Reactions

I have learnt to forgive myself recently for being so sad, angry, happy and random. It was a situation I'd never been in, a place I never would have wandered myself and an ending that I would not have chosen.

So I dealt with it how I did. I will cope as best I can. And most importantly, I will be kind to myself because someone in this whole damn Universe has to be :)

As You Wish

This makes me teary now.

And the clowns come

If you can't find a Simpson's quote for it then it is not worth saying.

A Great Big World

"Say something, I’m giving up on you
I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to you
Anywhere I would’ve followed you
Say something, I’m giving up on you
And I will swallow my pride
You’re the one that I love
And I’m saying goodbye" -- A Great Big World

And then it disappears in a puff of smoke

“She said, ‘I’m so afraid.’ And I said, ‘why?,’ and she said, ‘Because I’m so profoundly happy. Happiness like this is frightening.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you.’”

- Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner 

A Final Goodbye

I finally did it. I finally said goodbye to the past after accepting that this was it and I was wrong about all I'd thought and felt.

Now to keep doing awesome stuff.

One of these mornings

I Will Try

Rest in peace, Gabriel García Márquez

Until you’re about the age of twenty, you read everything, and you like it simply because you are reading it. Then between twenty and thirty you pick what you want, and you read the best, you read all the great works. After that you sit and wait for them to be written. But you know, the least known, the least famous writers, they are the better ones.

This is sooooo me

“I’m scared to get close and I hate being alone
I long for that feeling to not feel at all” - Bring me the Horizon

How music soothes my savage beast

Tonight, my mother listened to my current Spotify Starred list. We danced to Pharrel Williams and bopped to Christina Aguilera. She even had to take in John Legend croning All of Me which I call his song. You know... "Love your curves and all your edges. All your perfect imperfections."

The point was that we connected through music.

I told her about what music does for me. Instead of being sad, she was happy that I have music. She understands.

To me, music is a state.
To me, music is the tempo of happiness.
To me, music is salvation.

In my moments of deepest loneliness and sadness, I have tunes. They rescue me. They pick me up off the couch and twirl me around the room.

There is so much that I wouldn't survive if there weren't sounds to get me through. So I constantly look backward, forward and to now for the words and beats to represent me. I keep finding them. That preserves me.

Sometimes, I dread the day when music ceases to sing to me. When it stops explaining me to others.

The moments when I share a kiss with a perfect man, to a woman proclaiming that she asks that god accepts her man in heaven when the day comes.

May there always be music.

All the world's a stage

The five stages of grief usually experienced with a major loss are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

They don't have to happen in that order either and often stages will be repeated if they are not dealt with properly.

When I go through a big life change that I have no control over, these are the steps that I traverse.

People go on about acceptance as if it is something that you just decide on but that is not the case. Healthy human beings are supposed to feel feelings and not repress them.

I don't mean suppressed because suppression is consciously stopping yourself from feeling something. Repression is a form of denial where you don't even accept the thought or feeling exists.

Not dealing with emotions is what leaves people in a state of subconscious turmoil and dissatisfaction.

Acceptance is the end goal but it can sneak in earlier on as a form of closure at each stage.

My recent big loss has seen my journey to acceptance occur with severe peaks of each feeling that subside and leave me feeling the longed for closure.

I experienced denial first. I didn't even take the situation seriously because I didn't even entertain the idea it was happening. That lasted about 3 days.

Once I did entertain the idea, depression hit. I'm great at dealing with depression though since that is what my tool belt was built for. That didn't last too long - maybe a week.

Bargaining wasn't really a big part of me coping this time. I knew there was no point to it. I don't believe in asking someone else to fix something and I was aware of how little I would achieve so I tried a couple of times and then wrote that off. Total time was about four hours. Nothing takes less than half a working day.

