When Communication Fades

by Aashdoda

© June 30, 2011

          When communication slows down and the nearly imperceptible moments of action grow disproportionately visible in negativity that's when communication needs a life preserver tossed directly to it.  It's drowning! 

         

          It takes two people to keep it alive, two hearts to care enough to be the hero.  If it goes under on one end or the rope is let go the dance is over.  Hurt feelings can be mended but if communication drowns it is over for good.

          There is a saying all lifeguards live by, "Reach.  Throw.  Row.  Go!"  In that order it is designed to save the lifeguard so there is optimal opportunity to save the drowning their eyes are firmly attached to.   It is all about options that maximize opportunity for a positive outcome.  If you have ever watched a lifeguard in action trying to save someone you will see this process and be amazed how intense their focus is to clear the water of all souls first to prevent a second drowning while keeping their eyes darting rapidly back to the first.  They command attention in a startlingly certainty as they prepare to go if they must, the last resort because of how dangerous it really is.  You will see the heart of the lifeguard to be serious, skilled, calm but firmly in control of the moment, strategic, and passionate about what they do and are about to do.  There is no half way to save someone.

          This has to be true of two people intimately communicating or the relationship will die tragically right before your very eyes.  The helpless feeling of death cannot be escaped or hidden from, it will exact a price from the living.

          I sit here half way around the world knowing all I can do is to reach out, throw out honesty with a sincere heart carefully choosing my words to reach the man I love.  Was my softness mistaken or missed altogether?  Is my kindness and tenderly feminine heart mistaken for a door mat?  I cannot know.  I give him the benefit of the doubt as to why communication is fading while at the same time my heart feels as if it is strangling from whatever is causing him to allow our contact to fade.  So many things in life go wrong.  Occasionally multiple things go haywire all at the same time painting terrible pictures that instill deep agonizing pain.  Some of the time it is a scenario that seems absolutely unbelievable.  Sometimes it is simply a piece of technology that doesn't work, batteries do die, the internet doesn't work everywhere, or service providers are working on their networks causing havoc for my heart but in truth no real danger exists.  Sometimes, most of the time distractions simply get in the way and priorities must adapt.  In truth I don't always get what I want, or what I need when I need it.  Sometimes, God forbid, life is taken before I have a chance to say good-bye.

          Actions or the lack there of are beginning to take their toll.  I am learning new lessons in loving someone, new needs to let go and learn a different type of patience.  I must wait and see what the architectural plan is that is unfolding here.  I don't know what's on his mind or what is happening.  All I can do is love him and pray for the best.

          My hope is that I will retain hopes for us, that the answers time provide will be to my liking eventually even if my desires are unfulfilled.  I know only this, I love him from the inside out.  That love will never die only evolve whether together or separately.  I am not long on patience by nature and less it seems in my heart when I'm in love.  I have however learned that love has its own patience, a will to sit back and watch everything unfold, take it all in before making a fully informed decision.  At some point the silence will reach a conclusion, my love will draw the line of self-preservation in the act of letting him go. 

          I've never been one to beg, cajole or plead for something my partner refuses to do, or give.  I take people as I find them because it is the best way I know how to stay healthy emotionally and keep my life moving forward.  Sure I present my point as skilled as any debater but I will not force it, at least not since I learned how to be assertive as a fully actualized adult, a woman and a mother.  I'm clear and succinct with my feelings and my needs, knowing full well my partner may not want to hear it or agree.  I declare my limits and boundaries for they have saved me; they protect me, ensure my integrity remains clear and clean, and they keep me from harm's way, at least the worst of it.  They keep the waters of my life crystal clear and inviting.  If I take someone as I find them I am safe because I learn exactly who they are and where they fit with me.  I can take hurt feelings, live with them, own them, forgive them and move on.  I hate feeling hurt, being hurt!  I hate worse inflicting pain upon someone else!  I will however not hesitate to defend myself or enforce the consequences of violating my boundaries knowing full well his feelings will be hurt.  My life is sacred.  I will never let go of that truth or the fact that I see 'all life' as sacred.  I will fight to the death for a life, not just for my own.  In having done this I learned all life is worth fighting for.  Sometimes it is best to stop fighting and let the chips fall where they may.  Some things in life, like being right, aren't worth fighting for.  They aren't worth my time much less my effort.  I don't need to be right.  I only need to be and to learn. 

