Here's to friends...

I was reading some of my entries from the past weeks and all I could think was "what the heck was I talking about?". I was in a mood... that's all I can say... the people who get me can comprehend. The whole metaphysical ascension bit freaked me out... I think I need to make sure that I'm not partaking in recreational drug use while I sleep blog.

I am thinking about friendship today. I am so blessed to have wonderful friends that I've met during my time online. Ours is a relationship is not based on the need to please one another, it's purely built on the desire to support and uplift each other. I have to thank all of the women who have been so supportive of me during my trials. I don't think that I would've been able to come this far without their support. Kimmy, Jenn, Sally, Jaks, Maddie, Becks, Dawn, Jane and anyone that I've missed... thank you! I wish I could put into words how much the constant cheering has done for not only my ego, but my sense of self worth. I think I can safely say that I don't need the acceptance of the scrapbooking industry as long as I have the support of the people who care about me. The industry is a finicky, unfeeling machine that is driven by success. Its love for an artist is only as deep as the amount of revenue he/she can toss into their coffers. Friends however will stand by you even when your layout makes their eyes bleed and pat you on the back.

The sad thing is that my focus was so skewed that I didn't even realize that there were so many people who cared about my well being. It wasn't drive. It wasn't determination. It was the oppressed teen in me still striving for the love of those incapable of such a thing. I no longer harbor the bitterness and disdain for those who are in love with the glory and trapse on the fingers of the "little ones" trying to get a little sunshine themselves. Some people need the conditional love and acceptance of the industry to validate themselves. I don't want that anymore, I would take real, living, breathing friends who are willing to be supportive, no matter how sorry I feel for myself. When I look at the way the industry treats the previous "greats" and how much women have to sacrifice to stay in it's golden favour, I can only shake my head.

There is no red carpet, there is not gold-dipped statues, hell, there aren't even ball gowns! I'll take my friends, I'll take my sisters, I'll take my online family. I may never get to meet them but I will never forget how many times I've come close to drowning in my quest for self worth only to have one of them toss me life line AND smack some sense back into my head at the same time.

The industry won't last forever. Nothing does. This craft, this hobby, that will always be around for as long as memories can be treasured. Friends, well, true friendship stands all tests of time and I'm more of a tried and true. I'm sending out the biggest hugs possible to all of the ladies who have once again come to my rescue and saw me through my trials. I'm not completely out of the woods yet, but thanks to you ladies, I know exactly how to get back where I'm supposed to be.

I scrapped! ... well ... kinda ...

Yesterday was such an emotionally draining day. I still can't believe that I poured all of that out in my entry about my dad! I'm not usually big on putting my heart out in such a revealing manner but yesterday it was spill or explode. I was not in the mood to explode; there is nobody nearby to help pick up the pieces afterwards.

It felt so good to just get it out. It's no longer internalized. I love and hate my dad and I have forgiveness issues. I'm an emotionally terrified parent. My truths. Bare, naked and right there for all of the world to see. I feel a weight has been lifted. I no longer need to carry the weight of the reality of who I am. I can always come back here to remind myself should I forget. The important thing is that I don't have to hide that from myself and my friends. I haven't quite gotten around to the big reveal to the family yet... baby steps... I've mentioned them before haven't I?

Anyway, so yesterday I got home and just plopped on the couch. I got the beautiful layout that Kimmy did of Jo's first pool party as I was coming into the house, so Jo and I just studied that and oohed and aahhed a bit. It was then that I started thinking about scrapping projects. Listen, this is a good thing because a project hasn't popped in my head since the oar plaque I made for my FIL back in June. Anyway, I had my dinner and listened to the voices in my head telling me exactly what I needed to do. My voices are so darned creative... if they were corporeal I would suggest they take up scrapbooking. As it stands they are in "voice" form so they have little choice but to serve as my muse.

