To be forgotten is the worse pain of all

Posted: October 16, 2011 in Self-esteem, self-respect, Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

I just found this out and I realize I’ve been working very hard to not know this.

Very hard. In fact, I’ve tried to not know this for the last 6 months but to no avail.

I’ve been forgotten. It’s true. It’s as if I never existed.

I’d rather be hated and yelled at than not ever be thought of again.

It’s a feeling that runs right into one’s soul and you can’t seem to get your wits around it.

You’ve tried every excuse and justification that you can think of.

1) He’s really busy and doesn’t have time.

2) He knows he blew it and doesn’t know what to do.

3) He thinks about you all the time and is afraid to call.

4) He found someone else and regrets letting you get away and is too proud to admit it.

5) He’s dead, sick, in a coma and can’t call or email.

Round and round it goes. Then you see his posting on Facebook and you know.

He’s fine and doesn’t even think about you. Hasn’t taken the time to respond to your email from a week ago and it’s not because he’s dead, it’s because he just doesn’t care.

You hate social networks and right now think they have all been created by Satan himself in order to torture all us rejected souls and try to make us do something really stupid like blasting someone with a posting or an email or start to obsessively check their page every hour of every day and constantly pull our hand away from the “send” or “enter” key.

You even start to battle the evil thoughts of hoping they are miserable or suffering some imagined disease because of their stupidity in not knowing how you really are worth everything, every sacrifice they could possibly make just to be with you or knowing that your friendship and empathy is so rare that it is to be treasured.

But you know your thoughts and feelings are just bouncing around inside your head and you’ll never speak them. Your friends think you are fine and the honest truth of the matter is, you’re tired of thinking about him and talking about him and there really isn’t anything left to say.

You’ve said it all, thought it all and cried all the tears you possibly can until you cry again. You have endless conversations with him in your head that range from pleasant and fun to you slapping him across the face for his stupidity in letting you go.

You met someone who touched your soul and was a true kindred spirit, or so you thought. When you  admit you were wrong or that it was one-sided, you cringe with embarrassment of your shattered confidence.

You vow never to make this mistake again and that’s the exact moment when you realize you are going down the wrong path. If you go down that rabbit hole then you have admitted that you aren’t worth someone’s love and attention and it will soon come to be.

You forget to tell yourself that the reason you have been forgotten is that it’s their insanity and not yours. You were the one that put yourself out there and you were the one that told them you loved them and when they said they didn’t love you back, you did the ultimate in human kindness and compassion; you continued to love them in spite of them.

You have not been forgotten. You will never be forgotten because someone as wonderful and shiny and beautiful as you will always have difficulty in finding another to love you as you deserve to be loved.

Your friends have told you, over and over, that its him and not you. You try to believe this, but they aren’t the ones sitting at home alone with no one to talk to. They may very well be right, but for right now, you are convinced that you have some unknown character flaw that no one can see but you know it’s there. Besides, they say to you what you’ve said to them. That’s what friends are for and you love them more and more for their kind words and love and the way they view you as perfect and worth all things. You know you are truly blessed.

You are on planet Earth after all and the only mistake you can really make is to stop being you and try to be what you think others want you to be.

For all of those out there, reading this post and feel forgotten by the ones we love,  just know that it’s not true. Maybe your goodness and kindness were too much for someone to handle or understand. Maybe you, like me, needed to learn this and take it to heart that those of us who love unconditionally will get smacked around and not understood by many.

But we are never forgotten. No matter what it feels like or looks like.

No one can possibly forget us.

(Yes, I have “unfriended” him, deleted his email address, phone number and picture from my phone).

Gone, but not forgotten.

Women I have known: Yolanda, Gun Runner.

Posted: October 16, 2011 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

I met Yolanda when I was working with a group of women who were in jail for various reasons, from embezzlement to welfare fraud all the way up to assault with a deadly weapon. How I came to be here is covered in other posts, but there have been many women I have met in my life that for one reason or another, had a profound effect on me.

Some of them are still in my life. Others have come and gone and some of them weren’t so nice, but they changed my life and helped me to be who I am today. Flawed, smart and strong, but very far from perfect.

Yolanda was in one of my classes and always sat in the back and rarely said anything but listened intently with very little expression. She was very hard to read and get a handle on, but she always smiled and nodded her head when she came in and would often give me a “thumbs up” after class was done.

On this particular night, I had just finished up a workshop (I don’t even remember what it was about) and as I was wrapping things up, I asked the group if they had anything they wanted to say before I called it an evening.

Yolanda raised her hand but didn’t say anything. I looked up and saw her with a slight smile on her face. I was exhausted from working all day and then standing on my feet for the last two hours.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She smiled and jumped up out of her chair. “My name is Yolanda. I’ve been in here for two years and I have something I want to say.”

I heard a few chuckles but I ignored them. I was dying to find out what she wanted to say and I was pleased that someone had started the ball rolling.

“Sure Yolanda, what did you want to say?”

“I don’t want to talk in front of the group, so I was wondering if maybe I could talk to you after class.” She looked to be in her mid-30’s, brown-skinned and petite. Her teeth were crooked and she had long black hair that was pulled back in a pony tail. Her skin was clear and smooth and she had dark and dull eyes. When I looked at her, it was as if she was far away and struggling to connect with the people and things around her. She was looking straight at me but there was a lack of connection between her and I.  She could have been talking to anyone.

