Posted on by LA · 78 Comments

Going Down the Rabbit Hole

My friend M routinely stalks her ex husband. They do not share children together, so really, is there any reason to wonder what he is doing now, almost 30 years past their short lived post college marriage?

I’ve been apart from me ex husband 20+ years. Never once did I look him up online….you know, until I did…

A few months ago I wrote to you about getting rid of some big, glossy coffee table art books. I explained to you that thought they should have brought me joy, yet all they brought me was sadness, anger and regret.

I was thrilled to finally rid myself of the burden of these books.

Then I decided to Google my ex.

I found out he died three years ago.

Talk about dredging up sadness, anger and regret…

It’s odd to think about the death of someone who once meant a great deal to you. At one point in my life I thought I loved this person. I thought that I could care for this person and make their problems go away. I thought that this was the person I deserved to be with because of all sorts of issues with myself.

When you think about why you did something that turned out to be very bad for you, you end up feeling a little bit bad about yourself. You ask yourself how you could have been so stupid, blind….you ask yourself how you could have been so wrong…

Anger

Sadness

Regret

This is why the internet stinks. At your fingertips, in mere seconds, you can really find out anything and make yourself feel bad…search engines are a tool and a weapon. And it has to be treated as such. The internet can and does hurt you. It hurts your friends. It hurts your family. Handled incorrectly it hurts everyone.

Am I glad that I know that he’s dead?

Am I glad that he’s dead?

I don’t know. Three months later and I’m still processing my feelings. I’m journaling and thinking and making notes. Maybe this will too become a memoir…a rite of passage…a closing out of the books. I thought that this divorce, these feelings of sadness, anger and regret were long past me. I thought I was over all of this…but I can only wonder if these feelings ever actually go away. I wonder if they are always inside of us and somehow become part of our DNA, if every decision we make comes with the disclaimer that we have once been hurt very badly and we will forever remember that as we take tiny steps forward…

Do we compartmentalize our sadness, anger and regret so that we can live and find other emotions to balance those out? Or do we always fall back on our negatives?

Do we ever really forget? Or do we just learn to move on?

Do we ever get past the emotional damage in our lives, or do we just learn to live with it, like a scar that will not go away not matter what we put on it. It might fade, but there will always be traces.

I guess we can’t erase our past.

We just have to learn from it.

Posted on by LA · 81 Comments

Relentless Positivity

I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot recently.  Relentless Positivity.  What is it you ask?  Well, my definition is people who are consistently and wholeheartedly optimistic about all aspects of their lives.  They are unicorns and rainbows 24/7.

I have some problems with this.

Why?  What could be wrong with consistently having a go to attitude?  Isn’t that great?  Isn’t that how we all should be attacking life?

I fully admit that I have been monitoring, and documenting, the things that I am grateful for.  Sometimes they are as small as getting a mango ice on a hot day, or as large as my friend receiving good news from her oncologist.  I am often a little snarky about my list, but that’s just my personality- I tend to live life on the sarcastic side.

But just because I do a gratitude list doesn’t mean I’m eternally positive.

I get angry.  I rant about things.  I am sometimes not the nicest person in the world. I get sad.  I can feel hurt.  I have really crappy days where I just sit and have a good cry or a little tiny pity party. I accept this.  I allow myself to feel the full range of emotions.

Everyone should allow themselves to feel the full range of emotions.

Let me repeat that: everyone should allow themselves to feel the full range of emotions.

I have been told that I shouldn’t let anger get the best of me.  My question is why?  Why can’t I be angry?  Why can’t I be frustrated?  Isn’t it worse to bottle my feelings away, to push them deep inside?  Isn’t it better to get it out, be angry, be sad, be frustrated or whatever, and learn to deal with them?

Isn’t it better to learn how to deal with your emotions, whatever they may be?

See, that’s the trick: learning how to deal with the whole spectrum of emotions without letting one take over and dominate.  No one should be happy all the time.  No one should be angry all the time.  No one should be any one thing all the time.

2018 has been the best year of my life.  And as you know if you’ve been reading me this year, I have had set backs.  I have gotten into arguments and disagreements with people.  I have been full out pissed off.  And I have dealt with all those emotions- written about them, discussed them with friends and relations, thought about them.  I have put them into the perspective they deserve.  I have had some crap, yet it has still been the best year of my life.

Why has it been the best year?  Because I like myself more this year than last.  Just like 2017 was better than 2016.  And how 2019 will be better than this year.

I learn from my experiences, both the good and the bad.  This makes me stronger.  I have  taken advantage of the opportunities that life puts in front of me- because you never know what’s going to happen.  I have made new friends.  I have been sparked creatively.  I have been having a great time.

Life is good. But that doesn’t mean I’m all sunshine and rainbows.

Sometimes my blog exudes positivity- sometimes my happiness just shines through,  And sometimes my blog is negative, because, well, that’s just life.  Somedays it is just hard to find the gold.  And that’s OK.

Find the balance: be grateful for the good things, and learn how to handle the bad.  And don’t ever think something is wrong with you because you’re not always relentlessly positive.