An Attitude of Gratitude

Dr Emoto - Gratitude Water Crystal

Not sure why I'm here except that I'm aware I haven't blogged in a while. Feeling the need but not necessarily the inspiration. Which is strange as there is a lot going on in my life right now. Ah well, we'll start and see where we end up.
Tomorrow is my birthday - ak! I don't know why but the last few years, birthday's have been singularly unimpressive affairs. Not sure if its to do with the 'getting older' thing or the 'no inspiration' thing but really, despite everyone's best efforts, I'm always left feeling a bit flat and, I don't know, sad maybe.

Then next Thursday is my 4th Wedding Anniversary. I know that we are in danger of completely missing that because the very next day, the 28th, we finally take possession of our very own wee hoosie! YAY! Very happy about it and yet also, a bit, um... I don't know... flat? We went for the final inspection today and the current owners have already moved out. It felt so empty. It was also a cold, miserable, wet and dark day, so that may have added to the somewhat flat mood we all seemed to be in. I just couldn't garner any enthusiasm for it all and yet I am very much looking forward to moving in. Does that even make sense? We also realised just how much painting the place needs. It is pretty badly painted in an awful cold looking pale blue at the moment, so white is the order of the day and lots of of it. Except Beanie's room which will be pale pink with the possible exception of a lovely green wall - to go with her pink and green bedclothes. I am possibly more excited about her room coming together than I am about ours. I don't know why. Maybe because children's bedrooms can be full of magic and sparkle and adults have to compromise with one another and be all 'sensible' about their colour schemes and whatnot. Not sure I can convince my hubby to have a red feature wall in the bedroom but I might get it for the dining room. You never know.

Anyway, we sped from room to room and I showed two of my girlfriends around the place (they had come up to go for brunch with me for my birthday). They love it. I was freezing cold and realising how much work will be involved in making it homely and 'ours'. Still, I'm not easily put off by such things though the idea of backing the van down the very steep driveway did make my insides go all wibbly a bit. We'll have to see if I can do it or not! I'll be pretty much moving the boxes and little items single handedly as the hubble can't take any time off from his very new job. I don't mind too much, it's more the sore shoulder thing that worries me and the endless lifting and carrying of heavy items in and out and up and down stairs that is making me feel a tiny bit blah... the hubble was also in a funny mood, so that didn't help things along. Neither did realising we had no - and I mean NO - TV reception. We might be able to get something with a settop box (which we have) but its looking more likely that we will have to get Foxtel (secretly ok with that!).

Sorry. I'm being a big ole birthday bore I know. I AM very excited about owning my own house but with it comes a tiny bit of terror. Commitment was never really my thing. I liked the idea of being able to disappear whenever and wherever. Now I'm 'commited' (or I bloody should be) and I had the last minute jitters like I did about getting married. What if I've chosen the wrong one? What if it all ends in disaster? What if I find another one I like better and wished I'd waited? That sort of thing. Actually, its kind of funny to compare buying a house to getting married - there a many similarities and I think there is a lesson in there for me.

This might seem a bit off topic but I had acupuncture at 9am this morning and we were talking about weight and my inner child and stuff (which, if I'm honest, always makes me want to run from the room screaming or possibly roll my eyes so far up into my head that I can see out of the back of it).

*BiffSniff.com

I'm not big into the inner child thing - possibly because I feel like whatever kind of childhood I had, I should be able to 'get over it' and just move on. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case for the most part. It seems that the more I try to just 'get on' the less I'm able to. I know that much of my anger at my daughter is more anger at what I didn't have. And I will state here for the record that my mum loved me and was a great mum for the most part. But I lived in a violent household with a violent man and was raised on adrenalin and fear. Ho hum. However, I now that when Beanie pushes my buttons, as she often does, I react from that place of child not from my place of adult. I actually wonder if I have ever really made it to adulthood at all. Certainly not all of me has. Anyway, I digress. The acupuncturist recommended that I do some inner child work and I told her that I have much resistance to doing it as I think it's New Age bullshit on one level and just so bloody annoying on another level. I mean COME ON! However, I did think about it afterwards and wonder if my reluctance to play with my child and my seeming inability to mother her the way I so dearly want to mother her, is in some way part of this bloody scared inner child thing. I mean, how can yu give to others what you didn't have for yourself? I find myself spoiling her with things and experiences rather than my time or my attention - just as my mum did. Guilty that I am not able to give her more of myself, I try to fill her days with activity to keep her happy and well developed. My beautiful, curious, challenging, funny, talkative, empathic daughter only wants my love and attention, yet she gets precious little of it on a daily basis. I just can't seem to bring myself to connect with her in the way that I want to. In a way that means something to both of us. Why?

