The beginning of the end of Jon

Death. A Thousand times. But in a good way.

[thotknectar-blog]

You put your right foot in

I’m here to say you have a choice. There are so many ways we can get caught up in what everyone else feels and says and does as a reaction to the things going on around them. For those coming from a childhood or event that was traumatic, we’ve learned that mimicking or patterning our behaviors after those around us/over us helped us survive and make it to the next day. But it won’t work this time. This is one of those things that rarely happens where it’s time to look at how you feel, what you want to say, how you want to do things from now on. There are no substitutes for your unique life purpose, and no one else will be able to care/nourish/support/dream/desire/plan for you like you can! You own yourself and you own the best set of tools and desires that enable you to take action from this day forward. There are no more “easy way”s and there are no “sure bets,” so you need to take control of how your life runs if you want something “out there” to change. Get involved in the process or behaviors of your daily life if you’re unhappy with anything. 

But most importantly, DON’T get involved in other’s process or behaviors. Out of respect for your own purpose and your own unique perspective, recognize that not everyone will find your dreams relevant. These people won’t be ready and may never be ready to listen to what you have to say or participate in what you have planned. Don’t worry about it, keep going, find someone else, go somewhere else. Be smart about it though, do your research, follow your gut, help others find their own way if you must, but just START.

[thotknectar-blog]

Oh, you mean like this

The last few weeks it has been raining almost non-stop. While it’s great for this area, because of how little rain we’ve had for the past several years, it’s slowing down my short term cash flow before my job starts. So I’m working with what I’m able to move at the moment, which is online! My long awaited success at the job hunt has given me a nice boost of confidence, and even allowed me to consider reaching for a few jobs I probably wouldn’t have considered before. The last few days have been hard though. I have been dreading going back to work and wasn’t really conscious of it. I keep thinking that now that I’m starting back into this full-time schedule, I won’t have all this time to learn and prepare and study all the things I know I want to be doing long term. I keep thinking, “Where will all my time go?” I wonder how it will all pan out, now that I have options taking me away from the schedule I currently have. Today I’m thinking of confronting this dread, with the thought that while I don’t know how it will pan out, it will inevitably pan out in the way that will challenge me and open my eyes to a way I hadn’t thought of before. I will no doubt try something new because I won’t have dealt with this experience in the past, and trying something new is ALWAYS good. I will also learn something more about how I work and who I am as a result of this process, which is also ALWAYS good. I have felt so much resentment towards working ever since I left my parents home(more than 10 years) and I believe it was mostly directed at my parents as a result of how I was raised and how my life changed after I left. Work was always given to us as a necessity - drudgery - that thing you do to get to the next thing. The problem for me was that I never thought about that “next thing” and just ended up hopping from job to job never looking for a job I might like, always taking the job I could get, and never working that hard because I knew it wasn’t that important. Sounds like I was a crappy worker, right? Yeah, I’ve only ever received one pay raise, and that was in an office job where I was just typing really fast, so it was easy to show off. To be fair, I was drinking and showing up hungover, with 4 hours of sleep and wrinkly(and probably slightly stinky) clothing, so the raise wasn’t much. But the truth is, work isn’t about drudgery or “working towards something.” Yes, there are certain jobs that you feel you must take in order to make ends meet in the meantime, but apart from that it really shouldn’t be more than one or two jobs before you’re on your way to your true purpose. I don’t mean to say that you’re ‘weird’ if you’ve tried a few different jobs in the same field, I mean if you’ve done what I did(hopping to whatever job took you until you lost interest or got laid off during a slow season) then you should be spending your time off work SERIOUSLY studying yourself and the things you’re passionate about doing for others. It should be something you COULD do for free every day and not care about getting paid for it. It should be something that YOU feel is right, not something you “should” be doing because it’s righteous to the people in your family or your core social group. If you have a wild guess as to what it might be, DO IT. Don’t think about it, don’t rationalize why you want to. Make a plan to start learning it(if you don’t know it) study the market and where you can put yourself with good leverage, and design yourself a place where you can begin IMMEDIATELY. No excuses, no “I don’t have the money/time/resources/skills/etc.” If you can write about it, read about it, talk about it with others, make a model of it out of paper, just start. Save a dollar a month if that’s all you can spare. Sell the DVDs you don’t watch any more on Ebay and use that to buy the materials you need or a book on how to etc etc. If you get to a point where you feel like it’s not what you’re supposed to be doing, take a good hour and ask yourself this : Did I lose interest? Or am I just out of ideas? Write your response to BOTH questions, and weight your options. THEN MOVE FORWARD. Pick something else, or start talking to your guides, your mentors, the angels in your life(in the 3d world or 5d, your call). When you show up to work, you can make it through and you can give more. When you know that you’re working towards doing what you really love, you become an unlimited fountain of awesome kickass neverending bullish creativity that you can use to turn any situation into a good opportunity to grow and help others. You’ll learn that everybody winning means you’ve won, and blame shifting and competition disappear into the foreground, while creating value and connections with others becomes the focus. People will respond to this, and naturally just want to support you doing it. Anyways, that’s my rant, I got all pumped up!! Hope you enjoy.

[thotknectar-blog]

Tombstone Talk

As I’m getting further and further into investing my time in building myself up(it takes time and routine building and LOADS of positive self-talk), I’m seeing some immediate rewards and it’s been great. It leads me to really question, however, how letting out a lot of my feelings towards bio-dad on this blog is creating value for others. I’m not saying its wrong for anyone else, I just mean for me, but I want to begin my posts from now on with the question - Am I helping you with what I’m about to talk about? Am I encouraging you to be the best version of yourself? Or am I pushing that job onto you? I hope I can make it work for you. Today brings me to routines. Routines routines routines. This is what took me SO long to get away from negative self-talk and into building new behaviors and language to help me get out of the “pit of despair.”

Being raised by someone with chronic depression and anxiety puts you in some deep grooves behavior pattern wise, and the fear of changes can really grow anger and resistance to external changes. I have behaviors I’m still working on and still want to creep back in every day. I want my day to be predictable, I want the people in my life to be predicable, I want my experiences with objects to be predicable, etc. 

I learned this from bio dad, who my and my brothers labeled “controlling” instead of passive aggressively manipulative or angry. I learned to tear others down to make them more easily controlled, to get upset and lash out when people change their plans last minute or reveal that they disagree with how I believe they should be acting or living their lives. This is some pretty nasty stuff, and routines make it all happen! I’ve learned routines are about fear of some past experience coming back into the present, and not trusting myself to handle new experiences appropriately and wisely.  That being said, I encourage you to trust yourself. You have made it this far. You will continue to make it. Things will inevitably change, so how can you stop it from happening? Might as well jump in before it starts to hurt. Try something new today and don’t hate on yourself if it’s hard or if you forget sometimes. Just encourage yourself to commit to change. Encourage yourself by believing that you are really a good person inside and that you have what it takes to make others happy and to make yourself happy at the same time. You can have others and have yourself at the same time!

