relationships

Afraid of Being Alone

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As I was trolling through my Facebook feeds looking for something to make me chuckle, I saw a posting from a friend on being afraid to be alone. The posting was attached to a website on the fear of being alone. The questions posed was, are people staying in bad relationships out of fear of being alone? The article went on to say that people stay in bad relationships out of fear or obligation.

I am afraid I may need some help with this one. I did not understand this concept. I understand the concept of guilt. I understand the concept of obligation, but I cannot see staying in a relationship because of either.

Understandably, as a young adult there were unwise choices made for material or social status, but never out of fear of being alone. I have made some of my best decisions and biggest strides in life during times I was alone. This occurred because I simply did not have another to answer to and I could stay up late, spend countless hours on research and focus on making my dreams come true.

Now, this is where I become confused. True, the times in my life that I have been single have been of my choosing, but I was never one to feel as if I was no one if not with someone. How can a person justify loving another person if they cannot justify loving themselves enough to breathe? Breathing is what is required to have your own air space. I like my own airspace.

Moreover, I like who I am when I am alone. I also like who I am when I with someone who loves me, but these are not two separate people. My journey of discovery does not end with a bad relationship. Leaving a bad relationship should be the start of self-discovery of where you want to start to be better. Being alone is a time of fruition, a time of growth and time to understand what makes you tick. If we know these things about ourselves, then this is the person who is ripe to be shared with another soul.

The individual, who chooses to compromise their principles to be accepted, is a lost soul. You are not staying because of obligation; you are in fact staying because of lack of direction. This person that you have attached yourself to is now the person who gives you meaning because you have failed to find meaning in yourself. Does this also mean that the fear you are experiencing lives and breathes because you are afraid to go solo?

Unhook the oxygen tank; the air in the room is just fine. I can breath easy knowing that sometimes, the best conversations you can have, are the one you have with yourself.  In time when I have been alone,  I learned a new craft, new software or sharpened a skill set. I may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but I am an instrument that can stand alone.

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How Do I Love Thee?

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I want to give my husband a super fantastic Christmas present but alas I am lacking super fantastic Christmas money. I am not going to make some cheesy coupon book. I have even toyed with the idea of making a personalized annual calendar of photos of the family and cool moments in our marriage. Honestly, I am stumped. You often hear your parents or grandparents say, “I don’t need anything.” It never dawns on you that you can reach a point in your life when there are no more gadgets or toys needed to make you feel whole. I think we are reaching that point. In case you don’t what that point is, it happens when you realize you either need to throw some things away or get a bigger place. All these things are spatial and quantifiable. I want to talk about the gifts of growing that are not quantifiable. I want to talk about the gift of love.

    Earlier I posted that Love was the one word that the bible took time to define. This time I want to talk about the small things that endear a person to you. I want to talk about those little idiosyncrasies that make us loveable. Elizabeth Barrett Browning sat down one day in 1846 and began to pen a letter to her husband on all the ways in which she loved him, including telling this man that she loved him to “depth and breadth and height, my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight.” Mrs. Barrett said she loved him not only freely, but purely, in the sun and by candlelight. She even went on to tell him she loved openly and freshly with the faith of a child. You have to admit, that is really deep. I want to be deep too. Please keep in mind, I may be a wordsmith, but I am no poet, but I will give it a try.

Ode to My Man

I love you when you stripped out the locks,

I love you even when you don’t pick up your socks.

My heart beats in a rhythm that is often too fast,

especially when you eat pizza and get lots of gas.

I love that you listen, even though you don’t hear

But just in your eyes, I see that you’re near.

I love you in ways I don’t understand and am

often so proud that you are my man.

I see you in ways that make me stand tall, when you help

Out the neighbor, and say, “no trouble at all.”

I love the way we have carved out a life from

the first day that you stepped up and made me your wife.

I have loved you from the beginning of our life spent in days,

I cannot begin to count out all the ways.

I love who you are and who you let me be

I cherish the moments to grow old with thee.

  • December 10, 2011

Stay good to one another while taking a moment to enjoy the smaller joys in life. I know it is always cool to get a great big gift that cost a lot of money, but it is equally fantastic to receive a gift that took a lot of thought. Remember the reason for the season and don’t get caught up in the hype.

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Can you hear me now?

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          If you want to understand what is going on across the country or take the pulse of the nation, take a look at the commercials. Commercials can give you a perfect snapshot of what is happening in the workplace and where our youth are headed.  Recently, I was unable to sleep and noticed this Vonage commercial. I found very little, if any humor in this advertisement.

            If you look closely at the commercial, there are several people waiting in line.  This is money that shop owner is not making and his customers are not being served.  Sadly, this occurrence is not just happening in this advertisement, but in stores everywhere.  Here is the rub. It may appear cute in the ad, but in reality, this employee is costing you money.

This same, self-serving employee is working in stores and businesses across the country.  This employee is probably working next to you.  Oh, you complain about them being slackers, but really, are you doing anything about it? In our current economy, we cannot afford to be complacent.  Companies are sending jobs overseas because we as American workers feel entitled and often take our home lives to work. Our cell phones are becoming an extension of our hands and we are becoming less and less efficient and more proficient at goofing off.

