Mountain Views

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

An afternoon at Carl Sandburgs...
Well, I made it up to Little Glassy with a backpack carrying this journal, my Captivating book, cell phone, car keys and a diet Dr. Pepper from Sonic. (I think the fact that I walked up here with a fountain drink from Sonic is amusing.) I'm looking out over the mountains and really enjoying the peace, solitude and strength they have to give me. Mountains don't expect anything in return for all their gifts, which happen to be gifts that I need everyday.

I need peace in my head because it's constantly rushing and whirling about - even medication can't make that stop. I need solitude. No one asking me to do something. No one telling me I need to do something better or that what I'm doing is no good enough. I need the quiet that being here brings. I need help in order to ground myself and not have everyone in my ear. I need strength. God, I need so much strength. Everyday for me is another battle, another bridge to cross, another fight within myself to get it done, to finish it. Everyday I struggle constantly collecting the pieces of my life that I have personally shattered and continue going. Or am I going to wake up and have to fight those intense urges to run away? Am I going to succumb to my racing thoughts and announce out of no where that I'm headed to Hollywood...I am going to be an actress! I fall asleep scared of what I'm going to wake-up to. I toss and turn at night anxiety rushing so fast through my veins so fast I wake dripping with a cold sweat. Who am I going to hurt tomorrow? Who am I going to let down? Am I going to have the strength of mind and the courage it takes for me to face the day? Am I going to think non-stop about disappearing or spending every penny I have in my bank account (or don't have in my bank account, truth be told)? Am I going to actually make it through the day? Or will those tormenting thoughts haunt me enough to end my insanity? Every night these are my fears and my nightmares. There's no use trying to fool myself into thinking maybe tonight, maybe they won't come...because they always do. I know I have to live "Just for Today" but as hard as I'm trying to live each day just for the day... I still have knots in my stomach and a nervous head petrified of which Megan will wake up in the morning.

It really is beautiful up here. Just me and my mountains.

PET PEEVES

"Do not take life's experiences too seriously. Above all, do not let them hurt you,
for in reality they are nothing but dream experiences....If circumstances
are bad and you have to bear them, do not make them a part of yourself.
Play your part in life , but never forget that it is only a role."
~Paramahansa Yoganan Da

This will probably be my last entry before the year 2009...ugh, 2009. I'm old. Pet peeve #1: You're only gonna get older. I'm just kidding about growing older being a pet peeve. Really I am. There is so much I want to do and experience that growing older is just a bitter reminder of what I have yet to do with my life! Okay, now to my REAL pet peeves...

PP #1: You're driving down the interstate and up ahead there is construction, or an accident, causing you to merge into either the right or left hand lane. You're already irritated that this unscheduled interruption has slowed your driving progress down and in your rear view mirror you see some incredibly idiotic individual (I like alliteration) moving at what seems to be warp speed past you. WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING?! ARE THEY BLIND?! DO THEY NOT SEE THE OBVIOUS SIGNS DIRECTING YOU TO MERGE?! It absolutely infuriates me! I really do not like thinking bad thoughts about people (I really don't) but when someone refuses to follow the same traffic pattern as the rest of us, who are also annoyed with this delay, bad thoughts just come. I grip my steering wheel and sometimes let a few explicatives escape my mouth (okay, okay...always let a lot of explicatives) and bellow (yea, not just scream...I bellow) "DON'T LET THEM OVER! DON'T LET THEM OVER! DON'T LET THEM OVER! MAKE THEM WAIT" Oohhh...I can feel my blood boiling now, just thinking about those people. Who do they think they are?

PP #2: Self-checkout lines at Walmart. (I have to exclude grocery stores, because they have seemed to correct the problem that seems to plague America's "all-in-one place" shopping super center) Why would someone with most likely over $500 worth of items push their cart into a self-checkout lane? Why? There have been times, unfortunately quite a few, when I have found myself in the self-checkout line behind 3 or 4 wonderful Walmart patrons who have their carts overflowing (seriously, OVERFLOWING) with micellanious junk (yea...junk) and I am standing with my 1 or 2 items. (side note: You must know I never binge shop at Walmart. Walmart is terrifying for me. I am only there when absolutely necessary and I have a list...get it and get out!) WHY ARE YOU IN THE SELF-CHECKOUT LANE WITH 1,000,000,000 ITEMS?! WHY ARE YOU 60+ IN THE SELF-CHECKOUT LANE WITH 1,000,000,000 ITEMS?! WHY ARE YOU GOING THROUGH A SELF-CHECKOUT LINE WHEN 1/2 THE ITEMS IN YOUR CART ARE GOING TO HAVE TO BE APPROVED BY A CASHIER ANYWAY? I just don't understand what goes through the heads of some people? I have 1 item, you have 1,000,000,000, and you distinctly angle your buggy in front of me...ya know, just to make sure I know that I'm behind you. I HAVE 1 ITEM!!!!!

