It's all coming back to me now.

Thought for the day: Surround yourself with people who "get" you. I'm happy to say that I have a small collection of people in this world who totally get me. These people get my sense of humor and they appreciate it. They can talk to me and not at me. They can listen, really listen, without having to say anything. I, in turn, listen to them, and if they ask for my advice, I'll give it. If they don't ask, I don't feel obliged to comment. Of course I realize everyone is different and that's totally awesome, but there is something equally awesome about having people in your life who make it possible  to say anything or do anything you want to do without being judged, without risk of them being offended because they know you and they know your intentions and they know when you are joking and when you aren't. I like being able to be me without fear of judgement or ridicule. The list of people may be small, but I wouldn't trade them for anything. Physical distance is nothing between awesome friends (and family).

Walking on a tight rope. Oh shit, where's my safety net? That's right, I don't have one.

Some days I feel like I've been thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool. Guess what folks? I can't swim. I could probably stay afloat if I didn't panic, which I would, so if my metaphors were real, I'd drown. Luckily for me, I'm not really being flung into a pool. Interestingly enough though, that doesn't stop this overwhelming feeling I have lately that I'm sinking. Treading water isn't easy for all of us after all.

I think it'd be safe to say that I don't manage my stress well. Frankly, I don't manage it at all. It manages me and it does a mighty fine job of doing so. I find it hard to cope with a child who seems to have some kind of invisible remote control that is directly wired to me. She pushes the buttons, often. I'm a reactor. I yell. I yell a lot. It doesn't do any good of course. It just makes my voice hurt, really. It's a vicious cycle I'm trying to break, I'm just having a bit of trouble in the success department momentarily. Also, I seem to be grumpy like a lot. I'm not going to lie, I believe I was born grumpy. Baby comes out, look she's destined to be a super grumpy bitchface. Yep, that's me.

Stress brings out the worst in me and I seem to bring out the stress without any real need for it. I'm an overanalyzer. Example: If someone tells me how lucky I am to have my husband (yes, this happens frequently), I hear "You aren't good enough for him". It seems to be a pattern though. When I was 6, my neighbor who was the same age as my oldest sister, told me that the following day we would lay out and get a tan (Yes, its bad for you now, but no one knew that then), and then we'd go down to the Panther and get ice cream. That was some pretty exciting shit for a six year old. So the next day I got on my bathing suit, and put my clothes on over the top and headed next door to her house, let me tell you, I was BEYOND excited. She answered the door and told me that she had decided she was going to do all those things she had promised to do with me, with her boyfriend's sister instead. Yep, I was no longer invited. What did I hear? "You aren't good enough". In 1st or 2nd grade, kids at school went for some kind of testing and some kids got to get put into TAG (Talented and Gifted). I wasn't one of those kids. "You aren't good enough". I tried out for cheer leading in second grade, I didn't make it. "You aren't good enough". In sixth grade, I got sick, I had to take steroids and my face ballooned up bigger than anyone would've thought was humanly possible. Most of my friends quit talking to me. "You aren't good enough". I auditioned for show choir and of course I didn't make it. "You aren't good enough" Do you see the pattern?

I have a problem with negative thinking. I know this. I know that I over analyze everything that is said to me. I over analyze things that aren't said to me. Hell, I even over analyze things that will probably never ever be said to me. It's what I do.

I started this blog a couple of weeks ago and didn't have time to finish. Interestingly enough, the things that were stressing me out then are now kind of a non-issue. I wrote a song about it and moved on. Maybe I'm stronger than I thought.

Of course now, things have gotten really weird. I *think* I made up with someone who I figured I'd never speak to again. That was nice. It made me feel like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. However, what ended up opening up a dialogue box with this person (after zero dialogue for more than two years), was being screamed at by some assface posing as a human. A very shitty Eeyore type mumbling human, but a human nonetheless. Dude thought he could verbally abuse someone I love (we'll call her Betty) without me commenting. He must be a dreamer or an idiot too, because that was never going to happen. Of course, Eeyore then turned on me and continued to say horrible things to me. So anyway, long story considerably shorter, I had to contact She Who Must Not Be Named (yeah, that was my nickname for her when we had our falling out, I'm a Harry Potter nerd, after all) and ask her to do me a favor, well a favor for *Betty*, but still, it opened the dialogue and so that was good. The fact that this massive ass hat tool dude decided to verbally abuse me seemed to spur *Betty* into action to finally drop the dickhead from her life. Except that didn't really end up happening. It was talked about, it was assumed, and then it didn't come to life. So, now I have a new person I'm not speaking to, *Betty*. Weird. The reason I'm not talking to her is because I cannot be subjected to the kind of stress that dealing with the ass face tool dude brings. I refuse to allow myself to get sick and have a Crohn's flare up, which unfortunately is already starting to happen now thanks to the stress of it, so if *Betty* really wants to talk to me, she'll have to get her shit together.