The gentleman in line who pretends to choke the waitress is symbolic of how many of us feel when we patronize Mom and Pop shops.  We want to give them the business, because we know, that if America is going to become upright again, it is going to take the small business owner to make it happen.  However, bad service is not rewarded with return customers. We live in an instant age.  If I cannot get it here, I can get it across the street.  I am not going to wait for your employee to get off the phone to provide me service.  I am going to walk out of this door, take my business elsewhere, and never come back. Again, it is instant.  I am going to post it to my Facebook page and then I am going to Tweet it.  In less than an hour, nearly 500 people are going to know that your business provided me lousy service.  Hey, can you hear me now?

If your employees, co-workers, and subordinates are not there to serve the customers, but to pull a paycheck, help them find employment elsewhere. Someone else could really use that job.  If these  employees are not engaged and feel as if they are no longer a part of helping your company grow, then obviously where they are working is not the right fit. It is not the right fit your customers and not the right fit for your bottom line.

Bad service costs you money.  Bad employees cost companies millions of dollars. Loss of revenue means doors are closing.  Closed doors means there are no jobs for our kids, our retirees and eventually us. I have no qualms whatsoever calling an employee out. If your job is to provide me, the customer, service, then call your mother, brother, baby daddy on your own time and your own dime.

Do all of us a favor. Put down your cell phone.  You don’t look important. If anything you look ignorant.  If what you have to say is really that important, excuse yourself to make the call.  Don’t hold up the line, don’t hold up my time, and stop holding your employer hostage with your bad habits.

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That’s what friends are for……

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    I have been running hard and eating poorly these past three weeks. New quarter, new classes, new students and a new schedule added up to a recipe for disaster. My body rebelled and told me to stop the nonsense and when I refused to listen, it shut down. We are not talking about a head cold, I am talking a full blown system purging.
I was laid out. Flat on my back is where I ended up after a night of personal conversations from several perspectives with the King of the Lavatory.

    I couldn’t be sick. Tomorrow was my scrapbooking day with my friend, Saturday I was hitting the Oktoberfest with another friend and the flea market, plus I had to get the Quilt Show, and the Fair to get a turkey leg. I can’t do any of these things sick! The fever I had said otherwise and I called it quits.

    My friend called my cell at 10 am on Friday. When I did not respond she called me at 11:15 and this time left a voice message. At noon she sent a text and at 12:30 she called my house. I had not responded which, she stated, was not like me. And yes, we have a land line. No, I am not a dinosaur. On with the story about friends…stay focused please. At 1:30 she was at my front door with a bag of peppermint tea for my upset tummy and although my son had placed a chair on the opposite side of the bed of sickness, she opted not to use it. Instead, she brought me a hot cup of bitter ass peppermint tea, fluffed up the pillows on hubby’s side of the bed and climbed in beside me.

    She climbed on beside “Oh, my gosh, I have a fever” breath. She climbed on beside I smell like I’m sick, fever soaked sweaty tee shirt. She climbed on beside my matted afro and crusted nose that had started to drip from being so hot all night from fever, that now resembled a 5 year old with hayfever. She did so with a smile and simultaneously grabbed the remote and began to ask me why I was laid out like I was on a crucifix.

    I started to laugh. She then commented on my smelling like I had been riding a horse and my desperate need of a shower and washing my face. She stayed for 2.5 hours and when she left I felt better. Not cured, but better and ready to get well.

    Ironically, my friend that I was supposed to meet on Saturday, called while she was there as well, and she too called my house because I had not answered my cell; she too figured something must have been wrong. Something was wrong; I had made some poor choices on rest, exercise and food. I did not, however, make poor choices in my friends. They know me well enough to know when I am up and sharp enough to know to call my house when I am down. They also know my home number.

    Don’t be confused, any friend can be at your side when you are the life of the party. It takes a special friend to climb on your sickbed and hold your feverish hand. Friends are there to make you feel better when you are down, help you celebrate your accomplishments and cry when you need it. Remember, a friend is someone to also thank for putting up with you…..

    

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What You Won’t Do For Love….

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    It is sometimes difficult to hear the pain a loved one endures at the hands of what they believe is love. I just can’t recall a time in my life when love made me do dumb things that I could not recover from or a time when love told me to be stupid. I cannot recall anyone in my life that I loved more than I love myself and my mental well-being. I definitely cannot recall a time when love or being in love put me in debt or impacted my credit rating. Can I ask why people do these things?

Please don’t misunderstand. When I was in my twenties I did some crazy things, and often made a fool of myself over a boy/fella who could have cared less or just didn’t return the sentiment. In my thirties as a married woman, I thought of doing some things that would not be too smart, but I was wise enough to make the right choices. I was reacting on a feeling of maybe I was missing something and possibly needed to make sure. Common sense took over and made me realize that what I currently had was not worth the risk of losing what we had built. I also realize that common sense is also not that common.

It can’t be if we can find ourselves making irrational decisions about our lives, the well-being of our children and finances, based upon our need to have someone say, “I love you.” Our need to connect to another human can put us in mental jeopardy and can invoke insane doses of asininity. This need can allow us to let down our defenses as another person chips away at our self-esteem. With self-esteem in jeopardy, defenses down, thoughts become jumbled and we begin to miss sleep. Sleep deprivation mixed with slow self-esteem and craving for love is a recipe for disaster. Are you really this in love, or are you in love with being in love?

Don’t be stupid. If what you are doing would seem insipid if it was happening to your friend, how can you not see how see how ridiculous it looks on you? You must then make yourself a list and write down the things you won’t do for love. Being stupid is at the top of mine.

 

 

 

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