Isle of Remote

I’ve sort of been surrounded by a lot of death these past few years. A co-worker, a good friend, a cousin, a family friend (and her brother- AND son-in law), another co-worker, my grandmother, another friend, an aunt, my grandfather…..that’s just all I can remember right now.

I think that’s been the reason for my funk of late. I’ve just been pushing through life and not reallly living it.

Yesterday I got to babysit for my friend’s little boy and I just felt like my whole day got painted in bright and shimmering colors.

It’s really weird to realize that I thought I was living life before, but, in reality life was just sort of leading me through a series of hoops that I thought I needed to jump through. In other words, I was just surviving.

And yet, I laughed, I hung out with friends, I made new friends, I continued to pray and be thankful. But my heart was really bitter because it was full of grief and anger. I can usually sense those feelings and work myself out of them, but this time it crept upon me in an unfamiliar way. In a pit of grief so deep, but, at the same time, comforting.

So now I’m taking some time to bring the technicolor back into my world (and Meadow - Antonio Banderas might just do the trick! ) I’ll let you know how that goes.

So the Isle of Remote is showing telltale signs of continental shift. We’re busy uploading all the files from tblog on to blogsome here. So far I’m really liking this platform. I won’t go “live” until I get the whole thing loaded - so sit back and enjoy the process.

Gay bartenders are evil. They make any normal drink taste so sinfully delicious that you are amazingly unaware that the drink contains alcohol. Then bing bam boom - half a glass of sangria later you’re grabbing the bus boy’s bottom and singing “don’t cry for me Argentina.”

Evil, I say. Pure evil.

Yet another unexpected hiatus from the Isle. Sorry. Earlier this month one of my co-workers committed suicide. Weird.

I think there are two reasons people commit suicide. Either they think no one cares and everyone would be better off if they left this earth or they do it because they hate themselves and want to make someone else suffer.

But really, what it boils down to is suicide is the ultimate in narcissism. You throw the lives around you into such turmoil and focus their energy on why you would do such a thing.

I’m not saying this to be mean. My co-worker suffered from depression, but we thought it was all under control and that she was doing well. There was a some withdrawal, but her only child was leaving home to attend college and, in light of the circumstances, the sadness seemed normal.

But it’s halted her daughter’s life. She’s left school and come home to plan a funeral. Now she blames herself for leaving her mother alone in the first place. If she’d never left, her mother would still be alive. Even though her mother left her a note explaining that it wasn’t her fault. But an 18 year old girl leaving home for the first time shouldn’t have to deal with that sort of thing, you know?

It just makes me crazy.

It’s been a loooong week. Had my performance evaluation at work on Tuesday and it was mediocre. I mean, not that I was surprised or anything. I typically have a really hard time the first six-10 months of any job. I’m not a jump right in there kind of person. I like to know what I’m dealing with all around me before I can concentrate on the job at hand. I like to figure out the people before the job because then you know how to change things and how people will react.

I work with a lot of type A folk. Which is good because they are the detail people, which is good counter to me. Details bore me, I’m the big picture, long-range goal kinda gal and I like to concentrate on the effect my work will have, not so much the tweensy details like if there is adequate signage to the bathroom. But, I recognize the importance of having adequate signage and appreciate that there are people around to remind me of that. But it’s just not on my radar at any given time.

So luckily, my end product has been practically fault-free. But they feel I haven’t provided the proper amount of feedback to give assurance that I know what I’m doing. I can work with that.

I’m not sure I did a wise thing though. There were a couple of things that were either not directly or even indirectly my fault that I got dinged on. For example, I was responsible for the information to be provided in this memo. It was information that could not be supplied until the very last minute before it was needed because it was constantly changing. I sent the info to the next party in the format it needed to be printed in and said that the final copy would be provided at a certain time. Said and done. Then I had to leave for a meeting and my co-worker decided to change the format and I didn’t have the chance to see it before it was distributed. So I got dinged for that. Also for not doing things no one told me to do and that were not on record of having ever being done. (Because apparently, my mad psychic skills were the reason for my hiring.) Ding!

I decided not to say anything and let it slide. In the whole big pic of my job, they were infintesimally small things to pick out, so my defense probably wouldn’t have been worth the effort. But now I have to deal with things like, “make sure you double check that memo!”

Still, it is a good job and I really like everyone working there. And I know they like me and want me to succeed at this job. But I’ll be glad to see the weekend!

I’ve mentioned before that I’m having issues with the person formerly known as my best friend. I’m still not sure where our friendship is headed, but I realized I’ve now grown accustomed to her absence in my life. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but it does still manage to befuddle me.

About a month or so ago I get this email that her email account has been letting her send but not receive messages. Says that apparently she has not received any messages in a couple of months before she noticed the problem.

I happen to know these are not the busiest folks on the planet. Asleep by nine, up by five. Work, work, home, eat, pets, tv and early to bed again. So it’s not like she’s been so busy that she hasn’t had time to check her email. And she did notice that she was able to send, but not receive messages.

