It’s the twenty-fifth day of March and my life is still stuck on crappy. Got home from a temp job (Praise Jesus) and hopped right into bed and went to sleep. Was I tired? Yes. The reality that I had no money to buy food or do anything else but I was “working” left me exhausted.
That is a heavy and draining realization. I woke up with it. I managed to get it unto the bus and took it to lunch with me. I spent about $4.00 today: $1.99 for breakfast, a banana and granola bar at the gas station; and $2.20 for lunch, Dollar Menu Chicken Sandwich at McDonalds and a yogurt parfait which was also a dollar. I ate; I read; I was at peace.
Since I don’t have my car I have stopped going to my weekly meditation meeting. This has highlighted that I also get more than meditation from that meeting. I get food. It’s my food pantry. Without it, I’m hungry.
To keep functioning, I am trying to embrace gratitude. At various times, not just in the morning or when I am going to bed, I will try to think of a few things for which I am grateful. My health, this temp job, my weekly pay check, birdsong, butterflies, bees, the priceless sacrifice of the men and women of the military, beautiful days and clear skies of LA, somehow I’m still here and struggling; the feeling that I am moving forward, friends, Prozac, the Lilly Corp Prescription Assistance Program, the possibility of the future, that now is only temporary…. Get the picture.
No grand plans, no big promises to myself, just the prayer that things will change; that is what keeps me going. I just have to make it until then. Again, it is worthwhile to note that this is exactly how I felt as a child growing up in my home and family. “Just hold on Ann” this won’t last forever is how I got myself through lonely summer months left at home. No brighter picture of the future than I would be alone and alive got me through days of not speaking to anyone (including my parents). So there is an odd serenity to my days.
I used to obsess over thoughts of home. Where was my home? Who was my family? Was it Jamaica, with my parents, our townhouse, school? Today I know it is a feeling. It’s a feeling that springs from a place of dis-ease, want, and insecurity. I am walking on cracking ice. I am at home when my parents can not help me and have told me so. They haven’t abandoned me; it is just I should be rescuing them. My friends do not know what I am going through. I tell no one. I don’t ask for help. I also know that there is no external sign of trouble. I look happy; I eat; I make jokes; I make plans; I don’t complain. Everything is fine until it all collapses. And it won't. This bridge is made of rope but it is still a bridge.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Postcards from the Recession
I’m listening to NPR and they are talking about saving for retirement. The Employee Benefit Research Institute has completed an annual study and Surprise! Nobody is saving enough. Who didn’t know that? So now, that we know they are trying to do PSA to get people to save. How about raising real wages and creating jobs by investing in infrastructure??? I’m not saving for retirement. I also don’t have health insurance, life insurance, own a home, have a husband, or a job. (sigh)
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Emotional Generosity
This is a new term for me. I want to be emotionally generous and I want to be around emotionally generous people. I want to fall in love with someone who is emotionally generous.
Someone who is emotionally generous shares their feelings, with friends, family, and individuals. When you have hurt their feelings or offended them; they tell you. When you have made them angry; you know it. They are not afraid to compliment, acknowledge, listen, and empathize.
This is so different from the home I grew up in. This term is completely nonsensical in the context of my childhood. One was generous with tangible things. If you were rich, then maybe you were generous with money, clothing, or food. If you had running water, then maybe you were generous with it; giving beggars ice, or lemonade, or bathing your neighbor’s children. But emotions?
Praise was earned. If you got no praise, then you didn’t deserve it. Isn’t that simple? Love was an obligation and an entitlement. I had to love my father, mother, and brother; no matter what they did to me.
Of course I loved my father, even though he made me cry, beat my mother & brother, and terrified me. He took me to school everyday and berated my mother everyday. How could I do anything but love my mother, who spent most of her waking hours, during week and weekends, saving people’s lives and providing me with money. I got to spend that same time isolated in a house with my brother and father who rarely spoke to me and never to each other. I was in college before she got an eight hour work schedule and a junior in high school before she stopped working weekends.
Anger, that’s another topic entirely. Anger was always under the surface. It’s amazing I can’t ice skate because I certainly know what its like to be on thin ice. I walked on thin ice all the time and did not know the confidence and relief of being myself without someone exploding in rage, until I moved out of my parent’s home. To this day, I over apologize to all strangers and am the first to apologize to all friends.
How Do I see this playing out in society as a whole?
I listened to friends as they justified the following hypothesis: Teenagers and young people have been over praised. Teachers and coaches (not parents mind you in this example) are so eager to build confidence that they praise small if not insignificant achievements. This leads them to expect recognition and praise in the work world and how terrible is that! (lol)
I take the opposite position: my generation, particularly adults who were abused as children, were raised with emotionally withholding or emotionally repressed parents. My parents were not that in touch with their emotions. More powerfully, my grandparents and parents alike all encouraged me to suppress or dismiss my emotions. If I cried, I would be threatened with a beating. When my Dad made me cry, he then bought me candy or pastries. (Now I credit this to him as a loving act.) When I got angry with my Mom or tried to hold her accountable, she would become hysterical: making me feel guilty for feeling anything but pity or unconditional love. So I became overweight and was not conscious of any anger towards my Mom until I was 28; heavily medicated and in intensive therapy. (ohyeah.)
But, what does this phrase mean?
Someone who is emotionally generous shares their feelings, with friends, family, and individuals. When you have hurt their feelings or offended them; they tell you. When you have made them angry; you know it. They are not afraid to compliment, acknowledge, listen, and empathize.