“Sure, that would be fine,” I said and continued to try to get the group engaged in some type of communication. It was getting late and I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was go home, sit in a hot bath and polish off a bottle of wine. The more I thought about it, the better it sounded.

I dismissed the class. No one said anything to me as the filed out, headed back to their cells and to a future that looked hopeless and bleak. I tried to imagine what that was like as I could see it on their faces. As they walked by, I looked at each one and smiled at the ones that looked at me. A few smiled back and for a moment, I could see them as children, laughing and playing and wondered what could have happened that these women ended up here. I didn’t see one glimmer of hope in any of them. I saw women who were beaten down, shuffling out of one room to go back to a cell and spend the night looking up at the ceiling, knowing the next day coming would be exactly the same as the one before and the one before that.

Yolanda came up to me and smiled. We sat down and I asked her what she wanted to say.

She told me she was only 23 and had five children, four of them in foster care. The youngest one was just a toddler that was being raised by her grandmother. The other four were spread all over California and she wanted my help in making sure they were taken care of. She wanted the foster parents to adopt four of them because it would be the best thing for them.

“Yolanda, there really isn’t anything I can do about it. I’m just here to talk to all of you and see what I can do to help you while you are here and when you are released.”

She hung her head down and started crying. Her body shook violently with each sob. I didn’t know what to do or say so I just put my arms around her shoulders and held her. She cried and cried for a long time and I let her. She would occasionally mumble about what a horrible person she was, how she had messed up so badly and that she loved her children so much that she knew the best thing was for them to have a better Mom. She broke my heart.

Finally she stopped crying, wiped her face and looked up at me.

“Yolanda, what did you do that got you here?” I asked.

“The family business. We’ve been doing the same thing my whole life. Ain’t no big deal. We run guns in and out of Mexico.  I don’t really know what I did wrong that got me here though. Just a bunch of cops showed up one day, busted down the door and arrested us. Took my kids and I’ve been here since then.” She shrugged her shoulders and she said this to me as if we were discussing a grocery list.

“Well, I see. So you got arrested for illegal activities.” I said.

A blank look came over her face. “Well, that was news to me when I got arrested.”

I felt my mouth drop open. I looked at her really hard. She was serious.

“You didn’t know it was illegal?” I asked.

“No. It’s just what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.”

Yes, it was that simple. Just didn’t know. She had never gone to school. They lived out of RV’s and had very little contact with anyone outside of the business. She was sold to men here and there whenever the family needed a little cash.

She was only doing what she knew to do. She was just like me, doing what she had to do to survive. We talked for as long as we could before she was escorted back to her cell. As she was leaving, she turned around, walked over to me and gave me a bear hug. I was stunned at the warmth that emanated from her over to me and the strength in her arms. She held on for a long time before the guard pulled her away, but even then, she had a beautiful smile on her face.

“Thank you for listening to me. I like your class,” she said as she turned the corner. I will always remember the color of her jumpsuit (bright orange so they can’t easily hide) and the spring in her step.

I drove home that night, sad and happy at the same time. I was sad that she was in such a bad position and had never known any other life and I was happy that I had been so lucky for what I had been given from the moment I was born until now. I was lucky; she was not.

I can honestly say that I never judged another person after that.

Self-esteem. Lesson #7. Knock off the drama. You’re not entitled.

Posted: October 9, 2011 in Self-esteem, self-respect, Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

This is a fairly new word that has crept into almost daily conversation.

Drama. We don’t need no stinking drama.

I hear about people not wanting it in their lives. I see it on almost every dating website profile that I have ever read.  NO DRAMA screams the words. I see people getting fired because of “the drama.” I’ve even had clients fire employees because of it. I’ve been seeing quite a bit of it on social networks.

But what does it mean now-a -days? That’s the question that has been bothering me. This word has taken on a new definition and I’m not sure what it means. But I do know what it is when I see it. Oh, it’s oh-so-clear when you see it and I think now I have a new mission in life.

Knock off all the drama. I think I now have zero tolerance for it in myself and in others. Because I’m tired of it. I’m sick of it and I’m tired of dealing with people who think they are entitled. You’re not. You never have been and you never will be.

I recently had a heart-to-heart with an employee of a client. I had been given a head’s up to try to sort this girl out because she was bringing her personal problems to work every day. Apparently she was going through a rough divorce (they’re all rough) and was sad and snappy during the day. The boss liked her enough to send her my way but had lost patience.

There were tears and justifications during the conversation. I sat. I listened. I handed her Kleenex and let her vent. Then I was done. I asked her what the hell she thought she was doing. I asked her why she acted like she did and then pointed out her job was at risk.

I wish I could have taken a picture of the look on her face when I told her that. She actually thought she could say whatever she wanted to say because she was entitled. She thought she was ENTITLED to act anyway she wanted because it was everyone else’s problem if they couldn’t deal with it. This included talking back to her boss.

She ended up getting fired because as far as she was concerned, the world evolved around her and what she wanted and what she thought and it didn’t matter what came out of her mouth, she was entitled.

She is not an isolated incident. I’ve been running into this more and more. It has been bugging me for a long time and then it hit me why someone would be so assertive to the point that they crush anyone else’s viewpoint.

