Giving it to God (in other words, letting it go)

I’ve been thinking about this phrase again, and pondering what it means. I think I’ve come to a realization that it doesn’t necessarily mean you dump all your problems on a possibly divine being and go on with your life.

There are some things in life that we, as human beings, just can’t handle. They are not humanly possible for us to fix, because they are such enormous issues that one person can’t possibly do it on their own. We do what we can on our own, hoping our little bit is one little piece making things better in the world.

Let me go into where this all came about. It was one of my past jobs at a pharmacy, and I was working the cash register. One of my regular customers came in for his items and asked me how my day was. I answered him honestly, not that great. He was a very sweet man, a widower and religious in view, but it never really bothered me. he looked at me and said ‘sometimes you just have to give it to God, because we’re not meant to take on those kinds of burdens’. I thanked him and his words just stuck in my head the rest of the day.

The fact is, those words made a real kind of sense to me. I was not in the best of emotional states at the time, I was deeply depressed, stressed out and close to breaking down. I was trying to hold it all inside at that job, all the while ready to fall apart internally. I was pushing myself so hard that it was affecting me physically, trying to be the perfect employee and perfect daughter, and failing spectacularly at both. I was neglecting my own mental and phsyical health for my job, because i felt that the job was more important than how I felt.

Let’s also understand something here. I am not a holy roller in any way, shape or form. I despise fundamental religions with a passion. Especially those of the evangelical bent. If anything, I see myself as a fervent agnostic, not willing to blindly place any faith in one place without question. I do not believe faith will cure any illness one suffers. I’m quite militant about that. I’ve ticked off a lot of people for having that philosophy, and will CONTINUE to tick people off, because I will not swear mindless allegiance to any higher power. The concept going on here is that any one person is incapable of solving all the world’s ills. It is an impossible task, and we cannot torture ouselves over that. We take care of ourselves first, our physical, mental, and spiritual health. The rest just follows. If any of you can’t grasp what I’ve said here, or just cherry-picked what you liked from it, you haven’t paid attention to me at all. You just glommed onto this because it had ‘God’ in the title, so therefore it was good. It’s up to each person whether they want to see this in a religious light or not, but what matters is that what I’ve said means something to you. Simple as that.

I’m not perfect, and I never will be. That’s reality. I keep trying to do everything at once, thinking that people will love me more if they see me doing all these things at once. I’m not Supergirl, I’m just me. That’s where the concept of ‘giving it to God’ comes in. I CAN’T do everything at once, and I need to let that go. It’s impossible for me to solve all of my problems in one fell swoop. I have to break things down, take it one task at a time. Doesn’t make me a bad person. It just makes me human. I can’t fix everything, I need to fix me first. It’s not about giving up one’s responsibilities, but knowing exactly what YOU are capable of handling on your own.

We push ourselves so hard, past the breaking point at times, and I’ve seen personally how destructive it can be to ourselves. We don’t necessarily have to believe in a higher power to know we are loved, we just need to understand what our abilites and limits are, and NOT condemn ourselves for that. That’s the lesson I’m trying to learn. It’s what we all need to learn.

Making appearances

How one appears in public seems to be a trend these days. Some of us just can’t help basing our opinions of others by the way someone looks. If they saw me, a white woman in a hoodie, they’d never give me a second glance. But make it a young black man and automatically he’s a criminal in some people’s eyes.

I can’t even begin to express how enraged I am about that murder. It’s the 21st century, a time when people claim to be enlightened and above prejudice, and some of us can’t get our mindsets out of the segregationist 1950s. Some of us in this country just cannot alter their thinking, that they still believe discrimination based on ignorant prejudice is acceptable. The face of this world we live in is in constant flux, we are changing, evolving into something else. Change scares some people, scares them so badly that the only way they feel they can combat it is to try and obliterate it from society. They like their little world where everyone is categorized into neat little boxes, so that they can identify who is right and wrong, who is acceptable and who is not.

There’s a flaw to that line of thinking, in my opinion. True, there will always be the exceptions to the rule, but for the rest, it’s all grayscale. Life is no longer black and white, right and wrong, good or bad. It’s complicated and difficult. We can’t always depend on outside appearances as a guide to decide who is a good, moral person and who isn’t. We can’t decide what is a good or bad person based solely on looks, or what one wears, or what faith we hold. It’s short-sighted and ignorant. We can’t say that someone with lots of piercings and tattoos is a dangerous, evil person. That’s a very narrow-minded perspective and not very helpful. Appearances are deceptive. Someone can be the most prim and proper, stuffed shirt and also be a raging maniac.