...well, there are a few more Pet Peeves, and I will most likely discuss them in another entry...but quite frankly just writing about these 1st two has exhausted me... :-)

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL & MANY BLESSINGS IN 2009!!

ANXIETY & COURAGE

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." ~E.E. Cummings

Well, it has been 3 weeks since I wrote. In fact, it's been 3 weeks since I even mustered up the courage to actually look at my blog since the last one I wrote. It took quite a few deep breaths and a bit of liquid courage, before I was able to convince myself to start writing about such personal reflections of myself to an audience...not that my blog has an audience. It even took a few days before the thought of deleting my last entry stopped haunting me, but then the thoughts of what comments I might receive started to roll in.

Anxiety can drive a person mad. Your mind constantly races with thoughts like a 7 year old who has ADD and a bag full of pixie sticks...the super large ones! You stay in a confused state between reality and paranoia. At times it seems the paranoia is your reality. Those thoughtless worries that everyone has at one point or another (like what you're going to wear to work that day or what you're going to have for dinner) are so intense for me that sleep does not come. One simple thought about what am I going to have for dinner tomorrow night begins to form a tangled web linking one concern to the next. I cannot explain the reason behind it. I have literally just sat here for 20 minutes typing & backspacing, typing & backspacing trying to describe the reason. So, if someone out there knows why (other than a physiological reason) even the little things cause such mental anguish I'm begging you to help me out! All my life I have upset, frustrated and even angered people in my life because I just cannot explain it to them. I can only say, "That's how I am. That's just me." I don't enjoy the non-stop mental distress about EVERYTHING. I've thought about taking up yoga for the calming meditation and controlled breathing techniques you can learn. Of course though, I always have an excuse for why I still haven't set foot in a room with colorful kindergarten mats spaced out on the floor. It's not that I don't want my mind to have peace, it's that more worries always come. What if I wear a sweatsuit (because I have a disgusting hippopotamus belly) instead of stereotypical yoga attire? I have always thought I was a good ballerina (balance, coordination, etc.), but what if I can't do this? Does that mean I never really as good as I thought I was? What if I'm "called out" in front of everyone? I could go on and on... I absolutely cannot stand that the majority of my day AND night is filled with questions! SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!! (Ha!Ha!)

Today was good though. What a fantastic surprise I had when I finally reasoned with myself and logged on to check my blog! MDH was right! You can find support, encouragement and comfort through a blog... even if it is just you giving you the chance to discover yourself.

A NEW BEGINNING

"He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away." ~Raymond Hull

I am changing my approach to blogging. This time instead of just writing about miscellaneous observations and worrying what others may think about my writing, I am going to start writing about my life. I am going to start writing about me. This is NOT going to be easy for me. I am extremely insecure with who I am, I am overly anxious about what other people think about me and so I wear many different hats to accommodate everyone and I hide who I really am because I am afraid. I am afraid that if people find out who I really am then I will be alone, without anyone, and that scares me so much. I have had the same reoccurring nightmare since I can remember... I am alone, screaming out for someone to help me and no one can hear me, no one is there. My heart is beating wildly already over analyzing every thought, every word, every sentence...but I want to try. I want to use this blog for a different purpose. I want to use it to help me help myself. My blog is still dedicated to my boyfriend, Davis, who throughout the -- years of my life is the first person that has ever made me feel special, beautiful, important... but instead of using this blog as a tool to learn to write again, I am using it for me. (By-the-way don't anyone dare mention my real age...I've developed a horrible phobia of how old I am and how time is running out for me to get all there is to get out of life. So, at -- I've already started lying about my age) Let's start with who I am...

