Uncle B moved on and so must I

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

 By: William Ernest Henley

When I was a student in middle school, I was given the task of memorizing this poem for my seventh grade “gifted” English class. We were to memorize the poem and then recite it in front of the class. Being the theatrical person that I have always been, I set out to make my version a grippingly memorable rendition that would go down in the annuals of famous seventh- grade poem recitations. I practiced and practiced with the ferocity of a professional actor. Not putting much thought into the meaning of the words I was to recite, I memorized the poem flawlessly and with the exuberance of a crafty seventh grader. I got an “A” on the project and the accolades of my fellow students.

Fast forward to 2012. Back in 2011, I posted about a “friend” that I referred to as “Uncle B”. Uncle B. proved to be quite the mendacious one (I’m trying to be nice by not using layman’s terms for what he turned out to be). Back in February 2012, his true colors finally shone through. Being nearly two months outside of him removing me from his life, I have clearer vision of what kind of person he is as well as what kind of person I am. It has been a tough time. I never want to believe that my judgment would be so poor in allowing someone such as him to enter my life, but it was. It wasn’t until yesterday that I had the emotional breakthrough I had been praying would come for two months. This breakthrough came out of nowhere. I was sitting at a stop light crying about how I missed Uncle B’s “friendship”. The tears were running down my face and neck when all of a sudden I started laughing. Here I was, sitting in 5 o’clock traffic, tears streaming down my face and laughing hysterically. I thought that perhaps this is what happens when one finally goes insane. But, I started to realize what was happening…I was finally letting go.

You see, Uncle B. “dumping” me, cut to the core of everything I believed about people, life, and myself. His rejection brought out every insecurity I had ever felt about myself. When he made it clear (by text and chat…not even with the decency of a human being to verbally tell me either by phone or in person) that I was no longer welcome in his life, I took it as an attack against me personally. Who wouldn’t? When someone rejects you, most of us feel that there is something wrong with us. Even though he time and time again wrote that it wasn’t me, I refused to believe him. Now, I see that he is the broken one, not me.

The breakthrough didn’t come without many sleepless nights and many days of lack of desire to live. I cried for what was lost—not just the friendship, but the future. I only knew Uncle B. for one year, but he had become engrained in my brain and my life in that short period of time. Looking back, that friendship was doomed for failure based on how we started. I gave and gave; he took and took. That should have been the first sign of trouble. I did the standard thing one does when they get dumped and threw out the things that he had given me. Unfortunately to say, I didn’t even fill up a plastic grocery bag with mementos. With a clear mind, I’ve come to realize that this person used MY strength to get him through a very difficult time in his life. When he got what he needed from me emotionally, he tossed me aside.

After Uncle B. broke off our friendship, I started to do things to take my mind off of the hurt. There wasn’t much I could do about the pain at night when I was lying in bed thinking about the things he said and trying to decipher the lies from truths. My brain would just take over during those times. Recently, I’ve started to see life in a different way. I want to include people in my life that add positivity and value to my life. I want to add activities that enrich my being. The first thing I did was take a look at what I have right in front of me. I have an amazing husband, family, and friends who love me. They don’t just love me because they “have” to. They love me because I add something to their lives. They also love me for just being  who I naturally am.  These are the people who love me whether I’m fun to be with or having a mopey day. My husband could very well divorce me if he weren’t happy. He is free to leave, just as I am. We’ve known each other since 1994 and he loves the good and bad parts of me.  He stays no matter what. My parents make me feel like I’m the coolest person they know. My family and friends think I’m invincible and can do just about everything. It’s strange because I don’t see myself that way, but they all do. I may have arguments with friends and family, yet they love me so much that they don’t want to give up on my being in their lives. That’s what true friends do. Uncle B., had he been a true friend, would be reading this right now and laughing at his quirky friend Wendy. But, he is not and was not a true friend. Sadly, he just never was. He gave me up too quickly to be anything but an acquaintance. I also know that he was never my friend because friends don’t cause you tears—they are the ones who hold you while you wipe away the tears that your enemies have caused.

I’ve started doing things that I won’t associate with Uncle B. In the process I’m becoming someone I am starting to like. A part of what drew me to Uncle B. in the first place, was my own lack of self-worth. I’ve heard people say it, but I never believed it—you attract what you give out. I attracted Uncle B. because I didn’t care much about myself. Negativity drew negativity. I single-handedly brought someone into my life that would do exactly what Uncle B. did to me because that was the kind of person I thought I deserved to have in my life. He was a poison being injected into my system every day for one year. But, now that he’s gone, I can see who I am without the stench of his garbage in my life. I’ve started to lose weight. My finances are starting to get in order. Because Uncle B. is no longer festering in my world and consuming my valuable time, it’s opened up my life to new people who have brought hope, possibility, and positivity into my world. I’m learning to laugh, play, and enjoy life again.

And, so, I’m learning to be a new Wendy. I’m doing something I’ve wanted to do for many years—reinventing myself. It’s been an exciting adventure discovering the things I like. It’s been liberating, freeing myself from the things that I don’t like. I don’t need to impress anyone except myself. I’ve taken up stand-up comedy as a way of easing the pain of Uncle B.’s rejection by making jokes about it. In the process of doing that, I’ve discovered that I really like performing and I’m actually pretty good at it. I’m meeting new people and selectively allowing other people, who were once merely acquaintances, to get closer to me.