Love

[thotknectar-blog]

Another Dollar

The issue is this : How much time did you spend thinking about how our minds were developing as kids? To my bio dad - you decided instead to worry for us, and set conditions on our happiness when you were raising us. Your depression took over your life, and ours. Instead of thinking, “My life has been difficult and I worry obsessively, I’d really like to make sure my kids don’t suffer the same thing” - and then proceeding to GET HELP for it, you decided to teach us to worry obsessively about the same things. You taught us to set conditions on other’s happiness too - a torturous antisocial behavior that pushed us into the corners of society. We left unaware that we were unaware of the weaknesses in our social skills. Now we talk and bulldoze and bore and ignore and put down and patronize and yet the whole time we’re really just afraid and want to be loved. You decided that happiness would be conditional on external circumstances, circumstances you told us were out of our control, and, “Up to God.”(Which is partially true, but completely depends on how that relationship is explained) You decided that you knew best, and rarely admitted that things were your fault, whether or not it was a mistake or intentional. You decided it was best you played the unwavering dictator, maybe to, “give us something to lean on,” but it was more like something to enforce your principles and assimilate others into your grand design. You decided that the parts of you that you didn’t like were not up for review, and that we were the ones who needed to compliment your deficiencies. I see how you try to explain yourself, with your passive tones and feigned sympathy(you might even believe yourself sometimes, you do it so well, I’ve seen it when you cry). But you don’t know what my life is like. You don’t know what it was like with you - because of you. That would require you considering that you might be “wrong”(how hard it is for you to say this word, I swear...) that your experience isn’t always what matters. It would require you to listen to me without your little triggers and mechanisms beginning to buzz and whirr, stringing together your fabrications and your concoctions. It’s all just scripts and memorized gestures and things you read in a book written by some guy who “knows what he’s talking about,” so you’re, “well-researched” and don’t need to explain yourself. This logical world you live in, this “black and white” type world you’ve built for yourself, only seems black and white to you, but it’s gray, just like everyone else’s. There are cases for this, and cases for that, and everyone makes the best decision they can based on the experiences and information they have been given. For some people, the experiences and information empower them to accomplish great things and have an uplifting and healing influence on everyone around them. For others, they have been hurt and slighted and wronged and “broken,” and cannot see that by piling up these things around them, they have blocked out every good thing from reaching them, even the sun. I can’t help but wonder if you are this second one, but that you have tricked me into thinking you were the first. I can’t help you any more. I can’t assure you or confirm your choices or talk about the stupid house you’re building any more. You tricked me. I now have to comb through my childhood and seek out the good things(usually those things I did without you there, which was fortunately quite often) to take with me, so that I can clean up my life and move on. I don’t know that you really expect anything from me any more, because you’ve essentially discarded each of us in your own way, so I think this will work out quietly and neatly.

To anyone out there, just...get help if you can. Asking for help is probably the hardest thing right now, just thinking about how asking for help always got you in trouble. But you deserve help. If you need it, you should be able to ask for it without anyone judging you, looking at you funny, or deciding that something is wrong with you. If you share this with anyone and they treat you this way, just think - maybe they don’t think they’re allowed to ask for it themselves. Maybe they think they’ll get in trouble too. Don’t worry, though, this is your life, and it’s yours to do with what you will. If you have kids, they deserve you getting help to make sure that they are safe and encouraged to be who they want to be without your worries or problems becoming the focus.

[thotknectar-blog]

Welcome! Welcome!

Today I woke up awfully sick and sore and exhausted. Sore throat, headache, brain fog. This all because I decided I had earned some fun time New Years Eve, and that I could do it all on low sleep and poor diet choices. Oh well, lesson learned! Today I want to focus on relaxing and allowing myself to let go of what I had planned for today, since I obviously have a limited supply of energy to get it done with. I am picking ONE thing, instead of the ...50 I had planned or whatever. One thing, that way if all else fails, it was a productive day!

I’m picking several resolutions this year, mostly having to do with skill set development and daily behavior. I’ve borrowed several books on finances and marketing, and I plan on learning some development languages as well as starting some heavier social media content behaviors to grow my personal brand. “It’s all very technical,” I’d like to say, but it seems this is just what people have to do these days to equip themselves for the future that’s coming. No more “hard work,” just “smart” work, whatever that means.

But really, I have been working too hard instead of smart, thinking that everything my parents did to survive still works. My bio dad thought that doing something you didn’t really enjoy to pay the bills was just the way of the world, but that turned out wrong very quickly in my line of work, and now I’m paying for it in my current situation, where I have no skill sets that belong to financially stable markets in today’s world. I’m a “customer service” guy in a world where customer service is probably the least valued work above manual labor. Especially in retail, which is my strongest suit on paper. Anyways, the last few days I’ve been busy(hence the disappearing act) reading and learning, and trying to develop a solid plan for what I want to work on the next few months. Today, however, is more about sharing and coexisting, since I’m low on brain fuel and still don’t have paid work. I encourage you all to take it slow and easy! It’s just Monday, and we’ll have plenty more of those, and this year is bound to have tougher ones than this. After all I read in energy predictions/tarot/horoscopic stuff, 2017 is bound to be bipolar, but it’s more about learning how to still that angry rebellious side that’s excited to come out, now that we’re listening to ourselves again. Anger is great for fueling internal motivation, but if not used properly, external conflict gets messy very quickly. Learn to breathe through it and realize not everyone has lived the life you were given. Your life is a gift, and so are the experiences that come with it. As such, not everyone will see it from your point of view, and not everyone will appreciate it either. Just think about how your anger can be best used, in more of a strategic sense. If that makes any sense, haha. Have a good day :)

[thotknectar-blog]

There is only space

So many days now have passed. I live quietly in the mornings, tiptoeing and listening to soft things with headphones. The place I live in sleeps in late. I thought I knew you again, thought I had finally figured out where this all came from. I thought you were getting better, or maybe you were at least trying. Now I realized I was just eager to let down my guard. Eager to love freely and trust again. Eager to sleep soundly and have a big appetite. Eager to let it all go - at least I had something to go off, someone in my family that isn’t “out to get me.”

Now I know I must carry on looking. The family is not always who you were born to. The family is not always material or physical, either. For the moment, I keep my eyes open, searching at the edges of hills and valleys for a pinch of light - a squeak of life to hope for. I know you are out there, searching for me, waiting for your child to arrive. Waiting to love and to give freely. I see you now, preparing your guest room, washing your linens and picking beautiful things to put in your home. You sigh. I sigh, but from over here. Soon.