I am a daughter.
I am girlfriend.
I am a sister.
I am a friend.
I am caregiver.
Those are easy. Those are without effort. Those are titles that I are given to me because of the roles I play.
I am compassionate.
I am considerate.
I care.
I do for others first.
I help.
I give.
I am good.
I am happy.
I am fun.
Those are things I try to show to the world. Those are things I try to convince myself of when I look in the mirror. I constantly battle the overwhelming thoughts of who I really am against who I think I am. I do things everyday to make people believe that I am all those things. Part of my job is to help people with information. I work with a girl who has special needs. I do not do certain things because I fear they would upset or hurt my parents. I do things for other people because they ask me to. Yet, sometimes reality gets the best of me and I find myself laying in my bed just staring out the window not having the strength to move with tears falling so hard rivers begin to form on my cheeks because the reality of who I really am is too much to bear and I cannot face myself.
I say mean things about others.
I am resentful.
I expect something in return.
I want.
I lie.
I am unhappy.
That list was very difficult for me to write down and I know there are more things about me that one would find disgusting about a person. Those things are hard enough to say out loud and my head can't take any more thinking about who I am. I try so hard not to be those things. I fight them constantly, but it is exhausting and I want to end the fight. It is too hard sometimes and it is overwhelming. I actively try NOT to be those things and even when I think I have finally buried those ugly descriptions of myself and am becoming the person I want to be they always find their way back to my thoughts. My mind never wants to stop reminding me of decisions I have made, things I have said, people I have hurt and pain I feel because of the person I really must be and again I find myself praying for the courage to rid this world of a person like me. My brain acts against me, it doesn't let me forget the mistakes I've made or the nasty things I've done. No matter what I do in my life that is good there is always a reminder of what I have done that was bad and then I question the whole reason why I did something good in the first place. Was it to make myself feel better? Was it to justify something I did to hurt someone else? There are times when it makes me mad to hear someone give me a compliment. It makes me angry that they would say something nice about someone so horrible. I don't deserve it and I don't want to hear someone tell me something good about myself, because I can't even think of something good about myself. There are days when I'm so ashamed of my reflection that I don't even put on make-up because I don't want to look at my face.

It is so hard. I hurt so much, so often and feel so alone. I want to be that person I show to the world...so bad, so very, very bad. I try. I try so hard. I am exhausted. Always exhausted.

...then the mania comes.

IT'S MY LIFE!!

"What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth." ~Jewish Proverb

It's always baffled and amazed me how at one moment you can be doing something, reading something or listening to something and then a day later, maybe not even that long you realize just exactly why you had been doing that something, reading that particular thing, or listening… and every time it happens it just makes my head spin! My head is still spinning from this little quirk of fate…

Last night I decided to rummage around through some old boxes and get rid of some things I stumbled upon some old high school nostalgia, ribbons, awards, and several hundreds of folded pieces of paper. Captivated by an opportunity to take a trip down memory lane I began to open each carefully folded note I found myself back in high school…the good, the bad, and the ugly. I laughed at the dramatic flare each of these notes had so that I, the reader would know the extreme importance of their dire situation. Admittedly, I even became choked up, at one point, recollecting the emotional fervor certain events once had in my life and in the lives of my closest friends. I was glad I decided to take on this conquest to relive those bittersweet memories of high school. What we learn from our past affects our future. But the words quickly became redundant and not surprisingly. After all, in a town like Hendersonville there are only so many guys you can crush, there are only so many girls you can viciously insult, and if there is absolutely nothing else to discuss, there are only so many boring classes complain about. So, I put the notes back into the old shoe box and went to bed.

Throughout the day today, I emailed friends, sent messages or comments on their MySpace pages sharing my discovery of our archived glory days. Disappointingly, my fun was interrupted with cruel reminder of why I made the decision a long time ago to leave high school behind me, grow up and mature, but most importantly ON! Obviously not everyone made the same decision I did. Oh, they may have put their memories away but sadly, they did not move on. No, these pathetic sewer rats chose another route. They chose to maintain an immature child-like mentality and focus on the lives of other people, because their sad little life is so sorry it's not even worth THEIR own thought. It's simply unlucky for those of us who have chosen to leave Never Never Land that we have to co-exist with these disgusting rats.

Most people would advise you to forget about their craven remarks. Simply forget the lies that continue to ooze out of their jealous mouths made silent only when thinking about their own self-disgust. It seems simple enough. They're not worth it, so why waste your time. "He who angers you has power over you", a friend once told me…although I'm pretty sure she got it from someone else. It's good advice, and what I normally would do. Instead I took a moment to decide which was more important to me: publicly expressing my feelings of complete disgust with the constant slander of people who are actually happy with who they are and the decisions they have made or once again letting it roll off my back as if there is something to hide. I chose to write. Do not be mistaken about my reasons for writing this. I am not writing this with an expectation of change, sadly a person who would knowingly commit such an appalling offense again another person will most likely never change. I am instead writing this to say "Go ahead, keep talking. But while you're still making your cowardly remarks behind my back, that still puts me in front of you. So while you're staring at my back I'll continue to learn from my past mistakes, I'll continue to challenge and improve myself, and if you close your spiteful lips, just for one moment, you might just learn something… from ME.

**I wrote this several months ago after an old friend sent me an email with concerns about things she had heard about choices I was making. I had originally written her to share some memories of how ridiculous we were in high school. I was hoping for a positive response and possibly reconnecting, since we had lost touch over the past few years… Instead, I received an attack against how I am choosing to live my life which I was extremely offended and wrote this...

ALWAYS THINKING...