Then came anger. Anger is something I've stopped suppressing now. For years, I let others be angry with me and I was always sorry. Then I would feel anger and not express it because I thought that made me a psycho bitch. I don't think that anymore. People are allowed to be angry. Emotions are fine as long as you aren't stuck on one for a long time. Even constant non-stop happiness without a peppering of other feelings is considered unhealthy. We are feeling creatures so we must feel.

In this case, I felt angry and not at myself. I expressed this in a burst of communication that lasted less than five minutes and then I felt better. Who knows how the receiver felt but to be honest, I don't much care.

And I don't much care because I have finally got my closure. I was treated horrendously. I took it as maturely as I could and showed compassion and understanding. But to achieve closure and move forward, I need to feel all those stages. Even anger. The one stage I still struggle to accept the good in but conceptually do comprehend.

Now, it is that time. Time to go on with life as I was contently doing two months ago before his all happened.

Now, I can and I am proud of myself for that.

Forgiveness

I grew up in a home that had some religious people and others who weren't. I am not religious but have no gripe with anyone who is. At least not based on their religion.

One concept that I noticed always popping up was forgiveness for others and for yourself. Not in a god granting forgiveness way but more in an accept what has happened and let go of the pain you carry way. Like putting down a weight you've been carrying while walking backwards on shale in 4" stiletto heels.

Last night, I wrote two blog posts: One wallowing in the self pity of heart break; and the other forgiving myself and forgiving someone who had hurt me.

Even now, I speak in the past tense because it feels like it is behind me. There will be moments of sadness but nothing so terrible that I cry.

I re-read them both and posted the one I thought represented me most sincerely. It was the latter.

It felt better to express that emotion than the sinking sadness alternate.

Today, I walked in to the workplace and felt free. For the first time in two months, I did not feel stressed, guilty, annoyed, sad or afraid. Especially, not afraid.

I've been feeling a strange mix of fear and sadness but today felt like it had a long time ago when I just felt happy and content.

I achieved so much at work, caught up with colleagues and friends, ticked off most of my to do list, connected with new people and felt a genuine sense of belonging that I'd misplaced.

Damana is back. All hail the Warrior Goddess reborn from the ashes.

Happiness is a Kong Foo Sing

With every challenge that life presents, I find that silver lining.

Sometimes, I think it might be delusion but then the mirage of contentment materialises and I'm lying on a beach with a cocktail in hand, while I wait for the cute waiter to bring me my tempura prawns with wasabi mayo. Bliss.

I recently experienced a loss of a good friend. He is not dead. Just no longer a friend. It felt quite awful and still hurts but I feel lucky that we spent time as good friends.

He taught me so much about life and myself. He taught me about gentleness and patience. He reminded me of how much I love words and people who wield them. He showed me that perfect souls exist but are cast imperfect by situation. He taught me to be a better engineer and to never stop fighting for what is right over what is easiest.

Most of all, he taught me how to forgive someone for not choosing you. True compassion and friendship means allowing someone to walk away from you because that is what is best for them, no matter how much you bleed as a result.

If one day someone feels towards me the way I do for him and allows me to do what I must do and be who I must be then I will make them my friend for life.

That is friendship. When I choose you over me.

I am a good person. I just never saw myself that way until now. Until he taught me.

Fahrenheit 451

Book 11 of 2014 and the 3rd book I have read in ten days, is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

The name comes from the temperature at which books will burn. It is about a future world where firefighters are no longer needed to put out fires since buildings are built to be fireproof. They are instead responsible for seeking out and burning books in a world similar to the middle ages where information is destroyed in order to prevent dissention.

I did spend a lot of time after this reading about the periods through history when books were burned. It is both disturbing and depressing to think of how much we regressed in those times. Where would humanity be now if those incidents never happened?

There were a lot of original ideas in this book but to be honest, it is not the kind of writing I enjoy. It feels like a lengthened short story and on further investigation, I found that it basically was.

Yes, this is my third book in three days. When I can't stop my brain from overthinking EVERYTHING, I read. It lets me escape my own thoughts and enter in to a world in which I don't exist. I share the concerns of the protagonist and forget my petty worries. I wonder if other people go to books to escape stress.

