Aug. 29,2010

I have been remiss, but that’s easy to do when it feels like I’ve got nothing to say... If you were one of my regular phone friends that I spend hours speaking with then you’d hear me talking in circles.

Dilemma: the money has run out (just a bit too soon), so that ‘CHiP’ is completely ready to go with no way to make it go! I want to scream – I’m so frustrated Yell. I really can’t get mad at anyone, it’s my own doing. If I had been a little wiser with the finances, if I had spent less, if I had done something different!!! But it’s really no use beating myself up over it now, now all I can do is move forward from here. Or really all I can do is sit here until the money comes in Cry

Disappointment: I have in my head the way this was supposed to go ~ I envisioned everyone falling madly in love with ‘Safe’ and my signings being like a mad house with people lining up out the door and around the block. Don’t laugh – this has always been my ambition it’s just who I am. And is it so crazy? Is it so wrong to dream big?

So that is the two things that have been plaguing my head. And like a merry-go-round on steroids I keep going round and around them!

To try and distract myself I’ve been working on two books. Ambitious? Well, that too is me... ‘CHiP’ is a squealed novel as well as ‘Stuck – Facing Forward’ and because both are written in full I’m working ahead of myself to try and get them completed.

I’m finding it hard to be motivated and positive. This adversity seems to be eroding my self esteem. Silly isn’t it? I’ve been told by countless fans that my book is loved, my writing is beyond fabulous, my ideas/characters/the whole thing is engaging. Cool! So how come it’s so hard? How come I only focus on the negative?

Augh! I’m tired of being so ruled by my negative emotions.

So, to take my thoughts off that I did a crazy whirlwind trip. It worked out well; I was able to help out a friend in need, visit with some old friends of mine face-to-face, and go on an adventure.

I love adventures!

When I was quite younger and I ran my day-home, in BC, I used to do very silly/adventures things! Once I rode the Sky train (like the C-train) from one side to the other with 7 kids in my charge. Why? Just to do it. The kids loved it, it got them out of the house – the spirit of adventure wasn’t lost on them. Everyone else thought I was crazy!!!

However, I felt like a five hour drive out of Calgary to then drive through Edmonton and all the way down to the Tsawwassen Ferry’s in BC to drive back to Abbotsford – well, that seemed like a lively enough adventure for me! Without a second thought I was on my way.

They say the teenager mind is not fully developed and thus teenagers are subject to the ‘let’s do something ridiculous’ mentality and instead of thinking about it, weighing out the consequences and deciding if it’s safe or not, their only response is ‘sounds cool – let’s!’ I think I have a teenaged mind at times.

Positive outcome: I got to see all my good friends. I have layers of friends and every layer is needed and dear to me.

§  My first layer is the childhood girls I grew up with. Two I have managed to keep in contact with, one being a sporadic kind that we lose touch for years only to regain it and keep on as if no time had passed, the other I have been in contact with since I was eight.

§  The next layer are my having children friends, two again – they were having children when I was and subsequently we raised our children together, I’m Auntie V to their broods, they are aunties to my clan.

§  The next layers are my Albertan friends ranging from the ones I we met when we arrived in this new town

§  And the last are my latest – my book friends.

I am blessed with so many friends. And yet I never feel like I’ve reach that perfect amount where I might say, ‘sorry, my friend docket is full’ I don’t think I ever will. We can never have too many people we love and care about in our lives.

The best part of this trip was that it was all about the face-to-face. Face-to-face with my childhood friend to drive her home – there is no time like quality time and lump that with quantity and you’ve got yourself nothing but the best of times. 17 solid hours driving ~ road trip time, even better. We drove, saw wonderful wild life: two elk, three fox/wolves, and one black bear (wish I had brought the camera). We ate and talked and listened to music when we wanted. We peed at the side of the road. We slept in a road side turn out. Aaah, the adventure of it!

Then after saying ‘see you later’ to her I traveled into Abbotsford, my former home, and saw not only my two having children friends, being able to talk and look at their faces, I also got to see their growing children. What a treat.

Lastly I was so lucky to get to see my other childhood friend who I had only just reconnected with after a 13 year stretch. And this was super great. We talked so long we got dirty stares from our waitress after only three hours of eating dinner. Then we took the conversation back to her house and kept going until her, soon to be, significant other returned home with his childhood friend. It was really crazy how that worked out! He had been contacted by his friend saying he was in town only hours before I called my friend to say I was cruising through... Love it when things like that happen!

So our little twosome catch up became a foursome (nothing naughty). It was more fun than I can explain. The funniest moment was when the other visitor, being American, was complaining about all us Canadians down there and I asked how he knew ‘us Canadians’? was it like a they had a tattoo on them? Then I proceeded to pull up my pant leg and show off my tattoo ‘made in Canada’ I’m so proud to own it!

Ok, so great trip. But it had to end and I returned home – home to frustration. That’s where I’m at. Frustrated. I guess that’s where I will stay until something shifts...

Hope something shifts soon.

Until next time,

Aviva B.
 
Flashes of Insecurities

August 7, 2010

            Damn , I had really thought I could have grown past this by now! Yet here I am and I’m still suffering this affliction. That’s right; it’s my own personal plague! I am insecure. Insecure about who I am. Insecure about what I’m doing. Insecure about if I’m good enough... And these insecurities are getting really quite tiresome!

Now, the good news about this getting older and wiser thing is that these insecurities don’t seem to pull me down into the bottomless pit of hopelessness quite as long as they did when I was younger. Back then I used to spend months in this negative place, now I spend a few days, a week. But still one week is a long time when you’re self-doubting.

