Hip Hip Hooray!

I did it!  I survived the week, wrote my exam, passed it with flying colours and have emerged on the other side with my sanity intact!  I am very much looking forward to a few days of relaxation and spending some time with the children, whom I have been ignoring almost completely for the last week while I studied.  They've been troopers -- it's turning out to be a fairly boring summer for them, what with me being busy with school and studies.

Luckily, that is about to change, as tomorrow we embark upon a European vacation, which will reunite our family (my husband has already spent the last 10 days across the pond) and, hopefully, provide us all with some much-needed fun and frolic.

Stressed Out

At least I realized tonight that it wasn't just me -- it seems all of my classmates are freaking out.  We have a major exam at the end of this week -- which has us all panicky to begin with -- but for whatever reason, we've all got a ton of other crazy shit going on: one classmate has a groundhog digging up her landscaping and her boat ran out of gas on the weekend, another classmate has an extraordinary amount of work being piled upon her at her day job and needed to get her brakes fixed twice in two weeks, another classmate has money issues and a useless new husband, another classmate... well, you get the idea.  And, of course, there's me.  My husband went to Germany on a business trip, leaving me to try to study with the kids home 24/7.  I know the trip wasn't his idea, but his absence certainly hasn't made studying any easier.  We are also, somehow,  not get along even when he is on the other side of the world, which is causing me much distraction and causing me to lose focus on the anatomy & physiology that should be foremost in my thoughts this week.

I have no idea what the cosmos is doing, but none of us is very thrilled that everything currently seems to be one snafu on top of the other.  We don't have the capacity to deal with it all right now -- we just want to be left alone to study!  If I can do that for the next two days and if I can make it to the end of the week with my sanity intact, I'll be very pleased -- and more than ready for a few days of downtime!

Dilemma, Part 2

So today my pondering has led me to this question: what do you do when you know you're supposed to feel a certain way and you just don't? Do you follow your inner voice and your own feelings or do you believe what everyone else around you seems to be telling you, which is, quite simply, that your feelings are wrong?

Of course, this brings us back around to the choice to go with your gut, be true to yourself but hurt those around you. Or, listen to others, making them happy but not yourself.

I wonder if I'll ever figure this out...

Words of Wisdom

This quote appeared as a friend's status update on Facebook today:

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” -Steve Jobs

This is exactly what has me in such a dilemma. Because, while I completely, wholeheartedly agree with everything Mr. Jobs says, it is quite another thing to actually live these ideals.

I know that, all too often, I do let others' opinions drown out my inner voice. I have been trying very hard to listen to it and I think I'm getting better at it, but the other voices are still there to contend with. I don't seem to have developed the ability (yet?) to drown them out. I hope that one day I learn to muffle the interference.

Even more, I hope that I am able muster up the courage to follow my heart and my intuition (-- once I've figured out what it is they're saying).

Dilemma

One of the biggest challenges I am facing on my path to a new and improved me is trying to figure out how not to hurt myself.  It sounds so simple.  I mean, who wants to hurt themselves?  Sadly, it appears that I do.  I try so hard to avoid hurting everyone else around me that I end up being hurt as a result.  I would much rather suffer than harm those I care about.  In some cases, this is a good thing but it turns out that doing it all the time is not. 

One phrase from my current favourite song (Falling by The Civil Wars) goes: "Worried about everyone but me/ And I just keep losing myself".  Which is exactly the problem.  I'm so incredibly worried about what everyone else is thinking or feeling or wanting that I pay my own thoughts, feelings and desires no heed.  In the process, I've put myself at the bottom of my own list of People I Care About.

I keep being reminded that I need to make myself a priority; that I need to figure out what I want and what I need (and then, logically, make those things happen).  I understand the theory, but what happens when my needs are the complete opposite of the needs of those whom I love and care about?  How do I say what I need to say when I know my words will sting?  How do I act when I know my actions will hurt?  How do I come to terms with the idea that my happiness is worth causing others pain?  How do I convince myself that I am worth fighting for?

As they sing in Falling: "Please, please tell me you know"...

Trapped

When I started going to school last Fall, I embarked upon a new Path of Dreams.  I had been avoiding this Path for a very long time because I always felt that dreaming and setting goals for myself was futile.  The way my life was arranged meant that we moved (usually to a new country) every 3 years, which almost necessarily meant that there was no point in my investing any sort of energy in a job/career or any kind of long-term project as I would have to give it up as soon as it all started coming together.  So I never allowed myself to invest in Me.  What happened was that, over the years, I lost myself -- almost completely.  I forgot about all the things that mattered to me most and all the little parts that made me the Person I used to be and, more importantly, the Person I used to like being.