I was given The Magician today. I must stay true to what I believe. I must question my motivations, and watch my mouth to be sure I am not faking it or even faking myself out, or saying words I do not truly believe. I should consider my hidden positive intentions behind anything I am resistant to. I need to dig deep and strip away everything that doesn’t help me accomplish my dreams. And I need to clarify what those dreams are. Be careful of opening my mouth to disagree, judge, put down the dreams of others, or to be forceful and oppressive with my viewpoint. Today will be a good day to bring into being that which I know will come. I need to also be grateful for what I already have, to make use of the gifts, skills and resources currently available to me. I have everything I need to get started. The new year is coming, and I will be free to leave the country after this coming year is over. I will have everything I need to leave everything behind. I will fuel my body with what is good, and surround myself with beautiful images and things that remind me of who I am. I will leave behind old coping mechanisms and learn to give to others happily and freely from an unlimited source, safe and secure. I will stretch and exercise my body to give it the attention it needs every day. I will spend every day focusing on growing in some small but meaningful way, and always with love and forgiveness. I will see others and hear others and give to others as if they were not “others,” but were in fact mirrors of my inner world, reflections of my own infinite nature. I will share who I am without shame or guilt, and I will love myself for taking a risk even if it means sometimes getting hurt. Have a good day! :)

[thotknectar-blog]

I bought the farm

Today I wait for the call to start things rolling.

I’m signed up with a few temp agencies, but this most recent one promises to deliver sometime this week, and I guess I have no choice but to be ready every morning.

I woke up a little later than I wanted to, since when my alarm went off at 6:20 it was still dark outside. I wondered, “when does that sun actually come out during the winter?” and went back to sleep for another 40 minutes. I had a dream during those 40 minutes. I was buying party favors for a group of friends(friends I don’t know in real life). I went to a storefront to buy them, and when I attempted to sweeten the deal by negotiating the price on one of the three items I was buying, the store manager told me, “can’t always win.” So I walked out, disgusted by the owners’ attempt to bully me. On my way out I heard him say, “wait, wait, wait!” but it was too late. I was too pissed to turn back. When I passed the place my friends were at they were gone. I woke up.

I’d say something about that dream tells me either I’m a hothead, or I’m about to walk into a situation where someone wants to bully me because they feel safe, comfortable, or even powerful with where they’re at. I may need to stand up for what I want, even if it means losing something I want in the short term.

Or it could be a warning not to? Who knows.

Sometimes, dreams are pointing out my “tapes” or “triggers” from my abuse from bio dad. I sat and thought about the dream a little and realized lately I’ve been holding onto a lot of anger about how my bio dad held so many conditions over me in order to make me feel like I made him happy or like he loved me. I’m realizing it’s why I left! I feel a little crazy now, especially since a week ago I was happy to have finally regained a sense of family. Now I’m starting to question where my bio dad is on the spectrum(npd, not autism, although he might actually have some autism, too, almost everyone shares these days, myself included.) I left the house to get away from all his little rules and requests. He took in his mother when she developed alzheimers, even though the only time he could help was when he arrived home from teaching around 3-6pm. It wasn’t even his idea, ironically, because his new wife told him (I’m summing up) that he had skewed family values if he thought he could just leave his mom in a retirement home to die. She even volunteered to do most of the work, and they volunteered my brother and I to fill in the gaps. We’d get home from school, and have a 70+ year old to sometimes shower, make a meal, prep for bedtime, and supervise whenever they had other commitments. AKA PARENTIFICATION. We were minors, and he didn’t even ask us if we felt up to the task, or even if we felt weird having a 5th person in the house. I know you probably think I’m heartless(my own grandma!?) but you try taking care of someone with alzheimers when you know there’s nothing left rattling around in that head of theirs, and you’re just watching them mope around and get more and more sad and bitter. Anyways, as soon as I had a good enough paying job, I split. I stopped coming around as much as I could manage, and they hooked me in with my stepmoms homemade mexican food. I didn’t realize until later, when my grandmother passed and they inherited some large sum of money and wrote me a check for that help, that they knew that they had made a mistake. He never apologized, but just thanked me with $2000. I’m starting to see parallels and themes regroup and rally as I go back through these scenes in my life. My bio dad wrote me a facebook message the day after christmas(he couldn’t be bothered to call or message on the day of) telling me he essentially knew that me and my partner are in a dark time, but that he and his wife were praying for us to make it. “to make it”??? WTF? He sent me a christian book that he barely remembered from his failed marriage, trying to feebly recall what it talked about, and then amazon’d me a used copy of it for christmas. Great book! Actually pretty good. But not enough. Still again, I’m sitting here trying not to beat myself up again for having fallen for his bullshit trick of making me feel like he really is honest and understanding and that he’s changed. He hasn’t. It would be different if he actually apologized, but he didn’t. He talked about what he did when I brought it up, but didn’t apologize or communicate how he was going to do better or make amends. Instead he told me there was nothing he could do to help us, prayed for me over the phone, and said he would call later. I must remember that it is only natural for a child to feel a desire to be loved and cared for by their parents. It is only natural for me to want to have connection and a relationship with that parent, despite any wrongdoings. It is a natural desire. I did nothing wrong by wanting to repair this relationship. I did nothing wrong by withholding my own resentment and anger when I spoke with him in an effort to elicit a truthful and heartfelt apology. Now that I see he had no intention to change how he treats me, I must remember that I cannot hold contempt for myself for having trusted him enough to speak with him again. I love myself for trying and giving him another chance. I love myself for having honestly and patiently tried to hold a conversation with him without resorting to name calling, blaming, or guilt tripping. I told it like it is, and I told it with love, and he turned away from it, and tried to escape the shame by making excuses for his behavior.

The ball is in your court now, bio dad. I’ve pushed it around long enough. For those familiar or close to anyone with NPD, “It’s grey rock time.” If it gets worse, it’s no contact. Again. Don’t forget to show yourself love for having given someone a chance. Don’t beat yourself up!

[thotknectar-blog]

Sounds like...

I’ve been thinking about writing music lately. I was obsessed with playing ever since I saw my brother pick up a guitar. He was a grunge kid, and I could get into grunge, but I could definitely get into rock, and folk, and classical. Since I wasn’t allowed to touch any of my brothers things, I never got a chance to play on the guitar unless he was completely out of the house for a good length of time, which was rare. I’d have to avoid being notice by every one else in the house, too, which was even more difficult. I’d sneak in and lift this heavy fender guitar and try to make sounds out of it, but it was always so quiet, and so twangy(he used slinkies). I was interested in getting my own, but I didn’t get an allowance and my bio dad could never see giving me something like that.