They get away with it.  The more they get away with it, the more they do it. They act this way because they hate themselves and their lives so much that they lash out at anyone who doesn’t back down. Why? Because if they can take others down to their own level, it will justify their bad behavior.

It’s a very sick and twisted cycle and the more you let someone get away with it, the more they will do it.

If you actually liked yourself, you would feel no need to assert and dominate others. You would be happy and content with what other people think because you would have certainty about yourself and enough confidence to allow others to be who they are.

You want to feel better about yourself? Then stop treating others badly and having hissy fits over some imagined slight that probably never happened.

I also know when I hear someone adamant about not wanting drama in their lives, they are the first ones to dish it out, so you don’t fool me. I am just as guilty as the next person of being dramatic, but I work hard at not doing that. There are scars on my tongue from biting it and you might want to try doing that if you always feel the need to assert yourself.

The fact of the matter is, when it comes right down to it, most people don’t really care what you think. That’s a harsh reality, but if you can get your wits around it, you’ll actually be able to relax and not have everything be a battle. The people who do care about you will want to know what you think.

Good rule of thumb is not to say what you think unless you are asked.

No one is entitled to anything. Not me, not you. You are not owed anything just because you woke-up and got out of bed. I don’t care who you are.

You are not entitled to a paycheck unless you earn it.

You are not entitled to a successful relationship unless you earn it.

Your employer does not owe you anything just because you showed up for work.

You are not entitled to hurt or harm people with your words and actions. Ever. I don’t care how badly someone may be acting; you don’t get to harm them back. Treat them with as much respect as you can and then walk away. Sever the relationship if you want, but do not get dramatic.

If you care about yourself, you’ll take the high road as often as possible.

In the meantime? Yeah, you got it. Shut-up.

You got your feelings hurt on a social network? Well, what did you expect?

Posted: September 23, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Really? What did you expect?

You sat down at your computer and you had a lot on your mind. It could have been the fight you had with the spouse/significant other/various other PC terms that I don’t give a rats ass about.

Or maybe you wanted to share a political point of view or something happened at work and you wanted to talk about it. Maybe you just wanted to say something and get it out of your system.

You sat down and you wrote about it and you poured your heart and guts into it and then you did the unforgivable.

You hit the enter key or the share key and you put your words out there for the entire world to read.

What did you expect? What did you really think would happen?

You thought that you would be accepted and that you would be understood and maybe even loved a bit for your words and your heart and your soul. You actually thought everything would be OK and that your world would be better for the one sin y0u committed that will never, ever be forgiven.

You had the audacity to communicate.

How dare you! How dare you go against the norm of THIS society and actually put down, in words, what you think and what you feel. No, you aren’t supposed to do that. You are NOT supposed to rock the boat or have a different opinion than others.

You have NO right to have an original thought.

You should burn in hell for that. We should all string you up, laugh at you, share your stupid post and be done with you!

But I won’t. I will read what you have to say. I will comment or not, but I will know that your words came from your heart and soul and it has nothing to do with what I think and I will not pass judgement on you until you do something really stupid and then I will nail your ass to the wall for it.

And that stupid thing is when an idiot comes along and bashes you and then you do something really idiotic.

You defend what you wrote! What? Oh no, don’t do that.

Then, because stupidity has a tendency to go downhill very fast, you then begin to argue and the fight begins.

You see, the reason you defend it is because there was something about what you wrote that wasn’t really “you” or who you are and you got nailed on it.

Soon the postings are going back and forth and I sit back and watch. I shake my head because you could have done several things and been fine with it.

You could have deleted their stupid comment. Remember, this is a social network and not a democracy and as far as I’m concerned, it’s my post and I don’t owe anyone anything.

You could have blocked them and saved yourself a lot of time and grief and used that for creative energy.

You could have ignored them, which is the biggest insult of all and trusted your dedicated readers to oust the troll that got out of his cage and chase him away.

The opposite of love is not hatred. It is indifference. You could have yawned your way out of it.

But you didn’t. You carried on with the drama and lowered yourself to their level. The more you defended your position, the greater the value you gave him. You showed everyone that this persons opinion of yourself was more important than your own.

Now, I can live with most of that, but then the real harm can follow after that which bugs the hell out of me.

You stopped communicating. You decided that it was all so horrible and terrible and no one likes you and you went outside and ate some worms or had a drink or even worse, came back on your post/blog and whined.

Screw you if you can’t take it. Seriously, screw you if you let anyone get in your way of communicating.

Because the thing that you forgot was for every negative comment you received, there were at least ten positive ones.

You kicked us good guys to the curb and that pisses me off. Even if no one ever responded or stroked you or said a word, why would you care?

Do you write and post to get approval? Go to hell and don’t waste my time.

But if you have something to say, then say it and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe no one will approve, but so what? These are your words and your stories and your soul and if you don’t think it’s important, why should I?

Go ahead and communicate and keep it up, no matter what.

I dare you.

Self-esteem. Lesson #6. Don’t blame.

Posted: September 19, 2011 in Self-esteem, self-respect
Tags: , ,

Whatever happens, don’t blame someone else, including yourself.

Blame is when you point your long or stubby little fingers at someone else and exclaim “They did THIS to me and it’s all their fault!” If you are REALLY good at blaming others, you’ll keep this attitude for the rest of your life and will turn into the worse person you can be.

