Damn Regret....and Resolution Conflicts

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”

― Richard Siken

Oh the clarity that comes with a new year. December 31st is a huge production and we get sloshed out of our minds, whine over our years worth of misfortunes and screw ups and make a ton of empty promises of all the things we want to change and accomplish the coming year. When in fact, January 1st is nothing more than the day after December 31st. The clock doesn't reset when the ball drops, time just goes on, and so does life, one day after another.

I don't know what's worse, the false hopes and promises we make for ourselves, (I'm going to drink less and work out more. I'm going to spend more time on myself. I'm going to get up earlier and work harder. Diets. Diets. Diets. Or the one that seems to be "trending," I will fall in love this year-as if that's something we need to strategize for). Or perhaps the way we look at the past year and are overcome with regrets. Since I like to end on a positive note, I will begin with regrets. The "Why Didn't I's" and the "What If's" and the doozy, "How Could I Have Been So Dumb." Am I close? Sound familiar? Of course it does. If we sat here and I told you all of the things I should regret you would beg Mike Tyson to chew your ear off before I could finish. The truth is I have chosen to not live that way. That doesn't mean I don't occasionally look back and wish I would have made different decisions! Hell ya I wish I would have made different decisions. However, that is not the same as having regrets. "Regrets, I've had a few, But then again, too few to mention, I did what I had to do..." -Frank Sinatra, My Way. That sums up how I look at my so-called mishaps. Some of my biggest downfalls have come when I found myself in between a rock and a hard place and I did what I had to do. Guess what....it wasn't always a bad thing. You see, had I taken one different step, returned one less phone call, stayed at a job, left a job, went to college after graduating, didn't kiss that boy, or would've kissed a different one, I wouldn't be here, right now where I am. I have to believe I am here in this place in life, with what I have and what I lack, for a reason. I may have momentarily wondered to myself, 'How could I have been so dumb!' but I never get comfortable there. It's like I said in my first blog entry,  "I may not be able to tell you what to do in all situations, but more than likely, I can tell you what not to do."  That is the very reason so many of my friends and/or family still come to me seeking relationship advice. I had an ex get irritated that my friends would call with their relationship issues, so irritated that one night he said, "Why would they call you for advice, you've been divorced twice and well, how about the rest of your track record." I thought about it for a moment and realized it's because I've screwed up in almost every way possible, I can at least prevent them from doing things I've done. So, on December 31st, while the world was thinking of their regrets, I was thinking, "Thank God I got all that crap out of the way, what's next!" I recommend giving that a whirl. Now...as for the future....

Happy New Year! Let's all get skinny and healthy and happy and rich! Sounds good right? Sure. If it were that easy our country wouldn't be in the middle of an obesity crisis, and our economy wouldn't be in the pooper. I will start by telling you right now, I don't make New Years Resolutions. I make along the way resolutions. I was overweight when I met my second husband, and fell off the rocker (or broke it) after having two babies. In 2007 I weighed in at a whopping 230 something pounds. I have news for you, I didn't spend December 31st 2008 joining the gym, weight watchers and on hold with 1-800-29Jenny, what for, I had dieted several times, got to a comfortable 180-190 and if my jeans zipped it was whatever. I woke up in April 2008 and decided. That's the key word-DECIDED! I decided to make a change. I educated myself, found what worked for me, (more about this later), and did it. I currently weigh about 135, (130 if you see my Driver's License-don't act like you don't do that shit), and I make the decision daily to stay this way. Ryan Seacrest, midnight on January 1st, and an enormous sparkly ball had nothing to do with it. So what's my point in all this? Stop waiting for a new year to better yourself, and don't set goals that are so unrealistic you'll kill yourself trying to achieve them. I didn't wake up in 30 days with all that weight just miraculously gone. I had to work at it constantly for almost a year, and truthfully, I still work on it now. That is the real world. You want success? Educate yourself. You want to be skinny? Educate yourself. You want to be happy? Educate yourself. You want ---Fill____in___the____blank____---? Educate yourself!! Then put it into action. Now, today, tomorrow, next week, until you make it happen. No one is going to do it for you! Money will never grow on trees, brownies will always have calories, and happiness is a choice.

If you don't believe me, test the waters. Make your silly New Years Resolutions, but instead let's call them goals. Then make daily goals, weekly goals and so on. Call it whatever you want, but I can assure you, if you limit yourself to "What I want out of the year 2013," you and I will both be disappointed. And as for the box you've labelled "Regrets of 2012," I invite you to shove that sucker under your bed with the missing sock partners and God knows what else and forget about it. Let's spend a little less time looking back, and more time moving forward. You are where you are right now because of your failures and your achievements, embrace it, and strive for more. I am a huge Jillian Michaels advocate, and own most of her DVD's, but in one of my favorites she says, "You are capable of so much more than you even imagine," and I hear those words in my head all the time. We are capable of more than regrets and resolutions. We are capable of achieving the success we value most. The moment you start believing that is the moment things will start to change.

