WINDS OF CHANGE

I embrace change.  Not constant - unstopping change of the negative kind that you get bombarded with so fast that it makes your head spin, but a steady, gradual change can be positive signs of growth.

I need routine, which helps me to mark my days and weeks so that they don't run away from me and before I know it years have passed in a blink of an eye, but I also like to change it up a little with random new activities and adventures.  To be cliche - variety is the spice of life!

I never set the course in my younger years and made solid plans, not because I am lazy or stupid, but because I have been overwhelmed at the reality of my life since I was a young girl.  Too many powerful and life changing events which put a huge imprint on my life and helped prevent me from moving forward, always feeling like I was just hanging in limbo.  Too difficult to do anymore but survive the battle!

I absorbed myself in reading and writing.  I alienated myself from the people around me, like a wild dog, or feral cat - finding it safer.  I made choices and decisions that hurt instead of helped me, and continued to spiral further away from myself.

One of the reasons I don't make plans is because for too many years I would look forward to something, only to have it not happen and I do not like disappointment.  So I learned how to avoid it.  Treading water most of my life trying not to drown - smiling - always smiling and hiding from the reality and truth that was my "life".

Learning how to feel again, to shut off the constant negative tape running in my head.  Seeing the truths which  I refused to accept and acknowledge, keeping hope locked in my heart, always hopeful, able to find some shred of a silver lining, even though I was usually lying to myself, making excuses for the actions - or lack of them from the people around me who were supposed to be protecting, caring for me and shaping my life.

I still do that today.  I have  learned not to accept responsibility for the actions of others - well I am trying!  I struggle not to be hurt by the insensitive feelings and actions by my extended family and accept the reality that is.  I am a 46 year old woman, living with the pain of a 4 year old child, the confusion in  my head is that of a small child, who cannot understand like an adult - even as an adult!

I struggle with the fact that I was taught values, and manners and not to lie by people who seem to have forgotten what they are, and I guess I see the truth through the lies, which really sucks.  Actions really do speak louder than words.  It is the actions which confirm that the words are lies and more lies and bullshit!

As I try not to let this conflict, not with myself, but with accepting the reality and not the responsibility, and not the guilt that I am having for recognizing and wanting to believe the lies and ignore the reality.  That would not be being true to myself.  Such a difficult reality to accept.  Will my choice to accept the reality and distance myself from the cancer which is my family - what is left of them, and one member in particular make me just as bad, insensitive, selfish and uncaring?