The contradictions and the feelings....

Feelings have always been an issue for me. When I was growing up and felt something from a stomach ache to hearing voices or whatever they were I was often told it couldn't be or you are making it up. When others say things that contradict what I feel, it is confusing. I am used to being confused. I am still trapped into going back to my past because of what I learned there or didn't learn along the way. For whatever ratio it is I am doing that 10 steps forward, 2 steps back. My dance feels like 2 steps forward 10 steps back.

I have been to shrinks and other head doctors who have analyzed me and tried to do many things including get me under control with drugs. Of course they don't say they are trying to control us, they say make us well. Sounds a little George Orwell and 1984. 
I can feel energy from others.  I can feel energy from all kinds of sources.  Because of this, I don't really like to go to large events by myself because I can't filter their energy out. I get bombarded with others energy and it overwhelms me. If I go to a large event such as a flea market or farmers market I do better with a friend. With a friend I seem to be able to filter out all the feelings I sense while attending.

What has been happening in the last several years is I have given myself permission to have feelings. They still confuse me, not so much because I am confused by them, but more because it is a conditioned response and predictable. I am used to being confused and what is throwing me is not being so confused and that in itself is throwing me into some chaos.

One of my fears is failure, another is fear of success. I was thinking about this because how do I determine success as opposed to failure? It is complicated. For instance, I have successfully quit leading a self destructive life style.

I am at another intersection where I am colliding with the past and the present. My ability to integrate my past into my present, but not be controlled by it is what it feels like right now. I finally feel like I am growing up, another step, where all my peers and even those younger than I have quite likely already grown up. It has been like I was often two or three different people.  It is bringing up very powerful feelings. I have known for a while that my strong feelings are an asset. My feelings are so strong that the barriers my body uses to keep them from being noticed sometimes don't work and others notice something about me, but what they notice is not known to me. Sometimes I will be in a grocery and get looks from people I pass, almost like there is gelatin surrounding my body and it collides with them giving them a small bump. Of course, there is no gelatin, so it must be an energy related field that surrounds us and they must be feeling it and not knowing what it is. Usually they look at me a second time. I am just describing how I feel. I don't really know what others are feeling.  I have other actions that need my attention. Perhaps I will continue this or perhaps this is the end and new entry would be a new beginning.

One of my biggest struggles is leaving the past behind. Parts of it keep popping up interfering with my present. This seems to be a recurring theme with me.

Passed my evaluation ride along today

I had a trainer ride with me on my afternoon bus route today. She is the most particular one and some other drivers don't want her to ride with them. It is ok, yesterday she was making grumpy faces and I yelled over to her when I was standing in a group of drivers, "We Love You O!"

When we got to the school she was telling me somethings about other drivers and was giving me clues as to what she expected. We talked about lots of things and she only had a couple of minor things to point out to me about my intersection alertness telling me I was looking left, right, left at some intersections and not others. She said I was just looking with my eyes and not moving my head back and forth. The other thing was I didn't turn off the fan at the first RR crossing and did at the second. The first one is a siding where you can see the tracks in both directions for hundreds of yards across a busy highway. The second is more complicated and the driver can only see about 50 yards in each direction. I know that I have seen a train at both.

As we drove she kept trying to distract me. She kept saying oh look at that and I would say, can't do that maybe there will be a better time to see it when I am not driving the bus.  This person I really like and respect. She has been a school bus driver quite a while and has taken the test in California as well as Oregon. In California the Highway Patrol sends an officer along with you and that officer tries to distract the driver a lot. So, she is experienced and she is quite fair.

We had some good conversations. She told me about pulling some tendons in her ankle and how painful that was and how she couldn't work. She told me about her daughter who is in the Navy and is home on leave. When she told me about her daughter being in the service, I thought of how tough it is for women in the service and all the abuse many of them are subjected to. That is a whole other subject.

So a good day on that account.

evasive manuvering and trusting all will work out....

Jeez, I know a lot about that. I still am subject to it. For instance, I have been attempting to do my taxes, quite simply said and quite simply done, yet I have found all kinds of reasons for putting them off even though I stand to get back amounts that I need. I have to find out what is so uncomfortable about it.

What it has to do with can not be simply stated as one reason, but it is many. The most telling though is the way I feel. Right now I am going through a huge life changing transition and my feelings are intense at times and less so at others.

I am uncomfortable right now because I am involved in a physical condition that I can't control. Having found out I have to have an operation I tried to put it off until June, but that can not be. I have to work out getting disability insurance and expedite the operation to a closer date. The seriousness of my injury is finally sinking in. I tore the connective tissue from my quadracep muscle to my knee. There is just a small bit of connective tissue still connected, allowing me to walk as I do, with difficulty. If those last strands of connective tissue also tear off, I will lose my ability to walk at all until it is reattached.

So, I have my helping the work along work, my taxes and still working at my job, but also trying to set up the disability insurance so I can take a leave of absence and get my surgery. This is causing me to feel very vulnerable because I am going to have to rely on the generosity of others to help me through this. I am going to have to trust that everything is going to work out. Trusting is apparently still a huge issue for me.


I have already been shown my family and friends are very supportive. I am truly grateful for this.

1-01-2012

It is the first day of the first month of the new year 2012. In 30 days I will have my 62nd birthday. It is amazing to me that I have moved forward to this point in time. There have been many drips that I have ridden to get to this point. I am blessed.

Even though my slip and fall on the 30th of December challenges me, I am hopeful for the coming year. We have passed the shortest day of the year and are heading into the light of the coming spring. My short and quick journey down concrete stairs surprised me and disappointed me. I am humbled by this short flight and unhappy landing. It is not the falling that scares me, it's that sudden stop at the bottom that I fear.  I am ready for this set back and have already moved ahead with changes brought on by my lack of mobility. I am not able to hobble to the store on crutches, not a priority but possible to purchase 1/2 and 1/2 or milk for my coffee. Instead I put less coffee in my French press and made it a little weaker to compensate in reverse for strong coffee. Yummy! That's good.

