For Jessica(s) with Love . . .

I have found myself saying “No” a lot lately.  I promise Mom and Dad it’s not what you think . . . kind of.  I am only human and I have my weaknesses also.  And though I have felt victim to them time and time again, there is no greater feeling then the strength to stand up for yourself.  It beats any next day of regret and emotion.   You even walk a little different . . . even in 6 inch red stilettos (I don’t care Mom if they look like hooker shoes, I love them) you still feel a little bit taller, and walk a little bit stronger!   There will always be tears, and there will always be heartbreak, but what I also learned this month is there will always be girlfriends old and new with many bottles of wine to help you get through the moments you can’t see past the tears.  Some days will be harder than others.  Myself personally I will always have a hard time come the date of a wedding that never happened for me.   But, this month I get to help a new friend bridge a similar situation this year, we will drink mimosas, and pamper ourselves ridiculously and remind ourselves what everyone else already see’s . . .just how fabulous we are, even when we stand alone.  No relationship is the same, and some . . . some hit you where it hurts most and are a little harder to get over then others.  Let’s face it we aren’t 16 anymore, we have real life problems with real life fears.  Just because time seems to be going a little faster in our lives now, we are never too old to start fresh.  No matter the situation, no matter how many times we fall short . . . there is no problem to big where one of us won’t help the other one stand.  Millie Grazie!

You say your independent , get it from your momma?

There is a different breed of women today.  We no longer sit home and knit, while waiting for a man to come along and take care of us.  Not that there is anything wrong with someone else taking care of us, we just live in a different world today.  More women are going to college today, graduate school. . . landing higher paying jobs then they would of a generation ago.  Nearly 40% of women today are the breadwinners in their homes.  And while the alpha women continues to progress even further into the feminist movement now in its second generation, I can’t help notice the beta male left in the dust.  But are the men really left behind, or is the independent women just waiting for them to catch up?

Women’s role in society today hasn’t just progressed it has radically evolved.  We have mapped out our lives, and goals.  We are career minded, independent at making our own decisions, and children?  Maybe when I am nearing my forties; the age considered the end of our childbearing years.  We are no longer the damsel in distress looking for our knight in shining armor.  Most of us women today are doing the rescuing. 

I find myself to be insistently independent.  Some people mistake my independence for being guarded and jaded, and maybe I am to some extent, in fact I know it is, but even when I am in a relationship I always seem to fight for my own time.  I am my mother’s daughter, I worry, I fix, and I need my space.  I always find myself in relationships where I am fixing someone.  I make excuses for their behavior and strive to encourage and motivate.  Don’t get me wrong it takes two people to make a relationship work and I’m not mother Theresa, I have my faults.  I think my insecurities and walls I’ve built, mask brilliantly as independence. I am the star in my own one women show, and when the curtain closes, there I am alone waiting for someone to rescue me from myself.  So how do I balance?  How do I let down my guard and walls, while still hanging on to some of the great qualities that stem from being independent?  I am begging for someone to rescue me from me, and when that person comes I instantly push them away, while chasing the male opposite of myself, the “fixer-upper”.  Who am I kidding, I am the “fixer-upper”.  I am suffering from a manifested, hypochondriac, self diagnosed from WebMD case of “Independent Women Syndrome” the reason why so many women are reporting the greatest dissatisfaction with their relationships of any time in history, according to the New York Times. 

So here it is. . .I’m a fearful person, I fear failure, and I fear rejection. I am indecisive, I fear making decisions, because what if I am wrong, I make the wrong choice and I don’t know how to fix it, a decision so huge I don’t know how to undo it.  I was always the kid who ordered chocolate ice cream, and wished I ordered vanilla.  I also understand the even the biggest mistakes, the biggest chances, the biggest failures, beat the hell out of never trying.  It’s like intimacy, both desired and feared, impossible to live with and damn hard to live without.  And without you. . .my life will go on, masked independently on the outside, but on the inside it will kill me.  

I am aware of all my shortcomings, and my  issues, packaged so elegantly and appealing.  So why, . . . why do I keep banging my head up against the wall?  Because, . . . because it feels so good when I stop.

  

Delaying the inevitable. . .

Fate . . . according to Webster is:

1.      the will or principle or determining cause by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do : destiny

Webster goes on to spit out a plethora of other meanings for the word Fate, but I found those to be the most outspoken.  We experience so many things as we grow older, and each circumstance teaches us a new lesson.  We fall in love, we fall out of love.  We open up, and we build walls.  We are only human and as we “fatefully” follow our path we chain ourselves to the insecurities that we collect along this destined journey. Isn’t it Newton who said that “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”?  So what’s the equal and opposite reaction to; “here is my heart please run your car over it. . .over and over again”?   