PS: Happy New Year ;)

Wants v. Needs; Winning Disguised as Losing

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
-Oscar Wilde

Before you begin, read that quote again and really think about it. I'll come back to it at the end.

In the times we live in wants and needs have largely become defined as one in the same. The majority of Americans have become so spoiled by modern conveniences that we no longer want, we need. I am guilty of these feelings myself. Tomorrow is Monday morning and my first thought will likely be, "I need coffee." Do I need coffee? No, I would continue living and breathing without coffee, but I want coffee because it's delicious and takes the edge off. You see my point? Of course you do. Most would agree there are three basic, acceptable "needs," food, clothing, and shelter. I feel that there is a wild card that occasionally gets mentioned in songs etc, the fourth human need is love. (And there are at least four people that think all you need is love.) This is the need that's on my mind now, and the effect that it has on our choices. Now, this want v. need theory isn't quite the same in regards to relationships. In relationships, I believe, there are wants and needs, and confusing the two can really screw things up.

I'm going to take it a step farther and tell you a little bit about my journey and explain how wants disguised as needs can really send you down a rocky road. (Not the delicious kind either.) The stories I am about to share are all true, and some of them have taken me over a decade to talk about. I don't need to start at the very beginning because I don't feel it has too much impact on the topic. It's almost ironic because up until this year I could count the people that knew about what happened to me on one hand. My heartbreak I mentioned in the previous blog forced me to do a lot of soul searching and I started putting pieces together and eventually realized that one night really started it all.

When I was 18 years old I was on a work trip with many people my age and early twenties. The week before this trip, my boyfriend at the time cheated on me, and I found out from someone else. My heart was bruised (though I thought broken,) and I couldn't wait to get away. The company put us up in a hotel and we worked all day and then partied at night. I had never really experienced much of the party scene up until this point and was inexperienced with drugs and alcohol. How exactly it happened I'm not entirely sure, but one minute I was in a room with about 10 people drinking and smoking and the next minute I was sitting on a bed immobile and drunk. Next thing I knew, it happened. Everyone had left the room but one guy, and that night he took from me something no one should ever take. The worst part was, I was conscious enough to remember it all, including the sound of my voice sobbing and begging him to stop. I told no one. Afraid for my job, afraid to get in trouble for drinking and being underage, and ashamed. That night my views on sex and love had changed. Sex wasn't special, it was just sex, and sometimes even a chore, and love, well, love was something I didn't think existed anyway. I left that trip a cold, tainted, negative person with my first tattoo I had drawn the night after it happened, a shattered and broken heart with flames coming out.

Now here's the part where things got messy. Most of my understanding has been very recent, when I did the things I did, they were not intentional, I was going through the motions. Despite my lack of belief in love, it is one of the human needs so obviously I longed for it. However, now a relationship required more than just love. I not only needed love, but the next guy I dated had to make me feel safe, because you see, a part of me was extremely traumatized and I was almost afraid of men sometimes. I also wanted to be with someone that I knew wouldn't cheat on me, the only way to ensure that (if there even is such a thing) was to date down. Please remember I didn't know what I was doing at the time, hindsight really is 20/20. Shortly after returning home I began dating one of my managers that I knew was into me. He was over 6 ft tall, and just under 300 pounds, and came fully equipped with a closet full of Raiders jerseys. Very few men would be able to hurt me if I was with him, and at the time I was a cute little blue eyed, light brown haired, outgoing girl with a winning sense of humor...ha.

Fast forward 3 years, one break up, one make up and we got married. Fast forward another 5 months and my stuff was packed and I left with only what I could fit in my Civic while he was at work. So what happened? Why didn't I figure out I couldn't be with him before I married him? If he was what I wanted why didn't it work out? All of that back story was just to get to these questions, so I could tell you the answers, and why I believe so many people have long term relationships that initially seem so good and one day you feel like you are going to go completely bonkers if you pick up one more Q tip that he just can't seem to make into the trash can!