Tristan and I watched Serenity ... again! Quick bit: If you haven't seen the Firefly series, you have to. Serenity did so well in the European theatres, all should see it. I'll have to blog about it one day... maybe I'll give a boring play by play. Tristan thinks I should do a scrapbook page, but I've said it before... and now I'm saying it again... the boy ain't quite right. After Serenity I went upstairs to get Jo ready for bed. I'm going to skip the part where I found 15 black ants in my master bathroom... I'm definitely going to avoid telling you more than the fact that they were all at least 1mm in length! They are coming in from somewhere and I don't know where... time to call someone. I associate ants with being less than clean. I don't eat in my bathroom, so I am forced to concede that I have a problem with some pretty stupid ants who are trying to hold a convention I my otherwise clean bathroom because it's so much cooler in there. I'm reachin'.

Anyway, I finally get midget to bed and plop down in my scraproom. I flip on the TV and check my auctions really quick. I replied to a few emails and formulated another sponsor letter. Then it hit me. I remember exactly how it happened. I pulled down the box for my Secret Sista Swap on Scrapitude and I was trying to gussy it up a bit. I was trying to think of more stuff that I could toss in without seeming over the top and it hit me. I suddenly knew exactly how to "present" the package to my Sista. About 5 minutes later (I had to clear my desk believe it or not, I can't keep a clean desk even when I'm not using it) I had all of my old buddies (my herma dots, my xacto knife, paints, chatterbox ect.) surrounding me and there were scraps of paper everywhere. I went none stop for 3 hours. Sad to say, I'm not any faster at altering than I was when I first took my break. I wrapped up the evening by making my own epoxy pog with some chipboard, paint, and a generous helping of the Ranger Glossy Accents (equivalent to Gloo). I love that pog incidentally.

SOOOO, last night I scrapped/altered AND I taught myself something new! I don't know why last night was any different from the past 40 nights, but I think that spilling about my dad might've helped a bit. I'm just so glad that I am on my way back. I can feel my mind just filling up with ideas, and I can't wait to try them out! I also can't wait to ship off my secret sista's stuff!
As much as I'd like to keep the 1st item I create after this hiatus, I know that many more are coming, it's an honor for me to give it away. Besides, I have so many other things to catch up on.
For the first time in a long time, I can't wait to get into my scrap room tonight!

Off to pinch myself some more!

I'm scared...

Ich werde gesorgt und erschrocken sehr.

My father is now in the hospital recovering from hip replacement surgery. Well, he is trying to recover. This has been a very stressful weekend for me. His kidney's threatened to shut down once so far and he is still battling a fever. So far no infection, so I guess it's just his body doing it's thing. A part of my scared and worried yet another part of me is detatched and indifferent.

This is hard for me to think about. I feel like my relationship with my dad is still new and to be facing losing him is pretty damned hard to deal with. I'm 36. I've been getting to know my dad for about 10 years now. I had him wrapped and tangled up in my little fingers right up until I turned 10. That was when his much coveted son was born. In a span of a month I went from being daddy's little tomgirl that he took everywhere with pride to being the rejected and dejected child who was suddenly never good enough.

It's no secret that my Dad didn't know how to love his children; he didn't learn how to until my sister and I both left home. I ran away from my father by joining the Navy (the only person that could wrench me out from under his thumb was Uncle Sam and he did so effortlessly). I remember telling my dad that I requested to be stationed in the UK to get away from him. I remember spending 15 months in Iceland without him crossing my mind at all. I remember the day that I walked into the recruiting station and tested to join the Marines; it was the day after he (my dad) told me that I wasn't an adult until he told me I was one. I was 20. I remember crying until I thought my heart would break when I found out that I'd been tricked into coming to the Continental United States and that I wouldn't be returning to Hawaii to attend the University of Hawaii. Why? Because the scholarship money that I busted my butt to earn and all of the arrangements that had been set up for my independent stay in Hawaii meant nothing to my dad. He wanted me where he could see me.
I remember him refusing to fork out the $500 parental portion of the financing needed for my admittance to UNC Chapel Hill because he wanted me to school in the same Virginia town that we had moved to... therefore ensuring that I would be home every night for dinner. I remember cleaning out the hall linen closet when I was 16 and discovering that my Dad neither honored nor cherished my mother. Can you imagine a 16 year old discovering pictures of nude women tucked in a photo album? Can you imagine what would go through her head when one of those pinup girls materialized right before her eyes while she was taking out the trash at work? Can you fathom what it felt like to have this stunningly beautiful (and equally annoying) woman tell me how my mom couldn't make my dad happy and that he was going to leave her (because she was overweight) and that me and my siblings would come and live with her? Can you imagine your father telling you that you will never amount to anything and that you'll be pregnant before you were 17 years old? Do you blame me for running away?