There is endless speculation on the meaning of William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus. One of the things I think is so fascinating about humans is we have the power to take abstract things and give them specific meaning to our lives. We have the freedom to interpret things any way we choose to. I choose to relate this poem to my life. In the darkness that has surrounded me in the past few months, I have decided to, with unbowed head and unearthed strength, become the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.

Feeling guilty about the guilty pleasures

I'm learning to not feel guilty about my guilty pleasures. I'm still in the initial phases of this, but I'm getting there.

So, what are some of my guilty pleasures? Most of my joys revolve around simply spending time for myself to do things I want to do. For instance, as I'm writing my blog entry, I'm watching 80's videos on VH1 Classic. It's Sunday and therefore I will also get to comb through the newspapers and collect my coupons, circulars, and new articles of interest. Mr. Bourne is at work and this is MY time. Sometimes, I'll go back to sleep for a while. For the longest time, I felt guilty about these routines. I thought I should be doing something more useful like housework. What I soon came to realize is that I need these little pockets of "wasted" times in my days. They are the times that recharge my batteries and help me make it through the remainder of the day. Most of my days are full of neccesary things to do from the moment I get up until late evening. In recent months I'm starting to change the way I tackle my days. I fit in little guilty pleasures. When I get ready for work, I enjoy giving myself a mini pedicure. It only takes a few minutes each morning, but something about it makes me happy. On my way to work I give Mr. Bourne a call to make sure he got to work safely, to sing to him from whatever is on the radio (yes...I sing snippets of songs to Mr. Bourne as soon as he answers the phone each morning), and to just hear his voice. When I get to work I make a mug of unsweetened green tea. My day seems "off" if I don't have my green tea each day. It comforts me. Periodically during the work day I have certain people I like to email or chat with. After work, I like watching The Waltons while I fix dinner. After dinner, I sometimes take a nap, read, watch TV, or have Mr. Bourne play DJ and play music while we just play on our computers for a while. At night I have started enjoying watching Frazier before I got to bed. All total these little patches of daily guilty pleasures might add up to no more than three hours, but they really do get me through the day and help me achieve my daily goals.

The one guilty pleasure I truly do feel guilty about is the use of some of my weekends. Every few weekends, I have marathon sleeping sessions. I will literally sleep all day on some Saturdays. I often feel guilty about this because I know Mr. Bourne would rather us be out doing something. I will feel terrible about letting entire Saturdays slip away because I was sleeping. This is something I'm working on. I need to understand that those extended periods of sleep are going to make me a better person during the following week. Maybe I shouldn't view those weekends as a guilty pleasure but more as a neccesity. Maybe that's how I should view all of those things I call guilty pleasures. They are neccesary for me to be who I am and to get everything done. And, perhaps, they are not "wasted" activities at all but truly my own personal neccesities.

Random thought of the day

I have a severe issue staying focused. My husband, Mr. Bourne (that's how I want to refer to him in my blog), is probably the best witness to this on a daily basis. A conversation with me can be quite the test of one's concentration skills. I like to think my scattered thought patterns are as humorous as Rose Nylund's from The Golden Girls, but I know that's just not true.

So, this is how my brain works sometimes. I'll see something and it will start my mind wandering. Today, it was a blurb online about sea dragons. Watching the video of this one sea dragon floating along made me think about seahorses (which are in the same family as sea dragons). I hadn't thought about seahorses since I was a kid and decided to do a little research online. I watched some YouTube video of seahorses and remembered that the male of the species is the one who gets pregnant. Then my brain just went on and on. I wonder what the "purpose" of seahorses are? I wonder why it was decided by nature for the male to carry the babies? I remember getting kind of freaked out by seahorses as a kid because they looked just enough like a real horse (their heads really do look kinda "horse-like) to creep me out. In the end I spent about two hours researching and thinking about seahorses. Funny thing is, I've never even seen a seahorse in real life and might possibly never see one.
Watching the seahorses swimming around in the water made me think about my impending swimming lesson tonight. OK, here's the story. I can't swim. I am horrified of the thought of swimming. I always have been. When I was a kid, I took swimming lessons at our local YWCA and was terrible at it. I remember the first night when the instructor told me to "swim" to him, I sunk to the bottom of the pool and panicked. When I get into a pool, I get this surreal feeling of it expanding. I feel like there is water everywhere and that I'm going to get swept away or lost. I can't really explain it, but it makes me have panic attacks sometimes just thinking about having to swim. Back a few years ago I decided to learn to swim just in case I was ever in a situation in which I had to save my own life by swimming. I found the perfect swimming class at The University of Virginia..."Terrified Adult Swim". I have to admit that the title of the course is a bit...well...embarrassing. I have to walk up to the admittance desk at the gym and tell a 19 year old kid, "Yes, I'm here for the Terrified Adult swim class." I can only imagine them looking at the 39 year old (who is most likely the same age as their parents) in front of them and thinking all kinds of humiliating thoughts, each including me needing rubber swim panties in case I get scared and have an accident in the pool. That's a far stretch, but you get the idea. I really like the instructor for the class and she understands that years of fear might not be washed away in one term of the course. This is the fourth or fifth time I've taken the class and I'm still griped by fear. Right now, writing this, my head is starting to ache. It's also embarrassing for the instrutor to see it's me on the first night and tell me to go on and get into the pool while she discusses the administrative policies with those who have never taken the class--I can quote her entire spiel. Anyway, I'm going tonight. I think each time I take the class I get a little braver. I can swim a few feet before I realize that I'm actually swimming, that there isn't anything solid to grab onto around my body, and start to panic. I may never be able to save anyone else's life in a swimming situation, but I might be able to float my own way to safety.