I spent almost 3 hours talking with bio dad yesterday.
He can’t, or won't, I don’t know, help me with any money, he says. Something about his partners family borrowing money and not paying it back. I don’t know what to believe, but I guess at this point I don’t really get an option.
At least I got to vent about my current situation and it wasn’t to my crazy roommates or my fragile partner. He has no clue what life is like these days, in his little bubble of retirement, and his new family with new kids. He lives in another country where the dollar goes further, and is living in his new home, one he built himself(with the help of skilled laborers). It’s made out of adobe, with underground piped heating, a brick oven(and a normal one), a master bedroom, two rooms for his kids, and a guest room. It has an atrium with a plexi roof, and a two-car garage. He built a 10 ft concrete wall, complete with broken glass stuck into the top, and a metal gate, with a small door in it to walk through. He has a garden, with all his favorite vegetables. He gets invited to be Santa clause for a local politician(he has a belly). He has dogs he has trained to not eat food from strangers.
I don’t know how not to question his answer to my request for help. Does he believe I’m untrustworthy with this money? Is he just still depressed and afraid and really believes he doesn’t have enough to help even though he really does?
Why did he move to another country and blow all his money on his own retirement plan when he had a whole other family left behind?
I’m stuck here, married and unemployed, waiting for all the pots I’ve stirred to produce, wondering how I ended up here. Some part of me knows I brought myself here through a series of choices, permanently and causally linked. Some other part of me still feels like a conspiracy is afoot. I am torn between giving up this long-held battle against my great God or universe, or holding on to my victim hood and waiting for a savior to swoop in and take care of all my problems for me.
I think about the signs I have been receiving for the past several weeks, signs that keep indicating that I am about to receive help, and it always makes me wonder - are the cards talking about a change in my perception of what help is, or is it real, in the 3rd dimension help? How am I supposed to know?
I feel discouraged, lost, floating down a river with nothing to steer myself with.
And I feel like I’m out of options. I want to “give up,” but I know there is still something good coming my way. I know I just need to hang on a little longer.
At this point, I’m reminded of a few things that help me :
1. Trust your gut. When I say gut, I mean instinct. When I say instinct I mean intuition. When I say intuition I mean the voice that you listen to that usually helps you make decisions. For people like me, your voice has been ignored and belittled for so long that your “instinct” is really just a mislabeled conscious self. You make decisions thinking it’s intuition, but it’s really just weighing evidence and choosing the least fear-inducing option. This is not intuition. The closest thing to intuition I have on an instinctual level is what happens when I cook, play music, or make things with my hands. If you have nothing similar that hones this intuition on any level, FIND SOMETHING. This is the thing that will convince you that you actually know what’s best for yourself, because you will finally realize that you can be infinitely creative and infinitely wise in that creation process. Learn to trust your ability to manifest something you visualized in your life, even if you think, “it’s just art.”
2. Let go of your judgement of what you think will happen. Now, pay careful attention to what I said there. Don’t focus on the second half yet. This is about judgement. Let go of the judgements you have about what you think could potentially happen. When you believe something is bad for you, that is a judgement. Go back and literally write down things that you believe were bad for you in your past, and then force yourself to write at least 2 things that happened after it that were good for you that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. This gets easy quick. Once you realize that you have no idea and no way of knowing what will be good or bad for you, you’ll realize that holding judgements about potential events is ridiculous and speculative at best. You’re here now, you’ve survived, and you’re the better for every “bad” thing that happened to you. I suggest even trying this in the moment when you feel something “bad” has happened, to write down what you think you could actually benefit from in the situation.
3. Let go of the “bad” thing you think will happen, and, if you must focus on something not in the present moment, focus instead on the “best” possible outcome. Anything else is a waste of your brains energy. Consider this : choose one of the most recent decisions you made. Look back at the options you had. Did you consider every option available? Seriously, did you consider EVERY option? There are millions of options. Coffee vs tea vs water vs soda vs wine vs beer vs turpentine etc etc. You will typically have hundreds of options at every point in your life, and you will usually only think about the options that are right in front of you, or maybe at the most the ones you have already tried, or maybe that thing you read about while bored on your phone at the dmv that one time. Heck, it could work, who knows?
That being said, every time you focus on that one negative potential outcome, you line yourself up emotionally to make decisions that tend to attract what you don’t like. You stress about finding a job, you snap at the front desk lady when she asks you to wait longer or complete a form you already completed, etc, she tells the manager, you don’t get a job. Oversimplified example, but you get the idea. If you believe there is the best fit job for you out there, and it’s only a matter of time, and you’re not worried about it, you’ll be open to every considerable way it could find you. Wasting time no longer becomes a focus. Meeting people for fun no longer makes you feel guilty. Getting work that just “pays the bills,” loses its shiny appeal, and you begin to see that larger picture. What do I actually enjoy doing, regardless of any aspects that others might find unappealing or detracting? Yes, getting a job that pays the bills might be immediately important, but you’ll begin to understand why sacrificing that extra hour or that extra night out could end up being the difference between keeping the job you’re feeling safe with, and getting the job you know you would love. When you remain open to the best thing happening, the present moment starts looking pretty good, pretty tolerable, pretty fun. When you believe that every choice in front of you could take you there, you’ll start to believe that picking the one that’s fun for YOU is the smartest and most efficient thing you could do.