I wish I could pinpoint the fall. I wish I knew the magical circumstances that take place and wined me up here. Or, more importantly I wish I knew the magical combination that could get me out of here quicker!

My favourite saying: “You have to go through it to get through it.” Sounds like good advice when I’m talking to someone else! I hate having to live my own wisdom... But here I am – in it and trudging through it.

It’s from this place that despondency and despair are born. It is from this dark pit that that voice ~ that silky soft, alluring, tantalizing voice speaks: “Life is too hard, give up.”

Liar.

I know that voice well; it has called to me in many other moments of my life. Moments that felt just as hard as right now does; moments that I managed to survive through and things got better! That’s my point – now feels awful, but it has never stayed this way.

Yes, it has always changed – not always for the better at first, sometimes its felt far worse before it got better, but the one assurance I know is that it does change!

Ever notice how the best things in life, the best rewards, the best moments – are all born from tragedy? Nature has many examples: A plant grows best after a severe storm (something about putting better roots down); A butterfly can only fly if it fights to release itself from its cocoon (if you interfere the butterfly will escape easier but its wings will never work properly); And then there is labour and childbirth (something we’ve been able to avoid a lot of the pain with modern medicine – yet we can’t get away from it completely and afterwards) the rewards far outweigh the journey we took to achieve them...

I am rambling on to try and remind myself that this – this dreadfully uncomfortable place where I find myself once again is good. Here I sit, and I suffer dissatisfaction with where I am in life – disenchantment with the way things are turning out, and as much as I truly HATE this, it’s good. This feeling of unease, unrest can give me the motivation I need to re-evaluate and reinforce my efforts.

Do you too find yourself feeling gloomy and hopeless? Do you think that life is too overwhelming – too out of your control and you just want to give up ~ I hear you! I’m there with you. But if you for one second believe that that is the best option, you my friend are WRONG! That is a LIE.

Now, you may argue that I know nothing of your situation (as you know precious little of mine)... That may be true, so let me fill you in a small bit ~ I had a very traumatic childhood, so traumatic that I have blocked out EVERY memory from before age nine.

People who’ve studied this phenomenon know that this is not the sign of someone who had a happy existence. It means that things happened to me that were so horrific that I chose to forget them all together to protect myself (the brain is smart; it will protect you to preserve you).

If I have been too cryptic, let me be a bit more blunt – I was molested, regularly... Now, I’m not interested in unpacking my past (not here, not now) but I needed to say that if you think you’ve got it bad – I can imagine, I can emphasize and sympathise. And just because my memories only start at nine it doesn’t mean I was by any means a happy child.

Just because my brain forgot doesn’t mean I didn’t have residual memories. I don’t know if I can explain this part – what I mean is, even though I didn’t know what was wrong, specifically, with me I knew something was wrong. I awoke around age nine feeling sick, evil, dirty, rotten to the core and not having anything that I could pinpoint these emotions on – they circulated around my thoughts and dragged me under (for like I said) sometimes months at a time.

Enter the teen years. I’ve admitted that I was a bit of a social outcast... This would be an understatement. I was beyond socially outcasted – and I had no skills to fix it, in fact many of my attempts to do so resulted in slipping further down the social ladder. I will not humiliate myself by recounting all of the stupid and offensive things I did or allowed others to do to me just to gain approval. But it was bad.

Long story wrapping up to a middle – I am surprised that I survived my teen years at all.

So, what saved me?

Funny enough despite all my hopelessness there was another small voice somewhere deep within me that kept assuring me that things had to get better – they just couldn’t keep getting worse and worse and worse, eventually this was going to turn around for me.

And that voice lives within me to this very day.

I have to believe in rainbows, I have to believe in happily ever afters – they do happen. I know that no matter how bad things seem they will change, they can get worse, but that they do inevitably get better.

It is true.

Stick around and test my theory, I dare you to ~

Today is a down day. Today is a woe-is-me kind of day. Or I should rephrase, this evening, the past couple of hours have been such. The day was good, the morning and afternoon was even great, just this evening has seemed to slip into those dark clouded thoughts. What is annoying me is that those dark moments have been cropping up on a more regular the past month basis and I’m getting tired of them.

However, the plus side – they are just moments: FLASHES. Not months, not even weeks. Isn’t it funny how just a few moments of negative seem to wipe away all the positive? My positive’s far outweigh those pesky down-beat thoughts – yet down overshadows up. Cruel really, isn’t it?

I wish this wasn’t me. I wish I could be happy and smiley all the time. I wish I’d lived a charmed life where my past wasn’t so filled with sharply painful things... Guess wishing it doesn’t make it go away. So what do I do now?

Here I am reminding myself, yet again, that ‘this too will pass’ ~ I guess that’s where this saying had to be invented, because it’s true. I’ll go off to recount all the really great moments I had (even in this one day) and I’ll let the feeling pass through – like a weather system making its way past my home. Soon the sun will come; perhaps a rainbow will be seen? All will be well and eventually I’ll find myself in an UP place once more.

Good luck to all of you who can relate with my ramble, and if you don’t have that positive, hopeful voice – or if you just can’t hear it at the moment, reach out and seek help! Believe me, I know there is someone in this world who does care about you deeply and will be wounded greatly if you don’t!

Call a friend, a family member, a counsellor or the kids help line 1-800-668-6868!

Until next time,

Aviva B.
 
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