Lessons in Learning to Change

Let me start off with the incredibly cliche line of "Change is never easy". Ok, now that that's over with, let's move on.

Recently, I've been exposed to some serious life notions. Some of them are hard to swallow, some of them less difficult to digest, but the one thing they all have in common is, I cannot get them out of my head. There is extreme difficulty in changing yourself and your patterns of behavior, even more so when the idea that you have a larger purpose in this life than anything you could have imagined. It's been said that I'm resistant to accepting who I need to be in this life and I would be hard-pressed to say I disagree.

Lately, I've been so irritable, so annoyed at the one person who knows and fully believes in the truth of who I am and my purpose in this lifetime. I went to the beach today, I sat in the hot sun and thought. I went down to the water and floated around and thought some more. Why am I so resistant to the idea that I have something great to contribute to the world? Is it because I'm scared to fail at it? That there may be a chance that I cannot be the person I should be?

Ignorance is bliss but you can never un-know something. Once you know something, once your heart has accepted it, once you have accepted it no amount of resistance to it can make it go away. The difficulty then lies in submission, in letting yourself accept and act upon what you know to be true. This is so much more difficult than you can imagine.

I try so hard to logic my way out of illogical situations. I talk myself out of things. This hurts only me. And the weird thing is this is something I know. There is this DVD I was told to watch and use. Exercises that would help me release trauma. I sit there some days and stare at that DVD and yet, I never put it on, I never follow along with exercises but I stare at it and the cover is burned into my mind. I have a book in my possession that I never thought would impact me, that I first thought I'd breeze through the same way I breeze through my required college reading yet, here I am halfway through and I want to start over because I don't think I've read it closely enough. Something is telling me to read again, read again, read again and yet I turn to page 179 and read ten pages then stop. Then days later I'll pick it up again on page 179 read and stop. As odd as it may seem, its almost as if I cannot move past these pages. I think I need a paper copy of this book, a copy I can write in, highlight, fold and notate. I need to start from the beginning, I need to admit and accept this. This is harder than it seems. Or perhaps it isn't, I'm just making it that way.

I think the culmination of all of this is I know what I should focus on, I know who I am and what I should do but the fear of change has crippled me. In all honesty, I am the person scared of taking a leap of faith, a person scared of the things they can't control, a person who doesn't have enough faith in the universe to close her eyes and jump, trusting that there is a higher power that will help me through it all. Or perhaps I am none of those things, I just hide behind them.

I have a wonderful, patient, loving man in my life. One who believes I have within me the potential to do so much good in the world. One who adores me and loves me, sometimes more than I think I deserve. Sometimes my frustration piles onto him and he takes it with patience and understanding. I can only thank something greater than myself that our paths have intertwined in such a way.

Perhaps fear and resistance are the first signs that change is on the horizon. Not simple change but life altering change. I believe simple change requires materialistic fear, superficial fear, fear of judgement by others but life altering change requires none of that. It requires mental change, a deep and unwavering acceptance that you are contributing to something, the understanding that even though you may not know why or how you have given yourself over to something bigger and have learned to be unselfish and loving in ways you never thought you would know.

Deciding to step forward and participate in the journey of the paths of your life is the most difficult step to take. I think today I might take it; the first step.

Oh the Places You'll Go.

During my senior year of high school, my English teacher read this story to the class. I'm sure most of the students thought it was the lamest thing they had ever experienced, I mean, after all we were seniors, we were too old for that shit. We were cool, beautiful and nothing could bring us down. As far as we were concerned Dr. Suess could take his baby rhymes and shove it (although, to be honest, they were and still are really awesome. C'mon, that dude made up words like it was going out of style and they rocked).

Years went by and I had reached a point in my life were I was stagnant. It took me a while to realize I was increasing my education without increasing my experience. I was 25 and had spent the last 5 years working on my college degree, working full time, playing wife and being mom. I had gone pretty much no where, except for California, the place I was born and raised. If you are imagining palm trees and a salty beach breeze, please let me stop you now. I grew up inland, towards the desert and that was the only place I ever saw when I "vacationed" there. Dirt, dust and the unrelenting sun.

I had come to understand, if I wanted something bad enough there would be a way. After all, hadn't I slowly but surely been educating myself, all the while never having to actually pay anything when tuition was due? Hadn't I discovered that if a guy likes you enough he will make the time to see you no matter what? If you want something bad enough you will make it happen. You will find the money, find the babysitter, find the time. No one wants to hear the story about how you couldn't do this or couldn't do that. There's no story in that, theres just a lame reason as to why you never left that podunk town you've been wasting away in.

