not the trunk of the tree.

I like volunteering sometimes but I'm not fullfilling the important things in my life that are MY LIFE by doing it. That's just the truth of the matter.

I don't know if I can really DO more though. I just don't know how much I can push myself to do, I think I will make myself miserable in failed attempts to fix me. HOW CAN I BE ME PERFECTLY JUST THE way I am, if I am living such so far off course from who and what I wanted to be?

Cup of tea, take a breather and pray again. ? Futile

[Meh]

Not optomistic tonight. Dark and horrible really is what I see as clear-seeing of life.

Sometimes I wonder if I might be finished with writing about Narcissism or whatever my mother's un-love stems from.
Also wonder if I have done all the introspecting and research paper reading I can stand to do on that subject.
No matter how well I think I could understand one problem in my life I can't change it so why bother understanding it I don't care. I care more about "healing" any damage if that is at all possible and tonight at least I believe that I can not.

Plus Nar-mom is only the tip of the iceberg that is chunking off ice cube trails through life.

I was reading some advice a writing teacher gives to student writers and it was to "Stay with the Difficult".

But for how long, and why not "Break off from the difficult" if there will never ever be any resolution there is only the possibility of rekindling greif, stoking the flames of self-punishment like cutting oneself or picking the same scab, I mean other's will pick our scabs no? So why do it to one's self sometimes I ask. Somehow "staying with the difficult" is voyeuristically fine for the reader but NOT GREAT in just trying to get through one day to the next.

My fear is I spend my whole life trying to get through one day to the next until all my days are used up...then some cruel fairy comes down on a spider web and says I didn't use my days wisely....there is just absolutely NO WISDOM for some problems.

Anyways this is the funk I'm in tonight.
I would like to find something to dissappear into. A job a task that I can close the door behind me for years and years and never "interact" or whatever (THIS) is called.

I don't even know if the concept of voice matters to me anymore. I just don't know tonight.

What I do know. Is that when I ask real questions like "Where is the DO-KNOW"? I do get answers and they are very very hard to hear and see. I don't want to look at the real answers because they sometimes are not warm and freindly and optomistic.

I think I have been in self deception with false optimisim sometimes.

[Meh]

Came across a story yesterday about a woman with some social acceptance struggles etc. I was researching a personal issue of mine and then happened along this, I thought okay maybe I identify with her a bit. Then when I tried to find out more information I discovered that she died of a drug overdose. Go figure. So that added a little bit to the funk that I'm in today.

There are some things I have figured out/decided that will never be whole or healed about myself, typically I don't focus on them, maybe that is denial or avoidance but it's also just trying to exist on planet earth.....well....some times this stuff gets scratched up out of the dirt I tried to bury myself into...and there it is...and then my emotional state is like the sky has turned black from volcanic ash for days, there is a haze in my personal internal landscape even if I don't try to expose it too much to the world. I got up and went to get some coffee this morning to get away from chronic-crisis-creators, I knitted some, made a too-do list for the priorities to work on this afternoon. Got some packaged food that I don't have to cook, and decided why I don't I try to make life easier on myself sometimes, ate it and felt like crying a little bit but also knowing that sometimes extended life long grieving is just a huge burden, or thinking a few weeks from now this will have passed and I will have sent the problem back down into the lava pit from whence it came to be covered again with more layers of dirt.

Some times can one do more than to hide certain issues to oneself, painful, singularly personal issues?

I'm tired of pretending to be strong sometimes. Sometimes I just want to be flawed and hurt and broken because it's a lot of work to pretend like I am not a broken person sometimes.

I have support group class thingy that I'm suppose to go to about getting back into school or something-where I fill out endless interest surveys etc. I'm thinking about ditching the next class because I just don't feel up to it emotionally AND the instructor is not careful sometimes to gracefully just sit on the sidelines and half participate.

Sometimes I feel like my comfort level/energy level is half-participation. The instructor is not a therapist and doesn't really have the right to persist past peoples comfort levels with her proding. Thats it I'm not going. My little heart of dark-sky horizon wants a quiet place and a private place to live out it's grieving moments......AND maybe it is self-care to say NO sometimes to others, and NO to social groups. I don't like social grieving and patting on the back in public...there is nothing healing about that as far as I'm concerned. I'm allowed to be a dark horse on a black ash volcanic island far-way sometimes. I don't have to let ignorant classmates say dumb stuff to me if I'm having a bad day.