It might be time to move away from dystopian science fiction for a while. Not sure what awaits me now. Maybe I need a Kindle shuffle feature. Or I can just throw my to-read book pile in the air and read the next one I catch.

Should I read this? Honestly, don't bother. There is much better science fiction out there. This is a classic because it helped shape the genre. Read its spawn and leave this on that list of stuff to read when they've burned all the other good books.
What did I learn? The autoignition point of paper.

Selfishness is a side effect

I sat down with my boss today and received an insight that changed the entire way I see a situation and how I will approach it from now on.

Instead of thinking I was the cause of a situation, I can now accept that what I'm experiencing has nothing to do with me.

Without giving any detail, all I can say is that it was a "well duh!" moment.

Often I look to myself to understand why something adverse is happening to me. Other times, I'm just completely selfish and think the world revolves around me :)

Talking to people is a good way to understand a situation when I've come up with no reasons of my own. Must remember that.

Omniscience and then Null

I once knew everything you thought or I was able to ask for it.

You handed it up on a plate and I plated mine up on hand.

You bled for me. I did not drop a single platelet.

You wanted to understand and I wanted to explain it all to you.

Then it stopped and not because of anything I could control.

You took away that access like it had never been there.

You boarded up the windows and put that part of you back in a box on the shelf.

You didn't want to understand but I still wanted to explain.

And I see you five days of seven.

And I look down like I have done something wrong but I haven't.

And I wonder what you think and imagine only the worst possible things.

You don't care to understand and the apathy shows clearly.

I once knew everything you thought but now I don't.

You no longer know I exist and maybe I don't.

You wouldn't piss on me if I was on fire and I am.

I want to understand but I never will.

Acceptance Criteria

In software engineering we have a way of working that we refer to as "agile." It means that we behave in a way that makes it easier for us to adapt to change.

I often joke that I work as an agent of change so that I can make others change and not myself :)

There is an idea we work around that says that before we start any task, we must define upfront how we will know that a task is completed.

We call this the Acceptance Criteria.

Today, I applied this concept to a life situation and it helped me accept that what I thought was a case of friendship was really no more than a case of me being played.

As readers of this blog well know, I can be easily be convinced that 'gullible' has been removed from the Oxford English Dictionary. This often underwrites my tendency to believe people when they tell me something and that they are not lying to me. As a logician, I see the flaw in this statement immediately but apparently not in reality.

The acceptance criteria today involved checking what it means for someone to actually care for me. A friend for instance. A person who cares about how they make me feel and care that I am not made sad by their actions. A person who takes the time to understand where I am coming from. A person who gives me the benefit of the doubt. A person who would not act against me, no matter the situation.

Application of said criteria resulted in a fail.

I am a good friend. I am learning that I can not expect that from everyone.

Don't Overthink It Protocol

There is a Nietzsche quote that always pops in to my mind when I'm in the depths of introspection.

"And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

This is the point where I instigate the Don't Overthink It Protocol (AKA: DEFCON 3), which consists of the following...

• Accept what you can not control;
• Distract yourself with activities;
• Read a LOT;
• Plan things to look forward to; and
• Forgive the person who put you here.

Saying this out loud always helps me. It isn't a silver bullet but it is an easing of the melancholy.

Why I Run

The last six months have seen me start jogging again. It does involve a lot of walking but I run more now than I ever did before. Even on those cold mornings and dark wet evenings, I run.

I run because it makes my heart beat fast. Then I need to breathe. All I can think about is breathing. The rest of the world disappears and so do the thoughts in my head.

I run to stop thinking.

Stop thinking of the words written, those long ago peripheral glances and the silence. The deafening, wounding unending silence that feeds my pensive sadness.

There is an odd point when running where I feel myself coming up to the final few metres and my body is begging to stop but my brain doesn't want to. My brain doesn't want to because then it will start thinking again and that never ends well. Too much introspection is never a good thing.

So I keep on running.