          Being me is all I know how to do, what I do best, and that means loving with all of my heart and soul, all of my body, my mind and spirit.  Knowing that love is what I do best, what I was literally made to be able to do better than anything else in my life, showed me that it also means I will be hurt.  It will often not be on purpose but there will be tremendous pain.  Only some people will intentionally hurt me.  Sometimes I'll never know the why behind it and sometimes I will.  I stopped needing to answer the question 'why or why me' many years ago.  Ever since then I search only for understanding.  I ask questions of myself like, what can I learn, how did this happen and how can I apply what I've learned, what do I need to change in me.  I look outside the box, think far broader, see all sides of the issue I know of, search for new perspectives and grant the benefit of the doubt when it is necessary.  Recently I've also learned to say to myself, 'why not me' because I have learned what it is to be human is to deserve to be loved and treated with the respect real healthy love demands the actions from all of us.  Because I know love so well and what it demands of me I know how to live that way, acting from love's dictations, not desire's.  Only recently did deserving make sense to me. 

          Love has its own unique signature of behaviors.  When they are there love is the real deal.  When they aren't there the person that says they love you either is lying or doesn't know what love is, or is incapable of living love.  The fact remains love is determined more by actions than by words.  The only question is what's the language each person is using to mean 'I love you".  When I know the language they speak I know how to make them feel loved.  I know my own love language and what I need to feel it and I'm fearless to speak it and show my partner.  It's simply too important to be afraid of doing that even though it is a risk.  Sometimes this makes me feel very vulnerable because I know I'm giving them the ammunition to hurt me if they so choose to.  This is simply part of the risks in intimacy and loving someone, risks I gladly embrace.

          I have thrown all the right tosses to preserve the love I appear to share with my very special man.  I'm holding onto that rope waiting and watching intently for any sign he will or will not grab on.  It is breaking my heart as time passes but I know my prayers are being answered.  It appears that I won't like the answer I'm getting as our communication fades and he is getting farther and farther away.

          I'll be fine because I always am.  I can live without him.  I can love him and never speak to him or see him again.  I have to verbally remind myself of this, talk out loud to myself.  I deserve that from myself.  Everyone I have ever loved is right here with me right now and in every moment.  I have lost them all to death but 3 wonderful best friends.  This life of mine has been a grand ride, an adventure of a lifetime!  I want it to last, need it to last.  I need my life to have more quality and joy.  If not I'll simply treasure every instant I have had and be a better wiser woman than I was.  My tears will fade and in time they will dry.  Alas this will be a deep scar that will take a long time to heal.

          "Isn't it preparation on the road map of your life?"

          "For what?" I asked my dearest friend.

          The compassion in her dark eyes ever so slightly hidden by the rim of her glasses reached out to me.  "This is the kind of pain that is preparation for the next one, the right one."

          It could very well be.  As I thought about it and let her warmth envelope my aching heart I decided by its inner soft promptings to bluntly ask him what the silence means, what he needs while allowing him to know my love is a certainty, because I want to respect what he needs.  My only plea is to be honest with me.

Dare To Hope..., Live All Out

by Aashdoda

© June 18, 2011

          If I dare to hope then I must live.  To live I must do it all out, holding nothing back, embrace every opportunity whether hard or soft, happy and fulfilling or it ends up miserable and painful reducing me to tears.  It isn't the end result I think about, though I picture success in each moment, I focus on the joy of trying.  I put my hope to the test.  I let myself go and see what will happen after I've set myself up for the most positive outcome I can think of by using my many years of experience, the lessons I've learned and sage advice from trusted council.  It is in the act of letting go I seem to find the greatest joy of all because in that moment I'm exquisitely present and I feel alive, thriving.  Something inside of me simply soars.  At this point no matter what has happened to ground me in the past my hope has found its wings.

          Someone has decided to play with my heart lately and the heart of the man I care so deeply about.  He impersonated me and impersonated the man I'm falling in love with.  It has hurt me so hard I didn't want to date again, didn't want to wake up to the tears and pain of the heartache I've been feeling.  Suddenly the hacking is supposedly under control.  He admitted to his indiscretion born of jealousy and for reasons I know nothing about has agreed with the man I care about to stop doing this.  Over the internet I have no way to prove this so I remain skeptical to say the least.  The lies he told still burn inside of me and I don't know what to trust.  I can't see the man I love but something inside of my heart tells me to just hold on and give him the benefit of the doubt.  If I don't I'll never know what we have that just may be the best thing that's ever happened to me.  If I let go and plunge ahead I'm not taking the best care of myself I can.  So what do I do?  I step forward cautiously, mindful of every single step and wait until he can come to be with me in person.  I can't fault my love for what happened because he's hurting like I am.  We both are very tired of this game we were unwittingly exposed to, vulnerable to being hurt by.  We are both weary of the years of life's hard knocks and at times timid of heart as a result.