I feel so much better that I decided that I don't have to interact with them today, the dumb survey assignment stuff and "Self-Esteem" cr@p is just so off the mark with me, on another planet.

And that's okay, I'm okay to be on my own unique path in life, I don't have to make it fit anybody elses....today.

Okay so now back to my personal to-do list.

[Meh]

Layed down for a moment just to catch my breath and ended up falling asleep, a nice nap in the sunshine. For a moment as I woke fully my mind had stopped thinking, stopped worring, it was a quiet mind moment with sunlight on my cheek on some pink cloth and I was cozy and wondered if I could decide at that momet to do EVERYTHING DIFFERENTLY as new-agers suggest it's all a matter of what (I) think. Didn't last very long though.

I did a small amount of organizing.

I thought about what I am suppose to give my mother for her birthday about 3-4 times today.

I thought about how my truth is that right now I feel valueless to others. I mean I somewhat believe in me just for ME's sake. Like art just for art's sake.

Me just for ME's sake is very very different than the self-esteem exercizes related to career and education choice that they are trying to get me to do in that stupid class that I ditched.

[Meh]

Me just for Me's Sake /You just for you's Sake /Art just for Art's Sake

If you are a work of art with a value that is extraordinarily impossible to estimate because of your intrinsic uniqueness...what would you say about yourself? What would your artists statement (The informative text next to an art piece) say? What would the highlights and the shadows and the out-of-focus areas, the muted tones and the bold shapes all together in composition say about you?

Certainly no person is a blank canvas or an uncarved totem pole.
If I was a piece of art...

I think I would have a lot of little unfinished sections, some areas with ZIG ZAGS for stress.
 
I would want to have a light effect with shadows that move like the way a shadow gets tall or short while the sun is moving across the sky.
But honestly I just see a heap of junk-sculpture thing with random stuff sticking out of it.

It's pretty hard to sum up the whole of a peson's life experience or personality, I don't think I like the idea of me being summarized or symbolized, I want to always have an unknown part of my life for possibility-whatever shape that takes, even if it's not the possibility that I would hope for. I think I depend on the unknowns- believing that somewhere in the unknown in still something that will redeem me.

I'm a white earthen clay junk sculpture with random stuff sticking out of it with unfinished sectioned areas, I sit in a sandy area maybe a desert. Some areas with doors and keys and windows. There are some overlaying metallic ZIG ZAGS for stress and the sharp angles of life. There is some water symbol in there also for the few graceful moments there have been if any. I would want to have a light effect with dark shadows that move like the way a shadow gets tall or short while the sun is moving across the sky.

[Meh]

Well I got through the day with my mother.

A point of maturity maybe is that it dawned on me to say to myself "Don't expect any resolution to happen, nothing will be resolved today and there is no point in trying to resolve any disfunction just BE CHILL".

So when I was younger I would try to force resolution and bring up stuff that was hurtful and try to talk about it but I gave it up.

Still all the processing that I have done here has been valuable because I pick up on the subtle things that have impacted me. I can sort of deal with it consciously if I notice the slight of hand happening now it's no longer like a subliminal message of how terrible I am. I can see how I am devalued and that it's part of the family script.

[Meh]

Today is just a day by myself. I'm back with the previous self-advice I applied to interacting with my mother and now I'm trying to apply the same logic on being with mySELF, (Don't expect any resolutions).

I can make decisions A or B WITHOUT expecting any big resolutions to occur as a result of those decisions. That's smart actually. Thinking about it that way lightens some of the pressure of decision making.

(I believe that I am) overwhelmed with decisions to consider and figure out and I have been feeling guilty for not working harder on it.

I feel bad and stupid about this.

I'm agonizing or punishing myself for it.

Random thought: Boredom can be a luxury. One time I was bored on an island in a little make-shift library and every single book was interesting enough to hold my attention and was worthy of my interest.

I felt guilty because I had an important thing to do and I missed part of it. But the previous night there was a Mexican party that was working on my eardrums with high-energy Mexican music chi-ca-bink-a-ahh-a--ahhhh--boom--chi-boom-chi-ca-bink-a--ahhhh-boom. There was music flooding at least a two block radius around the party and my earplugs that I do have because I'm a prepared person half way at least--they were out of my reach that night. Whatever I didn't wake up at 6:30 AM on the weekend to get somewhere in the rain.