I suppose I have this great desire for everyone to be colorblind, that we could see the quality of a person not based on looks, but who they are inside. I recall years ago, when I found out a guy I liked in high school was gay, it didn’t turn me against him. I’m surprised it took me such a long time to figure it out. I still considered him a great guy to hang out with. We still have these bonehead mentalities that just because we learn something so surprising about another person, it means we have to hate them now. When I told people I was no longer a practicing Catholic and followed pagan beliefs, some people thought I was mentally disturbed and wanted me committed. Other people didn’t care and still saw me as their friend. If you knew me as a good, kind thoughtful person before this, why would anything I say now change your persepctive of me? Or anybody else? How many more people have to be hurt before we realize that judging one another based on what someone looks like is wrong? It’s using common sense, which seems to be severely lacking in a lot of people these days. Nature is a million, billion different colors and varieties. We humans, as a part of nature, are also varied. We need to accept that FACT now, not sweep it under the rug. I won’t live the rest of my life in the Dark Ages, in a world ruled by fear and prejudice.

Second chances and forgiveness

This has been on my mind lately. I don’t think Americans are very forgiving people, as much as some would claim they are. We’re altogether too eager to write someone off if they don’t satisfy us in 30 seconds or less as a complete failure. We do not forgive and forget, as the phrase goes. We nurse our grudges, we feed our resentments by taking out our anger on other people.

Human beings are naturally prone to mistakes. If we didn’t make any kind of mistakes, I don’t think we’d be human anymore. We make bad choices at times, bad decisions, things we will regret for the rest of our lives. Yet some of us think that if one person makes an awful choice, they are forever unworthy of ay kind of redemption, respect, even love. When we ‘turn the other cheek‘, I don’t necessarily think it’s weakness. It means you are strong enough to take another blow and remain standing. Despite incredible hardship, people CAN survive, people can keep going. Maybe they have a certain quality within themselves that keeps them going.

I think of people living with AIDS, and how some of them got the disease from bad choices. Maybe some never learned their lesson from getting infected and keep living a self-destructive life, but I wouldn’t classify all victims like that. How many were too scared to find out? How many just had no idea? Is it fair to blame every person who acquires the disease as ‘they deserved it’? No. People can learn from their mistakes, people can turn those tragedies into  educational experiences, to teach others how to make their own lives better, to not make the mistakes people before have done.

I can’t always condemn people outright for things done. I don’t have the knee-jerk mentality others do, that once something is done it can never be taken back. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, but those mistakes should not define WHO and WHAT I am. Just like everyone else. There are always exceptions.There will always be people that go beyond the rules, but those are the not the majority and should not be used as the standard to judge everyone. There are people in my life I will not forgive, because of what they’ve done to me. They knew when they did those things to me that they intended to hurt me and they weren’t sorry for it. There are some things that cannot be forgiven.

Maybe what I’m hoping for is that people will learn to become less judgemental of others. It’s not one’s looks that define someone; it’s their spirit. It’s not their faith that automatically declares them as a better person, it’s what they DO in the world that really matters. Our bodies should not define whether we are good or bad people, but what we do for others that define it.

For Goodness’ Sake

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This was something I shared with firnds on Facebook, but I’d like to share with all of you.

Like love, I think goodness is a universal trait. We all have the capability for goodness, it’s just a matter of whether we CHOOSE to use it, express it, or share it. It is not a sign of weakness, as some misanthropic sourpusses believe.

Goodness is what makes us all better people. It’s what makes us see the world with intense clarity ,and sometimes that can be a hard thing to bear. Sometimes we want to be selfish and not care about others, but that’s not a failing, it’s part of our human nature.

I like being good to other people who need it, because it make ME feel good, to be honest. There are some who try to use our good natures for their own selfish gain, but in the end, they only end up hurting others and themselves. Being good to others should not be something to ridicule, because it is an indication that we have a soul, a conscience, and have the willingness to love. It’s not a duty, it’s something that comes directly from our own hearts.