I held onto that passion with difficulty, until in the 7th(or 8th?) grade I asked my bio dad for piano lessons, and told him it was to help play in church(it was the only way I knew he would find it a worthy investment). I spoke with the current member of the worship team, and was referred to his teacher. He bought the cheapest keyboard meeting the minimum requirements my teacher requested. He paid for 3 months of lessons, which he ended without notice because he found out I was disobeying my teacher and learning songs beyond my practiced level(reasonable to a point, but fucked up to think I still wanted to learn to read music, and was still willing to attend, etc). So I took piano classes the next year at highschool as my elective course, and began buying cheap used sheet music at vintage and thrift stores. I loved ragtime, and jazz, and classical, and I loved radiohead, and coldplay, and switchfoot. My stepmoms guitar was a classical, and I borrowed it all the time(because she never used it) to learn music from the youth group music leader. One day at my bio moms house, I was casually playing in their back yard when their neighbor asked my stepdad if I was interested in a beater steel string. He handed it over the fence, and asked for nothing in return.

I fell in love with it and cleaned it and repaired it. My bio dad (once again) did the bare minimum in paying for the associated costs, and let me use the case for my stepmoms guitar to carry it to youth group. It had a double pick guard with hummingbirds and flowers, and a glued on bridge from some previous damage.

I learned how to read the notes, but not the rhythms, so I would find a recording of the song online to listen to alongside the sheet music to pick out how and how long to play each note. I had a classical music recital at school two years later, and the only compliment my bio dad could scrounge up was that he was impressed at how I could play both hands together so well.

I started playing and picking the music for youth group on weeks the usual leader couldn’t make it or wanted a break. I rearranged pieces and tried to get accompaniment whenever possible, but never got paid or reimbursed for my time, so I never got more equipment. Bio dad never thought that what I was doing would amount to any paid work, but was content with my church involvement enough to allow me to continue, and seemed okay with taking me to youth group for some time, until he got involved with another small group that happened on the same night, and my youth group leader took the opportunity to take me instead, since I helped set up equipment and was able to practice before enough people showed up. I started writing music of my own after I graduated, and when I started playing at open mic nights I got involved with “secular” culture and left the church my bio dad went to about 18 months after I graduated. Songwriting consumed me, and I began to just focus on working to pay bills and make it out to parties and venues to perform my songs.

All that quickly sums up just how involved my family was in my musical background, and after I left a lot happened that I can always post later. What I wanted to share was mostly how much of a dick my bio dad was about encouraging me to pursue the things I obviously was obsessed and committed to. He never supported my interests until at least 6 months had passed and I was still interested in it, and when he did invest any of his time or money, it was the bare minimum to simply keep me content for the time being. He never splurged to surprise me or make me feel like I had surpassed his expectations. He never commented or supported me in ways that made me feel like I had made a good decision or invested myself in something he approved of. It was always “my way or the highway.” And when I say that, I don’t mean that’s a euphemism that I picked. It’s one he said all the time. He said it half-jokingly, as if he did it because “he cared.” I find it ironic, because as I understand it there’s nothing in the bible that tells you to only support your children in things you believe are worthwhile. It doesn’t tell you to only give them support when they’re following all your rules properly. It doesn’t tell you that music and art are bullshit and that your children will be a failure and an embarrassment.

It says love unconditionally. It says do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It says if the birds don’t work or store up food but are still fed, aren’t humans more valuable and wouldn’t that mean you’ll be okay no matter what? I’m not christian by any sense, but I believe there to be truths in that book that christians ignore at any cost to defend their ego and their pride and their own selfish needs.

My bio dad had no faith in his Creator, and didn’t believe in being supplied properly enough to give us what we so obviously needed to feel supported. He didn’t believe that loving unconditionally means to support the people you love regardless of the fact that you disagree with how they decide to make use of your support. He didn’t believe that just using his words to show support to his children was needed no matter how we might experience pain or loss as a result of chasing what we think will make us fulfilled.

He thought he knew best for us, even better than his Creator, and we suffered for it. And I still haven’t received an apology, even though I gracefully and tactfully shared with him my disappointment and how I had chosen to move beyond a state of blame for how I was raised. I call bullshit. I’m going to be successful at anything I want, and I don’t need his support, acknowledgement, encouragement, money, advice, good will, or anything else he can provide to make it happen. I especially don’t intend on giving him any credit for it either. I know that sounds petty but that’s just how I feel right now.

I hope you all have a strong, courageous, abundant, supported, and unconditionally loved life.

I’m gonna go try writing some angry music today.

[thotknectar-blog]

So loud I can’t hear you

We see the world changing before us. There are always new ways of perceiving the daily things we take for granted. Every day the news tells us our lives are improving on one front, while on another,sometimes quietly, ground is lost. We got better internet speeds! But also we lost some rainforest. We found a new superconducting metal! But sourcing the compound is ecologically destructive.

We have new words for things that fill up our experience. Wi-fi, smart phone, tablet, cryptocurrency, things that might not even sound useful to older generations. Meanwhile, as we stretch the boundaries of our understanding of the outside world, our inner world goes quietly on - a hum, a twinkle, a soft and passing sensation.

Our inner world was loud before, it’s just other things found a way to get louder. We have real feelings, real needs to process these new experiences. We see horrors and traumas and abandonment and abuse and hatred and prejudice. We experience it and yet we don’t connect to it(I don’t think we’re even given the time to connect to it emotionally) because it feels distant and quiet. We don’t like being alone because it means it’s quiet enough to hear it all again, but we don’t like being around lots of people because it’s nothing but fakeness and spitting out platitudes and prerecorded messages. “I’m doing great.” We know our insecurities still manage to appear on our faces and in our words because it’s harder to hide when we spend more time in person with larger social groups. But now we don’t have to worry about that, because the internet can keep us looking strong, carrying on, storming through and getting by with ease. This extension of ourselves, this electronic signature, is what we pour our image into, to paint the optimistic scene we prefer others to see, however subtly altered by our unconscious workings, so that we can feel real and substantial. 

We stuff down the delirium, the woozy weakness and fright, down where it becomes that soft and passing sensation. The inner world asks us to just be, to sit quietly and patiently until we can begin to discern. But this “electronic signature” says we’re okay, so we don’t need that, right? We’re pushing on strong, right? So why bother with that stuff, I don’t want to be “oversensitive,” or “overwhelming,” because I see that look on others’ faces when I open up about where I really am. It’s that “whoa,” face, that makes me think everyone else has the same problems, but that it’s an unspoken rule to avoid the topic at all costs.

But it just keeps dragging on, and we wonder when we’ll finally get a chance to rest. When will that perfect job come? When can I take a vacation? When will I actually be able to enjoy that vacation without guilt or shame or just overindulging so hard I come back sick or even more stressed? WHEN DO I GET A BREAK FROM IT ALL?

That voice? That nagging feeling? That’s your inner world. It’s been speaking this whole time, but you keep stuffing it down. It wants what you want. It IS you.