Not me!! I shouted to myself one day ( I really did. Weird. Don't judge me!) I could be that girl who surrendered herself to the fact that there wasn't the money, there wasn't the time, no one wanted to go with me, I couldn't find a sitter OR I could just go and do it. And so, I vowed I would.

I applied for my passport and went with friends to Costa Rica. I may have been pushed forward by their plans (and my own blinded heart (Lame)) but that trip ignited something inside me. I saw a country I've never seen. A country unlike my own, with a language I could somewhat use, a culture so slow paced it made me, the patient daycare worker, want to rush. I saw poverty and blackouts, early mornings, monkeys, iguanas, beautiful oceans and cheap beer. I saw people talking to strangers, I saw freedom and experience. I saw a girl with no money, surrounded by friends and away from tourists. I wanted more. More. More.

Its been over a year since that vacation and I'm itching to leave again. I had promised myself that I would leave the country once a year. It has been longer and I am now left with a choice. I can admit defeat and travel back and forth to California, the girl who's always on a plane yet really hasn't gone anywhere. Or I can get my ass in gear and go somewhere. With a friend, with a lover or alone. I can excuse myself from life or I can have one. I will not be a woman who has learned of the world through novels and stories from others. I will have a life, I will fill it with stories, adventure and experience.

Nicaragua anyone?

One has to wonder....

If the person you are now is not the person you were previously, who, exactly, are you really? Are you the culmination of those people? Are you your past self and present self simultaneously? Can you only be who you are in the present with no regard for who you were in the past?

I recently had a conversation in which several of these questions came up.

Ok, so let's throw a little background info in here. In my marriage (see Choke on Fire), I was both a wonderful person and a not wonderful person. Don't get me wrong, I worked, went to college, took care of a home, fed people and was wonderful at those things. I wasn't a total bitch, at least no more than your typical wife. But I was one thing; a cheater. I'll admit it and, to a certain extent, as embarrassing as it is to admit, it feels better each time I say it. I lied. I didn't lie about paying bills or how much money I needed for groceries but I did lie about where I was, who I was with and, now that I think about it, I most certainly lied about loving my husband (at least romantically).

The weird thing was, it wasn't as if I didn't like my husband, I did. I still do. The marriage just wasn't what I wanted. I could even say I didn't lie about little stupid things, just the big ones. Now, I'm not trying to justify or make my wrong right by explaining why I did what I did. I did it and it wasn't the best choice. There really isn't much more to it. Wrong is wrong.

This is what the conversation kind of revolved around. I believed that most people use a person's past to help them asses what type of person they currently are. It makes people comfortable to be able to predict how a person might act in the future. When you think about, it removes the ability of a person to better themselves because people keep their past misdeeds in mind when they judge them. Room for mistakes and learning become obsolete and we have pushed ourselves, and each other, into a tiny box where we are unable to become better people. A box in which we are neatly assigned a personality by others. One where we accept that label and embrace it, even if it means we are someone we do not want to be.

When I think about my life, I envision it broken down into neat little chapters. Chapters which, once complete, are neatly filed away and have no bearing on the chapter to come. For a long while, I truly believed that this was good for me. I experienced a part of my life, learned lessons and transformed into a different person. At times a better person, at times not so much. I took this new person and embraced her, always believing I had left the old me behind. I believed I had no use for the old me, she was just someone I once was. In reality, what I thought was my transformation into a new and better person wasn't that at all. I had just been moved into a different box. I had not evolved, I had just point blank changed. I wasn't a better person, just a different person.

But what I have come to understand is I haven't left the old me behind. The old me and the present me are connected, we are the same. I cannot leave portions of myself out because I am embarrassed or ashamed of my behavior. I cannot pick and chose the parts of me that others see, even if they don't understand my personal evolution, even if I want to forget the girl that hurt a man who once loved her. These are the parts of me that I must embrace the most, the ones where a true and complete lesson are to be found. A chance for me to ask for forgiveness from another person and, in turn, heal not only the pain I brought on myself for hurting that person but, hopefully, the pain I put them through as well.

This new found idea has left me feeling more complete and less willing to present only one part of myself to the world. Does this mean I must proclaim all my ill deeds to each person when I meet them? No, it most certainly does not. But it does mean that I need to accept them as a part of my whole self and not be afraid or embarrassed to admit I was that person at one time. By accepting who I am, good and bad, past and present, I begin to form a true and complete picture of myself. In a world where we are constantly praising the "bigger picture", I can think of no better picture to start with than the portrait of myself.