I had a very strange weekend. It was filled with such a wide range of sorrow and happiness that by the end of it I was thrust into a state of utter confusion. I experienced the joys of friendship and love, and the sadness of death and disappointment and by the end of today all I wanted to do was just shut down.
It was too much.
I have been living my "new life" with such passion and vigor, savoring every experience -good and bad- to such an extreme that the conflict becomes almost unbearable. I don't know how I'm "supposed" to be feeling at any given moment. I was touched by death twice this weekend. The loss of my Daughter's dog and the tribute to a good friend whose ashes I helped spread as part of his dying wish. I was also touched by love this weekend, meeting new friends and enjoying the company of old ones. The juxtaposition of joy and sadness all at once, and feeling it on the level that I do now, creates a turmoil within me that I am unable to reconcile. How can I be laughing and having a good time when I feel such sorrow, and how can I be crying when I feel so much love around me from the people that I'm with? I can't separate the feelings from the respective experiences, and the passion that I feel is so overwhelming that I feel as though I'm losing control of myself. I don't know "which way is up".
It causes me to behave inappropriately sometimes, which has an adverse affect on the people around me, people that I care about. I feel like I'm disappointing them by not having the strength to reign myself in, to control this clusterfuck of emotion that is swirling around inside of me. I don't want to disappoint anyone, but I also don't want to sacrifice any of the powerful emotions that course through me now, positive and negative, because they make me feel alive and vibrant!
It's a conflict that I have been dealing with for some time now, and I guess the extreme ups and downs of recent days have brought it more to the forefront for me.
Some days are just better than others.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Taking it for granted.
This has been an exceptional past few weeks for me, culminated by an extraordinary weekend.
It never ceases to amaze me how much of life we take for granted, and how much we can miss those things when they are gone. I had the privilege of spending time with some old and dear friends of mine this weekend, some of whom I have not seen for some time. It was amazing how good it felt and how familiar we still are even though we'd not seen each other for so long. We essentially just picked up where we left off, as if we had only seen each other just yesterday. Good friends like that are hard to find, it's not good to lose touch with them, but it's very good to know that the friendship endures, irrespective of your communication level.
It makes me think about how we make connections with people. Why is it that some people can just "mesh" together, get each other, and others are like oil and water. They might be able to get along, but there's no cohesion. I've met a lot of people in my life, some of whom I even called friends, but most of them have faded out of my life and grown into their own lives. There are a select few, however, who endure. We are important parts of each other's lives, and we can feel it. Why are we so special to each other? What's the connection? I don't believe it can be broken down so simply as to say it's common experience, "birds of a feather" if you will. It runs deeper than that. Some of the "connections" I've made are with people who are 100% different than me. We live completely different lifestyles, and as a result hardly see each other. Yet, when we do, the connection is there. The passage of time has not weakened it.
By that same token, new connections can be made at any time in our lives, it is not reserved strictly for our youth. I've been finding these connections all of my life. I've made two of them as recently as this past year. It kinda freaks me out. It makes me wonder; how? How does it work? Why does it work? Does it really matter? Am I analyzing this too deeply? Yeah, probably.
Maybe there are some things in life that can be taken for granted, and strong friendships like that are one of them.
It never ceases to amaze me how much of life we take for granted, and how much we can miss those things when they are gone. I had the privilege of spending time with some old and dear friends of mine this weekend, some of whom I have not seen for some time. It was amazing how good it felt and how familiar we still are even though we'd not seen each other for so long. We essentially just picked up where we left off, as if we had only seen each other just yesterday. Good friends like that are hard to find, it's not good to lose touch with them, but it's very good to know that the friendship endures, irrespective of your communication level.
It makes me think about how we make connections with people. Why is it that some people can just "mesh" together, get each other, and others are like oil and water. They might be able to get along, but there's no cohesion. I've met a lot of people in my life, some of whom I even called friends, but most of them have faded out of my life and grown into their own lives. There are a select few, however, who endure. We are important parts of each other's lives, and we can feel it. Why are we so special to each other? What's the connection? I don't believe it can be broken down so simply as to say it's common experience, "birds of a feather" if you will. It runs deeper than that. Some of the "connections" I've made are with people who are 100% different than me. We live completely different lifestyles, and as a result hardly see each other. Yet, when we do, the connection is there. The passage of time has not weakened it.
By that same token, new connections can be made at any time in our lives, it is not reserved strictly for our youth. I've been finding these connections all of my life. I've made two of them as recently as this past year. It kinda freaks me out. It makes me wonder; how? How does it work? Why does it work? Does it really matter? Am I analyzing this too deeply? Yeah, probably.
