life and love

A fur seal pup in the Galapagos Islands. The mom leaves the pup alone while she feeds at sea, and comes back to shore and must to find the pup by its cries and scent. Sometimes I feel like the helpless alone pup like this - am I the only one?!
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

I have to admit, as I mentioned in a recent blog post, that I had been feeling pretty down lately - really a lot worse last week. It has been a lot of up and down over the past few months. This really is not all that new. We all have ups and downs, right, at least that's pretty standard for me. But I started feeling a real sadness in my soul and I couldn't quite identify where it came from. I also realize it's been a while since I have been very raw and honest on this blog, which is sort of my trademark. I decided when I started it that I would be open and honest about my feelings and about life. As I like to say, I want a life of radical honesty and transparency.

It becomes challenging to do so, though, when other people are involved. I can't write about my present feelings and emotions without mentioning the people who are intertwined in my life and who affect my moods. I don't want to do that to people who may not want to be talked about. I try not to talk about my children too much, to protect their privacy, and the same goes for those closest to me. I may tell stories about things that happen to me, but it's not obvious in any way who that story happened with. I do that on purpose. But when you're dating someone, as I am, it's kind of obvious who you're talking about! Right? After my break-up with the man from Australia I dated, I decided that although I may put photos and the like up, I wouldn't really talk extensively the personal nature of my relationship.

However it feels like it's time to say a little something. I am realizing that my downs have mostly been related to confusion and communication issues in this relationship. There's no doubt that they can have a real toll on the heart and soul and mood. I am someone who didn't really date much before I met my ex-husband, who I met at age 20 (and oh don't we think we are so old and worldy wise at 20?). My ex and I had a whirlwind romance, and were engaged after 6 months. We got married two years later but we lived together for nearly all those two years. And we were married for 10 years. The intensity of that closeness happening all so quickly had long-lasting effects on our relationship - not good ones. We didn't have a chance to learn one another's idiosyncracies slowly. Today, we are great friends and I'm so grateful for that. But we also shared a lot of communication breakdowns from the start.

During the marriage, we went to counseling and read books and I learned so much about communicating tools and techniques, and about the differences between men and women, and about prayer and about growing in spiritual maturity and understanding of my faith. And I learned, post-divorce, that a lot of what I may have once "blamed" on him turns out to have been a lot me all along. True there are always two people involved in every relationship. But it's also a good and illuminating thing to truly shine the light on oneself. However, it can also be very painful. And it is a lot easier to understand with one's mind than to implement them when it counts - in the heat of the moment.

Since my divorce I've really only dated a couple of people. And the relationships didn't last long, and the two more 'serious' ones were both long distance. So here I am, 5 years after my divorce with someone who lives here near me, and feeling like a teenager who doesn't really know how to date. And similarly to my relationship with my ex, D & I have gotten very close very quickly. I love that man, he is such a good soul. He is warm and loving and kind and gentle and sexy and sweet. And we sometimes frustrate the hell out of one another. And when that happens, it makes me want to run for the hills. But I really don't want to. The more I know him, the more I love him. I see so much beauty in his character.

In the deepest part of me, I want to stay put, and learn to implement all the tools and techniques - including praying and seeking God's will - in real time. Oh God it can be challenging! I'm so blessed by his patience with me. Because I tell ya, sometimes I feel like a big huge loser with all of this. Shouldn't I be more mature by now? Shouldn't I be more secure? Shouldn't I be able to make myself happy and not allow someone else to affect the state of my emotions? Would that it were so simple. I can do that, I can make myself happy when I'm sad, but it feels like the only way involves moving on and clearing the plate of a relationship, and that isn't something I want to do. So my mind goes into self-torture mode... Sometimes I think I want that, but in the deepest part of me, I don't. I don't. I don't!!!

And day by day I'm learning that through his loyalty, and through my own. I'm learning about myself, and about what I believe true love to be - selfless giving to another person and seeking their own best, and loving them despite flaws, and forgiving. And through that, we bring joy and acceptance and peace into one another's lives and souls. D&I do that for each other, at least I can speak for myself anyway, and despite some turbulence at times, it truly is beautiful and lovely. I don't know the future. I don't even know tomorrow. I am only just learning to understand the geography of my own heart.

Here are a few photos from the past few weeks.

Hugs rule. Doesn't my face look kinda like the lost little seal pup? LOL.
Being dorks!
Grilling chicken at my house the other week. I call this is my "I don't need a man grill." :) I put it together from like a zillion pieces out of the box, with no help!

Doug made me dinner! It's usually me who makes him dinner so this was an awesome surprise - what a sweetheart. Then we watched HEROES Season 1 episodes.

Kisses rule too!

It was a beautiful day the other day and we went to his apartment's pool for the first time this year. This photo cracks me up! (And after the sun, came the rain... it totally flooded last night!)

