Musings

        Passive Aggression

little, small, tiny, undersized . . .

             shallow.

A word can describe.

Unspoken meaning between the lines,

Within the hollow empty spaces.

HUGE, MASSIVE, IMMENSE, ENORMOUS

                 SUBSTANTIAL . . .

Impressions spelled out,

Insignificant letters forming thought,

Constrained together,
Printed neatly,

Poised gracefully on paper.

Simply penned innocence.

               no . . .

An intentional blow,

Pretense cleverly arranged,

Not to be seen or proven,

Only to be felt --- deep in the heart.

A long overdue reimbursement

For past resentments,

Unforgiven failures besieged by ink,

Set in type.

A word can modify.

sad, troubled, hurt, sullen, downcast  . . .

           broken.

                           F. B. Crowther

  

It's four o'clock in the morning and I can't sleep. My mind will not stop. I've been up and down consistently while the clock ticks. Something inside of me needs to get out. 

I learned a long time ago when I took action and sought some personal counsel to help me with changing how I think and react that all emotion --- E-motion, is in fact energy 'in' motion. It must travel through us and not get stuck. It must enter. It must exit. It is when it has no release, getting all bottled up inside us that it does the most damage. Writing is my release.

The other day I had two interesting experiences. Actually I wish to note here that the day held far more than just two, I just haven't got the time or emotional energy to write about the rest of them, even though I'd like to. The two however that have provoked giant waves of thought inside my head and greatly affected my heart somehow felt interconnected. It is strange how they unfolded back to back, like enemies headed into a duel, pacing off their steps. And together they have produced serious musings, so much so that my skull feels like it houses a turbulent ocean. One experience felt sweet, while the other tasted bitter and left my heart hurting. Both have tried to mix in me like oil and vinegar. The separation is inevitable.

Perhaps it is at this point in my autobiographical expressions that I should interject, if you are going to live with humans ---in being ---you are going to feel pain. I suppose however that it is in those moments when our human interactions gain us a feeling of having been loved and valued, that makes experiencing the painful parts worthwhile.

The first experience:

I don't know where she came from but I saw her across the room. The feelings that rose in me were warm and inviting. I had grown up with her. Just seeing her there in the distance among so many people filled me with one fond memory after another. She . . . in my eyes held worth, value, esteem, and underneath all that my heart held love for her. She meant something to me. 

I hadn't seen her in a long time. I crossed over the room. She was crossing towards me. I wound my way through the mass. She did the same. Our eyes met. Soon we were face to face. I immediately leaned in to give her a hug. She looked surprised to see me. It felt good to be in the presence of an old friend, someone I had lots of good memories with. I couldn't wait to hug her. That was the moment everything changed. I reached in. It was in wake of the hug a sudden awkwardness took hold. It was quick and a little bit fleeting, but it was there and I could feel it. It was being communicated in her way of being. And it soon told me the value I placed in her was not equal in her regards to me. It was then I realized, she had crossed over the room to see the person I was standing next to. She hadn't come the distance to see me at all, I had just gotten in the way and I knew it without a single word having been said. When she issued her half hearted greeting and abruptly turned her back on me, I knew exactly where I stood. No words were needed.

Now at this point you might think my mind was just having a bad day and I conjured it all up in my head. I however had Deserey standing by my side, another set of eyes, another impressionistic heart. Immediately when we walked away from the whole experience, Deserey turned to me and was aghast. She looked at me and questioned, "That's your friend? How rude. Some friend mom!" I had no words to reconcile what she had observed. She had been rude. And I was hurt. 

I have found in life that money always plays a role in how people value one another. Our critiquing, our judging, our summations, they are all tainted by a temptation to combine money with worth. If you don't think money plays a role in how we sum up people, place importance on them and how it plays out in our treatment of them you are living in denial. Even when we don't think we're guilty of doing it, we do it. Everyone. And we can judge wrongly in how we look up or down in the presence of it. We judge wrongly when people have too much. We judge wrongly when people have too little. Even the best people on earth see money or the lack there of and respond ever so slightly. Watching this encounter unfold filled me with a million questions.

As I left the room I knew money had played a role. I knew money had changed my friend. And as I walked away I had to ask myself why? See here I am making my judgements. Does money make people less sensitive to those who have less? Does it makes us more critical of those who have more? Does it always have to alter and shape our perceptions? Does it always have to get in the way?