Spend some time turning everything else down. Do it every day, - please - do it just for me if you can’t reason it for yourself. Turn everything else down, so you can hear clearly what you know you’ll actually agree with. You know it’ll make things better. Things will get messy at first, but you’ll feel SO much better. Just give it a chance.

[thotknectar-blog]

The darkest Night

I am so - so glad - that I made it this far. I’m alive, I have a healthy body, I have a bed to sleep in in a house, and I have my partner that believes I will make it yet another day after this one, despite anything I may have done to convince them otherwise.

Today is the shortest day of the year. And it certainly feels like it. Me and my partner have been striving to be as tuned in with the cycle of the moon and the sun, and as a result we have been feeling the sun draw further and further away, and there have been some days that felt quite dark!

Personally, I continue to receive signs to hang on for the good “bounty” that is on its’ way to us, and I can only imagine that from this day forth it will only seem more and more possible.

After today, the suns brightness and closeness will only increase, it’s influence will only grow as each day passes until the summer solstice in the middle of next year. I am excited for this!!! Seriously.

After everything that happened this year, I am seriously ready to see every seed that I have been planting sprout, and every project I have started and worked on to come to completion. It’s important to stay aware and focused on your desires and life purpose throughout the day today, to stay grateful and humble regarding your needs and wants. During this part of the season it’s easy to fall prey to anxiety, despair, hopelessness, fatigue, Feeling surrounded by darkness can make even the most resilient and hopeful of souls feel a sneaking sense of paranoia or fear of losing what they hold dear.

But don’t lose hope! Every choice you made, every place you went, every person you encountered, everything - was good for you. Don’t beat yourself up or second-guess! You are in the right place! You are exactly where you are supposed to be.(After all, if you weren’t, wouldn’t you be somewhere else?)

Today may be a good time to set aside a minimum of 10 or 15 minutes to slowing your heart rate, increasing your awareness of your breathing, and allowing your mind to empty itself of the details of the external world(anything outside the topmost layer of your skin counts). When you find yourself dragged back into stressful things, just accept that it is what it is, and accept how you feel about it, but that you will deal with it after this is over. When you have reached a point of relative calmness and stillness, ask yourself : Where do I want to go from here this coming year? What steps can I commit to taking that will push me to something new and exciting? How can I grow in a way that will bring me closer to my deepest dreams and desires?

When you feel like you have the answers you need, write them down immediately! Then tape them or pin them somewhere you know you will see them EVERY DAY before you leave the house or begin your work. If embarrassed, take a picture of them and set them as your background on your locked screen, or your desktop login screen. It needs to be everyday!

Okay, that being said, give this day some thought. What does it mean to you? What are some ways that you can make this day memorable? How can you engage your senses on these kinds of important days? Maybe an aromatic meal/drink/treat/hike or walk? Maybe a one-on-one hangout with your true love to learn more about each others’ intentions for this coming year?

I myself will start with some time in the side garden, repotting some tomato and hollyhock seedlings I started two weeks ago, so I can have some time getting my hands dirty and connecting with the earth. The rest of the day can unfold as it wants, and I wish you all a sun-filled year!

[thotknectar-blog]

If it were a snake

I posted just a few days ago about Groundhog Day, and just this morning realized that I’ve been stuck in my own little version of it.

It’s been over a month since I got an offer from a company to work, but I have yet to be given a start date. But I let things go, thinking I had done my work and that now I was set. It’s complicated, and I was expecting to get help from my bio dad so hard that I didn’t think to keep stirring other pots just to have the momentum. Now that it’s almost the new year and I still don’t have work, it’s time to look at my behavior and try to make changes so that I can learn from this and move on to a better life.

So, why am I so stuck in this behavior? Every time I have to find work I sabotage hard. Looking for work is just so triggering that every time I get a really good vibe off of one prospect I stop looking, and then when it falls through I take it hard, get depressed, distract myself, or look for someone to bail me out. I have plenty of ways of rationalizing why things fall through or why I still don’t have work, but regardless, finding work isn’t a 1-2 step kind of process, and it’s also not a guaranteed process either. Sometimes, you just don’t match what people are looking for.

So why do I tell myself that I have the job, or that I can count on something coming through for me to where I don’t need to keep looking?

Because putting yourself out there is rough. Because writing a fake resume about your accomplishments only gets you a crappy job that doesn’t fit you, yet when you’re truthful, it can really hurt if someone takes a strong dislike to who you are as a person.

It sounds simple, but it isn’t. Why do this over and over and over again, when it might even be a job you can’t stand? A new job is like dating, except it’s every day, and sometimes you have to just be nice to them because you can’t afford not to until you’ve found another.

It’s easy for me to just let this out, and feel frustrated and angry and use these words to feel like I’ve made a change. It’s something I know about myself and I’m improving upon. But this is honestly a big problem, because since I left my home at 19 I haven’t had a job I genuinely liked. And I’ve worked about 15 jobs, in several unrelated industries and in different types of support positions. I’ve never been promoted, I’ve never been kept long enough to get a raise more than a dollar, and I’ve never even wanted to get promoted, now that I think about it.

What happened to me? I’ve lived at 10 different places, burned through many friendships because I couldn’t pull my weight, and after waking up to the fact that I have no clue who I am and that I am definitely not happy with who I thought I was, but I still have these old parts of me that keep floating to the top and I keep trying them down thinking, “ok, everything looks clean now, all better.”

Reality is, I can talk about who I was as a victim, how I got that way, why I made these choices, someone I can blame, etc, or I can comfort myself, encourage myself, and become a whole person again that can learn and grow into who I want to be at this exact moment. How do I initiate this...shift?

Maybe this is where I “burn the ships.” I use this phrase a lot because it’s a metaphor for finding ways of forcing yourself to commit to the change by getting rid of the mechanisms that allow you to fall back on your old behaviors.

In this case, my old behavior is giving up before I’ve actually finished the task. Did I run out of ideas?Nope. I just gave up, except I tricked myself into thinking I was actually done so I wouldn’t feel bad about giving up. How clever am I, eh?

So what is “burning the ships,” in this context? Is it punishing myself, or removing pleasures or rewards? No, that’s hurtful and humiliating and endurism never works long term as a strategy for healing. I need to find ways to encourage myself in this process, but in ways that push me into the new behavior, not ways that make me feel a false sense of accomplishment. It also needs to be action-based, not thought oriented or focused, because action is the behavior I’m trying to encourage, not thinking. Thinking is what gets me into trouble in the first place.

So, I need a new strategy altogether, one that makes me so uncomfortable that I won’t have anything else to fall back on that’s familiar. I need to get rid of or create distance between me and any commitments or personal property that would keep me comfortable enough to stay at home stewing or avoiding my task, and I need to use that to motivate me to break up larger tasks and push through them on a daily basis without being distracted or procrastinating.

