All cried out

Ive recently begun to think about the way that negative things affect my life. When i am in situations which make me feel small and unimportant, i put on my armour and i battle it out. Right then and there. I pull down the viser and off we go.

What makes me think, however, is what comes after. What comes once the direct confrontation is over and we lie in our bed and contemplate the events of the day?

Im someone who refelcts on things long after they have passed. I can spend hours contemplating the events of the days past and whenever a moment passes which made me feel bad about i cringe. I get this terrible feeling in my gut that grips me and wont let me go. I then need to go out and run for an hour- i literally need to run away from the feelings i have.

When we overhtink the past, we tend to add things to make it worse. We add emotions, moods and visions into the past that really werent there to begin with. When we relive these moments, we falsify them. Often, this is to our complete disadvantage- Whenever i remind myself of some situations, i have to cry out "OMG im SUCH a fool" or "How stupid am I??". We condescend ourselves and make us feel even worse.

In recent times, i've learnt something. If i keep these feelings inside and run away from them, they will follow me. They wont be 100% present, but they will sit there- waiting patiently until I no longer think of them and then they will crawl up on me and eat me. And they will continue to do so until i tell them to stop! So, ive begun to cry. Yes, im a grown woman and I cry. I cry when the feelings overwhelm me and i hve no place left to go because they follow me. Funny thing is, once ive cried, the feelings go. They find some other place to stay- maybe Maui, who knows?

Ultimately, we cannot run away from our feelings of insecurity and self-loathing- we can only make them worse. So: face them, fight them and then cry. Cry it out loud.

The Zone

When you're far away from home, your perspective shifts. You're removed from your life and placed in a surrounding of silence- there is no more movement, there is but silence and calm. Its in these moments that i manage to reflect best on my life and the path i've walked.

In these "zero moments" which i find define my life the most. It is in these moments that i see clearly through the fog and the numbness of everyday life. Its these moments thatb define who i will be.

When we're far away from our usual 24/7 lives, we change. We find new starting points, new corners to grab hold onto...a new outlook. When we leave the sheleterd womb of our home, we are able to spread our wings and fly.

Why? how?

When we are in our ususal environment, we are stuck in a rut. There is no reason to evolve, to change or to adapt because everything is working as it always has. When we are forced to leave that comfort, when we have to let go of what was comfortable and safe. Letting go is always difficult, but at the end its what makes us strong.

Recently, i've let go of a person who made me feel i was unimportant and small. I had to step out of my comfort zone, i stumbled a couple of times but ultimately i am now a better person because of it.

Whats funny is that once you let go of all the things in your life that make you feel small and unimportnat you re-attach yourself to your value.

Find you value by getting out of the zone!!

How to save my life

Yesterday, i told the person i love how i felt about him. I told him straight out what i felt and that i wanted to be with him. You know what his answer was? "I dont think so". Right out. To my face. "I dont think so". Of course this episode brought me back to the feeling of humiliation i've been experiencing for the past 5 years. I thought i had gotten stronger, that things like these would no longer affect me, but i realize now that i was wrong.

How do you come back from something like that? How do you put yourself back together after such an apocalypse?

When we tell people how we feel about them, we ultimately make ourselves vulnerable. We feel naked infront of the person, we feel like there is no way things will ever be ok again. And right now thats the way i feel. I feel like my life will never be ok; that i will never ever be able to be happy again. Why?

The answer "I dont think so" broke me. It broke me into pieces and spat me back out in a milion pieces. I was sure of myself for a bit, i thought i could conquer the world and make it mine. With his negative answer he broke all of that. He made me feel small and insignificant again. He gave me the feeling that i wasnt enough, that i wasnt good enough for him.

It never ceases to make me wonder how other people manage to have such an effect on us. Other people can make and break us. All in one day, in one motion and in one sentence. Shouldnt we be happy or unhappy with ourselves because of what WE do and not because of others?

The more i think about my situation the more i realize something: It's not about me. There can be a milion reasons why "He doesnt think so". Maybe he's gay, maybe hes not ready, maybe hes not into relationships, maybe hes married... after all its not about me personally but about the situation. Its not us. Its circumstance.

At the end of it all, there is no medication for the pain. There is no way we can save ourselves from the trouble all we can do is hope to survive. We need to realize that rejection isnt about ourselves but about everything around us. People may be able to break us but WE can put ourselves back together! Dont let others hurt you and make you feel small because you are amazing in every single way.