It took 6 years after I left home for me to want to talk to my dad. It took the start of my married life and the birth of his then only grandchild to get my dad to open his eyes and see all of the damage that he'd inflicted on someone who only wanted his love. I'm still working on forgiving him for all of the pain that he has caused and for all of the destructive behaviors that he has encouraged. He's trying to make up for all of the pain and hurt in his own way, but it is ultimately up to me to be able to forgive. I'm not there yet. Now I feel like I need to be there now. But do I?

My mom is still sitting by his side, nursing her pain with a salve of her faith. GOD is the only thing that helped her through those times. But she didn't walk away from it unscathed, she has lots of scar tissue. She was a loving mother who was afraid to love her kids. She rarely said that she loved us, though I know that she did. She was sometimes very harsh and so very hard to love; kind of like snuggling with a porcupine; but when you got through her defenses... well those were the times I remember. My mom sees herself in me. I see my mom in myself and I don't like what I see. I have such a hard time opening up and allowing myself to be vulnerable. I do for myself and I don't like to lean on people. I still haven't told Shayne that my dad is in the hospital.
It's just that bad. My mother held us kids at a distance as if she couldn't bear to give her heart and all to another fallible human being. I am afraid to admit that my heart breaks when I think of how much my kids mean to me. To utter their value could bring about circumstances that would rob me of the gifts I've been given. Instead, I watch them sleep and I kiss their sleepy heads. Sometimes I hug them a little too tight and sometimes I just break down and cry because I am so afraid of anything happening to them. I would be utterly destroyed. I don't want to live like this though. I want to love my children with reckless abandon, not fearful secrecy. I don't want to live in fear of losing what I love, not if it means that one day they will sit questioning whether I loved them. All of this can be traced back to the man laying in a hospital bed 500 miles away from me.

I know that I don't need to somehow get through all of this and heal before he departs this earth. I know that I can continue to heal once he is gone. I guess that I just want him to see and to know what his choices have meant to the people who love him. I guess I just want him to see that I was able to free myself form the shelf that he sat his family on and that I did things the right way. I don't think it'll matter much...not to him... but it will mean a hell of a lot to me.

I'm so blessed that Shayne is in love with his children. He may have twisted priorities, but I know that when it counts his heart is in the right place (and when it's not, I know exactly which button to push to get it there). I often wonder if things would've been different had my mom not had me (I am the product of a relationship that my mom had with another man while my dad (her then boyfriend) gallivanted around the Army world, whoring without a care for the girl he left behind until he came back and found that she'd moved on). I think that things would've been better if my dad had been granted a son first.

Honestly? I don't know. Maybe. It doesn't matter now. What was, was. What is, is. What will be, will be. Right now I'm just a little scared of what I will learn about myself if my dad dies.

Just a litle push... okay... a shove...

I am a sloth...

Sans fur that is. And the creepy claws.

I can't get motivated. Not on a creative level that is. I've tried to trick myself into "stumbling" onto my craft but I walk away feeling stupid. I've tried to shop my self into wanted to create but I find myself feeling dejected at the checkout; asking myself why I even bother.

How does one sink so low?

I don't usually write TO people who may be reading this blog, but today, well, today I'm desparate. I need help. I need advice. Heck I need prayer. And if anybody has a spare $10,000 laying around collecting dust, I need my Disfunctional Angels flewn out to Ohio to administer a
kick in my butt!

I cried last night. Mourned really. I lost something that I fear I won't get back and it's my own stupid fault for not taking my own advice. There is a phenomenal scrapper who's blog I subscribe to, her name is Mari. (is that not the absolute worst constructed sentence ever?)
Anyway, Mari has so much strength and inner beauty in her work and her writing that it seems that the ugliness of the scrapbooking industry will never be able to bruise her spirit. I love her love of life and her no nonsense way of seeing things. Her layouts are so darned inspiring sometimes that they almost break your heart. If I could get a thimble of that strength I know I'd be alright. I know I have to garner that myself, but our hopes and dreams are what makes living in this blighted world bearable. So I hope and I dream for the strength and courage to figure out who I am and to be only that person.