Adjusting and adapting are two actions that I have made a point of focusing on for much of my life, even when I didn't realize that is what I have been doing. Adjusting and adapting is what has kept me from condemning others for their actions because I can then put my feet in their shoes and know that I have probably done those same things. It is part of our journey and our learning process.

So as a result of my fall and injury I am now again being forced to take a breath and not charge ahead with the same abandon of my past days. I will learn to move differently, think differently and adjust and adapt to my current situation. My concern is with healing and getting back to work so I can continue on my plans for each moment of the coming year, one drop at a time.

Wow! I need to speak with my acupuncturist or maybe not. Maybe I will speak to the person here. I am just sitting down to my first meal of the day. I started my day with a cup and a half of coffee with 1/2 milk 1/2 creme.

I am wondering if the energy restoring that I had with the acupuncture had something to do with this? We had discussed my treatment issues in the past and one of them is digestion. I ate a large short veggie burrito yesterday afternoon at about 2pm, then came home later and ate a small salad, then nothing until now, 12:35pm next day. Usually if I got overnight without eating something in the morning I have bad effects to my personality. I get tired, less alert, cranky.

Onward. The computer I purchased used a couple of months ago is telling me battery replacement time. Apple, wants about $130 for one. Last time with other computer I got a knock off battery and it worked just fine. I pretty well intend to do the same. Probably made in the same slave factory that makes Apple and other computer batteries. Hopefully no one died to make the quota for the knock off's Got to wait until payday at the end of the week.

Along with that I need to purchase rear brake shoes for my van and also some knock off brake drums I found on line for about $25 apiece. My van has gone close to 300,000 miles without getting the brake drums replaced. I think they have been turned by the previous owner and are beyond limits. All this boring mundane wordage coming from inside my head. Yet, it is a way that helps me sort through whatever I am processing up there. Repetition of what I need to do by writing, saying and etching it into my brain.

Wow, wow again! I don't remember having all the tools at the top of the page before, but maybe I just overlooked them. I used to use html characters when I linked and now there is a button in the tool bar here and presto! Type in the web address and there is the link on my page.

So, for those that don't know, there is a website by the name of change. I am linking to it below. With it one can start an on-line petition. Many have got signatures and presented them to for instance the Apple store in the Big Apple over 200,000 signatures telling Apple computer what their loyal customers expect from them concerning labor practices at home and abroad. And remember that Bank of America wanting to charge it's customers $5 to used ATM cards. That back fired on them by a person who started a petition on change.org. So there you go, not that you were interested. But the web is proving to be an interesting tool if one knows where to go for info.

http://www.change.org

I like to write here and haven't been here for quite a while really until yesterday and the 9th of Jan. 2012.  I like this format, because it gives me a certain feeling of anonymity that I don't feel I have at Face Book. I don't want everybody to know what or how I am thinking. I tried that in the past and learned over time that trusting everyone is a mistake for me. If a person knows where to look they can find my page. Yet, with that,  I still feel a certain amount of privacy. Another reason to write here is I can save, sleep my computer and come back to it like I have been doing this afternoon gone into evening.

The limitations of my body seem to be catching up to the limitations of my mind. The last month of 2011 and the first month of 2012 have changed me rather suddenly or  that's how it feels. Actually, the changes have been happening over time, but I haven't been letting my mind acknowledge them.  I tell some people about my experiences and what I say seems like it is a little hard for them to understand. Of course, my ability to communicate has always been strained.  I have always been either misunderstood or misunderstood. Non-sense? Not to me. Only to those who can't imagine there are many ways of being, thinking, feeling. We limit ourselves by our habits, expectations and desires. 

Today was another day of strong feelings. Today I was understanding and accepting something about my chronological age. I was helping one of my friends on a plumbing task he was doing at home and together our ages add up. I was thinking none of us can escape the inevitability of the life cycle. He was telling me about his limitations, that he feels his mind leaning into dementia and I said I have been prepared for that my whole life because my particular challenge leaves me always feeling as though I am missing something. I have been lost most of my life, but also have noticed other changes.

The job went well. It is often a good thing to have a second opinion when one is doing a job that one is unfamiliar with. We balanced each other. We worked it out and got the job done to his  satisfaction.  If we had not met the challenge well enough, we would have had to call the plumber. That would have been costly. We handled it and then went to the grocery. We went to People's and Trader Joe's.

I have been ignoring or denying some of the changes that come, but I can't ignore or deny them anymore. I am accepting how I am changing and that change is the only constant and inevitable. It is adapting to the changes that are tough. Adapting and adjusting is what I am meant to do. Resisting this basic of needs seems to be a common action in this, our species.

Johnny Cash singing "Your Own Personal Jesus" a cover on his album American IV.

I am being pulled along like a cork in the ocean, bobbing up and down on and in a current. I am only slightly able to make course changes.

Feelings were stronger yesterday, much stronger. I am often confused still by my feelings, so I just feel them and eventually time takes away the strength and allows me to find some perspective. It's a heck of ride and sometimes I wish I had more input into the direction I am traveling. All that I feel begs the age old question, what, who why, where?

The best I can get is to keep putting that other foot in front of the other, walking through the time that is much like that big bowl of gelatin. It is probably lime gelatin because when lime is added to anything, it brings out extraordinary flavors. People and lime, brings out more than the ordinary.

I'm attempting to head out to a friends to consult with him on a plumbing issue and perhaps put a wrench to some part of his plumbing system. I just got a message on my phone and I must go now. Now!