If we are destined to learn lessons that bind us to chains we will carry with us forever, how do we find the strength to trust destiny and let someone in? Or are these lessons just preparing us for the inevitable future.  That out there is some cosmic force connecting us. Making us stronger. Making us patient to take on the entire luggage that comes with young adults our age.  I always tell people there is no time limit on the healing process of things that occurred during relationships in the past , and then there are some wounds that cut so deep they leave scars.  I have a friend, let’s call her Zooey . . .she is very deeply scarred from her past relationship.  Today she is very much in love with someone new who is patient and kind, and willing to wait for her to heal.  His passion for her is admirable.  Maybe that is what love is about, maybe that’s the key.  Waiting, believing that one day she will be released of all her insecurities, the scars will still be there but instead of hurt, she will see them and they will remind her of how strong they made her, and the man who helped her heal.  I, I believe in fate, I believe that there is one person out there for everyone.  Who knows, we might already know this person.  People come in and out of our lives when we least expect it, some are there just to leave and imprint, some are there to teach us the hard lessons, and others are there to take our breath away.  It may not be love at first sight, and it may take awhile .  But when you know, you know.

. . . and one day when its time, you get on the plane.   ;-)

2.       an inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition, or end

Girl On Girl . . .

Mean Girls we all joke about the film and exaggeration of it all, but how much of it is exaggeration?  We all imagine that this is a phase girls out grow as they leave high school, but reality is . . . it goes from being catty to just downright extreme.  I recently experienced something I don’t think I have experienced since maybe my college days when the coolest place to be was an underground bar that smelled like puke.  I had two women who I have never met in my entire life perform a modern day Salem witch trial, they were the puritans, and I was Abigail Williams.  There I was accusations, name calling, obscenities, and cell phones being thrown in my face with their idea of proof of why in thier eyes I was all the things they claimed i was.  I was being dragged to the fire, preparing to be burned at the stake.  I hate admitting this, but it emotionally shook me for days, and I am still a little bothered by it. Why would such an immature act bother me so much?  While one, it all leads back to a man who I thought I felt safe and comfortable with, and two . . . I had no idea who these women were.  Maybe it’s my age, but I can’t imagine anyone just deciding to start a hate campaign against someone they  have never met or had a actual conversation with, and that’s exactly what was happening to me.  I was unaware that this campaign against me had been going on for over a month, with my public humiliation as the finale.  What is it about women today?  We claim to be sisters, and join together for equal rights. . .when in all reality we are each other’s biggest enemies, and how did we get here?  Today 1 out of every 4 violent acts in America are girl on girl, a generation ago it was 1 out of every 10!   When did we stop building each other up, and start breaking each other down? I am not perfect, and I am sure I have at one point in my life been on the mean girl side but when do we grow out of these acts of violence against one another.  I couldn’t help but think . . .I have some amazing women in my life.  Although these other girls may have broken me down and made me question women in general it only made me more proud and admire the women I call my girlfriends.  These girls are not just friends they are my therapy.   We may change and evolve as we join this human race, which is just that a race . . . they (my girlfriends) will always be the rainbow on a difficult day.     

To all my girlfriends . . .

"Promise me you'll always remember:  You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think" - Christopher Robin to Pooh

A glass half full . . .

Faith is a funny thing, it sneaks up on you when you least expect it.  Sometimes we don’t even realize it until all faith is destroyed in a blink of an eye.  You can’t think of one reason why you should be with this one person, but you can think of a million reasons why you shouldn’t.  Living a life where the glass is half empty, and then it hits you.   You were waiting for something to happen, you needed a sign, a reason to believe, and some hope in the absence of hope. . . and someone comes along.  Your glass now is half full and there is something to say about a glass that’s half full.  The opportunity to “say when”, but that’s just it the fine line of possibility when you don’t know when enough is enough . . .and it also depends on what’s being poured.  More coffee, more tequila, more love.   It’s up to the person to decide the level of need and emotions. You’re sitting there and a sip, a taste is not enough you need more, a bottomless glass, and all it takes is that one slip and the glass hits the floor and shatters, control shatters.

