Tag Archives: passion

Couldn’t Be Much Happier

Posted on by learning to live like water

He likes my little house. That’s a big deal to me, because he was not happy at all that I sold our house in CT, and decided to move here. Change is hard for him, and we were so happy in that house, after the years of abuse with his father. We were ok in the rented condo I had for transitional space, but the house we had there was a dream come true for both of us. Now that he’s happy in CO, and has a life there, he is happy for me, and he really really likes this cute little house. Kept saying, “You did really good Mom. I get why you just had to buy it.” Because, he felt for the longest time that buying this house pushed me to sell the house in CT immediately. But fact was, that house was going on the market when it did, and he gets that now. You have to sell between March and November up there, because very few people buy a house in the winter.

It’s so funny, how it used to irritate me so much to find his stuff stuck in the couch, or spread on the coffee table, his shoes on the floor somewhere, or a light left on somewhere. And now…it just makes me smile. Like, oh, this is how it always was. It is so familiar, the way the things our children do are.

We can, and did, just sit in the living room, each in a recliner, and talked for hours yesterday. The TV was on for noise, as was the habit in our old life, but we just talked and talked about our new lives. I could tell he loved the familiarity of our furniture from the old house. You’d think there’d be not much to say, because we talk every day anyway, but there was. He was way too tired to do any sightseeing, and I think it was cool, that he just kind of wanted to stay here and reconnect.

My son loves to mix this EDM music, and he uploads it to SoundCloud and has like 5000 followers. He got a gig to play the Saturday after Easter at a club in Denver. He played there once before, and they liked him well enough to invite him back for Saturday night. He doesn’t get paid, but he gets his name out there. He’s meeting a lot of the artists that have made it really big. He’s really breaking into it. He says he spends most of his free time making new recordings. I love that he has a passion for it, that he follows his passion. He landed in the right place to follow this passion, since he says Denver is probably the hub in the world for this kind of music, and the wild shows that go with it.

We’re both looking forward to going over to the island tomorrow to see my sis and hubby. My sis has a big really nice apartment over the garage, overlooking her pool, that he and I always stayed at. I told him maybe we could share my mom’s old room, where I stay now, in the house. He looked so disappointed, lol. He said, “Idk, Mom. I really need my own room, you know I stay up way later than you…..” But I know it’s just because he loves that space, it’s like a really nice hotel suite. So I’ll tell my sis that he’s staying up there, so he can watch TV late, and go to bed late and sleep late, lol. Just going to tell him to come to the house to shower etc….so she doesn’t have to clean it all up for one night’s stay.

He also knows my sis is a great cook, and the food will be awesome, lol. And we’ll hang by the pool, and the hot tub and go to the beach. It will be fun. My sis just loves my son too. I know at one time her hubby was appalled that I wasn’t insisting he go to college, but he’s doing so well, I know my brother-in-law has changed his mind on that. And it’s hard not to like my kid. He’s funny, and kind, and smart. His priorities are good, and he’s set his own boundaries, that make it easy to be with him.

I’ve had a few moments of wishing he lived close to me, but I am trying not to get too attached to those, because that stuff will just ruin the time we have. Just going to enjoy having him here, and then begin to plan the next time I’ll see him. Probably in the summer sometime, I’ll head to CO for a few days. He has all kinds of places he wants to take me now.

Couldn’t be much happier this morning. Love and light all.

Ruminations on Reclusiveness

Posted on by learning to live like water

Am I becoming reclusive? I spend a lot of time alone. And I don’t mind. I consider calling a friend to come over or go do something, and so often I stop myself. Not wanting someone intruding on me. At least lately. I don’t understand this sudden change in me.

I’ve always been extroverted. Love having people around. Love deep conversation. Love my friends. It’s why I was not afraid to move somewhere far away where I knew only 2 people, an old friend and my sister. I knew that I had always made friends easily, and I have. But lately, I find myself keeping to myself.

Perhaps I have given too much of myself, maybe I feel spread thin. I don’t know. I miss my son. At times I really miss my old life. But I love my new life. It’s just that lately, I don’t want to take a walk with someone else. I want to walk by myself, along the waterfront, sorting out my thoughts and emotions. Trying to figure out what it is that I really want, that brings me joy, and passion.

Writing is the first answer. Not the only one, but the first one. It brings me so much peace, to put my thoughts in a form where I can see them. I cannot seem to work them out without putting them on the page. I was up again, last night in the middle of the night, writing away. Because thoughts were there that were screaming at me for release. Compelling thoughts. And things I don’t want to publish, I don’t want them to be public knowledge. I need to keep and honor some things only in my heart. We all do.