We need love, all of us. The trouble comes when we start to add stipulations to it that aren't permanent. How each of us shows and receives love is a little different. (Please read the 5 Love Languages for more information on this.) Here's what I'm trying to say, Husband #1 loved me, and I loved things about him. Did you catch that? The simple fact that I knew he loved me is what dragged our story out for so long. However, my needs for dating him in the first place lost value over time. Eventually I didn't believe every guy in Target was plotting to rape me in the garden department, and I had been comfortable living in the land of fidelity for almost 3 years. My "needs" changed. More accurately, my need was still love, a mutual love, but my wants changed. When those two things weren't a priority, it opened my eyes to all of the things he was doing to me or ways he was treating me that were wrong. In other words, I saw the relationship for what it really was, and the sad truth was my wants were being met, but my needs weren't. Had I figured this out then, it would have spared me a second divorce. Sadly, I repeated the process, but this time with different wants, which eventually lost value again.

So, how did I figure this out? By falling in love with someone when I didn't want anything. I was tapped out, dried up, all I needed was love. As time went on, I had the best relationship of my life. The bright side to all this heartache was without it, I wouldn't have been able to really know what I needed. I could sit here and list the things about my relationship that made it the best, but they are going to be unique to me. In order for you to have a successful relationship, you are going to have to sort through your own list of wants and needs, and be honest with yourself. If I wouldn't have found this special person, I don't know if I could have done that, because in some ways, I didn't know my needs until he kept meeting them. My theory behind that is I didn't know my needs, because I had a decade old secret, and every day after that I lost a little more of who I was, until on some level I didn't even know myself. I have learned more about myself in the past three months than I have my whole life.

The best advice I can give on how to figure all this out is:
Regardless of your current relationship status, write down 5-10 things that you feel you need out of a relationship. These can be qualities in a partners, mutual hobbies, emotional compatibility, etc. Don't think about it too much, just write the first things that come to your mind because those are likely the most important and likely honest. If you have more than 10 that's good! You know what you want, you're already ahead of most of us. Now one by one, go down your list focusing on each item and ask yourself if this was gone from my relationship in 5 years, but I still loved the person would I still be happy. The ones where you can answer yes, those are your wants. If you say no to any of those things then that becomes a need. Things that shouldn't be compromised or forgotten about. I'll give you an example of one of each for me to give you an idea.
Want-I want my partner to love the outdoors as much as I do.
Need-I need my partner to be my best friend.
It would be ideal if my partner liked to go to the mountains, the beach, and just be outdoors with me. However, if he only came along once and awhile I could live with that. Until my recent relationship I had never dated a guy that I felt was my best friend. This is one of the things I was telling you about that I wouldn't have known was a need without having it. I would not be happy in a relationship unless I felt that way, and that is something I am unwilling to compromise on.

This was a long one, but hopefully you learned something. Now if you remember the quote I began with, hopefully after reading this you can come up with an example or two of your own when getting what you wanted wasn't necessarily the best thing. My life has been filled with moments like that. I'd get an idea in my head and I'd fight for it throwing caution and rationality to the wind. The good news is now I'm aware of it, now I take a good look at each situation before jumping in blindly. It's a conscious effort, and I still screw it up, but I screw up a lot less than I did 5 or even 10 years ago. There's hope for us yet! My thought is that if I can help even just one person do things better than I did than it wasn't all for nothing. Part 2 of  "If it's not Broke..." coming soon. Hope you all have a great week!

If it's Not Broke.... Pt 1

"Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't." -Stephen King from "Heart in Atlantis"

or

"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable." -Wizard of Oz

If heart breaks were uncommon they wouldn't be mentioned so frequently. From music, to poems, to novels, movies, TV shows, the list is endless and it is the one disease that every human suffers from at least once in their lifetime. This is a topic that will undoubtedly come up again and again, but for now I have a few thoughts on the matter.

First of all, sadly, some of you reading this are already recollecting your assumed heart breaks and commiserating along with me. At the ripe old age of 30 I have recently discovered that if you asked me at 29 how many heart breaks I had experienced, I would have thrown out a number somewhere between 10-15. Ask me today and I'll tell you my heart has truthfully been broken only once. The other assumed heart breaks I had experienced were nothing more than what I would refer to today as heart bumps and bruises. Allow me to explain: any time you make yourself vulnerable in the love department, and that relationship ends, whether mutually or by the element of surprise (i.e., "This isn't working out, it's not you it's me," "Umm, honey, who's lipstick is this on your shirt?" or my favorite, "I hate to do this to you after all this time, but I really need to do the right thing and stop screwing you on the side." Let me tell you, there are few things worse than finding out you are the side salad when you assumed you were the best damn filet that fool could get. At 18 I had deemed my heart broken so badly that I have a tattoo to show for it. Even that time was nothing more than my heart getting a TKO in one round with Muhammad Ali, bruised but not broken.