Goodness owes no allegiance to ANYONE, or any group, most of all, any faith. No one owns the ability to be good; it’s within all of us, and as I stated in the beginning, we all can choose to use it or not. Being good to others in the hopes a Deity will give us higher status in heaven completely cancels out the whole meaning of it all. You either mean it, body and soul, when you do good, or you don’t at all. There is no middle ground when it comes to this issue. Deception doesn’t work in this situation.

Doing good makes the universal soul better, and in doing that, makes each of us better people.

Emotional survival skills

I have a problem that I really need a lot of advice to help me deal with it. Here’s my problem: I have a great deal of difficulty handling criticism.  There’s not a doubt that most people have a lot of difficulty with this same issue, but this is me and my problem. I have a very hard time not only trying to accept criticism, which I take very personally, but how to accept positive criticism. I think it’s a matter of seeing both in the same light, which is negative. My typical reaction is to take any kind of criticism as an indictment on my character, and that there’s no way for me to counter it. I get demoralized, I get very upset, and I then am afraid to continue to do anything for fear of failure. As soon as I get singled out for a mistake, I take it to heart and end up snowballing it into my whole life. A clinically aloof part of me realizes this is very distorted thinking, that it’s unrealistic and irrational, but my emotionally sensitive part seems to overrule any logical thought pattern. I seem to put my emotions over rationality and this is where my problems come from. Here’s another aspect to all of this. I have abysmal self-esteem. I don’t view myself in very kind terms, and I’m the first in line to beat myself up over something. I’m always apologizing for whatever I say, expecting to offend everyone for simple as opening my mouth to speak. I am very much my own worst enemy in practically everything, and it’s a not a good place to be. For that matter, it’s not emotionally healthy to live like this, because of the corrosive negativity of the way I treat myself. It’s not a good way to live, frankly.

I don’t know how to handle this. I’m not sure what I should be doing to counter the negative thought processes, because I’ve never really even made any attempts to do so. How do I begin to change my behavior when it comes to someone offering criticism, even if done in a beneficial manner? I think it’s more than just ‘well just stop thinking that way’. This is a learned behavior for me, so it’s a matter of reprogramming my thoughts, if you will.

In regards to positive steps forward, the obvious one is that I realize my actions are irrational. I’ve been able to see that the way I’m thinking doesn’t mesh with the situation, so now comes how to fix that matter. The old bitter standard of ‘suck it up and get over it’ I think is incredibly antiquated and unhelpful. It doesn’t give you any sort of instruction for how to deal with a situation. It’s inflexible and unforgiving, making no distinction of circumstance.

This isn’t a matter of babying someone, or coddling, or lowering standards. For some people, it’s very hard to deal with others because of certain life experiences. When someone has spent a good portion of their life feeling they are worthless, depressed, being emotionally abused, anything one could say could be taken in the wrong way. In my own experience, I saw myself as incompetent, stupid, ugly and useless. I really thought I was a dumb, pathetic creature that was past hope of any recovery. It’s taken me a long time to see this is wrong thinking, but I am now at a stage where I can see it for myself. It’s nowhere near a perfect process, but I now need to find ways of improving my life, because I have to. I can’t go through the rest of my life afraid of everything. How do you cope with these sorts of feelings? Do you have any ideas or advice that might be helpful for someone like me? What would you do if you were in my place, things you might do differently. As the title says, it’s emotional survival skills that I need to develop in order to keep going in this crazy world. I have no intentions of caving in to my nightmares. I mean to fight.

 

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Embracing the unique

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To be truthful, I have never felt normal. I haven’t led exactly the most normal life either. Most kids don’t spend half their childhood in and out of the hospital for reconstructive surgeries, or dealing with years of braces, headgear that look like a catcher’s mask, or getting half you head shaved for a procedure. That was not fun, and I would get so mad when someone mistook me for a boy. (It was in the summer, I was six years old,and spent most of that time in shorts and t-shirts. I also wore a baseball hat to cover my bare scalp).

I dreamed all the time of living a life without complications, without going to doctors, not being teased and bullied in school for my looks. I wished I had the ability to turn invisible, because I just wanted everyone to stop staring at me, so I could just go on and not be bothered by anyone. I hated the popular kids, and yet, I wanted so desperately to be like them. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to fit in, but no matter how hard I tried, I still was the butt of insults and humiliation.

