Tag Archives: failure

Someday

04 Saturday Feb 2017

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Someday I hope you know all those times you saw me crying, I was trying to show you there is strength in your emotions, and there’s no shame in your tears.

Someday I hope you know, all those times I told you not to cry, I was trying to help build your strength and confidence, and sometimes I contradict myself as a mother.

Someday I hope you know, all those times you rolled your eyes when I said I had to study, I was showing you the value of education. I wanted you to know you can be anything in this world.

Someday I hope you know all those times Daddy and I argued in front of you, I wanted you to know what a healthy relationship looked like. I wanted you to see me stand up for myself as much as I wanted you to see Daddy stand up for himself. I hope you learned how to behave in a healthy relationship.

Someday I hope you know, you never needed those sparkly pants on New year’s, I wanted you to be surprised for once by me.

Someday I hope you know, I didn’t give you gifts every day to show you I loved you, I wanted you to understand the value of money and be grateful for what you had.

Someday I hope you know, I interrupted you interrupting me to tell you interrupting isn’t nice. Sometimes moms aren’t perfect.

Someday I hope you know, when I was gone for weeks at a time, I prayed someday you would understand the value of a woman’s career as well as her family.

Someday I hope you know, how many times I bit my tongue because I love you.

Someday I hope you know, I didn’t bite my tongue just as often, because I love you.

Someday I hope you know, I made you cover your butt and not wear just leggings to help you learn to respect yourself and your body.

Someday I hope you know, I worried and overanalyzed if that might give you an unhealthy perception of your body when you were older, when you are already perfect.

Someday I hope you know, I ran every day to show your health is important, and so is sanity.

Someday I hope you know, I wished you would run with me.

Someday I hope you know, even though sometimes I was very sad for long amounts of time, I never gave up on you or Daddy, and I valued every hug you offered.

Someday I hope you know, I could be jealous. I struggled not to be, to show you acceptance is kind and there is plenty of love to go around.

Someday I hope you know, I’ve done the best I could to be the best I am for you.

Someday I hope you know you can be just like me, but I hope you are just like you.

Hello God, its me

16 Friday Jan 2015

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Are you there? Of course you are. Have you seen my performance lately? Is it part of something. Of course it is. Will I become a better person because of what I endure now? Probably. If I can pull myself out of this hole. I’m feeling defeated. Which is absurd given the high high I had with the success of this past weekend. Nothing like a work week to kick you in the teeth and make you want to run for the hills with your tail between your legs. My stupidity and frantic brain have cost me trust this week. I’ve been labelled a liar and a thief. All because I couldn’t remember what happened 4 days ago. In the span of 4 days so many things have changed. So many good. Some not so good. Some chaotic and intense. So many things I had to defend myself against. I have electrodes taped to my person monitoring my heart! And I am supposed to remember the chaos of 4 days ago accurately? Of course, by the time I remembered what really happened, it was too late. The tape had been played back. The fat lady sang. And there is nothing I can do or say at this point to force continued faith in me. And I’m angry now. Angry I’ve been betrayed by the people I’ve fought for. Angry that assumptions were made without ever speaking to me. Not that speaking to me helped matters much anyway, clearly as exhibited by my stumbling response of “I’m certain I was here, I think….I’m pretty sure”. Stupid. The unbelievable dedication I’ve had to this project for 8 months now, washed away in a poor review, all because I’ve been sick for 30 days which has affected my performance and my concentration. The sickness broke my defenses and my life just swallowed me whole. I’m feeling judged solely on 30 days out of 180. And that is a crappy place to be.

So here’s your take-away for today. If at any moment in time you could have your entire life, or career, or friendship judged on a single moment or even a single day, no option to explain or defend: do you feel confident you’ll rate well at any given instant?

I’m not strong enough

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

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I’m uncertain as I start this, if there will be a happy finish; if there is to be a moral to the story, or uplifting message in the end. As of yet, I have not intended my writing to go the direction it has gone, it just sort of, happened.

I believe I’ve lost my connection and relationship with God. Not severed or destroyed, just drifted away. I’ve been angry for a long time, and I remember the last two times I was feeling as I have lately, and I had weakened my relationship with God. The first time, I was young and very angry with him. I chose to separate from him. What resulted was a very long and very dark year of my life, that ended in a very harsh and awful lesson. What became of that year, is the strength you see now. I still carry that time with me, ashamed, hurt, guilty, and saddened by it. But, I am incredibly strong and capable because of it.

The second time I lost my way, was not on purpose. It casually slipped away in the chaos of life. I was busy with work, with a home, with family, with friends, with my own emotional turmoil in trying to believe and trust in another human being. I lost my way. What resulted was an inability to trust and communicate with my partner. A passive aggressive relationship that ultimately spiralled downward into its own shrapnel loaded explosion.

And here I am now, feeling hopeless and inadequate. Wondering how do I continue? How do I find my way through this heartbreaking scenario day in and day out for the rest of my life? How do I manage to stay calm, level-headed, and rise above the pettiness of others on a daily basis? How do I accept that things will not improve? They will just change their shape and present in a new format. I cannot change others. I struggle to believe when they say they want to change. I try to have faith in human ability to self improve. I am struggling to believe in the wrong thing first.