I left the crowd and Deserey and I made our way down the long corridor. I've had a few rough days lately and I must admit I felt hurt and devalued by it all. As I walked out the door and turned onto the street, a cold bitter wind hit me hard. I felt it on the inside and the out. I could feel the sting all the way to my car.  

 The Second Experience:

The day had been a rough one. I had other encounters that told me my value. I'm theatrical, dramatic, intense and I feel things to a debilitating degree. I am super sensitive to all colors of emotion, feelings, and overpowering thoughts. I also have a glass window in which I can see things in people others don't readily observe. I don't know if it's a gift or a curse, but I can see the unseeable easily in people and their interactive human workings. Calmness feels just out of reach some days. Everything seems to rush into me at high tide and if it ever gets the chance to enter calmly it still produces feelings inside me that are overwhelming. Sometimes within me it produces good, even great, most of the time it just gets me into trouble or leaves me feeling troubled and bereaved. My soul however seems to have a set of eyes some people don't have. Maybe it's my upbringing and how I was taught to read between every line. Lately I've been tortured by it. 

Most people are unaware that I have worked my whole life to try and reshape three quarters of my inner self and how I think. I have a library full of self help books. At points in my life I have actually felt like I was making progress. This is not one of those points. All my life I have worked hard on the very core of me. Lately I think I feel like I'm slipping backwards. I'm starting to think the older I grow, the worse I'm getting. And on this particular day, having already had a few bad experiences, my thoughts and my emotions were driving me towards a desire to pull up a parking spot right next to my mom. At some points during the day I just wanted someone to throw me in a pine box and throw sod on me.

"Life is hard and then you die." I say that a lot lately. And sometimes I wonder if my way of being doesn't make it harder. Sometimes I think God put a button in me and turned it all the way up. Sometimes I think my trial in this life is locating it and figuring out how to turn it down, maybe even off. I always feel overwhelmed in trying to overcome myself. Sometimes I would like to be one of those people who 'think" they have nothing to work on. Some people don't analyze themselves ever. And they certainly don't criticize themselves the way I do, or so I think. Some people go through life never looking inward for that which needs improvement. I know because I encounter them often. 

You might read my blog and think you know a lot about me. You might know me and think that you know a lot about me, or, you might not know me and think you do. Hell, you might know me and wish you didn't. What ever the case, you know nothing. And feel free to judge away! I'm an expert at dealing with harsh judgments. I think it's safe to say, you'll be wrong. We are so often wrong when we judge. I'd say about 100 percent of the time. I'm saying 100 to be safe. 

On the inside of my frame, in the back of my exterior somewhere there is a constant war going on. Yes it's very real. Take any person who knows me better than they know themselves and there is a part of me they still don't know or even understand. And I wrestle with it. I wrestle with this part of myself often. Perhaps it's that way with each and everyone of us. Struggling is very personal. And often we don't see it in each other.

I'm sorry my thoughts are being dispersed with no direction. There's just so much evasive thought whirling around in me. And I've been in a bit of a vile mood. So as you can see, it was on a day of waring with myself and all that was taking place that I started to feel worn right down, thread bare if you will. It was a day I wished I hadn't gotten out of bed. It was during the onset of feeling like a complete and udder failure that my phone rang and the second experience took place. 

The voice on the other end again took me by surprise, but the feelings in my heart rose up the same way they did during the first experience when I suffered my ill encounter with my so called friend. It was a voice I hadn't heard in eons. The minute I recognized that familiar voice on the other end, good things started to take shape and my day immediately brightened.

As I said, "Hello." There was friendly audible noise on the other end of the spectrum. I recognized the warmth and the joy of her friendly tones that flowed through the line. I felt a light come through the wire. This person has always been kind and generous in her heart with me. She's a positive soul, always happy and always complimentary. Immediately when I heard her charm and wit on the other end of space I was happy I answered the call. She had some questions for me and we talked for a bit and I found myself rising out of my murky disposition. Just before she hung up the phone she stopped. The conversation turned abruptly from being light to serious.

"Faye," she said now in a more direct tone. I just have to tell you how much I appreciate your blog." 

In response, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I had to balance myself on my chair. The minute she said the word blog my mind tried to replay her exact sentence. 

"Huh?" I said in a stupefied spacy voice.