Shayne has a clear cut solution for my problem. "Lower the bar" says the old one with male patterned balding. He has admitted that he isn't looking forward to my re-entering the online arena. He sees it as pointless because of the ugliness and what it can do to all but the strongest of spirits. He knows that I need the community because I don't have one here, but he doesn't want his wife broken; how could I possibly do the laundry if I'm a blubbering mass huddled in a corner of my scraproom? Yes, I do entertain the thought of doing mean things to him and putting creepy crawlies in his pants. More often than I'm comfortable admitting.

Anyway, I need a spirit boost. I need a freakin' miracle in all truth. I still find myself trying to figure out how to create the "awesome" layout. I still feel the pang of fear when I read about page and dt calls. I still feel somewhat excluded when I go to scrapsites. The one thing that keeps me peeking in is the support that I've been getting, however undeserved.

I just need to focus on one thing at a time. I just don't know what that one thing is. I need to get the need for acceptance out of my head/heart. I just don't know what to replace it with. I would love to truly be the type of person who can go about her scrappy business and not give a fuzzy rats behind about what others thought of my work, but I grew up yearning for acceptance that I never received. Now it's carried into my adult life. Sometimes it really hurts to think about all of my formative years spent alone. No friends in the playground in elementary school. A friend who liked to beat me up in junior high. No social acceptance in High School because my over bearing father didn't see the value in spending time outside of school with 'other peoples children'. Acceptance (to a degree) from the military but very little from my peers because of my rapid ascent up the career ladder. Now, I have friends and I have acceptance amongst them, but not a lot from the big hairy scrap industry monster.

Gees... that sounds like I'm feeling sorry for my sorry self. I'm good at that you know, I've had a lifetime full of practice. I need to start affirming the positive in my life. I'll start that tomorrow... today I'm nice and cozy in my cocoon of self pity.

What was the purpose of this entry?

It's August 1st...

... and I've yet to see a huge revelation manifest itself.

I went to be last night, excited and eagerly anticipating this day. This day was to mark my return to the scrapbooking world. Today was supposed to be the day that the lock on my creative spirit. Today was supposed to be different; symbolic; monumental.

But I woke up and as I lay in my bed, staring at my ocean green ceiling I realized 2 things:

1. Today is just Tuesday, yes it's the 1st of August, but it's little more than that. and

2. I'm just not ready. I can still feel the anger and the resentment. I don't want that coming into my creative space.

I went into my craftroom after my shower and tried perusing some of my favorite sites. It just wasn't there. I've amassed an arsenal of supplies in preparation for this day and now I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to get my main creative engine going again. I knew that was a danger in stopping completely, but I didn't know that I would have to rediscover scrapbookings' magic once I left.

The good thing is that I've had a month full of sit down dinners/meals with my family. I've bonded a bit with my son over our fav tv shows (Hell's Kitchen and So You Think You Can Dance). I've sold a little bit of stuff on Ebay and I have plans in work to get rid of the rest I don't care how much I rake in, I just want it out of my house even if I only make enough to buy an ice cream cone with. I've managed to get most of my house in some sort of order (though they do protest to my insistence that there be no dishes sitting in my sink and that it remain dry when not in use. I've learned a little bit about me and I've learned a lot about what I like. I've even read a couple of books that my son reccomended.

Sooo... I guess 'baby steps' will be the new phrase that pays. I am going to set a goal for myself though because I refuse to succumb to this. I have given thought to all that I need to accomplish in order to be able to focus on scrapbooking with any effective degree of intensity:

1. I need to move all of the ebay ready stuff out of my house. I estimate that I have 40 auctions coming up. I just need to get off my ass and do them. Lump stuff together, take the pictures, upload and write the auction out, then list and see where they go. This does work! I listed a piece of fabric that I bought for very little and I made 4 times what I paid for it easily!

2. I need to carry my successful Kitchen and Family Room management plan into my dining room and somehow keep the clutter out of there. I am tempted to make the dining room for eating only, but I just don't have the energy for the battle.

I will return... kind of... eventually...