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne,
The Scarlet Letter

I must first acknowledge a dear friend first... because I did find this quote in The Scarlet Letter... I wish I could remember the exact words in which he (Matt) described me as, "Megan is no Hester Prynne (yes, I had to use Google) she would drag everyone down with her."
HELL YES I WOULD!! I read the Scarlet Letter and thought... "WHAT WAS SHE THINKING CARRYING ALL THAT ON HER OWN WHEN IT TOOK TWO TO BE IN THE POSITION SHE WAS!!" She carried that adulterous (meaning adulterous against the church) minister with his secret to his grave... SHE DID. SHE SACRFICED HER HER SHE. SHE. SHE. ALONE.
Anyways...that wasn't my original point. Why I chose that quote is because I looked up quotes on passion. Does passion not drive us all? (I feel so "old English") As we grow older do we not recognize what drive us...and is it not passion that drive us? I have found what I do love (see past post)... I love passion. I love drama. No. No. NO... Not the drama that is futile and ridiculous but the passion behind it all. I love when people are driven by something deeper than themselves that they are willing to "stick they're head on the line" disregarding the "public" disapproval they may suffer. Do they consider it suffering? No. They, who freely without worry, recognize that it is a privilege that they are allowed to express they're opinions or whatever they may want. I wish so much that I had their passion. Sure I displace my initial internal reaction of "acute" anxiety with humor but I do wish I had the strength that I have seen/read in the notes/blogs of my friends that I wish to post my feelings, and even my "dorky" humor on respective "social networks." Am I stuck in an unending demise of a popularity contest? No. I refuse. I really truly with all my heart (as over dramatically as I can express via a computer) will not worry. ...or will TRY not too.
...okay have to finish this later... a tad bit too much Chardonnay...

I DON'T LIKE FOOTBALL. I DON'T LIKE POLITICS. DOES THAT MAKE ME A BAD AMERICAN?

"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide." ~Napoleon Bonaparte

Okay, I like my quote. I know that Napoleon was not known for being particularly democratic but I think what he said is very powerful. In lieu of the excitement we all shared yesterday, celebrating our right to vote for the next president of the United States I begin to think about some things and so I chose this particular quote by Napoleon Bonaparte to get this entry rolling...

We have a fantastic right in this country. A right so powerful that citizens of other countries don't even dare to dream about. We have the right to speak out if we don't like what's going or we want a change. We have the right to decide. I will reluctantly and with my tail between my legs, admit that this right is not something I have always appreciated. In the beginning it was simply not understanding... not "getting it". My freshman year of high school it was this not "getting it" that got me sent out into the hall when I proclaimed in my Economic, Legal, & Political Systems (ELPS) class that "Voting is a waste of time. The Electoral College really does the choosing." Throughout my college years, I rolled my eyes at my mother when she would offer her "polite" reminder to cast my absentee ballot, because there are always important issues that need my voice. Although I still do not completely "get it", I can say that I very much appreciate and I am very much thankful to my fore-fathers AND fore-mothers for fighting for me to have my voice heard. (on a side note...I was sent a fantastic email from one of my friends reminding me of just how hard our fore-mothers fought for me to have the right to vote. It was really great... I would be extremely happy to send it to anyone interested!) I have scribbled on enough about how wonderful it is to have rights long enough...now for what this entry is about...

I do not like politics. The commercials are relentless and bore me to tears. Debating, in my opinion, is just a way to give multiple "put-downs" in one sitting. I hate that. The embelished self-flattery of each candidate leads me to believe that all politicians are suffering from a serious case of narsicissm (I can't believe I spelled that right...). I loathe lying and false promises, even if the intentions are good. Politics in general bore me. I do not like to talk about them. I do not like to read about them. I do not like them to take up my trash TV time. I don't like them Sam-I-Am. :-) I know that expressing my boredom and apathy about politics probably makes me sound ignorant, but I don't care. It simply does not interest me.

I do not like football. Period. People (men AND women) just get too worked up over such a silly sport. Emotions run high and harsh words are exchanged between buddies all because of a game. It's just all to intense for me. (Yes, those of you that really know me know that I get worked up about things that others usually find insignificant...but that is me and this is my blog so we'll leave the discussion of my obsessiveness at the door) Alright. Alright. I will admit the idea of drinking lots of beer (which I'm ALWAYS for), eating wings (which I LOVE), shouting (I'm naturally a loud talker, so if everyone else is shouting I blend in more) and dancing (I do love to dance...) does sound like a little fun. I said a little. Still the actual game of football, which is what this fun time tends to revolve around, I could care less. Fine...I will also admit that some of the mascots are cute too.

What DO I like? I like shoes. That's as far as I've gotten with that question so I'm going to have to come back to that one.

To answer my question: I don't like politics. I don't like football. Does that make me a bad American? I would love feedback!

**for Rachel Wilson who told me
about National Blog Posting Month
...and keeps me entertained at work!