I’m thinking this means :

1) Get out of the house during the day so I don’t get sidetracked

2) Break up tasks into set chunks of time so I don’t get overwhelmed or discouraged

3) Alternate between those tasks and another behavior that is rewarding in some way. Needs to be a smaller chunk of time or I’ll never get anything done lol.

4) Don’t come home until I’m tired or hungry. (Bring food, too)

5) Don’t stop until I have a start date with a job that will pay for everything I need and more. If I have a start date but it’s not for a while, keep on until it’s close or I find another. If it doesn’t pay for everything, keep on until I have another that does.

6) Don’t look back.

[thotknectar-blog]

Laying Down

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.

[thotknectar-blog]

Active Resistance

I wonder if I do enough. The movies make everything look so easy, but when you’re down, feeling like you’re “enough” to even try to do enough is the hardest part. It sends me down the rabbit hole of thoughts about would haves, should haves, could haves, etc.

When I think about the fears that I have about taking action, I tend to focus on eliminating scenarios that I don’t want happening. For example, I don’t want this situation to get worse, so I shouldn’t eat all my roommates food, or hog the use of the living room all day long. These are some pretty basic examples, but you get the idea. So, when I think of action, why do I think of what not to do first?

Because coming up with something TO do is hard. You have to feel confident enough to come up with actions that you’ll enjoy, or that you can’t shoot down with your wicked depression six-shooter. You dread the cycle of abuse you put yourself through, propping up ideas and then tearing them down. “Stupid, stupid. *hits head with hand and anxiously tousles hair.*” 

But what’s worse in the long run? What actually produces action or takes you out of the funk of “not enough”?

I think what’s best for me is to motivate myself out of inaction by seeing what actually produces more pain or discomfort. I’ll make a list. I’ll compare the risks of taking action to the risks of not taking action, and see which one is actually worse. I’ll keep in mind not just immediate risks and concrete risks, but long term and abstract ones.

If I just sit here, will I risk never reaching my potential? Will I risk my health?Will I risk losing even more of the things I own? Will I risk losing the opportunity to work at a job I might actually enjoy? Will I risk my safety and stability in the long term? Will I risk becoming someone who does not take any risks? Will I risk becoming someone that isn’t fulfilled and happy? Will I risk becoming lazy and fearful of any changes? Will I risk never leaving this situation? Will I risk repeating history over and over because I am too afraid to move forward into the future? Will I risk never experiencing anything new?

If I go out there and take action, will I risk being hurt and/or rejected by others? Will I risk failure? Will I risk being told I am not enough? Will I risk being told I don’t have the skills? Will I risk being told I am a bad person? Will I risk being told I don’t belong here? Will I risk being told I can’t do what I love for a living? Will I risk running into someone I don’t want to talk to? Will I risk being abused, jerked around, punished, bullied, simply for existing or being near? Will I risk someone trying to control my body? Will I risk being hurt? Will I risk being unloved or told I am unloveable? Will I risk saying something others will think is stupid?

When I look at both lists, I can see, now that it’s all written out, that one is about feeling safe and secure and tucked away, and that the other is about what others think of me or how what others think of me will make me feel about myself.

Wow. I am afraid of others and how hurtful they can be. My parents played a big part in this, mostly because my bio dad was also too depressed to move beyond these risks as well. These fears related to taking action have mostly to do with all the things I know one time or another came out of his mouth. I remember it always being cloaked in “I’m just trying to help you be realistic” kind of dialogue, or even, “I know what your chances are, and it’s not worth the time or money.” In reality, I know many times it was his own fear, and his own lack mentality that prevented him from being able to encourage me in mine.

He probably didn’t believe he had the money(even though he always had plenty for his own hobbies and interests) or the time(even though he always had plenty for his own hobbies and interests) or the motivation(even though he - you get the idea...) to encourage me in the same fears I had, but had managed to overcome enough to ask him for help. I had overcome even the fear of confronting his negativity each time I came to ask for money, or a ride to an event, or to use some materials we already had in the house, or to even just help me come up with ideas of how to overcome any difficulties associated with my interests. I had overcome the fear that he would say the things he would eventually say, the fear that he would think less of me or think I was wrong or stupid, the fear that he was going to punish me for thinking it was okay to want what I wanted. I would overcome that fear, and ask, and then he would make his, “executive decision.” And that’s where these fears come from. 

Except he’s not here any more to tell me no. He can’t say, “No, sorry, I just don’t think that’s a good idea,” or, “We just don’t have the extra money,” or, “I don’t think you’re ready for that kind of responsibility,” or, “I can’t willingly support that with my money.”

So it’s no longer relevant. It’s no longer a fear substantiated in truth. It may have been in the past, when he could control everything I did or said. But not now.

Now it’s my life. And my time. And my motivation. And my responsibility. And my ideas. And my materials and money. And MY fears. They’re mine. Mine to do with what I want. I own them.

So I get to make that decision now, the decision to empower myself and push through the risks that I know will be worth it in the long term, in the abstract, in the concrete, in the here and now.

No more inaction.

No more sitting.

[thotknectar-blog]

Groundhog Day

One of my favorite movies.

It didn’t click with me the underlying reasons behind why I liked it until lately, when I went through all this waking up and becoming aware spiritually.

I just thought it was a funny movie, what with all the different ways he tried to get out of the loop, through getting rich, getting caught, getting killed, giving up, getting to know people, trying to help others selfishly, and finally helping himself.

What I realized later is that this exact progression mirrors how we tend to resolve our own purgatory-creating behaviors. We try to cheat, we become the victim, we try the martyr, we try dissociation, we try putting up a front and playing the game, and when that doesn’t make us happier we reach out to ourselves - the real source of our purgatory - to question where it all comes from, and make a change.

Bill Murrays character is a real conceited personality at the beginning, full of snarky platitudes and jabs at other peoples way of life. He believes it makes him strong, independent, clever, attractive, and most of all, successful. We do the same sometimes, believing that the way we push others around and try to get them to join us in our personal quest is something that successful people do, or that it’s a way of surviving or avoiding repeating some great loss. We believe it’s what makes us “us,” and so when others question or push back we take offense. We have identified with these platitudes, these reactions, really, and we believe that these sayings, behaviors, or essentially, the things that we do, are what makes us unique or makes up the whole of who we are as a being in this universe.

But what gets “Phil” out of purgatory isn’t actually some introspective moment, but it’s what I believe to be what wakes him up to his own existence - he realizes that “Rita,” can’t be beaten with just memorizing facts, learning to mimic behaviors, or becoming a poetry quoting Don Juan. What wakes him up is that he realizes that pursuing his own interests and following his own desires is what she expects(and respects). And THEN - he realizes that he was ignoring himself the entire time, and that he was so obsessed with getting out that he forgot to enjoy himself and find things to make Groundhog Day enjoyable for the time that he was there. He allowed himself to relax, take a breath, find what he liked, and even consider sharing the joy he had with someone else, even if it was just for “one” day.