This morning I have to get some groceries. Coffee, cream, toilet paper, some salad makings. I had to force myself to be kind enough to ask my friend who has no car of her own if she wants to go with me. I’m glad I did. I have wished someone was here to just talk with, someone I knew well. I want to rest in the arms of a close friend. This friend I called, well, she is a good friend. She can become argumentative though, and I hope that doesn’t happen today because I am way too tired to deal with it.

What I really want is someone who could take a nap with me, just lay down and make me feel safe….a man, no doubt, but just to rest my weary head against someone who I knew would not hurt me. It has been decades since I had that peace. And even when I had it, it was temporary.

When I lived with my son, I was content enough, to have him around. He was there. He would listen to me if he realized I really needed to be heard. He could see and understand me without a whole lot of communication. He read my body language. It wasn’t like having a significant other, but it eased the fact that I didn’t have one, or that the man I’d chosen had let me down, again.

I don’t want to be a recluse. I want to be involved in life, with passion, with love. I don’t want to become isolated, yet that’s what I’ve been doing lately to some degree. I’ll show up where I’m expected, but I just want to be alone most of the time.

I guess, when I look at it from the more objective perspective of reading it on the page, that I am sitting with some things. I don’t really know what they are, or why they are affecting me this way. But like a teacher who used to facilitate my meditation group each week said, “You don’t have to excavate. You don’t have to dig up your past. You just have to honor that you feel the way you feel.”

I guess I’m honoring myself, by allowing myself to feel things that are uncomfortable right now, but are evasive in origin. I guess that I want to do this in private, until I don’t need to anymore. So, if my blogging is more sparse, that’s why. I’m not saying it will be, but it was yesterday. And then the things that came out were direct from my soul. Today, this comes from the same place. I am confused, but willing. Reticent, but full of words. I suppose at some point it will spill back out and the clouds will dissipate.

Love and light.

The End of the Fireworks

Posted on by learning to live like water

the end

My book club is reading “The Untethered Soul” by Mark Singer.  I have seen him on OWN, on Super Soul Sunday and liked him.  I just started the book, but he begins by talking about the voice in our heads.

He asks why we  discuss with ourselves, in our heads, situations and things that we know.  I thought about how I keep re-running the chaos that ended the relationship with Scott, and replaying it in my head.  Why??  do I do that to myself?

I know what it was, I know how it hurt, but I’ll never really get past it if I keep re-living it in my head, or here on the page.  I know what happened, I know how I loved him, I know all the red flags that I ignored, I know what he did to me, to her.  I know how he is now, there’s nothing that needs to be figured out.

I would like to shut that conversation down permanently.  I don’t want to forget, I just don’t want to be obsessing about it.  It was traumatic, yes.  At my age, I’d never experienced it before, and was blindsided that it happened.  But I need to let it all go.  Why give all that bad news my continued attention?

Gratitude is a better place to go. This morning I woke up after a poor night’s sleep and thought about all the things I do have.  My great son, a lovely home, a lot of friends, a decent job, the real possibility of retiring and moving closer to family.  I’m grateful for our incredibly mild winter so far.  I’m grateful to have a few things I love to do passionately.

If I think about my relationship with him, I am going to be grateful that I found out I can love passionately, despite my long abusive marriage.  I honestly never thought I would when I left it.  That I chose the wrong man, is secondary to the fact that I was able to passionately love someone.

I guess a relationship that was so passionate, was probably not going to end quietly.  It was bound to go down in a huge explosion of emotion.  We were night and day, just as he said in the poem he wrote me. When we occupied the same space for a short time, there were fireworks in the sky like the blazing colors of dusk and dawn.  Sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes the display was terrifying.  Now  all the fireworks are spent and I am going to just let the memories fade, pack up my stuff and go home.

I have a lot of good years to live yet.  I don’t want to waste any more of my days trying to make sense of that chaos.  It will be an effort at first, because I think it’s a habit now.  But I’ve never been an addictive person, and I can change that.

With gratitude, and a conscious effort to extend love and compassion wherever I go.

Finding Your Own Way

Posted on by learning to live like water

https://www.facebook.com/GilbertLiz/photos:

I had a conversation about this today.  It’s so easy for us to do what others want, or expect us to do. To stay in a marriage or a relationship because it’s easier than leaving it, even if it leaves you cold, or alone, or unfulfilled.  Lord knows I have done it.

Lord also knows that I have learned the lesson now, that my life is mine, to decide what I want out of it.  And I will fight my way to the light if I have to.  But I won’t settle for less than I want.  I am lucky, I know what that is.  I know what I want, I have some idea of how to get it.