That’s on you and you’ll get no sympathy from me.

God knows I’ve spent plenty of time blaming others for what they did to me. Including, but not limited to, cheating on me, betraying me, talking badly about me behind my back and firing me. OK, I still think the guy who fired me was and probably still is an asshole. Sorry, but I just can’t quite let that one go.

It was so stupid but what happened was not my fault! Honest, it wasn’t. I was hired by “He-who-shall-be-only-called-asshole” to answer phones in a tiny and dingy office while he worked at another job. He had started a business where he made these tile thingys that you would lay down on the floor and then insert the tiles to create something spectacular. I took the  job because I was desperate for money and was currently married to a guy that thought it was fine for his wife to work two jobs so he could stay home and write. Yeah, well I fell for that because I was very young and he was really good-looking. I’ll post another time about that.

So the office was in this industrial part of town and I was very isolated. The phone rang about two times a week, so after I spent the first hour of my new job cleaning the office, there was nothing left to do.

One day, some Neanderthal comes in to pick up his order. I go back into the warehouse to get it and he follows me. He starts making lewd comments about me and I suddenly realize I am in a very bad situation. As I reach up to grab a box, he slaps me on my ass. I freak out, yell at him and run back to the office. Fortunately, he left and I locked the door.

That afternoon when “The asshole” came in, I told him what happened. He looks at me and then tells me I deserved it!

I did what any young woman would do. I started crying and just then he tells me I’m fired. I tell him he can’t fire me because I quit. I grab my purse and make him pay me on the spot. I walk out the door in a huff and go to walk to my car but I had forgotten I didn’t have a car because the husband had it, so I walked around the corner and sat down and cried some more.

When the husband came to pick me up, I made the mistake of telling him what happened. He did a U-turn across four lanes of traffic because he wanted to go “talk” to “The asshole” but I somehow convinced him not to.

For a long time, I blamed this man for his insensitivity to me and what happened. I blamed him for me not making enough money and I blamed him for upsetting me and my husband and I blamed him when I couldn’t pay my rent the next week.

It was all his fault. All of it.

Granted, what he did was wrong, but blaming someone else isn’t the same thing.

When you blame someone, you are saying they are better, smarter, faster, prettier, etc. than you.

If you say so then it’s true.

What you say and/or think becomes real and true because…you said so, that’s why.

As long as you have that attitude, the other person will always be able to manipulate you but only because you let them.

Trust me, I’ve blamed lots of people for lots of things and it sure didn’t make me feel better about myself. In fact, it makes me feel pretty freaking bad and I don’t know about you, but I don’t like that feeling and I don’t like beating myself up for my many, many mistakes anymore than you do.

So let’s knock it off, shall we? Agreed? Agreed!

No human being has ever been wrong – ask anyone and they’ll tell you why their horrible actions were justified – so don’t ever think you’ll get anyone to admit it. You’ve never been wrong either in your mind.

We make decisions and if things don’t turn out like we had hoped, acknowledge the fact that you made a mistake and learn from it. We tend to only learn from our mistakes. I don’t know why that is, but it seems to be the case.

Don’t blame yourself or anyone for what has happened. It does no good and closes the door on your learning about yourself and life.

Instead, tell yourself you made a mistake and figure out what you can take away from it to have a better life and be a better person.

I admit there have been times when I wish I hadn’t talked the husband out of “talking to the asshole” but the actual problem wasn’t him. The actual problem was I was married to someone who didn’t work, didn’t want to work and if I had been truly honest with myself back then, I would have seen that and made better decisions.

But I didn’t. I justified it to the point that I took on another job that I didn’t understand but lied on my application. I sweet talked the guy into hiring me and I wasn’t honest with him that I had no idea what people were talking about when they phoned in. I am not a math girl, so I couldn’t handle the orders. Instead I told them “No problem,” wrote down what they said and then set it aside for when “The Asshole” came in.

I didn’t ask the guy to try to degrade me and scare me when he came in to pick-up his order. He was way out of line and as I look back on it, that could have been much worse. But the funny thing, I never blamed him. I just figured he was another pervert in this thing called life and I was fortunate that I got him out of there.

I never blamed him because I never held him responsible for my survival. But I sure as hell held my employer responsible for my life and I should have held myself responsible and not taken on a job that I didn’t understand. I should have held my husband responsible for making income but instead I justified it.

I did that and I can fix it. That’s what you say and that’s what you do.

So you’re not perfect.

Welcome to my world.

Smack down on a gang banger.

Posted: September 6, 2011 in Pets
Tags: , , , ,

Sometimes in life, you have to stand up for yourself and let the chips fall where they may. You have to speak out and not worry about the consequences. If you think about it, you might not do it.

I was walking my dog Maverick last year. It was twilight but a warm evening in the summer. Maverick was getting older and wasn’t feeling great, so I made sure to give him short walks. He and I both needed to get out of the house that night.

This is my Maverick:

We were just turning the corner on our street. I saw three men standing on the sidewalk ahead of us with a couple of dogs. Because Maverick liked to bark and have a tizzy fit anytime he saw another dog, I walked us into the street and figured we would get back on the sidewalk after we passed them.

As we were walking by, Maverick started to get excited, but I reined him in. The two dogs were smaller and could have been pit bulls or some similar mix. I personally love pit bulls and don’t buy all the crap that is said about them. But the guys standing there had the full “gang banger” look going on.