I love this photo. A bit out of focus but cute.

making faces

Painting fabric with Huito, which is similar to henna, in the Yine Indian village of Diamante, Peru along the Rio Madre de Dios.
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

Sometimes it's hard for me to stay in one place
- Susanna in Girl, Interrupted

When I was tucking Savannah into bed tonight we were talking about things and she told me how one of her good friends was griping about her older brother's behavior and when she was listening to this, she heard some of her own traits. It's funny because I've had a very similar experience lately. It's like God likes to smack us awake sometimes by allowing us to see ourselves through other people. Lately I keep running across people with my own traits - good and bad and ones that just need to have the volume turned down on. I try to see everyone through the lens of compassion and I like everyone, even people who are sometimes rude etc because hey I make the same mistakes. I thought she was pretty self-aware to be able to recognize that about herself.

So Savie and I then got on this conversation of how when she's mad at me, she makes this awful mean looking face and when she does it, it always makes me mad. She only does "the face" when I'm disciplining her. I said, what is going through your head when you make that face? Are you trying to cast a spell to blow me up? (she loves Harry Potter and has read every book like 10 times!) and she laughed and said, no, that's what I do to keep my mouth shut and not say all the things I want to because I have the problem of word vomit (she didn't use those words but said something that means the same thing - that phrase is from the movie Mean Girls). I was like, "Ooh That is what I need to do!! I have that same problem!" She said, so is that what you're going to do when you're getting mad at me? We can just make faces at one another? (ie disciplining her is always getting mad at her, according to her...). So we started making faces at one another. :) But seriously I was thinking, hmm, maybe instead of sending out an anger bomb to the universe (or someone in it) I need to make a face that no one can see.

I actually have been thinking about the film Girl, Interrupted for some time now because I remembered this dialogue about ambivalence since I saw it the first time it came out, years ago and since I've been thinking so much about how ambivalence rules my life, I decided I wanted to see the movie again. I am watching it now, while catching up on email which had collected dust during the hurricane. Here's that dialogue...

Susanna: I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favorite word.
Dr. Wick: Do you know what that means, ambivalence?
Susanna: I don't care.
Dr. Wick: If it's your favorite word, I would've thought you would...
Susanna: It *means* I don't care. That's what it means.
Dr. Wick: On the contrary, Susanna. Ambivalence suggests strong feelings... in opposition. The prefix, as in "ambidextrous," means "both." The rest of it, in Latin, means "vigor." The word suggests that you are torn... between two opposing courses of action.

This was also in an email newsletter I get, quoted from the book God Grant Me...:

Listening is one of the gifts we give to each other. Listening is also one of the gifts we give to ourselves. As we listen to others and learn from them, we stop thinking we are the center of the universe. Listening to others - to truly hear what they say, to learn from them - helps keep our egos in check. We should frequently ask ourselves, "Am I practicing the skills of active listening?"

Prayer for the Day

Higher Power, today I pray that I may open myself up to hearing Your voice in the words of others. Allow me to see the people around me as teachers. Help me stay open to being taught.

questions and answers

Ornate door in Durbar Square, Kathmandu, Nepal
Copyright (2) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high. Look it squarely in the eye, and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me." -Ann Landers

I beg you... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer. -Rainer Maria Rilke

The second quote is on a card that is on my desk. I don't read it often, although I love what it says. Very apropos. I am dealing with some issues in my life right now that are pretty intense. When I go through the intensity, I feel at once both strong and vulnerable, but I also tend to react strongly to perceived slights during times like these. More acts of self-sabotage, I guess. It's the old pendulum swing of reactions and emotions. Like most children of abuse, I tended to keep the important most vulnerable things to myself as a child, and yet particularly as I became a teenager I would also react verbally when I felt slighted. This has a tendency to push people away.

I think that in some ways, we have a very unhealthy society, because people do not seem able to communicate in a healthy way in any sort of conflict or disagreement of ideas. I am learning that I have a way too idealistic view of people. I see the model that Jesus set up - forgive not 7 times but 7 x 7, always forgive, always be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful. I want to believe that people will be forgiving and understanding and will always be there to work things through - especially those who care about me. It seems like that is just not always the case. Or, I should say, not usually the case. I used to think the problem was them, but I am learning that I have unrealistic expectations in this regard. I think that people's emotions are fragile, and people have their own boundaries that are not always clearly visible, and we can cross them without realizing it. And when we tell others that our boundaries have been violated, we must take great care to know how and when to do so, if that relationship is one that we treasure. This is one of those lessons I am learning, and that I will continue to learn. I am living the questions, I don't have all (or most of) the answers.

And I know that I fail again and again to follow the idealistic standards I would like to live by myself. I'm pretty good at forgiveness and working through stuff, but I am not so good at sitting in my discomfort - which includes "not knowing," and feeling slighted. I want to fix things. I want to speak up for myself. As a child, no one took care of many of my needs so I learned to take care of my own self. I learned that if I needed something done, I would just do it myself - even when others said it couldn't be done. But sometimes, I'm learning, that what I need to do is "do nothing." The most challenging part of that is not knowing for sure that is what needs doing! If God would just send a billboard, please! :)