She went on to tell  me about her relationship with her mom, and some of the things she had longed for but knew she would never have. She told me how disappointing it was. She told me some things about her parents and some of the strife they were traveling through. She mentioned an impending divorce and her sorrow in it. At the end of her conversation she went into detail about what reading my blog does for her, what it means to her, how it touches her. Her words were honest, sincere, and the spirit attended their meaning. Her words were kind, generous, personal and moved me in a way she will never know. I hope she's reading this sometime soon because on a day when I was feeling like I resided at the bottom of the dog pile, she didn't even know she was extending a hand to me, pulling me out from under my mental debris, gently lifting me back to a happier place. To her the compliment was a little thing. To me however, it was enormous. 

I want to stop right here and tell her thanks, I want to hug her and tell her she's wonderful for being generous with her compliments on a day I was feeling pretty low, I want to thank her for doing a little rescuing.

When it comes to my blog I have felt like giving up a million times. Always when I think I'm done with posting and writing,  someone, somewhere tells me in someway that I have changed their day, improved their mental outlook, bolstered them up and given them a feeling of worth. That one single word of encouragement keeps me here. I am always thankful for those who are generous with me.

I also find it interesting at how people who are having serious struggles in their life find their way here. A month ago I had an individual who I know well enough write to me telling me of how her husband is out of the home and the struggles she faces everyday being alone with her children.  She finds comfort here with the Crows. I'm glad. 

I am constantly reminded, all of us face our own mountains or maybe what seems like a mountain to us. We all cross up and over differently, with different people, different kinds of relationships and different struggles along the way. If I can ever give a helping hand in the crossing, I pray I'm able to see it and do so. It is so much easier to travel through life with a kind forgiving friend, someone who loves us just the way we are in spite of ourselves.   

Now I look back at both of those experiences on that trying day and ask myself where am I in the struggle?

All of us in this life are traveling through our own personal experiences. I don't know about you, but for me some of these experiences are really tough. I'm wimpy, so some feel monumentally hard. We are all travelers though. We are all different and unique in when and how we find our way. We are all headed in different directions yet often the same. We all have stressful trials and we all handle them differently. And even though we all travel through these experiences in life in our own unique individual ways, I think to a great degree we all seek the same destination, somewhat of the same outcome and I also think we wait and hope for those around us to help us in our journey. Who doesn't want a friend to cross through life with. Someone to be there with us through thick and thin, someone to go the distance with us.  

I don't know about you, but I want to feel needed, appreciated, honestly loved, valued and I want to feel worth. I want to travel with people who see the best in me. I want the benifit of the doubt. I want generosity. 

We all seek to have our needs met. We all hope there will be loving souls surrounding us to meet those needs. We all seek to 'get'. Sometimes however we are so busy focusing on the getting that we forget to 'give.'  I know I do this repetitively. I get so caught up in myself that I forget to see what's around me. I also know I live and associate with people who expect me to give generously while they are stingy.  I also have relationships with those who continually give and never take. And as I try to make my way through all of this I have two staggering questions. 

Why is it we can't see anyone but ourselves?

And . . .

Why is it we can't see ourselves?

There is a lot of pondering to be done on those two questions. how we can see nothing but ourselves so often and yet so often there are parts of ourselves we can't see. I really think in there lies all of life's frustrations.

Tonight I'm tired. I'm tired of people who judge. I'm tired of stingy hearted souls. I'm tired of people who would rather die than give an honest generous compliment. Why is it always the people who are closest to you are often the most stingy? I've even seen people who would compliment one in order to hurt another. What's in your heart always comes out. My favorite quote by Terry C. Warner, "Your face tells the truth while your lips lie." There is not a more profound statement. I'm also tired of people who expect much in me but little in themselves, who see stinginess in me but rarely see it in themselves. Maybe tonight I just miss my mother. I know I wish I would have been more complimentary and more unselfish with her. All of this makes me look inward. Tomorrow I'll wish I hadn't written this. 

My thoughts take me to a small conclusion in all of this ruminating and rambling. That in my hope and desire to feel valued and loved, I must work to give more of what I hope to gain. And to take my focus that often points inward and turn it outward. I am reminded tonight to center my sights on the joy of giving rather than the need of getting. I must come to see and value that above all else. I really know deep inside when we struggle the best thing we can do is get out and help someone in need. It is when we stop focusing on ourselves and focus on others that our problems seem to shrink in size. 

It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to forget one's self and be more in tune with the needs of those around us. 

Well it is the essence of Christmas ---the giving. And I'm glad while traveling through a little turmoil this past week that I've been reminded of it. It is better to give than to receive and tomorrow is a new day fresh with no mistakes in it, a chance to apply what I've learned and become a reflection of what I hope to see in others.

I stop there.