As we walked by, one of the dogs barked and we kept walking. As we passed and returned to the sidewalk, I heard one of the men start to yell at his dog to shut-up and then I heard the dog yelping. He was hitting his dog.

No, I don’t think so.

I froze. I was about four houses down from them, but it was a quiet night. I turned around and yelled back at the man to knock it off.

I was a bit surprised those words came out of my mouth, but that’s what happens when you speak before thinking.

“What did you say, bitch?” was the reply.

I froze but Maverick kept walking. I felt the leash tug for a moment. My heart was racing and it suddenly dawned on me what I had done. I wanted to just keep walking but the sounds of that dog crying and him yelling at it were still in my head. I thought about what would happen to the dog if I just walked away and I couldn’t do it. I looked down at Maverick and knew I would never let anyone harm a hair on him and that I would do whatever I could if someone tried.

The dog that was getting beaten was the same as Maverick to me. The love I felt for Maverick suddenly transferred over to him and I was not going to walk away.

I turned around.

“You heard me. Get your hands off that dog or I’ll come back there and make you do it,” I yelled back. Maverick was now looking up at me, worried. He knew I was upset and he was trying to figure out why. Because he was older and because I didn’t want him hurt, I tied him to a tree and told him I would be right back.

Just as I started to walk towards the men, one of them said “You can’t tell me what to do. It’s my dog.”

“That doesn’t matter, you idiot! You lay another hand on that dog and you’ll have to hit me too!”

“Oh really?” he said. I wasn’t bluffing. I meant it. I had made my decision and I was hoping that today wasn’t my day to die.

“I’ll tell you what do to do, when I want. You get your hands off of one of God’s creature or I’ll come over there and take your dog from you.  You understand me?” I yelled back. I had stopped walking towards them. My whole body was shaking and fear started to arrive again and I pushed it back. I had gone this far and wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew I could not back down.

There was silence. I tried not to think or worry about myself. I was more worried about Maverick.

“Sorry ma’am, you’re right,” he said.

What? Did I really hear that?  Did I really back down a gang banger or was this some insidious ploy to get me closer and then kill me?

“What did you say?” I yelled back. I was now three houses away from them. I started walking again. They weren’t moving and they looked so much taller and bigger than when I had first walked by. They turned towards me as I got nearer.

“I asked you a question. What did you say?” I asked as I came within twenty feet from them.

One man was kneeling down now, petting and stroking his dog. He was whispering in his ear. The other two men stood silently and watched. One of them knelt down and started to scratch the ear of the other dog, which began to wag his tail.

The man, who I think yelled at me, looked up, kissed his dog on his head and stood up. “I said you were right and I’m sorry I did that. It was wrong of me.”

All my anger and rage started to lift at that moment and I didn’t want it to. I wanted to stay angry at them. I was prepared to grab the dogs and run as fast as I could but I was not prepared for an apology. This threw me off.

I looked at them for a moment. My racing heart started to calm down but my body was shaking. I was prepared to get hurt to help the dogs but I didn’t expect this fight to be over so quickly.

“OK, then. You ever hit another one of God’s creatures again I’ll make sure you pay for it. Somehow.  Someway.” I said with no idea how I could ever back-up that statement, but I was way past the point of thinking.

“Yes ma’am,” was all he said. The other two men nodded their heads in agreement.

I looked down at the dogs. They were happy and healthy and showed no signs of abuse. I smiled at them, turned and walked away.

I untied Maverick and we began walking again. I walked past my house and went around the corner. As brave as I might have been, I didn’t want them to know where I lived in case they had a change of heart. Maverick and I laid low around the corner for a few minutes. We kept peeking around the bush to see if they had left yet. Once they did, we came back around and almost ran up the driveway and into the house.

Once behind my locked door, I thought about what I had done and what could have happened. I don’t know if I was brave or just plain stupid, but for once I was glad I hadn’t thought before I acted.

I made Maverick cuddle all night with me, which he hated but relented.

Shoes I’ve worn once.

Posted: September 4, 2011 in funny stories
Tags: , , ,

Admit it. You have at least one pair of these, don’t you? Maybe you have more than one pair?

I am only willing to talk about one pair. Just one pair and I am NOT going to go through my closet and take pictures of the others. That would be pointless and would also make me feel a bit more foolish than I already do.

I KNEW it when I bought them that I would never wear them much but because they were so cool and on sale, I went ahead and got them. But since I am being honest here, the fact that they were on sale had absolutely nothing to do with my decision. I tell myself that to justify buying shoes I don’t need with money I don’t have. Hey, it works for me, OK?

I also justified it by telling myself I had so many outfits they would go with and I would wear these all the time. Besides, I have to look nice for work and somewhere during my twisted little thought process, I actually convinced myself that buying and wearing these shoes would help increase the income of my business. At the time, it made perfect sense to me but right now, I cannot even imagine how I spun that around but I know that I did.

They hurt my feet when I tried them on, but again, I told myself in great detail that the shoes would “give” the more I wore them and it would be OK. Sure, it might take a few days, but it would be fine and I really needed these shoes today and passing them up would mean the end of my career.

Again, at the time, it all made so much sense.