And she's not the only one who gets the distant Kitty syndrome. Poor hubble gets it to. I explained to the acupuncturist that I wanted to lose weight and despite my best (aerobic) efforts, not a kilo had shifted and I wondered why? She asked me about other times that I had lost weight and I told her that I seemed to only lose weight when I was alone and that as soon as I was in a serious relationship, I started to gain it again. I offered up the idea that when I had nothing to lose, I lost! Meaning that when I was alone and not at risk of losing someone or something that I loved, the weight dropped off me. When I am happy and loved by someone, the weight stacks on like drowning people to a dinghy. (what a weird metaphor - what is wrong with me tonight?). I guess when I have nothing to lose, I have nothing to be afraid of and therefore don't need the extra layers of protection from the world. I am simply here and surviving. When I have something special, I distance myself from it because I can't stand the vulnerability of loving when it comes with the possibility of such harrowing loss. I think that's why I'm (a) fat and (b) have the emotional depth of Paris Hilton.

Dr Emoto Celebration of Love Water Crystal

Christ. What is this bloody post about I wonder. Sorry for the stream of consciousness writing but this is what happens to me when I am in mid-realisation and I can suddenly see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. In loving my daughter, I am vulnerable and human and fallable and crap and everything that I do not want to be. I want to be super-mom, crafty mom, loving, kind, gentle and patient mom who wants to spend nothing more than all of my days playing and loving and nurturing this wonderful blessed creature who has come into my life. I don't want to fail because to fail would be to not love her the way she deserves to be loved. In being with the hubble, a man who is so wonderful and caring and funny, I am open to losing him and that part of me that can't take any more loss urges me to keep my distance, so that when it happens, it won't hurt quite so much. Of course both things are impossible. Loving opens our hearts to the possibility of pain because it opens our hearts to another human (fallible) being and all the mistakes that we are capable of. My fear of commitment comes from not wanting to make mistakes and yet, I have learned so much from mine that I find it hard to think of them as mistakes at all. What is life without the possibility of deeper loving? Where is the joy of life but in the sharing of that love and in the surrender to those deep, deep layers of vulnerability? We cannot simultaneously love and be closed - love and be distant. We can only be closed and distant. Or we can love and be opened like a ripe pomegranate, dripping the red juices of our very souls into anothers mouth and being willing to be devoured by them.

Dr Emoto Love Water Crystal

I have always believed in true, deep and lasting love. I am a romantic at heart. A romantic who has let her cynicism take over because to be romantic is to be foolish and unrealistic. Yet realism is only coldness and closedness under a different name? Why not be foolish and romantic and dream of deeper connections with all human beings, all of life? Is that not a better dream than one of isolated seeming safety? I don't want all the power. I don't want to control everything (even though my head is screaming 'Yes. You do!.' I want to wake up in the morning and simply stand in the breathaking simplicity of life and of love and 'be' in it. I know we all waver in and out of it, of all of our good intentions, but still, wavering (not drowning)is better than standing still in our false notions of what life and love are or must be.

I'm rambling. I'm sure of it. But I'm equally sure of this. I do not want to live half heartedly. I do not want to constantly be looking for the 'something better' or the 'something more' I simply want to be grateful for what I have, house, husband, child and all and to learn to live more gracefully in this life than I have managed heretofore. And if I can let go of my fear and embrace all that this love has to offer me - scary or not, I can do anything. Even enjoy getting another year older.