Ok, so now you are probably wondering, what is my definition of a heart break then? I think true heart break varies by person for sure. In my heart bruises, I cried for days, felt sick, thought I would never get over it, either ate or starved my feelings, wanted to disappear, tortured myself with pictures, had nightmares, and even tried fixing the situations out of desperation. (Hindsight has left me SO grateful I didn't have success mending any of those prior situations, ha.) The list goes on, the majority of which were all eventually healed with the help of friends, family, time, and Ben and Jerry. My heartbreak had all of those same symptoms, but there were some variations and certainly some additions, the first one being simply this, at a point in my life where I truly believed I had everything to live for and so much going for me, I wanted to die. The quote I began with by Stephen King really hit home when I read it a month or two after the Break. Let me be clear, I wasn't suicidal, it wasn't a desire to die in a literal sense at all actually. I was in such severe pain, physically, emotionally, and in every other way possible, that I just lost all desire for life. My world was rocked., no other way to describe it. It was like I was Dorothy starting out in Oz and got abruptly teleported to Kansas and suddenly my beautiful world was lacking color and a twister was headed straight for me. If you are one of the people who have experienced something like this then you know exactly what I'm talking about. It took about a week before I could even think or process normal thoughts, and one of the first things I realized was exactly what I'm telling you now, every other heartbreak was just a heartbruise in disguise. It was like a tragic epiphany! "Holy shattered dreams Batman! My heart was still completely in tact until now! Ka Baaaam!"

To Be Continued......

When the End is Actually the Beginning

"Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck." -Joss Whedon

I didn't really know how to start, instead of wasting time dwelling on it, I decided to jump in and see what happens. Before I could expect anyone to read anything I write, I suppose it would be appropriate to know a little about me. (At this point you should understand that 'a little about me' will just be the tip of the iceberg, the rest of me will have to come as we go along.) I woke up recently and found myself 30 years young. I'm not really sure how this tragedy happened without my ok, but nonetheless here we are. Alright, some of you argue, 30 is the new 20, PERFECT! Except, that doesn't change my situation in the least. I am a "single" mom, (the quotes are to be later defined as "it's complicated"), twice divorced, (Yes, twice), and have had a love life resembling an album compilation somewhere around the ballpark of Taylor Swift meets Adele meets P!nk with a large dose of Alanis Morissette. In other words, You Oughtta Know it's a Love Story that Set Fire to the Rain....huh, Who Knew?! (Isn't it Ironic? Ok, I'll stop). Back to the summary, from the first marriage I acquired the desire for a second marriage. From the 2nd marriage I acquired two amazing daughters, and an extra 50 lbs to my already 40 lb overweight frame. (I have since lost it all, TY Lord and Jillian Michaels). Since that divorce...or lack thereof as fate and the State of California would have it, (if they are going to make it so difficult to end a marriage don't you think it should be a little harder to get one?!), I have "dated" a player, a bartender, a guy with a Harley and more tattoos than regular skin, a "recovered" drug addict, a thumb war champion, and when I was ready to throw in the towel at 27 1/2 I fell in love with the sweetest guy I had ever come in contact with, he was kind, not tainted, caring, sensitive, attentive, (I'm going to spare you, but the list of his qualities could go on,) and he was aaaaaaalmost 20....but he adored me. To be honest I was at a point where it was easy for me to think that guys my own age (at every age) had screwed me over royally, and perhaps this was my answer. I don't want to get into this too much now, as this is the reason for the previously mentioned "it's complicated," but you can't understand where I'm at unless you know where I've been. So, there you have it. Now you know a little bit about where I've been, I can't wait to tell you where I'm going, and I'll share with you some pretty cool shit along the way. I'm just saying, if you find someone that has failed as many times as I have and is still smiling, I'd probably want to read what she has to say. True, I may not be able to tell you what to do in all situations, but more than likely, I can tell you what not to do.


Side Note--- 10 Things I am Known for:
1. Making jokes in uncomfortable situations
2. Saying "shit" more often than I should
3. Finding the Bright Side in almost any situation (which can get annoying, ask my friends)
4. Owning every color of the $8 Target tank top and wear them year round
5. Drinking Sugar Free Red Bull like water
6. I don't believe in strangers
7. I love birds. Yup, and not just like a little....
8. My cars are always falling apart
9. I have spent the last 4 years of my life almost always being on a mini diet
10. If I had a dollar for every time I wondered if I was on an episode of Punk'd in the last 5 years, I could buy Ashton Kutcher.

There you have it...the introduction into the life and mind of JFox....To Be Continued

-JFox