Monday, August 30, 2010

The most wonderful time of the year?

It’s not even Labor Day yet and soon all the holiday decorations will be everywhere. I don’t mind so much because autumn is my favorite time of the year. I’m my happiest when the weather turns cooler and I can open the windows to let in the breezes. I like crunching leaves under my feet when I walk and how festive it gets from October through New Year’s. And it doesn’t hurt that I found candy corn already on sale in Walmart yesterday either.


As the song goes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Or is it?

I’ve heard for years about how the holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) are the time with the highest suicide rates and when folks tend to be the most depressed and as a rule I have “poo-pooed” that notion. Until last year.

The reason I start getting amped up in October is that my birthday is in mid-October and then Halloween happens. Those are 2 days that I enjoy, plus I like decorating for Halloween. With the cooler weather I just feel festive.

The trouble is…my birthday never turns out the way I want it to. In my head I have this fanciful notion that it will be the greatest birthday every. I have no idea exactly the specifics that that would entail, but suffice it to say that I always seem to come away disappointed with the reality. I’ve thrown a few combo birthday/Halloween parties around my big day, but something always ends up as the proverbial fly in the ointment. Most notably the year someone vomited on my front lawn after drinking entirely too much and not eating enough (if anything at all). Although I guess that was preferable to them vomiting somewhere in my house…

I wish I knew what it was that I wanted from my birthday so I could at least potentially achieve it, but I’m really just not sure. I guess I want it to be…better. I won’t ever have another party because I always want things to be “just so” and that is so hard to make happen. People always come in and do things I didn’t want done or want to turn the party into someone else and I get pissy and it’s downhill from there.

Perhaps my expectations are simply too high. I mean, everyone has a birthday, right? So why should mine be any more spectacular than the next person’s. To that end, I’ve made some mental plans on what I want to do this year on my birthday that should, theoretically, allow me to have a very enjoyable birthday. Guess we’ll find about in about 45 days or so.

After my birthday, I always get excited about Thanksgiving and then Christmas. I’m not sure why though since my family doesn’t actually get together for the most part on those holidays anymore. There are various – very good and valid – reasons and commitments that keep us from being together on the actual days, though we do have a family Christmas a few days before the actual day. I have found, however, that over the years I’ve bought into the Hallmark, Hollywood ideal of how a family holiday should be. Everyone together, squeezed into the house you grew up in with wacky hijinka and warm fuzzy family moments ensuing.

Uh…yeah. Doesn’t really happen in my world. I always want a big houseful of people (maybe I should consult Central Casting and see if I can rent a family this year…) with lots of food and peace and goodwill to men and all that stuff. Once upon a time, back in the days when I thought I would do the “normal” thing and grow up and get married and have 2.5 kids and a dog, etc, I thought how great it would be to marry into a family with multiple siblings (I have 1 brother) where everyone would come home for the holidays and it would be this big family fun fest.

Of course, my life has not worked out that way and I would bet most families would say that’s not how the holidays work anyway except in a Norma Rockwell painting.

But I still wish that it did.

The holidays last year were a very lonely time for me. I never realized it could be like that until it was. And it’s not like I did not see people and/or family on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. I totally did. But something was missing. I want tradition! I want a gathering! I want…well, I do NOT want pumpkin pie because that is just nasty crap, but I want something. Whatever that “something” is that is missing.

Because I am an obsessive-compulsive planner, not only do I have my mental plan for my birthday, but I’m already thinking ahead to what I want to do on Thanksgiving Day. I haven’t gotten to Christmas yet, but there’s time for that. I will plot and plan and figure out what to do to make ME happy. At first I thought that notion was rather selfish, but then I realized that if I don’t look out for myself, who will? No one.

I guess time will tell as to whether or not this holiday season turns out better than the last. But I am going to do my damnedest to enjoy the coming season – everything from leaf crunching to celebrating the birth of our savior Jesus Christ – no matter what. And maybe if I’m really smart, somewhere along the way I’ll figure out how to help other people do it as well. Because I know I’m not alone in questioning whether this is really the most wonderful time of the year.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

The Girl with the Dragon(Fly) Tattoo

Yeah, this post has nothing to do with the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I know nothing about the book except for the title and maybe it’s a movie now? Or going to be one? I have no clue.