As much as I respect that *Betty* is a grown ass woman and is fully capable of making her own decisions, I also know I don't have to accept or agree with those decisions. I respect that everyone makes choices in their life and her choices are her own, however the choice to stay with a dead beat piece of shit jerk directly impacts my health. That may sound dramatic but it's true. Imagine having someone you love constantly putting themselves in danger by staying in an unhealthy toxic environment with someone who has proven time and time again that they can't be trusted. Imagine also having a chronic illness that flares up under situations of stress. That's what I'm dealing with and I refuse to have anything more to do with that toxic situation. When I got verbally abused and screamed at that was the turning point, or so I was told. Then the excuses came, "I've still got to do this and then I'll get out", "once I've finished with this, then I'll go", "I hope to be out by Friday". Except, you know what I hear? He said horrible mean things to you and I'm choosing to overlook that for whatever reason because "You're not good enough".

And this time, I'm not falling for that shit.

Breathe....something I keep forgetting to do.

This song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKO-5u2z4EQ That is all. I need to remember to breathe.

Songs from my youth. Plus Bo and Hope

I'm pretty sure my mom shouldn't have watched so many soap operas when I was a kid. I blame soap operas for the craziness of my youth. They were on TV and by default, I watched them. As a result, I always wanted to fall in love. I blame Bo and Hope on Days of Our Lives. They were always so darn happy. (You know, when one of them wasn't dead or being controlled by Stefano). ;) I can remember laying in bed when I was pretty young (I'm talking like 9), just day dreaming about falling in love. Yeah, it's safe to say I was a very odd child.

This brings me to the Title of my blog. I've been trying to write this song about a specific series of events from my youth. It made me think about all of the songs I used to identify with during that period of time. So, I thought I'd post the ones I can remember. 

Without You by Motley Crue. Yep, this was on a loop for a while. The guy I liked was just not that into me. I'm sad to admit that Motley Crue ever did it for me. What an annoying voice that dude has. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3QhVeHr-gM

King of Wishful Thinking by Go West. I have no idea if this is the original video or not, but if it is OMG that was the lamest thing I've witnessed in a while. It's equally lame that I was so obsessed with this song. I've always had a thing for meaningful lyrics. This song was my pep talk. Sure, I'll get over you, assuming I don't die a horrible death. (yes, I was dramatic even back then). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaZaTlcbYxw

Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough by Patty Smyth and Don Henley. This song used to depress me, but I loved it so much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdzbjUWu2VU

I Can't Make You Love Me by Bonnie Rait. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW9Cu6GYqxo I spent so much time when I was younger trying to *make* people love me. I was like, "DUDE, I'm here look at me, I'm totally awesome." I always liked this song but refused to believe that the guy I liked didn't really love me. That was Bonnie's problem, not mine. 

I was absolutely convinced that the guy I was madly in love with (at 11, 12, 13, and 14, probably even 15, 16, and 17 too) would one day love me back. I knew it like it was a fact. I never had a doubt in my mind. Even when I got sick with Crohn's Disease and the doctors pumped me full of steroids that made me hideous, I still believed that one day he would see how much I loved him and he would love me back. I don't think during those years that it ever occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, he really just wasn't at all interested. Seems almost conceited now that I thought that way. 

Having grown up and moved on many years ago (I won't say how many because that makes me sound old), I would think about my youth from time to time. It wasn't until I started writing this song that I had my epiphany that I had fooled myself into believing during my entire pre-teen and teen years that the Bo and Hope style romances of Days of Our Lives were actually real. Having read a condensed version of their love story, I can safely say "Fuck all that". lol  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Brady_and_Hope_Williams

Anyway, I'm glad that soap operas and fairy tales aren't true because reality is much more exciting. I'm also glad that I had the experiences I did because they made me into who I am today. Let's face it, I'm pretty effing cool. 

An Old Friend

An old "friend" decided to make an appearance today. My initial thought was to run screaming, but I knew I'd be followed. I just sat down and observed. Well, my "friend" got bored and left. I'm sure it will come back and visit again, and I might not be as ready next time to rebuff the visit, but at least I know I was able to this time. My "friend's"name is Anxiety.

Ah yes, I have a blog.

