All the things she said, all the things she said, running through my head, running through my head...

Hello, beautiful souls!  Today is a wonderful day.  The sun is shining, I slept in until almost one o'clock in the afternoon, and I only got one question wrong on my assessment at work last night.  I'm feeling good.

On Friday, I went with Tristan's class to Frederick Meijer Gardens for their field trip.  Tristan was so happy to see me and I was so grateful for a chance to spend the day with him and his class.  It was my first time there also, so it was a lot of fun to walk through the sculpture park and the gardens.  I posted pictures of him on Facebook and nobody "liked" them.  I feel like the current lesson I am learning is living my life and walk my path for the right reasons, not in search of approval from others.  To have the strength to continue toward my goals even when I feel lacking support from those in my environment.  The thing that bothers me is that Tristan lives with Blair and Rachel, as I have mentioned before.  When Rachel, his aunt, posts a picture of Tristan, my son, it gets like 37 likes.  Most of those likes are from people in my family, people who are also MY friends on Facebook.  Yet when I, his mother, post a picture of my own son...none of those people click like.  It's almost like everyone wants to be in denial of the fact that I am his mother, and they hope that by not acknowledging that fact, it will cease to be true and someday magically if they all pretend hard enough, Rachel will be his mother and I will never have been.

It's hurtful.  I brought it up in counseling and Suzanne was very reassuring by telling me that Tristan does know who his mother is, he is never going to forget, and as long as I am involved in his life and trying he is not going to look back at this phase in his life as a time that I abandoned him.  I know Rachel wishes that as time passes, his bond with me will dissolve and he'll build a mother-child bond with her, but it will never happen.  Why does that upset me, then?  It should be enough to know that regardless of what everyone else seems to want, I am and always will be his mother and he knows and never will forget that is true.  I think most of my hurt in this situation is not from a fear that my son will forget me.  It is from a sense of betrayal by the people who claimed to love me in that they WANT him to forget me.  It breaks my heart that people in my family are so blind to how all of this is making me feel.  It's almost like they think because of all the mistakes I have made that I have no heart and am not actually a real person anymore.  

Since this is my blog and I can say whatever the hell I want, I'm just going to go ahead and say it.  I play dumb, but I can see what's going on here.  It's not hard to recognize.  Why am I drawn to relationships with controlling men?  Look how my family has always tried, and continues to try, to control my life.  My own mother has even told me I'm not capable of making decisions.  If you hear that long enough, inevitably you'll start to believe it and soon enough you'll be living in a way that supports that belief.  I used to hate my mother for this, but I'm trying to live in a compassionate way.  I try to believe that we are all doing the best we know how to do, and that includes my mother.

I think about my car accident, and how it must have felt for her to get the call that her child was in the hospital and later to receive the news that I would likely die.  Putting myself in her shoes, I can't imagine the agony of thinking I would lose one of my children.  How, then, would I act if that happened and miraculously the child survived?  Can't I understand how she may have been driven to interfere in every decision, to keep me in a bubble and protect me from all hurt?  Can I not relate to that fear?  I can.  Even before that, when my parents made what I view now as mistakes -- they weren't aware that they were mistakes.  Their motivation was love.  Their intention was to protect me.  They were doing the best they could.

So I release all the anger and resentment I have against my controlling manipulative family.  I understand that in their own twisted way, they believe they are making good decisions.  I know that they love me yet I am frustrated to also recognize that they are completely blind.  They don't understand me and it's because my path is so radically different from theirs and unfamiliar to them that all they can do is make guesses about my thoughts, feelings, and motivations.  Sadly their guesses are wildly inaccurate, but I have no way to help them understand me.  We all do it, we all judge people, and we all think we know what we are talking about -- until we later find ourselves in the shoes of those we judged.  Only then do we realize how wrong we were.

In that way, I am thankful to have been in so many challenging positions.  I have gone through many trials and tribulations, but it has allowed me to understand the perspective of many that I previously judged.  I am so much more compassionate and wise than I used to be, and life has been my greatest teacher.  

What I was going to write about was loneliness, but as usual I went on a huge tangent.  I was reading an article on Elephant Journal about how loneliness relates to Buddhism, and it was kind of an "aha" moment for me.  I believe that I have more of a monk-like destiny this lifetime, and the article I read explains perfectly the feelings I have as they relate to my Buddha-like quest for enlightenment.  What I said in my last entry was true in more ways than I realized at the time.  For me, relationships always HAVE been just an escape or distraction from the loneliness I feel.  We always think that loneliness is a problem and partnership is the solution.  This explains my previous constant preoccupation with drugs, infatuation, alcohol, serial dating, even internet addiction -- anything to keep me busy enough to forget the emptiness inside.  But the emptiness must be embraced.  

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2009/02/chogyam-trungpa-rinpoche-pema-chodron-the-buddhist-view-of-loneliness-as-a-good-thing/

"...I was amazed that in the Buddhist view the feeling of loneliness is identified as the feeling of Buddha Nature. In other words, loneliness is not a lacking of something, but rather the aching fulfillment of our open, raw, caring nature."

"Trungpa Rinpoche:...I don’t think anybody can fall in love unless they feel lonely. People can’t fall in love unless they know they are lonely and are separate individuals...So I think in love it is the desolateness that inspires the warmth. The more you feel a sense of desolation, the more warmth you feel at the same time. You can’t feel the warmth of the house unless it’s cold outside. The colder it is outside, the cozier it is at home."

"As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity. To the degree that we’ve been avoiding uncertainty, we’re naturally going to have withdrawal symptoms—withdrawal from always thinking that there’s a problem and that someone, somewhere, needs to fix it."

"The middle way is wide open, but it’s tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or the left. We don’t want to sit and feel what we feel. We don’t want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me."

This entry is ridiculously long.  I wanted to talk about my girlfriend, which is actually a woman who is married and lives pretty far away so it is easy for me to keep her at arm's length while I live a single life yet experience companionship and intimacy at fairly regular intervals.  I am beginning already to have second thoughts about her and I feel like, while I like her, becoming emotionally invested in this relationship is just a straight shot to heartache.  Her husband knows and is fine with her having a girlfriend, but what about me?  I have to wonder what subconsciously draws me to people who are emotionally unavailable.  Her mother gave up on her as a child and she was taken from her home at a young age, shuffled around from foster home to foster home, and finally adopted at age eight by an adoptive mother who didn't care about her either.  So I haven't escaped my propensity for hooking up with people who have "mommy issues".  Is it my nurturing sense that wants to just love them and take care of them and heal all the pain by giving them all the love their mother never did?  I already know from N that it isn't possible.  Nothing I can do can fix these people.  I can't help them.  So why do I attract them?