Emotions are messy, and we all become control freaks when it comes to our emotions.  We begin a cycle of denial, and that’s thing about denial. . . we only see what we want to see, believe what we want to believe.  We begin to deny so much that the truth is clouded with our own denial.  There are no solutions, no easy answers.  And the pain, all you can do is ride it out, and hope it goes away.  And whoever said “What you don’t know can’t hurt you”  must have invented the idea of surprises.  Because not knowing for most people, not knowing when you’re about feel a pain that hits so below the belt, is the worst feeling in the world.  In order to survive this world today where we no longer share a milkshake at the “Peach Pit”, or Saturday nights at the Drive-In, we have to let a little part of us live in the dark.  Because even though in the dark there is fear, there is also faith and hope.  There will always be things we don’t want to hear, and things we simply just have to say because we can’t take the silence. Things we will always keep to ourselves and things that just speak for themselves.  At the end of the day we have to make our own “happy endings”, appreciate those who come in to our lives, teach us lessons and leave imprints on our character.  Admire the struggles it takes just to let someone in, and the feeling of comfort and safety when they break down those walls.  Maybe sometimes we do have to appreciate the things we don’t know, and may never know.  Because sometimes too much of anything isn’t a good thing it’s just that . . .more.  At the end of the day all we really have is ourselves, and everything your doing I am doing in heels.

Cure for the common silly girl . . .

I am almost embarrassed of girls my age now days and I am no stranger to participating in this epidemic of silly girls.  They say if you’re not willing to make yourself sound stupid, you don’t deserve to be in love.  The girls of my generation took that quote and ran with it!  We run around and risk ourselves, reputations, heart, and mind.  We do things we never thought we would do, and in the end sometimes it works out, but mostly we just look silly. There is no rulebook, no guidelines set for us to follow just some advice passed down to our mothers which was passed down to them from their mothers.   Our mothers broke all the rules, but then continued to pass along the same advice they received, I presume because they saw themselves as silly girls.  So where does that leave us?  Smack dab in the middle of a tug a war, defining our image and road map between Grace Kelly and Paris Hilton.  So what do we do, how do we break the cycle?  Rules, maybe there isn’t any, maybe we have to make our own rule book.  Who cares if you’re a Grace or Paris, as long as you’re just being you.   Eventually we are going to have to face the world, guns blazing.  So why not feel guilty for crossing your own lines, not the ones society, and our mothers set for us.  God knows our mothers didn’t follow the advice passed down to them, communes, “Free Love” and Woodstock I’m sure was not in the playbooks. 

So we quit wadding in the shallow waters of silliness, dive into the deep end and emerge from the water refreshed and renewed.     We don’t let anyone tell us what is acceptable and what’s not, I know it can get dangerous and scary, but you’ll learn.  The silliness will become a distant memory of someone who stumbled to find who she was amongst a plethora of expectations.    Restoring which once was the shell of a confused insecure silly girl.  Now all anyone will see is a strong, independent, and confident woman, with her own rule book in tow, the best accessory.

It’s a mad mad world . . .

I have been spending a lot of my now available free time with girlfriends of mine, and throughout conversations it made me ask the question . . .When did we as women become the one courting men, instead of vice versa?

I met with some dear friends the other night for a birthday dinner, and I was the gift or birthday surprise.  A great honor and privilege when it comes to this particular friend.   I greatly admire her and the many obstacles in life I have been there to witness her go through, and see her become the strong women she is today.   I definitely admire her boyfriend and hers relationship, and view them to be unique.  They complement each other in so many ways, and can really feel a sense of balance within their relationship.   They are both supporters of my blog and questioned what topic I would be talking about in my next post, I replied “Co-dependency” within relationships.   They were both enthused by the topic and opened up honestly about their past relationship and how co-dependency was an issue.  So what makes this relationship they are in now different then the old habits in the past?  They courted each other.  Neither was too quick to jump head first, they took things slowly, lunch dates, late night phone calls . . . something rare now a days.

Today we are so desperate to jump into the deep end before we even know how to swim, that by the time we figure it out we are exhausted, exuded all of our energy and suffocating.  What happen to taking things slowly?  In a world where everything is instant with the click of a mouse, fast food, instant coffee, the internet on our phones, we are introduced to a society that not only expects but demands instant satisfaction.  We elect a new president on day 1, and disappointed when he doesn’t deliver the “change” he promised by day 2.   We want, what we want, when we want it.  We are a generation addicted to falling in love, when we haven’t even taken the time to really know what love is.

More to come on Co-dependency, but for now I am taking time to “Stop and smell the roses”.