Maybe there are some things in life that can be taken for granted, and strong friendships like that are one of them.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
My Nona "episodes"
My Nona was a beautiful woman. She was Italian. Devout Catholic, with all the prerequisite stereotypes associated with such a designation, and some issues of her own. She was fun to be with. We spent a lot of time together when I was a child and I got to know her pretty well. She tried to indoctrinate me into Catholicism but it never worked and she knew it, and on some level, I think she envied me for that. As brainwashed as she was, she could still see the "other side" but just couldn't break free of her chains. It was, in her opinion, (I think) too late for her to change. I think she was afraid that we would think her hypocritical for "changing sides" so late in life. Among other things...
Regardless, it's her "other issues" that I believe have the greatest effect on me currently. I believe that she was manic depressive, and lucky me caught some of that in the gene pool. I don't know if that is scientifically possible, but I'm gonna run with it, because there is nothing I like more than to blame my problems on my ancestors. It makes me feel good about myself. lol?
She used to go through these, "episodes", where she would go from extremely happy to extremely low, sometimes for extended periods of time. I have witnessed some of these transitions, as they occurred, and I remember thinking, even at that young age, that it was not...right. Based on my perspective, she had no real reason to effect this change in her demeanor, it seemed random to me. It was as though she couldn't control it, it would just happen. There were "triggers" of course, things that would set her off, but once those triggers were pulled she couldn't stop the bullet. She would sometimes go for days, even weeks, without talking to anyone, not even her Husband (except for the necessary communication required to maintain life), and as a result the whole Family suffered. It was a sad time for me when she went through these tribulations, because when she was happy she was brilliant! She would play guitar and sing, and her laugh was strong and infectious. I can still hear it, I miss it. I loved her dearly. Even through her "bad" times, because I used to have them too, and I had one today.
I have had these "episodes" all of my life, to varying degrees (just like her) but this is the first time that I have had one since my "enlightenment". It's...interesting. I am miserable, and angry about nothing, and fully aware that I have no reason to feel these emotions, and yet, I can't stop them. WTF?? Before, I simply accepted these events as "par for the course", it's just how I am; don't like it? Fuck off! But now, I am seeing life through a new set of eyes, and I don't like what I'm seeing right this minute. This is a short episode, mind you, and it's already beginning to fade, but I have "observed" it through my "new eyes" all day today and it wasn't pleasant. I don't like to lose control. Because of my new perspective, I had more ammunition at my disposal to fight it, but I still felt like it was a losing battle because I had to fight it. Because I couldn't control it instead. It was disheartening, to say the least.
However, it's fading now and I am learning from it. I think I am learning what my triggers are, so that I can do my best to avoid them, so that this doesn't happen to me as often in the future as it has in the past. It's been a long time since I felt this way. It's like that part of my personality was "put on hold" so I could deal with my "ailments", and now that I have, and I'm feeling better, it seems to be retuning...
Or maybe I just had a bad day.
Regardless, it's her "other issues" that I believe have the greatest effect on me currently. I believe that she was manic depressive, and lucky me caught some of that in the gene pool. I don't know if that is scientifically possible, but I'm gonna run with it, because there is nothing I like more than to blame my problems on my ancestors. It makes me feel good about myself. lol?
She used to go through these, "episodes", where she would go from extremely happy to extremely low, sometimes for extended periods of time. I have witnessed some of these transitions, as they occurred, and I remember thinking, even at that young age, that it was not...right. Based on my perspective, she had no real reason to effect this change in her demeanor, it seemed random to me. It was as though she couldn't control it, it would just happen. There were "triggers" of course, things that would set her off, but once those triggers were pulled she couldn't stop the bullet. She would sometimes go for days, even weeks, without talking to anyone, not even her Husband (except for the necessary communication required to maintain life), and as a result the whole Family suffered. It was a sad time for me when she went through these tribulations, because when she was happy she was brilliant! She would play guitar and sing, and her laugh was strong and infectious. I can still hear it, I miss it. I loved her dearly. Even through her "bad" times, because I used to have them too, and I had one today.
I have had these "episodes" all of my life, to varying degrees (just like her) but this is the first time that I have had one since my "enlightenment". It's...interesting. I am miserable, and angry about nothing, and fully aware that I have no reason to feel these emotions, and yet, I can't stop them. WTF?? Before, I simply accepted these events as "par for the course", it's just how I am; don't like it? Fuck off! But now, I am seeing life through a new set of eyes, and I don't like what I'm seeing right this minute. This is a short episode, mind you, and it's already beginning to fade, but I have "observed" it through my "new eyes" all day today and it wasn't pleasant. I don't like to lose control. Because of my new perspective, I had more ammunition at my disposal to fight it, but I still felt like it was a losing battle because I had to fight it. Because I couldn't control it instead. It was disheartening, to say the least.
However, it's fading now and I am learning from it. I think I am learning what my triggers are, so that I can do my best to avoid them, so that this doesn't happen to me as often in the future as it has in the past. It's been a long time since I felt this way. It's like that part of my personality was "put on hold" so I could deal with my "ailments", and now that I have, and I'm feeling better, it seems to be retuning...
Or maybe I just had a bad day.
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