So recently someone came across my blog and asked me about it. I'll admit I felt slightly cyber stalked. I felt this way mainly because I had forgotten I had a blog and when I Googled myself looking for it, I couldn't find it which told me a little bit of "Cyber Digging" was probably done.

I haven't written here for a very long time. I suppose I've been busy. More likely though, I haven't felt like "sharing". A lot has changed in the past couple of years. Up until a year (close to two really) ago, I still felt like Ohio was home. That's not to say that this didn't feel like home, but I always referred to Ohio as "back home". It doesn't feel like home now. It feels like some foreign place I lived in a million years ago in another lifetime. I'm not that person any more and I'm cool with that.

One things I've learned about moving away is that life goes on. Seems pretty simple and enormously cliché, but it's really true. People have their own lives, but moving has excluded me from their lives. I'm off the radar, out of sight out of mind -- so to speak. Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder, either.

I keep in contact as much as I can with the people who are interested. The numbers seem to dwindle more and more as I stay away. I'd be lying if I said that didn't bother me a little. I guess what bothers me most, though, is the reality that I'm probably never going to see most of these people again. I'm not so naive as to think that my friends and family are going to disrupt their lives to come and visit me. I'm also fairly certain that unless I win the lottery, I'm not going to be rushing back for a visit either. Truth be told if I did win the lottery, Ohio isn't the first place I'd go. I'd rather meet my 5 friends, mom, and any interested family members in Hawaii or something.

I have no idea where all of this came from. I sat down to try to find the blog. I found the blog, and thought I'd write about being cyber stalked, but somehow it's turned into this. Maybe I'm feeling a little sad because one of my friends is getting ready to move away. It's with that sadness that I've possibly reflected on the fact that when she moves, I'm unlikely to see her again either.

Well, there's always email. We know how well that seems to be working out.

Oh and to my cyber stalker.....please don't read into my "tone" too much. I'm merely thinking out loud. ;)

It's been a year.

I just realized it's been nearly a year since my last blog post. It's funny because I stopped writing in my blog for a couple of reasons. 1) I forgot my password, not realizing that I just log in with Google and 2) I felt better. I don't need to sit and write about things when I feel good. Writing is therapeutic for me. That's why I write songs. As it's been pointed out to me in the past (by people who would do better to mind their own business), my songs aren't very happy. I think that's because my inspiration for writing comes with things that are hard to say out loud. It's different with songwriting for some reason. Some of my favorite songs that I've written have come out of some really dark moods.

A lot has changed in the last year. I got to the point where my panic attacks were nearly completely gone, and now here I am sitting and writing, which means they're back. Not full force like they were, but lately I find myself getting panicky again from time to time. It's been a crazy year. I did my first ever musical, which is something I've wanted to do since I was in elementary school but was always too afraid to try. I also got very sick with the flu and was pretty convinced I was going to die for a week I felt so horrible. It was around that time that I sat down with my mom and unloaded some secrets that I had been harboring for the last 20 years. She, in turn, was able to tell me some of her own. I think it was probably the most empowered I've ever felt. It felt like a weight had been lifted off of me and hearing her own story just seemed to click a lot of things into place that I had always wondered about. It was around this time that I took to songwriting again. This time the song came to me in a rush while I was doing dishes. I'll be the first to admit it was definitely my most unshiny happy people kind of a song. To say that it got a reaction would be a teensy bit of an understatement. Without going into too much detail, my writing this song and posting it (like I do all of my songs) on youtube (for my therapeutic purposes) made one of the people it was about contact me after quite some time to ask who I was talking about in the song. Ironic, eh? The only person who asked me what the song was about was the person it was about. Funny that.  I ignored the message. And then a few weeks later, I got a friend request on Facebook from said person. That did it. I have a little bit of a temper and if I feel provoked you're going to know about it in a hurry. I (without profanity) told this person who and what the song was about, and, that said person's little secret isn't as dead as they thought it was. Then I walked out the door and went to a party. The party was quite fun btw. I then came home to find three shouty capital messages from someone else. Talk about being blind-sided. I didn't realize that a paragraph response to someone I loathe would elicit such a strong reaction from someone I loved. Yeah, the ranty pointed message wasn't from the same person that I wrote the message to, it was from someone else. Long story shortened even more, lots of things starting clicking into place. Basically, if I had listened to my dad when I was a kid and looked at all of the people he wasn't really fond of, I could have saved myself a lot of problems growing up and as an adult. My dad was the best judge of character. If he didn't like you, there was usually a pretty damn good reason.