They have DSL like I do. Her lovely husband has not had a problem with his email. And all his IT knowledge (a field in which he earns his pay) was unable to fix this glitch. Is it wrong that I think he did something to sabotage her email account? And two months is an awfully long time for her to realize she hadn’t heard from her family once, isn’t it?

I called her a few weeks back out of the blue. (I believe when you get the urge to call someone you really should - there’s something that person needs to hear from you.) So I call and we had a brief, impersonal conversation in which she told me she has to be better at being a good friend. Of course that’s the last I’ve heard from her.

Cut to conversation with my mother. Seems my father complained to her that I haven’t been returning his phone calls. How does he manage to piss me off without even talking to me? This is a grown damn man! You got a problem? Talk to the person you got the problem with! And then don’t freakin’ lie! I have returned all phone calls except one which I forgot about, but did ring back a week or so later, but didn’t leave a message. It was his cell phone so I know he knew I called.

So I’m thinking - is this one more way for my relationship with my father to shape my relationships with others? My best friend marries and doesn’t call me anymore and so I’ve pretty much cut her out of my life like a trans fat. Because I don’t want to keep pushing myself on people who don’t want to be pushed upon. Have I done this before? Yes, several times.

I told my mother last year that I’m tired of putting myself on the line for my father to disappoint me. Yes, I accept the man that he is, that he’s never going to be able to live up to my (low) expectations, but I can’t do all the work. It’s time for him to be the grown up. And because he removed himself from my life without caring how much it hurt me, he’s going to have to work a little to get back in. I’m not cutting him out - I wasn’t raised like that - but I’m just not inspired to work that hard at something that’s always left me grieving. Once you’ve burnt your hand on the stove, you’re smart enough to avoid doing it again.

So I’m re-evaluating how I need to proceed in the course of my relationships. Do I deliberately hold things back because I don’t want to get hurt? Yes. I mean, if your own father, whom you adored as a little girl, can drop you off his radar in a split second, how is anyone else supposed to love the real you?

Do I carry self-hatred around with me? No. With everything that is in me, I know that my absence from these two people’s lives is a loss to them. But it’s also a loss to me - relationships are an investment of time and emotion and it does something to you when someone shows you that investment was not worth as much to them as it was to you. That rejection is something you carry inside you like a festering tumor - you don’t know it’s there until something doesn’t feel quite right.

How will I move beyond this? I have to let myself be vulnerable. People are always going to hurt me, disappoint me, leave me. That doesn’t mean it was anything I did - IF I’m being true to myself.

We were never meant to find that sense of completion through another person - people are fallible. They make errors in judgment. They are broken. They have many, many flaws, some of which can strike you right out of the blue and leave you so breathless and wounded. But I have to hold in my heart and my head that there is someone who already loves me so perfectly and completely and passionately that His perfect love can even allow me to accept the imperfectness of those in my life who have hurt me. I’m having a hard time grasping on to that lately. I’m so overloaded with so many feelings that sometimes I feel as though I’m just waiting for everything to spill forth and pollute the earth - I am a living, breathing Pandora’s box ready to spew the ills of my life on to an unsuspecting world.

My mantra this week: Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love casts out fear. I’m so afraid that if I let myself crack, there will be too many pieces scattered about and nothing to put back into a semblance of me.

I guess that is why I’ve been so angry lately. A simmering pot of anger on a slow boil. All that emotion has to come out somehow, and isn’t it amazing how anger is …. more acceptable than breaking down. I’m not a good manager of my anger. I am, however, extremely good at stifling it….to a point. And then I’m out of control. I can stifle a good 5-10 years - so if this were an Olympic sport, I would so be bringing home the gold.

I guess it is a step forward that I’m realizing this. Maybe now I take another step forward, and then another. Maybe it’s time I learn how to take refuge in the arms of the one who created me. Somewhere along the line, I lost the assurance that He could heal what was broken inside me. I mean heal 100%. I recognize that I’ve come this far, but somewhere inside my head I’m saying, “this is best He can do with what He’s got.”

Hmm. Seems there was a lot brewing inside these past few weeks. Honestly, I didn’t know all this was going to come out until I saw what I was typing. It’s given me a lot to think on this night.

I made it through the heinous month that was September. Alive. Yay for me.

It was touch and go for a minute there - it was a crazy work schedule. Some days I worked from 7am to 11pm. Include weekends on that chore list and it makes for one cranky Abbie.

But I held it together and now I’m back. I can honestly say that I hope that I never have to go through that again. The only thing that kept me from losing it all together was making sure I planned some fun activities on my free time. I mean it wasn’t much - a quick facial here, a walk in the afternoon, stopping for a special treat - you can’t live putting all your energy into you work, even if you love your job with a capital L, y’know?

Anyway, I’m glad to be paying some attention to this blog of mine again. I’ve missed it and you all. I’m going to spend the next couple of days reading what ya’ll have been up to. Hope it’s all good stuff!