Without (Miss bored) there are too many competing things to do like eating. I can make food my whole priority for a day's events although I need to do other things I zero in on food probably because I have been telling myself the mantra "food is one of the only pleasures I get out of life". Or maybe the eating came before the mantra and the mantra is a description not an incantation for stuffing my face. Doesn't matter I had great Ethiopian food today, it's enough to make me feel like I have died and gone to heaven..because some days I have literally been eating moldy bread. Gross just thinking about it.

So good food is a luxury and when I manage to make somethin really good out of foodbank stuff I feel like I have triumphed. I know I need to think about more serious stuff BUT these little things help me to not be totally despaired--because the "serious stuff" does nothing to uplift my spirit and keep me afloat.

I ate Ethiopian food by my self, alone just to be nice to my-SELF.

I put on a thin cotton summer dress today and I have been gaining weight. Not going to go crazy over it or anything.
Just wish I had more muscle tone and was taking care of myself better.

I have been meaning to write down goals but in my head maybe I make it too complicated.

I think the goals have to NOT be place-dependent.

So for exercise if I at least stretch for 15-20 minutes a day that is a start and I can do that a lot of places it must not be restricted to a gym.

I didn't so much as stretch today but I wiggled for 10 minutes, sort of random stretching with a little made up dancing and that was enough to make me feel a little better for a few minutes. So even just that remembering of my body for a few minutes is better than nothing. YES it is much better than nothing at all.

I feel guilty for not taking better care of myself. I feel guilty for not getting to where I (should) have been earlier. But did I NEED to be there- was it the right place for me? Am I trying to conform myself to fit a box that I don't fit? A square peg into a star shaped hole?

Positive things are:    

I ate yummy food.
I pulled out some weeds.
I did make it to where I needed to go even if I was late I didn't miss out completely.
I read a part of a "self-helpish" type book.
I thought about goals even if I didn't write them down contract style.
God, you are within me right now and you are helping me through my job search and helping me find the perfect job for me.
I took a shower (I'm at the point where I don't really care if I brush my hair in the morning, I don't wear make up and I don't style my hair so the next step down is not even brushing it at all, or not looking at it to see if it needs to be brushed or to even contemplate that.

I know that the things I did were some what mindless but I was aware of it at least a little bit. It was sort of mindful-mindlessness.

What could I write here that would matter? Sometimes I wonder what all these words are worth. I wonder if writing here is part of healing voicelessness, I think sometimes it is but other times I come here and I don't feel anything powerful in the putting down of my daily minutia. But my daily minutia is important to recognize because it's normal human stuff that I'm doing but I believe or think or say to myself that I can't afford to be doing minutia at all really. Pressure.

Where is the Do KNOW?

[Meh]

I woke up to the sound of someone passing out and having a seizure. Sounds like thud and then some sputtering noise out of her moulth. I could here it and I thought, oh geeze, can I just stay over here in bed and ignore it, I did for a short moment and then I ended up calling security to alert them to call 911. Of course there were three other women standing around.
Thing is I've seen paramedics show up for seizures before and they don't do anything, just take vitals then person comes out of the seizure slowly, is disoriented at first.

Stuff like this puts me a little bit off for the day, the proximity to troubled and sick people who are not Loved-Ones and all the extra (stuff)--such as disruptive events that go along with having to share space with troubled people. This is not the first seizure I have come across since I have been "in the slums". This is the 3rd seizure, very common I guess. The three were all drug users also.

Oh well, I am on to the rest of my day now.

[Meh]

I volunteered all day. Played with a little boy putting foam alphabet letters into the corresponding alphabet letter holes.
I love the way it's so easy to encourage little kids that age! All I have to do is say YAY! and smile and it makes him smile. Sooo cute.

[Meh]

Standing on the corner, contemplating the always fresh spray of clouds and birds and air streams that make up a new evenings sunset, ignoring all the passersby, breathing taking in singularly the world but not the people in it, in a mood of uncertainty and newness of unknowing what my path was-- I observed.

As a young woman walked by she was a blur to my unfocused eyes, I was looking distantly at three birds moving easterly together, I was looking at a flaming copper area of the sky, not a cloud but a pouf of invisible moisture that caught the sunset glaringly like one of nature's magic tricks, the feel of me trading stale lung air out for some new outdoors air into my lungs,....apparently the young woman just couldn't stand the fact that I didn't make eye contact with her, heaven forbid that I don't want to enter every little twitch of the human animal empire. She asked me: "Are you okay?" I said: "Why wouldn't I be?" She said: "because you're standing on the corner looking confused". To that I did not reply. Then a look of "I don't get it" came over her face as she walked away.