This is so different from the home I grew up in. This term is completely nonsensical in the context of my childhood. One was generous with tangible things. If you were rich, then maybe you were generous with money, clothing, or food. If you had running water, then maybe you were generous with it; giving beggars ice, or lemonade, or bathing your neighbor’s children. But emotions?
Praise was earned. If you got no praise, then you didn’t deserve it. Isn’t that simple? Love was an obligation and an entitlement. I had to love my father, mother, and brother; no matter what they did to me.
Of course I loved my father, even though he made me cry, beat my mother & brother, and terrified me. He took me to school everyday and berated my mother everyday. How could I do anything but love my mother, who spent most of her waking hours, during week and weekends, saving people’s lives and providing me with money. I got to spend that same time isolated in a house with my brother and father who rarely spoke to me and never to each other. I was in college before she got an eight hour work schedule and a junior in high school before she stopped working weekends.
Anger, that’s another topic entirely. Anger was always under the surface. It’s amazing I can’t ice skate because I certainly know what its like to be on thin ice. I walked on thin ice all the time and did not know the confidence and relief of being myself without someone exploding in rage, until I moved out of my parent’s home. To this day, I over apologize to all strangers and am the first to apologize to all friends.
How Do I see this playing out in society as a whole?
I listened to friends as they justified the following hypothesis: Teenagers and young people have been over praised. Teachers and coaches (not parents mind you in this example) are so eager to build confidence that they praise small if not insignificant achievements. This leads them to expect recognition and praise in the work world and how terrible is that! (lol)
I take the opposite position: my generation, particularly adults who were abused as children, were raised with emotionally withholding or emotionally repressed parents. My parents were not that in touch with their emotions. More powerfully, my grandparents and parents alike all encouraged me to suppress or dismiss my emotions. If I cried, I would be threatened with a beating. When my Dad made me cry, he then bought me candy or pastries. (Now I credit this to him as a loving act.) When I got angry with my Mom or tried to hold her accountable, she would become hysterical: making me feel guilty for feeling anything but pity or unconditional love. So I became overweight and was not conscious of any anger towards my Mom until I was 28; heavily medicated and in intensive therapy. (ohyeah.)
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Ham Damn That Boy is Fine!
About two years ago, Forbes online magazine introduced the world’s wealthiest and best looking royals to the ignorant masses. Actually, [rewind press play] I was listening to BBC radio mention that Prince William and Prince Harry were at the top of the list. Naturally, I wanted to see who else was on the Forbes list. That’s when I saw him. Sheik Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum.
Do you get me?
Do you get me now?
Then you are in with the IN crowd.
Dig this! 2000 and late, Arianna Huffington is scoping out the dude also. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/30/the-worlds-20-hottest-roy_n_104295.html
Meditate on the following: Prince Hamdan was born on November 13, 1982 and is the named successor to his father, the Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates. He, and all his brothers, graduated from Sandhurst, the exclusive military academy in England. He is worth millions if not billions of US dollars. He is a poet; a falconer. Oh, and he is hot. Seriously, he is a good looking dude. He is an attractive, young, athletic, wealthy, powerful man. And he has brothers, single brothers.
I don’t really have to explain this right? I mean, royalty were the first international celebrities. He’s good-looking; rich, young, single, and he wears his pants on his waist and not hanging down lookin’ like a fool. If that wasn’t enough, the list goes on long enough to make me swoon.
There are no videos of him calling any Black woman a bitch; or performing gansta rap. No interviews where he uses the “n” word; talks crassly about his sexual exploits; nor does he refer to himself as a pimp. He has real work to do like figure out how to make an economic engine of an entire nation run. Or raise the status of women or something equally as important. Not just work out and memorize movie lines.
He’s my dream come true.
Do you get me?
Do you get me now?
Then you are in with the IN crowd.
Dig this! 2000 and late, Arianna Huffington is scoping out the dude also. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/30/the-worlds-20-hottest-roy_n_104295.html
Meditate on the following: Prince Hamdan was born on November 13, 1982 and is the named successor to his father, the Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates. He, and all his brothers, graduated from Sandhurst, the exclusive military academy in England. He is worth millions if not billions of US dollars. He is a poet; a falconer. Oh, and he is hot. Seriously, he is a good looking dude. He is an attractive, young, athletic, wealthy, powerful man. And he has brothers, single brothers.
I don’t really have to explain this right? I mean, royalty were the first international celebrities. He’s good-looking; rich, young, single, and he wears his pants on his waist and not hanging down lookin’ like a fool. If that wasn’t enough, the list goes on long enough to make me swoon.
There are no videos of him calling any Black woman a bitch; or performing gansta rap. No interviews where he uses the “n” word; talks crassly about his sexual exploits; nor does he refer to himself as a pimp. He has real work to do like figure out how to make an economic engine of an entire nation run. Or raise the status of women or something equally as important. Not just work out and memorize movie lines.
He’s my dream come true.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The Sons of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
(sigh) How do I say this delicately? There is no easy way to say this.... I know it sounds like something that can be easily dismissed, but I am utterly fascinated the following two people I have never met before:
Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum
and
Sheikh Rashid bin Mohammed Al Maktoum
I was introduced by Forbes magazine and my good friend Andrea. TBC I have a hair appointment I have to motor to and I will use the time to draft something that sounds less than a fourteen year old with a crush.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdan_bin_Mohammed_Al_Maktoum
She made a slideshow:
Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum
and
Sheikh Rashid bin Mohammed Al Maktoum
I was introduced by Forbes magazine and my good friend Andrea. TBC I have a hair appointment I have to motor to and I will use the time to draft something that sounds less than a fourteen year old with a crush.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdan_bin_Mohammed_Al_Maktoum
She made a slideshow:
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