There was a very bitter realization when I came to see I wasn’t going to be transformed into something devastatingly beautiful. This was me, I wasn’t going to be able to make my nose look perfect, I wasn’t going to make the scars on my face go away (unless I got creative with foundation), and I wasn’t going to have a perfect set of pearly whites to flash when smiling. It sucks big time, but it’s something I need to accept. At this point in my life, I’m pretty much there. But for all this time, a bit of wisdom from my college years came back to remind me. Where he’s gone now, I’ll never know, but he gave me the most profound advice I have ever heard in my 36 years being alive. Why be like everyone else when you can be unique? That’s what this acquaintance told me. Louis, of the scraggly goatee, glasses, and the Russian Army greatcoat. Louis, with the six-inch mohawk and steel-capped monster boots. I might add, one of the most eloquent and intelligent individuals I’ve ever met. Why would I want to be a carbon copy of every other girl out there when I can be completely myself? There was not another person on this earth like me who looked the way I did, thought the way I did, had my own particularly shrewd sense of humour. I should be embracing those attributes instead of burying them. At the time, I laughed at it, trying to deny to myself that they actually did make a lot of sense. At that time, I saw myself, or tried to make myself a sort of non-entity. I wanted to just fade into the background. Thing is, no matter how hard I tried, I was still visible and after a while, I got tired of it. What was so terrible about being different? Why is standing out in a crowd so awful to us, especially in America? Why did I want to be a part of those snotty, nasty girls in school? Because they always had the latest fashions? Because they were popular and had lots of friends? When I think about it, their lives were very shallow compared to mine. Theirs was all surface and attention, while mine was a matter of survival. I never asked for what happened to me, but it did. I get frustrated at times because of what I’ve been through, but I think it’s also taught me some valuable lessons. Some people may have just given up, after going through what I did, ended their life because they just couldn’t deal with the pain. I’ve been close to that point several times, but never broke. Maybe it makes me stronger, or that it shows I’m a survivor. Kids thought I was mentally handicapped because of my birth defects (shows how much they know!), but here I am, blogging! I’d like to think I’m fairly eloquent in my posts, and clearly that means something to those who read what I put out here.

So I’ve decided to embrace my uniqueness, because honestly, normal is really boring. Normal is not challenging the imagination, or the rules. Normal is living in a rut, because getting out of it means entering unexplored territory. I am different, and I’ve come to like it. I would rather befriend the shunned girl with the dyed blue hair than all the Abercrombie & Fitch outfitted brats, because there’s got to be a great story behind that blue hair. I’m blind in one eye, and for a time, it was a mark of shame for me. Now I accept it as just a part of who I am, and have developed a wicked sense of humour about it. I’ve played pranks on people with it, much to my immense delight. That’s empowering. I don’t have typical interests. I love being a sci-fi nerd, reading graphic novels, getting technical over computer special effects. I like wearing unusual makeup, or dressing a little outside the norm. I like bending the rules when it comes to my appearance. I have two tattoos and stretched lobes, because I like it. I have musical tastes that span the spectrum, from chamber music to metal and electronica. I don’t think it makes me a frivolous person, but much more dimensional. I’m always changing, because I am trying to figure out who I am inside. I never let myself embrace that growing up. The most amazing thing that I have discovered is that people think I’m beautiful. They have told me to my face I am an attractive woman, and I have never been able to express how amazed that sounds to me. They say I’m beautiful also because of who I am inside. I care about what people say, and I care about what I say to others. If all these different little facets are what make me shine, then I’m happy to say I am unique. I’m not better or worse than anyone else. I’m human, which is something I have overlooked for a long time. Every single orchid is unique in its shape, and rare, and beautiful. That’s how I see myself. Unique.

I have to offer thanks to someone who inspired me to not be afraid of being different. La Carmina, I truly enjoy looking into your world and seeing how I can apply it to my own. Thank you for helping me see my own strengths and potential. Plus Basil, who is my furry life preserver.

