Tag Archives: Friend

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A Day’s Journey (Syria and Sex)

It occurs to me as I search for change, that I am myself a great creature of change within one single day. My life may not make a drastic change, my habits and opinions and personality may stay the same. My life may not exhibit the changes I wish to see but in a moment of reflection, I realize change within myself is constant.

Pure contentment with a slow drifting off to sleep if only for an hour before the children awoke.

Resigned to the fact that they would not go back to sleep.

Pride in myself for being supermom, breakfast, multiple diaper changes, hot wheels races and the bathtub cleaned all before 8am.

Quiet insanity with my son going through a phase where he can call my name 18 thousand times in one minute. “Mama, mama, mama….”

Feeling completely overwhelmed at the first day free of depression in quite awhile.

Anger at my husband for taking his anger out on me. Anger at myself for allowing this to deconstruct my entire planned day.

Sadness and desperation when this momentarily drove me back to the dark room.

Frustration when my husband could not control his anger and our fight ballooned to packing his bags, name calling and angry cleaning.

Recovery with a cooling down period.

Shame when I accepted an unwanted loan for rent I can’t pay from my best friend. And then relief.

Determination when my mother showed up and we started cleaning my house.

Happiness playing more hot wheels and watching Disney Junior with my one son and seeing my other son laugh for maybe the fifth time so far.

Hilarity ensues when my mother speaks, as a dog ate her dentures and she has her alternate pair on. Complete with buck teeth and crooked teeth that are brilliant white.

Fear and anger when I read that the U.S wants to go to Syria. Fear for my children and anger that this could happen in 2013.

Absolute joy when my two year old and I go for our daily walk way past his bedtime and he becomes obsessed with the mangiest cat I have ever seen.

Reflection and deep thought reading a book about the parallels between neuroscience and Buddhism.

Hope when I talk to my husband about maybe attending a Buddhist temple in September to help us both focus and improve our minds.

Relaxation watching T.V. eating more chocolate than I probably should.

Lust and intense sexuality in bed when postpartum doesn’t affect my naturally high sex drive and my husband and I have amazing sex that leaves me feeling thoughtful, content and warm and fuzzy.

Love when my son can’t sleep and he walks with his doggy and blanket to sleep in the big bed.

And now…. it’s now.

 

All in a day. So my conclusion is, if I am capable of changing my mood and mind so much in the span of less than 24 hours, I must be capable of changing my life the way I desire.

 

 

 

 

 

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Dear Battle Worn Friend,

The last story I wrote on here is actually about a real person.

One day I will write about him in reality with no metaphors.

My dear friend.

He moved away and in with a woman with whom I do not get along.

And like most of my good male friends, we can’t be friends anymore.

Women hate their men to have women friends. As if it’s just asking for them to be cheated on or something.

I’m not completely faultless. I care about him so much and we know each other so well that when I could tell it wasn’t right for him… I told him AND her to stop it. I may have gotten angry and called her names…. ahem. But he told me he didn’t really love her and that he just didn’t want to be alone. So what am I supposed to do? Let my dear friend move across the country to be with someone he doesn’t even love without a fight?

Yep. That is exactly what I should have done. I’m older and wiser now and I realize that part of being a good friend is allowing your friends to make their own decisions, right or wrong. And being their friend through all of it.

So with whatever happened, we don’t talk anymore. I miss him like crazy. We talked about everything. He made me laugh like no one else has ever been able to. He always called me his babe and even after I met my husband he said that was his name for me so he had to keep calling me that. Even after he met his girlfriend. He tried to stop once but he would always say, “….. babe I mean Shauna. Bye babe, I mean Shauna….” He is honestly a very one of a kind person. I won’t go into it. It’s a long blog entry for another day.

My point was, that story was about him, so I wrote to his girlfriend (I have no way to contact him anymore) and I asked if we could all be friends. I told her how much I missed him and that I just wanted him back as my friend. He’s injured badly from being at war in Afghanistan and I know he could use a good friend as much as I could right now…..

I wonder what she’ll say back…..

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Zack

Zack’s full name is Zachary Paul Williams. I met him in 2007 for the first time and he saved my life. Ever since then he’s been my personal hero. Zack lives on the street. If indeed he is still alive.

In 2007 I seemed to be at a fulfilling beautiful point in my life. Great career, great friends, was with a man I loved with a intense passion. But unbeknownst to me, I was in reality, still a fragile dark creature that was simply living in the sun for a moment. The man I loved left and I allowed everything to come crashing down. Looking back I can’t believe I had no fortitude to keep something…anything afloat but at the time I wasn’t strong enough alone to stop the threads of my life from fraying and unraveling.

So on an actual dark and stormy night I took off from my life and drove my car haphazardly down an empty highway, tears burning my eyes and streaming down my face. My mind racing I had no choices. My life was over and in my heart of hearts I felt abandoned for the last time. Drive off a cliff was the only thing that came to mind. I wasn’t thinking in words anymore, only in storyboards.

Drive off cliff. Pain ends. Heart won’t hurt so much.

But like anyone that can’t cope with an intense onslaught of emotions, I had fear first. Overwhelmed and hurting on a physical level, I pulled over at a closed gas station and fell on the ground sobbing. No solution, only pain.

Then Zack. A dirty homeless man on a bike looking for cans if I recall correctly. Much too emotional to be scared of this stranger in a terrible area of town, when he approached me I continued to sob uncontrollably.

“Are you ok?”

“No! My life is over.”

“What happened?”

“The man I love left me…he LEFT me… I can’t… I can’t….”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s not the end you know.”

“It is! He is the only one I had and now I have nothing and nobody. What am I going to do…”

“Get up every day.”

“I can’t! It hurts…you don’t understand!!!”

“I don’t? I beat an addiction, got a great job and had a wife and baby girl…. and I woke up one morning and they were gone. My wife took everything, and she took my daughter….. they had to lock me up I went insane it hurt so bad. I lost my job, I lost everything…. I’m using drugs again, my life is shit. Don’t tell me I don’t understand.”

Caught completely off guard.

“Sorry…”

“But you know what? I’m still here.”

“How are you… I mean didn’t you just wanna die?”

“Every single day”

“But then…”

“You just have to fake it until you make it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wake up every day. Breathe in and out. Pretend you’re not in excruciating pain. Live a lie. And one day the pain will actually be less. It’s never going to go away. But it will get better. I promise.”

I can’t remember the rest of the conversation. Either that or it hurts too much to remember. This man who didn’t know me, who had NOTHING, gave me a chance at staying alive. I am fairly certain I was emotionally unstable enough to end my life that night. And his words, his completely sincere and compassionate nature….let me believe I had a chance. It was months, perhaps years until I healed from it, still hurts today, but he was right. It got better. And THAT night, he let me stay alive. Love him until the end of time. He’s a part of my soul and a part of my life for always. I wear his name in ink on my wrist along with the names of the most important people to touch my life. I defend his honor with the ferocity of a mother who has a threatened child.

I left that night with a spark of hope. Enough to sustain me until morning. Fake it til you make it.

I only saw Zack one more time after that…. but that dear friends is a story for another day.