It also made sense that even though I found them difficult to walk in as they are at least 4” high, I would figure it out in a very short period of time and I just needed to get used to them and all would be right with the world once again. This is logical. This makes sense and this is the right way to think.

I bought them and brought them home. On my way back from the store, I mentally calculated all the things I could do without the coming week in order to afford them. I could forego paying my electric bill until next month unless the utility company got bitchy about it. I also didn’t need to fill up my gas tank at the station and could maybe survive on half a tank of gas unless there was an emergency and I had to hit the road suddenly. Yeah, that would work along with adding water to the bottle of shampoo in my shower and using that for another week rather than buying a new bottle.

I am not good at math, but for some reason, I felt like Einstein as I drove home with the amazing trajectories I was able to do.  It was rocket science and I was scary brilliant.

So I bought them and I came home with them and put them on. Sure, I was wearing my baggy jeans and a T-shirt I’ve owned for over 25 years, but I still looked good. I knew I was right because these shoes went with everything! They pinched my toes and I could feel the blood stop moving to my feet, BUT I LOOKED SO DAMN GOOD!

I mentally patted myself on the back for being such a good shopper and then I tried to walk in them. On a hard wood floor with feet I could no longer feel. On a floor that is tilted and uneven because I live in a converted garage. Yes I do and that’s a topic for another post but come to find out, when a landlord converts a garage into a studio apartment, they’re just looking to make money and aren’t too concerned about the minor details such as when you walk into the bathroom, you have to place your hand on the wall to steady yourself so you don’t crash into the closet. Just a minor detail that is annoying at 3:00 in the morning.

Suddenly I was headed for the dreaded closet and I couldn’t stop myself because the bottom of the shoes were slick and now I was rollerblading with my arms going all over the place as I tried to balance myself and find something to grab. My closet doesn’t have a door on them because that would have also cut into the landlords expense in remodeling a garage, so I crashed into the back wall of said closet but did manage to grab the rod that my clothes hang on. Fortunately the rod was strong enough to hold me, so I swung there for a moment and then let go and crashed onto the closet floor because I still couldn’t get feel my feet. I landed square on my butt and avoided the shoe rack. I don’t even want to think about that.

One would think that a normal and somewhat sane person would have immediately grabbed the shoes and the pretty box they came in and gone back to the store and returned them.

Of course I didn’t. I loved these shoes and I was on the brink of giving up FOOD for a week just to own them, so I realized that the actual problem was the floor and not the shoes and everything would be fine because we had carpeting at work.

I wore them the next day, but I didn’t put them on my feet until I got out to my car. It has carpet and when I got to work, I very carefully walked through the parking lot and up the stairs without incident. I shudder to think what I must have looked like walking but as long as I looked good, I was willing to pay such a small price.

All day my feet hurt but I refused to take my shoes off. I was right in my decision damn it! My staff is composed only of men – again, a whole other post coming up on that – so they of course don’t notice anything like my shoes, though one of them asked me if I had hurt my back from the way I was walking. I blew him off, told him not to worry and to get back to work.

Everything was going fine until I had been sitting at my desk for a while. I would wiggle my toes to make sure I still had them. Someone called me, so when I turned my chair around and started to get up, I hadn’t put my foot down exactly right and the next thing I knew, I fell flat on my ass. The chair I had been sitting in crashed into the glass door behind me and then bounced off of that and smacked me on the back of my head which then caused me to scream.

The next thing I know I have 3 men standing in my doorway, looking down at me with very worried faces. Then, as if they were in a herd, all scrambled to help me up but since there was only a narrow passage between my desk and a credenza, they couldn’t get through and began to shove and push each other, which made it only worse. It was classic slapstick and the more they tried to get to me, the further back they pushed each other.

I started laughing and told them I was fine but that I needed someone to take my shoes off. Suddenly they were silent with blank looks on their faces. The two married men weren’t too scared but the young single man was, so he silently slowly backed away as he shook his head. One of them came forward, sat down on the floor and took my shoes off with no questions asked. He had been married a long time.

I finally was able to stand up and grab my chair and sit down. I could feel the blood rushing to my feet again. I thanked him, told them I was fine and had just tripped. They wouldn’t leave my office until they were convinced I was fine. I went barefoot the rest of the day and no one said a word or asked one question. It was just “Susan is doing what Susan does” for the rest of the day. Just another normal day.

So here they are:

And I can’t give them to Goodwill like I do with all my clothes that I’ll never wear again. These shoes are cursed and dangerous and I don’t want to inflict them on another woman.

I can’t throw them away because I only wore them once, so maybe you know someone I should send them to. The woman who slept with your husband or maybe a woman who stabbed you in the back and pretended to be your friend and then betrayed you.

They are a size 8.

Self-esteem. Lesson #5. Demand it.

Posted: September 2, 2011 in Self-esteem, self-respect
Tags: , ,

We have a saying in sales that I think comes from Zig Ziglar:

     “You don’t get the close you don’t ask for.”

These words are true, not only for sales, but for probably all areas in life. If you don’t know what you want, you are going to have a tough time getting it. If you don’t demand what you want, you’ll never get it.

I am not talking about demanding something in an offensive or rude way, but you should always be direct and clear in what you want and what you don’t want.