About 5 years ago, during a trip to Japan (without husband or children), I started to remember some of those ingredients that had previously gone into the concoction of Me.  I returned home and determined to add those things back into my life.  Over the course of the following years, I did just that and started to regain some of my former self. 

When my husband and I began couples counselling two years ago, I went into it fairly blindly, having no idea how much individual therapy I needed. The issues I've encountered have been profound and I've done a lot of work on myself over the past couple of years, which is, I believe, a large part of what led me to the brave step of investing in my future, going back to school and happily rediscovering many long-lost parts of myself along the way.

The problem is that in doing so, I gave myself over - completely - to a false sense of security and to a false reality.  Recently, I have had very many reminders of the real reality that I live: that despite my thinking that I have some control over the direction in which my life is headed, I really don't.  At all.  My future hangs in the balance of people who, for the most part, don't know me and don't care about me in the slightest.  I am aware that in my reality, I don't get to make any decisions -- at least not any that really matter.  Decisions will be made and I will follow along because I have no other choice.  In a way, I am completely trapped -- in an admittedly, beautiful and ornate cage of my own making, but it is a cage nonetheless.  In the end, it doesn't really matter what I want.  I may be allowed to take little detours every now and then - like going to school - but the path I follow is not mine to choose.

My therapist says that unless I am truly free to choose my own path -- be it career, relationship or otherwise -- I will never truly be happy.  I guess there won't be much true happiness in my future...

Confusion

Not long ago, my marriage was in such bad shape that I could not think a positive thought about it to save my life.  I had reconciled myself to doom and destruction and assumed that it was only a matter of time until the bottom fell out from under us and we would tumble to our demise, or at least that of our marriage. 

Due to our current immigration status in the country we've chosen to call home, I/we are unable to really make any decision about the future of our relationship and, indeed, ourselves.  While we wait for all things beurocratic to be settled, we have been trying to stay together -- because we have no other choice.

It seems, however, that things are changing.  Ever so slightly, but they are.  Thanks to therapy, psychics and yet another relationship book, there has been a palpable change in the direction in which we were headed.  Perhaps that's an overstatement.  The winds have changed, but the sail has not yet caught the breeze to steer us on a new course.  And really, at this point, I'm not sure the breeze is strong enough or will last long enough to have any effect on our poor, weather-beaten boat. 

What I do know is that I have seen the palest, tiniest glimmer of hope, which is something I nearly didn't recognize as it had been so long since I'd encountered it.  I also know that, because it's been so very long since I've had any kind of hope, I have absolutely no idea what to do with it.  It's frightening and it's confusing and it has sent me spinning -- and I have no idea where I'm going to land or what direction I'm going to be facing when I do.

Oozing Musicality

On Saturday I went to my guitar lesson.  It was the second week in a row for me, which was quite an achievement.  Due to school and other scheduling conflicts, I hadn't been to a lesson in, oh, about 2 months prior.  My daughter, with whom I began lessons, was still attending her lessons despite my absence and although I made her practice (not as often as she should) I had picked up my guitar only a couple of times during the previous weeks.  Even in the week between my lessons, I only practiced twice and had concentrated solely on the chords for the songs we had previously been learning the melody to (so that my daughter and I will be able to play a nice duet at some point).

During the lesson, we worked some on chords, especially those crazy "bar chords" (in which you hold down multiple strings with one figure) that seem to defy my playing them.  My teacher, who is an incredible musician, a fun teacher and a generally cool guy, also taught me a neat variation in playing chords, so that rather than strumming them, you pluck the strings at the same time, much like you would play a chord on the piano.  You can take that further and do a little walkabout with the chord as well, playing each of the notes individually in turn.  Sorry if all this is rambling nonsense to anyone who doesn't play, but for me, it was all very interesting.

Then, out of nowhere, my teacher flips a few pages ahead in the book and wants me to play a song I hadn't played in months and which involved notes on a new string.  So, there I am, basically sight reading my way through a 4-string version of "Amazing Grace".  We repeated it 3 times (with teacher Steve playing a lovely accompaniment to my melody).  We finally finish and I am totally frustrated because I was still making mistakes and I turn to Steve and the man is sporting a huge, glowing smile.  "Wow!" he says, "You were in the zone.  Just oozing musicality.  Some people play for years and never do that.  Awesome!"

So, all the while I was hung up on getting the notes right and being frustrated by my imperfections, I had something going on.  Something I didn't even realize I had.  Something that is very, very awesome.  I guess sometimes it's good to see things from someone else's perspective, especially when our own perspective is not the most favourable.  I know I am often my own worst critic -- wouldn't it be wonderful if there were always someone else around to point out any perceived awesomeness they noticed that I didn't?