But I intend to extend my hand to those still seeking.  Not to do it for them, but to support them and cheer them on in the quest to give their lives meaning.  No one should settle.  Life is for living, fully, passionately. As people have supported me, I will pay it forward.

You are enough.  You are so enough.  It is unbelievable how enough you are.  (another Liz Gilbert quote)

A Wave Just Washed Over Me

Posted on by learning to live like water

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What a beautiful New England autumn day.  Just gorgeous.  Tonight my Bff asked me over, to a bonfire, dinner and drinks.  I will be the only single person there, but I always am.  She’s gathering me in, wrapping me up in the love of good friends, protecting me from the thoughts that surely will come if I am alone.  She never met him….but she had him pegged from the beginning.

If you are bedding a man for 18 months who has never met your BFF, I would guess that’s a pretty blatant sign that this relationship is not all it’s cracked up to be in your head, isn’t it.  Only my son met him, and from the first day he told me S was weird.  LOl.

Weird is good in my book.  I’m a little weird.  But my son didn’t mean it that way, as in slightly eccentric like you Mom.  I should have listened to him.  Especially over the summer, when he disappeared for days.  My BFF has told me 100 times,  “A relationship that is that much work, from the beginning, is not a good one.”  And I didn’t listen. And it was work, right from the beginning.  Work with no reward, really.  Betty Boop is getting the reward.  I would have had to screw him over for him to treat me well.  Seriously, I mean that.

There was a story on FB this morning, of a little girl who was hit in the face with a rock by a boy. Her mother had to take her to the hospital for stitches.  A man at the hospital, checking them in, said, “I bet he likes you.”  What???  There it is, the warped idea that hurting someone shows that you like them.  Watered down, it falls under S’s old adage, “I only tease you if I like you.”  I think it’s the same mindset.  Perhaps he’s so used to being hurt by people that he actually believes that being hurt is part of loving someone.

If that’s the case…I gotta feel for him.

In that case, I also gotta stay way clear of him.

I always have to feel bad for anyone who didn’t go to bed every night in their life taking their parents love for granted. (Or at least one of them.)  If I believe him, (which I’m not sure of anymore) he never went to bed wondering if he wasn’t loved by them.  According to him (which, again, now I’m not sure how much of it was true, how much was manipulation of me) his parents had not left out any form of abuse of him as a child.  How could I possibly have expected him to get me, to have any idea what a normal relationship is, to even want one?  Not that there aren’t people who overcome that.  But he wasn’t one, and it was pretty clear to me, if I am honest.

It makes perfect sense of Betty Boop, and why she’s spending the weekends with him now.  And really….while there is still a small part of me that hurts from the way he did it, I am really blessed, not to have gotten in any deeper with someone who believes hurt is love.  That passionate fighting makes for passionate making up.  He told me that was what they did.  I remember saying, I only want to love passionately.  You can keep the fighting and making up.

Emotionally, really, he is about 14.  My son at 23 is 100 times more mature.  I mean, look at how he broke up with me, by text!!!  I want to scream, how old are you anyway?  Who does that, at 66?  He didn’t want to listen to me scream at him.  What did he expect, me to say,” Oh that’s ok S…” If you are hell bent on devastating someone, I think you have to be prepared also to deal with their pain.

I wish it hadn’t happened to me.  But if I stand outside and peer in, I am so glad to be out of such an immature relationship.

Anyway, enough of my analysis of him,and myself. .  We are all sick of it, lol.  As an adult we own our lives.  We make our choices.

Writing about this makes me stronger, and see what the work is that I have to do.  I’m sorry if I’m sound like a broken record.  The healing, and the growing comes in waves.  And I just got swept up in one, and now I’m landed on the beach and looking at where I came from.

Just a Kiss

Posted on by learning to live like water

He kissed her that first day,

Sweet and tender.

He held her, and she him.

It held so much promise.

She looked for it, anxiously

every moment they were together.

But it became elusive.

She searched,

She waited.

Small kisses goodbye

but not like that first day.

With passion and longing and desire.

Then one day he thought he would lose her

and he kissed her again

with longing and desire.

There it was.  Out of the shadows.

Finally.

But then, inexplicably, it ran back to lurk in the shadows 

She knew it was there,

She reached for it

She could never find it.

In fact, after awhile she couldn’t even find a hint of it.

Not a clue.

It was just a memory,

Slowly receding from view.

Soon it was gone,

and he was gone.

And so, in the end,

She was gone too.

Looking for that elusive kiss

From someone not afraid to be seen.

Or to feel

Or to take the chance.

It was just a kiss.

It will be just a kiss.

Just a kiss.