Are you demanding self-respect from yourself and others? If not, it ain’t ever gonna happen. Yes, I am using those words and style intentionally to make a point. When you demand something, you are insisting on it and it’s not negotiable. How you allow others to treat you is a direct reflection on how you look and feel about yourself.

I remember in High School how what other people felt and thought about me caused me to define myself. Personally, I think this is a very common trait and I would rather eat insects, raw, then go through High School again. It was not a good time for me and looking back, I don’t think it was a good time for anyone except for the perfect looking cheerleaders that pranced around the school in their cute uniforms.

Yes, I am a bit bitter because I was twice their size with the wrong color and style of hair and no matter how many hours I spent the night before, putting it up in curlers and using tons of gel on it, by the end of the day it was no longer straight and looked like I had stuck my finger in a light socket. But they looked perfect and had the perfect boyfriends and drove the best cars and were the fussiest Diva’s I had ever seen prior to that time.

Plus they didn’t have acne and braces and God I’m going to stop thinking about this right now…

No wonder I took up smoking and hung-out with all the other misfits. It’s a wonder I didn’t do drugs or start drinking but I was always terrified of my parents finding out. So instead I hung-out with the kids that did and hoped their “coolness” would rub off on me by osmosis.

But the funny thing was, as much as I might have been just a wee bit jealous of the cheerleaders and all my ex-friends that seemed to have moved onto better and more interesting people who were SO much better looking than me, what really bothered me was they got away with it. It never entered their little pin heads that anyone would say “No” to them and if anyone did, I never saw it.

Some of them were quite nice and pleasant to me as we had all grown up together in the same neighborhood but in High School, new and invisible lines were drawn and you didn’t know about them unless you accidentally crossed one. I have a tendency to ignore lines and don’t appreciate anyone telling me what my own space is.

But I watched these lines changed and I made new friends in other places and I watched as my old friends morphed into people who would no longer talk to me and I saw their attitudes shift as they became more and more popular and I found my own sense of myself get fuzzy. Soon I was someone who was trying to get other people to like me.

This had never happened to me before. This was new and I didn’t like it and yet I couldn’t stop it.

I felt I had been dropped onto another planet and I didn’t know the customs or how things worked or who it was OK to talk to and who wasn’t. Now I was with people I had only known a short time and some of them were nice and some were not.  Most of them did drugs and drank but I didn’t and the ones that did were  bothered by my abstinence and would push me to do it.

At first I tried to pretend that it didn’t bother me and the more I did that, the less I liked myself. There was no particular defining moment as this was a gradual deterioration over many months. I was more interested in getting people to like me than I was on liking myself. Things were changing so fast that I never knew what I thought from day-to-day, and yet I was the one person people would come talk to.

I am a great listener at least. So I listened and talked and tried to make friends and I allowed them to treat me any way that they wanted. I figured if I did that, then they would like me and that would make me a good person and I didn’t need to worry about all the friends I had lost as High School sucked our souls away from us.

It all came to a head one night when I went out with someone. From the moment I left my house with him, he began to talk down to me. I didn’t say anything because he was popular and I was lonely. The whole night was a nightmare as I kept my mouth shut and said nothing. His verbal attacks were very subtle. The disrespect he showed me wasn’t obvious at all, so it was a gradual feeling of despair and hatred towards myself that began early in the evening.

But it suddenly erupted and took me by surprise.

It was such a silly thing. He said he didn’t like the way I flicked my cigarette and tried to show me the correct way to do it. I don’t know, for some reason that was the straw. I grabbed my cigarette back from him, said something about what he could do with it and got out of the car and started walking home.

The fact that my house was 20 miles away didn’t enter my mind at the time. I was more angry with myself than him. He watched me walk down that road and I guess he realized he had been rude and he came and got me and drove me home.

I didn’t say a word all the way back to my house. I didn’t say a word when I opened the car door or when I slammed it shut. But as soon as that door was closed I told him to never talk to me again and right then I knew this has all happened because I had allowed it and accepted it. I let people treat me the way they wanted. I justified THEIR bad behavior, but I was just as guilty as them because I never drew my own line and made it clear of the consequences if they crossed it.

And what the hell? People had drawn their own lines to me, so I figured tit for tat.

How people treat you is on you. It’s not on anyone else. Sure, someone can blind side you. This can happen to anyone.

But how to deal with it shows them, and yourself, how you feel about you.

Someone says something rude to you? Don’t accept that it’s alright for someone to do that. Either walk away or deal with it, but push them back across that line.

Your date is looking at other women? Get up and walk out and don’t look back. (This also applies to men, so if the woman you’re out with is acting like trailer trash and you don’t like it, be a gentleman but don’t ask her out again.)

You’re in a business meeting and someone says something inappropriate to you? Let them know they were out of  line. I don’t care how you do it, but do it.

How you first deal with disrespect sets up the rest of the relationship.

If you don’t demand it, you’ll never get it.

Self-esteem. Lesson #4. Learn

Posted: August 14, 2011 in Self-esteem, self-respect, Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

Start learning now and never stop. This doesn’t mean you have to go to school if you don’t want to or can’t afford it. It means to find things out for yourself and keep practicing at what you do and get better and better at it.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to feel good about yourself when you are being or acting stupid? No, really, have you ever felt good about yourself in moments like that? I sure haven’t but that is a good way to learn. You do or say something stupid, see that you did and then go find a better way to deal with it in the future.