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Normal is way overrated

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That’s the conclusion I’ve come to lately. All my life, I have struggled to try and fit in with society, with the current mindset, fashion, all of it. I’m the one who just keeps going against the current, though. My parents raised me with the notion that I was ‘perfectly fine’, that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me whatsoever. Never mind that I had to go to the hospital just about every summer for surgeries; I was just like my twin sister and shouldn’t think of myself as ‘different’.

It confused me to no end, this double standard I existed in. I wanted so much to fit in at school, with friends. I never looked fashionable; a lot of my clothes were hand-me-downs from family friends. I was not very social because I feared being taunted over my looks. I had interests in subjects most girls found weird, or considered suitable for boys, such as science fiction. I read a LOT, which set me apart from the rest of my classmates even further. I wound up hanging out with most of the outcasts in school, because they were the only ones who didn’t taunt or bully me.

As I got older, I developed a fierce love-hate relationship in regards to fitting in. I wanted so badly to be accepted by everyone, yet at the same time, I hated them with a passion because they were so stuck-up, mean, and most of all, popular. I began to develop my own style and looks, despite my deep longing to conform. What I came to see later on was that those girls I wanted so much to be like were all the same. Variations on a theme, you could say. They all had the latest fashions, had money, had boyfriends, but in essence, they were all alike.

I would’ve taken freckles over my scars, to be honest. Lots of them, like this one girl in my class had. I would’ve put up with acne than my surgeries. I would be happy to wear glasses than to be blind in one eye. I would’ve taken all those little imperfections over what I was born with. I would’ve been overjoyed beyond belief to have my twin’s looks, even when she complained about her own. For all that I tried, I still felt different. I thought of myself as a freak for many, many years, because of my looks, because of what I went through at the hands of bullies, the way I came to see myself.

One of my most profound life lessons came when I was in college, and it came from an acquaintance. Ah, Louis. You could not miss this fellow from a mile away, that’s how distinctive he was. Skinny as a rail, with a penchant for old russian Army greatcoats, he sported the meanest pair of steel-capped boots I’ve ever seen. He also had a six inch mohawk that had nails tied into the trailing locks at the base of his neck. One of the smartest guys I’ve ever met as well. He did not give a damn what anyone thought of his appearance, and people learned to respect what he had inside rather than his outward appearance. He took me aside one day and asked me why I hated myself so much, and I told him it was because I was ugly. I thought no one would ever take me seriously because of my defects, that they’d always consider me mentally handicapped in some fashion. Louis thought it was rubbish and then proceded to give me this very sage advice. He said, why be like everyone else when you can be unique? There is not a single person on this earth who looks like you, acts like you, says the the kinds of things you do. Why would you want to force yourself into a false idea of what you think people expect? He said that half the ‘normal’ people in the world don’t have a fraction of my knowledge, or intelligence. Why would I want to limit myself in such a fashion?

I laughed it off, but it stuck with me down the years. I was in denial of this for a very long time, because I could only see the darkness in my life. But things change over time. here I am, writing blogs for a wide audience to read. I never thought I’d have the guts to do that. I dress up for special occasions and I look really good. The face you see is the only one I’ve got, and I’ve learned to accept it. I’m not going to be a runway model, but then again, I don’t need to be. I have been told I am beautiful by others, and I have come to believe it. These are regular people, not celebrities or media icons telling me this. Hearing such things from real people is what makes it all the more profound, because they mean it.

We really ought to stop judging one another based on outside appearances. I would rather surround myself with people who stood out in a crowd than those who all look the same. We make fun of people who dye their hair neon colors, have lots of piercings and tattoos, and call them freaks. Some of those people I have met are the most down to earth folks ever. So what if they defy the norm? Does that make them automatically a bad person? People once perceived me as stupid, ugly, and undesirable. They based their contempt of me solely on my looks, not my brain. I wish people would stop trying to fit in to this carbon copy world. There isn’t enough variety, at least to me. We should not be afraid to be ourselves and express ourselves in a way that isn’t damaging. Why should we follow the talking heads of fashion, society, and other things? They have no real concept of what our actual lives are like anyhow. They don’t know what it’s like because they live in a false world. They have all the trappings of a well-appointed life, so they don’t know how much average people hurt inside.

We need to be more accepting, I think. Fear of the unknown in all aspects of society is what holds us back, makes us cling to prejudices that serve no purpose. Different doesn’t mean bad. Why be normal when you can be unique?

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