The good thing with pain is that it always ends up going away!

Love 2 for 1

Hello Cavenders! Yes its been a long time since i last threw some pseudo-wisdom into the world and i apologize from the bottom of my heart. Nonetheless, i have some very interesting things to say this week, so here we go...

I've recently spoken to a long time girlfriend of mine and she told me the following: she loves two men. I am one of the people who believed that you could only ever love one person at a time. Notice i used the past tense; what my friend said made me think...

She has a boyfriend she loves very much- someone who makes her feel safe and secure and they have been together for a really long time and they are happy. Yet at the same time, she met someone at a function and they talk and get along very well. There is nothing physical going on but he makes her feel alive, vibrant and insanely good about herself. At first, she told me, she tried to fight it because she felt it was wrong, because of what society tells us about monogamy etc. Yet there came a point when she could no longer pretend that there wasnt something between them. She has not gotten physical with this man but they talk a lot and he compliments her constantly.

Many of you will be screaming "cheater" right now but i dont think its that easy. When you have been seeing someone for over four years, the "zazazoo" is gone. It gets replaced by the deep feeling of love and appreciation for one another. Nonetheless, that excitement of the first few months is gone- its all natural. If you find someone who gives you that fire back, without it getting physical between you two, it can only benefit you and in turn your relationship. Im not trying to give you free passes for cheating on your other half but maybe the idea of monogamy is outdated. Maybe we need more than one love in our lives in order to feel complete.

My friend has not told her boyfriend about the other man, because, in her words, "there is nothing to tell". She wont let it get physical and what is happening between them is so platonic that, by telling her man, she fears she'll damage his ego and spark fights. She loves him dearly and deeply and when this whole story stared she was devestated. She felt like she was being the worst girlfriend in the world. After weeks of forcing herself to forget man nr. 2 she was hit with the realisation that this was, for the time being, impossible. So she accepted it and made do with the situation by adjusting to it. By accepting the situation and adapting to it, she could deal with her feelings and move on with her life.

When it comes to love and relationships, you need to go with what feels best for you. If it feels right to love two men, without hurting yourself or the other person in your relationship, go for it. Love is supposed to be comfortable- no matter how many people it may involve.

Beauty Queen?

I've recently begun reading a abulous book from the much dreaded and avoided "Self Help" Aisle in Barnes and Noble: "Beautiful You" by Rosie Molinary. Its a book that allows you, in 365 steps, to aquire more self-esteem and to love you the way you are. Yes dear readers, i have issues too. :)

In any case, she proposed the following task: Write down what you feel makes a perosn beautiful. I did. You want to know what i wrote? "Confidence, a great smile, laughter, grace, warmth, " Notice how all of these things have nothing to do with the way that someone looks? With the way that their body lookr or the way that they dress? This got me thinking about something else: If we percieve beauty to be about interior things, then why do we bother to turn ourselves into the person we feel we should LOOK like?

I was into a guy once that loved it when i straightened my naturally curly and unruly hair. Previosuly, i used to straighten my hair on occasion i.e. a night out on the town or Christmas, but now i found myself doing it ALL THE TIME when i felt like i had the chance of bumping into him. Im a high-heels girl- i feel like im short so i try to wear my "stilts" as often as i can. When my crush said that he loved me in Ballerinas- guess what i did? Yep, i wore ballerinas 24/7. I turned myself from the person i was into the person i hoped he'd find attractive. I changed the wasy i look to please a man. I still cringe while writing this.

A few weeks passed and i discovered that the guy wasnt who i hoped he would be. SO guess what i did? I took great care at making my hair as curly as possible and i wore the HIGHEST shoes i owned everytime i would risk being around him. It was my way of demonstrating that i no longer cared about him. This is behaviour that is apparently very common behaviour amongst us humans- males and females alike.

HOWEVER, when we define beauty we define it with interor values such as confidence, charm or great sense of humour. Why is it that we leave aside all that we feel beautiful only to occupy ourselves with exterrior things such as hair and outfits? At the end of the day, all we really want to do is please the person we are into. Thus, we throw overboard all our instincts and better judgements and we turn ourselves into the person we hope they find attractive. Heres the thing: chances are high that they too find people beautiful because they are graceful and confident and less because we wear all stars and slacks.