Funny enough, when he finally did it, he broke free from the spell, and moved on through life, awakened to the prison he put himself in, free to enjoy himself wherever and whenever he was.

If YOU feel stuck in a loop, a purgatory, a spell, stop trying to cheat, victimize yourself, be the martyr, dissociate or give up, or go through the motions when you know it’s just not who you are. You’re making your own hell!

Take up ice sculpting, jazz piano, life-saving, soup kitchening, heimliching(RIP),whatever you can to break the monotony and enjoy yourself, even if it’s killing you to stay in one place. Find a way to love yourself, and pay attention to what you like and don’t like. Make a difference in other people's lives, but don’t do it because it looks right, or because you feel you “should.” Do it because it makes you happy.(obviously saving lives is probably a priority even if it doesn’t make you feel good, but I think you can safely assume that I’m talking about people in the same room as you, not talking about joining this or training for that when you really aren’t okay with the pressure)

I hope you all break the spell and find what makes you happy.

[thotknectar-blog]

The eleventh hour

 When is it too late for anything?

I feel discomfort, anxiety, worry, desperation, hopelessness, fear - I lose connection to the part of me that knows I will survive whatever comes. I get stuck in the loop of not enough, feeling slowed down and restricted in the muck of time.

Right now I am worried about where certain resources will come from in time to help me complete what I started. I have many different intentions right now, the main one being to get through what I currently believe to be the biggest difficulty I have had in a while. Funny enough though, what makes this difficulty feel like the biggest one is just the fact that I thought that, before I lost everything I was working towards, I was finally getting out of all of the money issues I’ve been having since I left home.

After my bio dad remarried, he took my grandmother in when she developed Alzheimer's, and solicited our unpaid assistance in taking care of her. He also depended on his new wife to do the same, while he taught at school. So when I graduated, I saw to getting the first opportunity to leave as soon as possible. I didn’t realize how little experience I had with managing money or resources, but figured it wouldn’t be a problem.

I was, however, told to avoid credit cards and loans, so I did. I worked on and off, sometimes part time, sometimes full time, going to school at a community college and not taking any loans. My parents made too much to qualify me for student aid, so I had to save up chunks at a time, I never got the hang of it though, so I eventually gave up and starting working full time, spending my weekends at parties, eventually playing music at open mics, even getting gigs at special events and venues occasionally.

But I was always cycling through periods of plenty and little. Even the last year, when I was making more than I ever thought I would, rent and cost of living were so high that I could never create a buffer long enough to save any money, so me and my partner went through the same cycles, worrying about when money would come through at the last minute, having to push bills back, make late fee payments, sign up for payment plans, etc.

What I still have difficulty with is why the eleventh hour is so painful for me. Do I have trauma with this? It always just...consumes my entire day, worrying about when this will come, when that will come, when I will be able to relax again. Cortisol sucks. Depression sucks. PTSD sucks. Mind you, I might only have little ‘t’ trauma, at least at the moment since I can’t remember any big ‘T’ trauma and I have no reasons to believe that I have repressed it.

This feeling of stuckness, of despair, of what ifs and only ifs, it’s what paralyzed me for hours. I can’t enjoy a morning of rain, or a walk to a park. When I walk, I constantly have to slow my pace, because I get caught up trying to get somewhere faster. My whole day becomes a race to finish everything as soon as possible, to be efficient, to not waste time or allow others to waste mine. I get irritable, short tempered, and disconnected with my experience. I become the robot, and I shut off all the happy feeling floors and rooms in my building, worried that feeling good will bring the “wrath of the gods”, angry that I was enjoying myself while being punished. But being punished? for what? And since when am I being punished for making a mistake?

This is where it sneaks in. Guilt. Shame. I jump straight from, “I’m in a situation that I feel uncomfortable in,” to “I’m uncomfortable because I screwed up and it’s all my fault and I’m such a crappy person I couldn’t possibly deserve to enjoy myself until it’s fixed completely.” Who taught me this one? This doesn’t even make sense. And yes, it doesn’t make sense, in this context, but it does in the context of being punished by someone with anger and control issues. I.e., my bio dad! Hooray!

So today, if you feel you share my experiences, let’s remember a few things.

First - People make mistakes. Even people who are really successful and practiced in a particular skill make mistakes. They have on days and off days, they get tired or overexcited and make a mistake. Making mistakes is part of the human learning process and it’s something we have to use to better ourselves. Yes, it's humbling to know that we’re not perfect, and yes, it can sometimes happen often enough to bring up feelings of inadequacy, feeling underprepared, or even ill-suited to a skill set. But there are always ways through negative experiences that can provide the necessary lesson. Ask anyone you know that is successful at what they do, they can tell you how many mistakes they’ve made, but that they knew that it was something they loved and that pushing through the pain or disappointment of mistakes was worth it.

Second - If anyone who tries to convince you that your mistakes make you a bad person, stupid, unworthy of any affection/love, unworthy of any self care or peace, etc., you can quietly tell them to GO TO HELL. Anyone who believes that about themselves should be sweetly and lovingly told that those thoughts can GO TO HELL. Everyone is worthy of unconditional love and self care. If you have those thoughts about yourself, please, please give yourself infinite chances to make it up to yourself, and please tell yourself that you have survived thus far and will continue to if you are given the opportunity to try again and again and again. This is what life is about, isn’t it?

Third - Feeling shame or guilt for a mistake or for even the most unintentional of consequences keeps us from being open to what comes next. Allow yourself to regain calm and peace in your heart, mind, and spirit. Find a way to be okay with who you are right now, because there is no way for you to become anyone else. If the only way you know how to get there is by wrapping yourself with three comforters and eating a gallon of ice cream, don’t let anyone stop you. Help yourself feel good enough to consider how things might improve once you allow yourself to enjoy your senses and get into a light and positive mood despite your circumstances. 

So,

Open yourself to more possibilities! Despite the risks! Do you want to live afraid of every opportunity? Because every opportunity carries a risk and a reward.

Think about the truly infinite possibilities of each of your actions - there is no way of knowing, or even estimating from any point in time, which actions will produce negative consequences, ESPECIALLY If you believe that everything is a lesson to move through. How could you really decide if something is a “good” choice for you to make? You can only try it on for size, and see how it fits you.

