Thursday, November 29, 2012

Gretchen

I said goodbye to my old 1990 Mercedes 300E today. As I cleaned her out, and watched her get loaded onto the tow truck in the rain to the mechanic that is buying her, I felt sadness. I don't think I have ever been so emotionally attached to a car. She was alive and had a personality to me. We had a rough few months. When I first got her, she was my pride and joy. I didn't have much else and was really struggling in my life, so to have a Mercedes, no matter how old, was an amazing thing to me. And she ran so well for so many years. She had a bad paint job, but she had character. She fit my personality perfectly at that time. Seeing as she was German, I named her Gretchen. The last time before she started breaking down again, I was driving to work, thinking how much I liked her, accepted her. She was, my car through and through. But all good things must come to an end. It's a new era, time for a new car, and new adventures. But I will miss her. On the car ride back to work, my poor boyfriend had to listen to me deal with it the best way I knew how at the time. I belted out my rendition of The Way We Were, and an Evita song. It made me feel better as I let go of her. I will always love you Gretchen and I thank you for all the places you took me.






Sunday, November 25, 2012

last night on the way home from Griffith Observatory, a place where me and my boyfriend had been trying to get to for the last 4 1/2 years (just never seemed to work out for some reason), we were talking about something funny his daughter said. Then the thought hit me, how much he and I have been through together. We have made it through my alcoholism, some of the worst years of it he was there for, made it through my sobriety, made it through him finding out he had a 21 year old daughter and building a relationship with her, made it through a terrible illness with him, unemployment, me moving in, me moving out, numerous nervous breakdowns. We have both invested a lot in this relationship. This is Love. I have learned more about love, REAL love, universal, best friend, soul mate love from being with him, than I have learned from anyone else. We are lucky. Behind closed doors, we laugh, we play, we talk, we are grateful for what we have. We very rarely fight anymore. We have worked a lot out. A lot of people may look good from the outside, but behind closed doors it's no good. My life is not like that. And when someone you truly love is going through a very hard time, you don't bolt on them, there is no time limit to how long they are allowed to have to get it together. And you do that for eachother. You either accept things...or you don't. If there is more good than bad, you stay. Period. If you love, you stay. If they are your best friend you stay. Everything is not perfectly lined up on the outside, especially by some others standards, but, I am happy to be with my best friend. We accept and love eachother. Nothing is perfect, no relationship is perfect. But if it makes you feel good inside, and lucky and happy, and is realy LOVE....it's pretty rare.

Monday, November 12, 2012

this is....grown up life

this is...hard

this is...no joke

this is complex
silly
meaningless
meaningful
lost
found
forgotten
remembered
left behind
taken with

this is everyday..
of your life...
of YOUR life
of your LIFE

~Jenny

Monday, November 5, 2012

I find myself scrutinizing my relationships, how I act, and what I say lately, because, I find that I am becoming more uninhibited as I grow and become the real me. Instead of analyzing myself before I say or do something, as was the norm for a very long time, thus a lot of things did not get said or done, I now do it after the fact. I found this great article from Nancy M on Ordinary Vegan. (I am not Vegan, but I am into achieving emotional sobriety = ) I am also finding that if we constantly try to say or do things based on what others might think of us, we are in essence trying to control what others think of us. That's not a good thing, for us or them~it's...well, controlling, and manipulative, and it keeps me from knowing people and finding out about them, because if I'm busy scrutinizing my next sentence or trying to "behave properly" (my own expectations of how I think I should act) I am missing out on the questions I want to ask someone, and giving them feedback and finding common ground as a human with them. This is a very big deal for me, this stuff and next step I am learning. It's part of my process of growing into a real live grown up lady. We all have these challenges, I know, that's part of the beauty of it, we all go through this shit.

Here is the article I was lucky enough to find on the internet:

"Recently, I heard a speaker give a compelling lecture about “emotional sobriety”. I have never heard that phrase before, and I was immensely intrigued. Understanding emotional sobriety wasn’t hard. Basically, if you build your whole life around being loved and accepted, you may need emotional sobriety. Ask yourself these questions. Do you need to validate what you are doing from someone else and not yourself? Do you have relationships or do you take hostages? When someone asks, “who are you?”, what would be your answer? Often the answer is not who you are, but what you do. I know there have been many times in my life that I needed to be accepted by someone else to feel value, but now I am happy to say I have worked on that, and my center of gravity is no longer false. By the way, it isn’t easy, and it won’t happen overnight. Like everything, it takes practice. Here, are some things that worked for me.

1. Listen to what is most important to you (not others) and add your best self to it.

2. Instead of asking what you expect from life, ask what life expects from you.

3. Let go of your dependence on other people’s reaction. If you have good news, savor it before sharing it with others.

4. Learn to lick your own wounds. Comfort yourself when you are hurt or disappointed.

5. Stop taking your partner, friends or family’s behavior personally. Remember, everything they say and do is about themselves, not about you.

So how do you exist in this new world with this new set of rules? When you put these paralyzing dependencies behind you, you get a glimmer of what real happiness is. Remember, when you add more self to everything you do, it doesn’t mean your selfish. It means you are thoroughly engaged in the process of being and becoming your authentic self. When you live a life that is no longer ignoring your true gifts and talents, there is nothing more beautiful. Don’t be afraid. It won’t be long before others accept the new you, and love you more for it."