You don’t learn about things from reading. I wish we did because then we would all be much happier. No, we learn by experience and our own observations. You know the sun rises every day, right? Well, did you learn that from reading it in a book or from observing it for yourself?

We learn by smacking into a brick wall, pulling back and rubbing our head and finding out that when we do that, it hurts. Some of us have to smack our heads against the wall a few times before we get it. I have survived many bruises on my forehead (and my butt from getting knocked down on it) before I thought “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t do that,” and figuring out another way around something.

I am also the person that if the sign says “Wet Paint,” I’m fine with that. But if it says “Wet Paint Do No Touch,” well, I have to go touch it to see for myself. I have to learn on my own and not because someone told me what was right to do and what was wrong to do. If it’s really wet, then I know it. If it’s no longer wet, then I know that too.

There are also the people who just keep banging their heads against the brick wall and blame others for it. We call these people “victims” and I wouldn’t give them too much attention. They like it.

You are responsible for your own knowledge. No one else is. You know what you know because you said so. It doesn’t have to agree with anyone else. In fact, if you look at the title of this blog again, you’ll probably get a good idea of my opinion of anyone who tries to tell me or others how things are or how to think and behave.

I will only agree to the things that I know for myself to be true and I think we all need to find our own truths no matter what anyone says. You need to find your own truth, whatever it is and then say that it is.

If you don’t understand what someone is telling you, tell them that and have them explain it to you until you understand. It doesn’t matter who it is, a boss, a teacher, a co-worker or a friend. Don’t go along with things that don’t make sense to you. Question and learn. Those that care about you will help you. Those that don’t, try to push their agenda on you. That usually indicates it’s a hidden agenda. Find out and if they won’t tell you, then walk away.

Read and then read some more. Evaluate everything you read and decided if you agree or not. You can accept or reject anything you want. Then go see if what you just read is true for you. If someone tells you a certain race or culture is bad, go find out for yourself. Go look and talk to the people and see what you see. Make your own decisions because those are the things that will give you knowledge. Your own observation is the only thing that is of value in learning.

Do you really want to look and act like everyone else? Since when did someone else’s opinion have more importance than your own? It has as much importance as you give it. Ignore it. Don’t try to learn from anyone that you don’t respect even if someone tells you that you should respect them. So what if they are a relative or rich or famous? That doesn’t mean you have to like or respect them. Be with people who you admire and learn from them.

List out all the things you would like to know more about. It doesn’t matter what they are as long as they are things you want to learn about. Then go find out more about those things.

List out all of the things you need to improve upon and start increasing your competency. If you are having trouble with something at work, get someone to help you be better at it. Know that you can be better.

List out some of the stupidest things you’ve ever done and then write down what you learned from them.  I have a long list and it makes me laugh now. At the time I did some of these things, it wasn’t so funny.

Find someone who could use your help in becoming more capable in an area and help them do that. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you are teaching someone to be better at what they do.

You are as valuable as you want to be. You are as smart as you want to be.

Let me know everything you learned this week.

Email from a polygamist

Posted: August 7, 2011 in Dating, Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

This email wins my award for the week of the best one I received from a dating website. Drum roll please….

“U R very pretty. I like ur smile. I am a poly man and am looking for another wife. I am honest, truthful and caring. My cell is ###-####. I tink I have a lot to offer u. I hope to here from u soon.”

I had to read this three times before I could understand what the hell he was talking about. I then quickly checked his profile and yes indeedy,  he’s a polygamist.

I will give him brownie points for being honest.

His email surprised me so much that I jumped back a bit in my chair which caused the chair to catch on the carpet, stick and the next thing I knew I smacked my head against the wall behind me.

I was glad no one was around to see that.

I went to flag the email but then there was a thought in the back of my mind to check my settings on my profile.  Sure enough, I had the setting defaulted to “Interested in anything” which I quickly changed to “Single men only.”

Maybe they need settings to be more direct because I want the one that says “Must have been born a male as I only want the original packaging, single, no criminal record of any kind, likes women most of the time, can and will carry on a conversation when necessary, won’t  text/call me 50 times a day, has original thoughts  sometimes, can and does read actual books and NEVER mentions the word ‘cuddling’ in their profile because that’s male talk for copping a feel.”

Pictures of whom or what would be contacting me if I didn’t change it went through my mind. The “Craig’s List Killer,” Scott Peterson, the smelly guy that hangs out at my local 7-11, Bill Paxton from “Big Love” (which wouldn’t be bad because he’s hot) and Warren Jeffs. OK, I’m stretching it a bit on Warren Jeffs but then again, prisoners do have access to the internet.

Fortunately for me, his was the first email I got when I put up my profile so future disasters were avoided.

Why do the strange people always find me? I took another look at my profile. It was short and sweet with a couple of pictures of me that I don’t completely hate. Why would a poly male want to meet and marry me off of my bio?

Now the question arose on how to respond? Sure, I could just delete it and not say anything. I could write him back and thank him for his email and decline his kind offer or I could blast him back and tell him what I thought of his email.

I took the brave route – I deleted the email without responding and then blocked him. I blocked him so fast that I wasn’t sure I had done it at first. Suddenly before I could figure out what I wanted to do, I hit that block key, sat back and stared at my monitor and rubbed the back of my head.

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