What I do know is that in November 2006 I got my first tattoo. I’d been thinking for several years that I wanted a tattoo, but wasn’t sure what I wanted. So being the highly intelligent being that I am *snort*, I waltzed into Fantasy Ink Tattooz just over the border in NC near Myrtle Beach, SC and started looking at the designs on the walls. Yeah. That’s soooo the best way to pick a tatt, right? LOL But my eyes honed in on a picture of a dragonfly. I didn’t like the colors on the picture, but since I could pick and choose my own, that’s just what I did.

Sam, the tattoo artist, was great. I think he was slightly surprised by how willing I was to just whip off my shirt so he could have access to my shoulder – had I even realized that morning that I’d be betting tattooed that night, I would have come prepared with a tank top. But let’s be honest here; my flabby abs were not going to excite this man and I can’t imagine I have the worst body he’s ever seen either. So he’s pulling the curtain around the area where I’m going to sit and saying, “Are you concerned about people seeing you…” and I’m just whipping off my sweatshirt as if I don’t have a care in the world. Go figure. So not like me.

Moving on…

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure...

Our Deepest Fear

by Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Monday, August 9, 2010

"Feelings are everywhere - be gentle."

There’s a line in the Meg Ryan/Kevin Kline movie “French Kiss” where Meg’s character “Kate” is on a bit of a tear and says, “Happy - smile. Sad - frown. Use the corresponding face for the corresponding emotion.” Kate, you see, has no problem expressing her emotions and expects everyone else to be able to do the same. I, however, am not Kate. (And I’m not that other Kate either. The one with the wackadoodle hair and the 9 gabillion kids.)

I’m not the most demonstrative person in the world. I’m not a real touchy-feely kinda gal. I’m not sure why that is exactly. It’s not that I don’t have emotions; I just don’t really throw them out there a lot (except to complain about stuff). Or when and if I do, one of two things happens – it’s a crazy eruption like some psychotic episode or I am made to feel like I shouldn’t be feeling the things I am feeling. If I’m sad, someone’s always telling me to cheer up. If I’m angry, they try to calm me down. If I’m happy, sometimes I’m made to feel silly for being so happy or excited about something. It’s much easier to just not express those emotions and keep them to myself and for myself.

I can’t say that it’s something instilled in me from childhood; I’m not inclined to be someone who blames all their adult problems and issues on their parents. I had awesome parents. But somewhere along the line I just lost the ability to cut loose.

Case in point, the Michael BublĂ© concert I attended a few weeks back. If you’d seen me you might never have realized how much fun I was having because I mostly sat in my seat, listening and not singing along and clapping politely at the end. Before the show I was bouncing around a bit and I might have sung along once or twice, but to the outside viewer, I probably was not having a good time, when in reality I was loving every minute of it. As I expressed – ad nauseum – on Facebook (I do much better with the written word it seems.)

Now, at the Bon Jovi show I attended back in April, I was much livelier. I always dance and sing and have a grand old time, but I gotta be honest – I feel really strange when I do that. As if someone is going to be watching me and wondering why I’m so happy. Yeah, I know. In an arena with 10,000 or more screaming people no one is paying attention to little old me, but it feels that way.

I don’t dance in public. The last time I actually danced in public was 1992 after the USC homecoming game and I’d had 6 screwdrivers in a 1 ½ hour time period and the world was still spinning around hours later. (But I did have a grand old time!) The last time I think I cried in public was at my mother’s funeral 10 years ago. I love a lot of people, but I seldom say so. That’s just a whole other level of discomfort for me.

A lot of this makes no sense even to me. I do so many things that scream, “Hey world! Look at meeeeeee!!!” and then when the world does look at me, I want to run and hide behind my mother’s skirts like I did as a shy little girl. Yeah. I know. It makes no sense.

I wonder about it all sometimes. Wonder if I will ever be someone who can just freely express emotions without worrying if someone is watching and judging me. Part of me believes that even with my closest friends, they still simply will not understand me and where I am coming from. Sometimes you just want to be able to say what you are thinking and feeling without someone else trying to solve your problems or tell you everything’s I ok when you know that it’s not. Or without someone jumping in with “Oh that happens to me all the time and it’s 900 times more interesting than what you just said!” Or without someone judging your feelings as if it’s ok to do that. Because it’s not. My feelings and emotions are just that – MINE. And yours are yours. So long as you are not homicidal I think it’s ok to feel what you are feeling and to acknowledge it. But usually I’m just told that it’s not ok, even in less-than-direct terminology.

Sometimes you just want to be able to express what you are feeling and have that be enough. Maybe that’s all I really want – I just want to be enough.