No matter who the person may be, if they dont find you beautiful because of who you are, they suck. So stop trying to please the other person by turning yourself into someone you're not and embrace what YOU feel is beautiful. Because thats what you are: Beautiful. In every single way possible!!

Gut Feeling

Merry Christmas Cavenders!

I am a total thinker- i over obsess about every little situation, about everything going on in my life constantly. I analyze, i weigh out pros and cons and i try to figure out what is the best decision. Yet recently ive come to realize that maybe, in matters of the heart, one should trust their gut.

I went to meeting a few months ago with someone i know from a former job, and before the meeting, my gut was twisted in a knot. I had hot and cold flashes, my nerves were up in the air and i didnt know why. I had weighed out the pros and cons of this meeting, i figured out what it would mean to me if i went and what it would mean if i didnt. Yet my gut was acting up.

Ultimately, my gut was right. The lunch, even though it was fun, it was tough. It was very strange to me- i was not easy around this person. I felt cooped up, twisted, wound up so tight i couldnt breathe. Yes, the conversation was fun and it was a short-lived 30minutes but on the inside, i felt watched, uneasy and completely lost. Was my gut telling me this all along?

Gut feeling is a small part of what nature left us - our instinct. Gut feeling prepares us for the worst, gets us to bolt when it gets dangerous and tells us to take a leap of faith when the time is right. So how come we so rarely trust it?

We have grown up to think everything over, to ponder pros and cons of everything we do - did we loose our ability to trust our instincts? When we think everything over a hundred times, does it really get better? Do our decisions come easier when we thought out every angle? Can we ever figure out every angle? Life is so compliacted and we complicate it even more by bringing too much thinking into it. When we think everything over all the time we loose the sense of what is real and what is not. We loose grasp of the real situation and we block out our instincts only to replace them with toughts.

The problem with our thoughts is that they are always connected to the past, to what we have lived and to where we stand in our lives. Our thoughts and ideas are not realistic but flawed by our perceptions of what is around us. Our instincts, however, are pure, they are raw, they are unpretentious. They dont care who we are or what we do in our lives- they react to our surroundings.

Comming back to my meeting- looking back, maybe it was good that i went. I realized that maybe this person doesnt belong in my life. On the other hand, did i really need this tightness in my chest ? Did i need to feel the way i felt? Should i have listened to my gut? Should i have followed my instincts and run the other way?

Maybe its time that we trust our guts, that we trust what mother nature gave us to protect us. Trust your gut!

Fight it

There are moments in our lives where everything just goes wrong. Nothing seems to work out, everything has turned against you. Once we have overcome the scare of these events, any situation resembling them automatically makes our plams sweat and our heart race. Do you remember those moments in your life where you were so scared of falling that you barely made it out of your front door?

In life, we are confronted by various obstacles- each and every day. Its starts with school, when you're not cool enough to sit with the "in" crowd at Lunch, it continues on to where you meet the girl of your dreams but she couldnt care less about who you are and it finishes where you loose your job and your mortage and end up on the street. Life can be a bitch. Sad, true fact.

What makes matters even worse are those people around us who seemingly never fall. That coworker who laughs off even the biggest mistake and never once doubts himself. That fit guy who never think twice about the girl who blew him off in a bar. The suave business woman opposite you who seems unbothered by snide remarks by her male counterparts. There are people out there who seemingly take any downfall and turn it into something positive. They are unfazed by life and just move on. I envy these people. I truly do. It takes me days to get over a stupid comment made by some sales girl.

What do these people have that we dont? WHat is it that gives them to power to pick up where they left off, without doubt or fear? Its a little thing we call confidence and self-esteem. These people are usually quite sure of themselves and their capabilities. Dont get this wrong, they arent arrogant and full of themselves, they simply know what they have achieved in their lives and how hard they have worked to get there. This confidence comes from the fact that they have had to work hard to be who they are and they arent willing to let people who have no relationship to or with them ruin what they've built.

The strengh to face defeat and come out fierce as eveer comes from the fight itself. Have you ever had to fight in order to get somewhere or to obtain something that you really desired? Remember how strong and invincible that made you feel? Its precicely that feeling which these strong individuals live off that makes them so strong. They know what they have had to fight for.

Next time something gets you down or someone tries to play you, remember that you have fought to be who you are. You have achieved great things in your life and you deserve respect for that. You are fabulous. You are a fighter.

So fight them!!!