I was given advice on a particularly difficult night of stress and frustration with this person. I was told that above all else, as humans, we are called to love. How do you love someone who continues to hurt you? How do you love someone who goes after your family? How do you love someone in spite of everything they’ve become, when you know nothing of who they were? How do you do this for the rest of your life? I’m not strong enough to do this!

And to all of these questions came this response:

You may not be able to love this person yourself, you may struggle to be civil. So love them as God would, because they are one of his own.

This is not easy. It is not easy for me to repair my relationship with God. It is not easy for me to ask anyone for help. So today, as I sipped my coffee and thought about doing nothing really all day at work, unmotivated and uninterested, a thought popped into my head: I should pray and ask for motivation to do what is best today. I sat down at my desk and had a timid conversation with God before starting work. I asked him ultimately for strength to be a better version of me today. I turned on my music and hit shuffle on nearly 600 songs, and this one played the moment I came back in my office and sat down:

“I know I’m not strong enough to be everything I’m supposed to be. I give up. I’m not strong enough. Hands of mercy won’t you cover me. Lord right now I’m asking you to be strong enough, for the both of us.”

I haven’t had a real conversation with Him in a very long time, and without argument or blame or judgement, He responds. Perhaps if I let Him love me, I can learn to love as he does; without expectation.

“Strong Enough” -Matthew West

I wish I wish I wish I wish

15 Saturday Nov 2014

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Do you ever find yourself starting your thoughts or sentences with “I wish so and so would…..”? Is it usually when you are frustrated with that persons behavior or communication. I’ve found myself saying this a lot lately, more specifically, “I wish she would self-assess and focus on her development” I find often I am helping other people to take those internal views when dealing with a problem, but this one person I can’t help. I wish I could change her. I wish I could give her the help she needs. I wish she was able to look inside for the problem she needs to solve.

I have a hard time understanding people that believe everyone else is at fault for the way things are in their lives. I struggle to contain my frustration and anger that they don’t realize if they just worked on one little thing about themselves, things might get better. A friend of mine once enlightened me that most people aren’t like me. To this I replied, “I don’t want people to be like me, I want to be more like people”. Now wouldn’t that solve all my worlds problems?!

What she meant by her statement was that I’m hyper sensitive and aggressively yet positively critical of myself (For the most part, I’m no Mary Poppins of positivity all the time). I listen when you speak to me. I accept your differing view (to an extent, let’s be honest you aren’t always a genius). I want to be a better person. I know I’m not the best version of myself right now. I accept that some days, I really don’t care if I’m the best version of myself. Sometimes being the best version, is down right exhausting. And trying to be the best version, but not succeeding, is just depressing if you go on too long.

I tried. I mean, I really dug in. I was breaking myself with 100+ hour work weeks. I was coming home as fast as possible just to get a few minutes with Peanut before bedtime stories (Sometimes running through the front door as the last page was turned) I was struggling to keep my eyes open and give Bacon the attention he deserved. I was driving north for all the family events I could make when I wasn’t working. I was doing…doing..doing….all the while I kept saying, “I can make it work. It has to work. everyone can get everything they need.”

Except me.

And I didn’t see it coming.

I failed in my career for the first time in my life. And you should know, when I do something, I do it full tilt. So this was not a minor fail, this was epic, turn in the keys to the castle, you’re going down for this one, failure. All those hours, all that time in the car, all the sadness and stress and time away from my family, the precious little time with my family: for nothing. To fail.

I spent 3 days straight in bed after that. I could hear Peanut asking if I was ok, was I going to play today, what was I doing, can she come in by me. I struggled to get out of bed for 20 minutes just to have dinner with my family, and I only made it 2 minutes before I had to walk away. I was rapidly falling apart at the seams. I had nothing holding it all together; my drive was gone.

Now why am I telling you this depressing sob story and being dramatic? Because I learned an important lesson, one that I will need to remind myself of frequently in the next few years. You must always take care of you. You are useless to anyone else, if you don’t take care of you. You may be super woman, and carry on that way for months, even years. But super woman is not sustainable. You are a real woman, and real women need a time out. We need to be kind and loving to ourselves not just everyone around us, otherwise its all going to come undone in the end. I could not remember the last time I had done anything, just. for. me. I’d done enough fun things that involved other people, but was it ever just for me? Such a strange position to be in, thinking you’ve been killing it. You are successful. You’ve got it all together. Everyone is happy. Everyone is having their needs met by you. And then turning the view inward and realizing, you do not have it together. You are not killing it. You are killing you.

Every once in awhile, when you are rocking the schedule, making the dinners, packing the lunches, folding the laundry, picking up all the dog poo that’s accumulated in your yard; stop and ask yourself in all this, what is just for me? And when you come up short, don’t beat yourself up, just put down the pooper scooper and go for a run. It’s time to take back your happiness, even if it’s only for a couple miles.