[thotknectar-blog]

The smoke clears

It’s been months and months of processing my childhood and what it means to me. It’s been a lot of hurt, and a lot of body memory came up in the process that made me afraid of what this would all bring up as a result. My parents are different than they were when I was being raised - in good and bad ways. I know my biological mother is in a dark place right now, being isolated and alienated by someone she loves, and she’s taken on a personality I don’t recognize any more in order to survive the relationship she’s in with an abusive partner. My biological father remarried to a woman with an abusive mother, but she stood her ground against my bio dad when he brought his anger problems back into his life and tried to run away from the relationship. As a result, I saw him make a few positive changes before I left home at 19, trying not to look back.

I drifted back and forth between being sure I couldn’t go home, and needing help to survive the adult world I was so unprepared for. When my partner woke up to their narcissistic abuser, they said I should look into my parents and see if they were the same, because behaviors and phrases lined up.

What became clear to me recently was that my bio dad was and still is suffering from chronic depression and anxiety. I was so certain he was suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, and it was my intention the last time I spoke to him to get clear answers about where he came from in order to connect the dots. But instead of suspicion, blame, defensiveness, or martyrdom, I was met with calm answers, no blaming or projection, and even admitting guilt on some occasions. It sent me spiraling into a mental confusion the next couple of days, trying to figure out if he was just that good at lying or if he was just as much a screwed up kid as I am, just trying to make things work to the best of his abilities.

This isn’t to say my bio dad treated me with gross negligence and carried several narcissistic tendencies into my life for most of my developing years into highschool. I have memories of him putting my dreams down, asking his coworkers to speak to me about giving up music, telling me art/theatre/psychology/everything-I-ever-wanted-to-try-for-myself was not worth it and would waste time and money. He withdrew support from me when I decided to do what I loved anyways, and I withdrew from him as I got involved with things I knew he would disapprove of. I have a million memories of how he punished us unreasonably for small mistakes, and how he spent money on books, diets, computers, the car, anything but on our health, wellness, or personal development. He grew up in a culture of isolation and authoritarianism, and I grew up in one of connection and decentralization. The differences are staggering, and when I finally got answers from him about his childhood, he was oblivious to any traumas he might have sustained in childhood as a result of how his parents treated him.

This, just says more to me about where our culture is and how we believe children should be raised as a society then it says something about mental disorders in my family. NPD is a spectrum, so it’s entirely possible my bio dad is on it, but I no longer feel the staggering paranoia I was feeling before, when I thought that both my parents were unsalvageable. It’s terrifying thinking, especially when one isn’t in the best financial situations, that both your parents are people you can no longer have a relationship with. But the reality is, people make mistakes all the time when they decide to have children without understanding the permanent and traumatic consequences of their actions. Children are bearers of light and love, and bringing a spirit into this world without having healed yourself of your own wounds, and without having a love of life and being grateful for the abundance in it is pure selfishness. I believe my parents made that exact mistake, and while I’m personally grateful to the universe for having led them to it, I believe I am still resentful that they decided to do so and will probably never admit it or believe in the possibility that they did, however obvious it may be.

I do know that it doesn’t help me any more to hold onto this pain and resentment, but that it’s important for me to allow it to pass through me unrestricted and unmitigated. The childhood I had was painful, lonely, confusing, scary, sad, depressing, dark, poor, prison-like, tense, and it felt like it took forever to get through. But that’s not the whole truth.

The whole truth is, that I have to search out the moments in my childhood that can bring balance to that experience. Not to wipe anything away, not to forget, not for others to benefit, not to hide the pain, not to cover up, not to obscure or create an illusion, not to lessen the guilt of others, not to invalidate my emotions, not to deny my past or deny anyone else for that matter.

But just to bring balance. My life needs balance. My life needs...contrast. Contrast I have needed for so long. Contrast from all this pain and misery and disconnect. Contrast from lack and suspicion and blame and shame. Contrast from trauma and unconsciousness and apathy and self-sabotage. Contrast from wounds and loss and heartbreak and darkness.

I am lightness and fullness and completeness and saturation and abundance and love and trust and hope and peace.

I am this and more.

[thotknectar-blog]

The true cost

This is what I’m realizing lately about the true cost of surviving childhood abuse and narcissism.

That probably sounds pretty unspecific, but let me clarify - I survived some pretty massive neglect because my biological father was chronically depressed and hung onto some nasty covert NPD traits while I was a child. He’s remarried and has gotten rid of most of his nasty traits, but still hangs onto depression and as such is mostly just neglectful these days(as if that means he’s worth it, right? I still don’t know but I just barely decided to give him a chance so I don’t have enough evidence yet.).

I also, as a result of how I was raised, suffered more narcissistic relationships after I left the house as I went from relationship to relationship. I believe my first relationship was possibly the most harmful, and as a result I ended up shifting to the dark side afterwards, probably hurting many of the women I was with afterwards, until I met the partner I’m with now. My partner had a spiritual awakening and brought me with them, and woke me up to my own narcissistic tendencies. It was...difficult. Mostly because my partner has narcissistic tendencies as well, and suffers from PTSD. So us both waking up roughly around the same time was scary. We both accused each other of some pretty horrible things(and we were both probably right, sadly enough).

But what woke me up today was the feeling that I just wasn’t sure who to trust any more. And that, I realized, is the real rub of this trauma.

I sometimes wake up and think, “who am I married to?”

And I’m sure they do the same.

I get into dialogue with myself thinking I’m not sure why I am in a relationship with someone who does X, when I clearly am the one who gives the most and loves the most. Why does my partner say X but then do Y? Am I married to a narcissist? Wait, is my partner married to a narcissist? I don't know any more.

And I go back and forth, never being able to trust them for more than a few days until I get paranoid again, and want out. I start feeling cagey and sensitive to comments, I call my partner out on them and then we both get triggered by the things we say after that and then we get into a fight. Then our day gets consumed by a 3 hour breakdown where we can’t get through to each other until one of us takes a step away from the edge we threaten the other person with.

That’s the suckiest part.

Because I still don’t know who’s right, and I don’t have the money to get therapy for me or for my partner, so I don’t know when it will end. And then every day I get up and do the same thing again, hoping to make some headway. Hoping I’ll get another piece of the puzzle to put in and maybe find out my next move.

Today’s full moon marks a big harvest. I want to be grateful for what's coming as a result of the work I’ve done these last two weeks. I want to recognize the seeds I’ve planted, the toiling and weeding, the weather I’ve weathered and the peace I desperately held onto. If I can survive what I’ve survived, I’ll continue surviving no problem!

There will always be something new, something to drift away to make room for what’s to come, and something I haven’t noticed that needs to change. If I can stay focused on the things I love and things I have and be grateful for them, everything else won’t seem like such a drag. I want my life to become cyclical, not stagnant. I want my life to be focused around holding the good questions, not the answers, in my head while I’m walking around, so that I’m not lying to myself about being done when I get somewhere.

I want a bean feast.