What practical use is there in asking if someone is okay? What is she going to do about my so called beyond- existential-dark night of the soul wearing a summer dress after months of no skin. I have flesh! And it's breezy! And I'm contemplating something spiritual that is slow to sink in!
I'm alone! I'm without family! I'm unwanted! I'm living a self-convinced life! I'm without a path! I'm interrupted from my peace!

She is just as odd to me as I am to her!

Humans distress me, I don't feel peaceful when I look at another human I feel drawn into a vortex of their face, their needs, their stories, their desire to talk about their future's brightness, their plans, their family, their friends, their pedicure, their dog's pedicure, their dog's family of origin.

I no longer feel myself, my bruises, my toes, my soreness, my chest expand, my back ache, my scrubbed fresh skin, I don't notice myself when I look at other people, I see a face vortex and my mind being trapped into a tunnel of death. The moment that I look at their votex face their moving lips, the sunset is shuttered, the birds are obscured, my skin dissapears, I am a mind in a dark tunnel of someone else's talking at me. I lose track of me.
There is no pleasure in humanity.

If I can't have a family or a life than at the very VERY minimum I want to have my SELF, I want to feel myself fill with oxygen, and my barefeet on flip-flops on the sun's warmth radiating from cement. I want to know that the breeze is delicately blowing my hair and know that my skin that has been covered all winter is delightfully naked in a summer dress. I want to look at a huge sky full of variety-pack clouds.....without being interupted.
I want to be with my SENSES and with my own PLAN even if it's a stunted plan, even if I am all wrong, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time "looking confused" on the street corner --blissing out as much as I can in new skin absorbing the pink and orange and turquoise and blue and copper-golden light rays coming into my amazing eyes. I deeply wish to just be.

Who are they to judge if I am incongruent to the world? Why can I not just stand peacefully on the sidewalk looking at the sunset? Why must I be pestered. Sure I'm in a mental state that is all my own--my own particularly lonely naked contemplation about spiritual materialism while grieving basic things such as no family. I am odd indeed to a person who has never experienced family-less-ness, odd to someone not trying to grasp nuances of spiritual materialism, odd to someone who has pimples on their young face, odd to someone who doesn't get high from looking at a sunset. My brain gets stunned by colors. Little construction workers in my brain partician new rooms with light collection vessels for my memory.

"Coppery poufs are enough to make me want to get through one more day of living hell so leave me the F-alone"

I live for ephemeral coppery poufs and live music dying moments after it has been created---what other medicine for the spirit is there?

I'm an invisible person and I gravitate to the fleeting!

Now don't I sound crazy y'all?

I wonder if I may have lost my sanity. When I dress up to go to an esteemed position job, following the dress code, adhering slightly to the preferred colors of death-black, gray, and beige, going up into a high rise building, working efficiently and accurately for years....no person would stop to ask if I was okay--they would think "she is someone and she is doing something".

Why can't I be a nobody doing nothing logical-- is that so wrong?

Can I be a b@tch in the same way people have been b@tches to me? Can I just say "I'm looking at the sunset idiot!"

I wish I had an inner new-yorker. What's it to you! Can't a grown woman stand on a hill over looking a beautiful view without being interupted by a dim-wit such as yourself!!

my defeat is a personal matter, it means nothing to the world

My survival is MY SURVIVAL

[Meh]

Today, instead of making coffee in the morning I decided to use the single crunched dollar I found that was dropped in front of the  door to get some coffee in a cafe circumventing the epileptic "recovering" alcoholic blabber whose emergency of course turned out to be a non-emergency.

In the cafe I opened the book I bought at a used book store about untraditional family, a children's book. I covered a few of the story titles because I felt ashamed for being an adult reading a kids book. I believe I have to have an excuse to read a childs book, like I must be reading it to a kid to justify it. So I read my kid's book all by my adult self and almost cried three times but since I was in a public place I didn't. I'm not sure what about reading the book made me tear up but there it is- oh yah I remember, one of the sayings was about how a person is wonderful if they are loved by at least one other person.

The book also made me laugh out loud at least two times.

[Meh]

Independence & Belonging.

In both of these areas I was developmentally delayed or challenged or something. I did not get the independence right or the belonging right as a child and it's even harder getting it right as an adult "grown-up".

There was a coupon for scoops of gourmet icecream so that was my hightlight for the day.

Mainly my day was unremarkable.