          I find myself asking if the man I care so deeply for will hold on and let me be ill at ease for the time being?  Will he understand that I still care but that caution is our only chance to proceed further by waiting for our relationship's growth to resurge once we meet?  Will he hold on and give me the benefit of the doubt?  Once our eyes finally meet life will find a way to erase doubt so that we may start over stronger.  The man I have begun to fall for will understand, he won't give up on me or what we have discovered.  In truth of fact our relationship is being tested harshly very early on and something in both of us won't give up on what we have experienced with each other.  There is an irresistible quality to what we share I can trust.

          I was lost when I spoke to him today wanting it to be him and not knowing how to make sure it was.  The date of his arrival has changed, still another week away, another lie uncovered.  It is painful to me to think someone would try to interfere in something that was none of their affair.  It is comforting to me to hear that my love is like me skeptical but unwilling to give up on what we had, promising me nothing will keep him from coming to me next week.

          In my life my heart has been shattered more times than I can count by the promise of hope stolen just after I attained it.  In truth there is no better way to destroy someone than to do that very thing which is why I find it so heinous downright evil.  My life has been utterly devastated, destroyed and annihilated.  My children have been murdered, my life literally taken twice by death, yet here I am.  My family has not just abandoned me but betrayed me in every way imaginable.  Still I learned how to trust, what to trust in others and rebuilt my world into a healthy functioning life of peace within my autonomy despite being alone.  I have taken every struggle, every sorrow, every battle I've been forced into and turned them into something that made me a better person.  Make no mistake this isn't just my own doing by any means, this has been with and only with the Grace of God at work in me and my life.  I have lost everything and regained my world only to have my heart tested once more by an ignorant obnoxious and cruel human being all because he was jealous of what I have despite the fact my love and I are just beginning to discover what we may truly have and all the possibilities that exist for us to have a lifetime of love and joy together.  Nothing is set in stone.  So what is the point in being jealous of us?  We are just beginning to find our way.

          Will I give up now?  Will I succumb to twisted and painful moments of trust turned inside out?  Will I cut my losses and run now?  I most certainly will not!  I choose to stand my ground and let God handle this pain, guide me through the rain of tears and doubts, and give my love the time it needs to break the barriers that keep us apart for the moment.  I will talk to him, guarded I admit.  I will reach out as he reaches out to me.  I will declare my boundaries as I expect it from him.  I will trust what and where I can.  I will run on my feelings and God's guidance and pray like a sweeping wind clears a path to open our hearts if this is in fact what is meant to be to salvage us from the wreckage of damage by one man's green eyed monster within.  In time I will forgive him though it will take time, and cut him loose from us completely.  Right now I will be cautious knowing that my love, should he truly love me as I feel for him will more than understand.  He will want me to proceed carefully for my welfare and that of the love we share.  More than anything else I trust God to protect me and bring us together when the time is destined to occur or separate us forever.  I will pass this test and pray my love does as well.

          We are both weary of this mess, weary of the bruises our lives have inflicted, and weary of false starts and holes in the road to love.  One thing I know for certain tonight is that our love is stronger than our obstacles, stronger than the past, stronger than any pain or interference in our course!  What we have is stronger than anything I've known and I will trust in that as God's blessing.  This is a powerful lesson obviously I need or it wouldn't be happening.  I will guard the love in my heart for him as I know he is guarding his for me, tenderly tending the Garden of Eden and the wells that spring forth fulfilling us when we least expect it.  Every moment I live and breathe I will protect and nurture and defend and trust the love I know and the love I feel.

          A good man once told me, "trust is what you have to give but it is faith that you hold onto."  Little does he know the gift he gave me and the man I love.  I will forever pray God blesses this man for crossing my path before my honey came along.  If he hadn't perhaps I'd have stumbled and given up without taking the hardest road ahead, waiting for the richest and bountiful blessing of all, the two way street of love.  My Grandpa told me, "never give up your standards and morals for something less than what you want most or God's blessings will be less than what He wants you to know and have."  I've waited 51 years for love, so I will wait another week just to see if this is the one man in all the world meant for me that God made me for.  Where it will take us I have no clue.  I only trust it is for the best.

        Loss has been the way of my life up until now.  I'm risking it all once again.  Love is worth it all if only for a single solitary moment of it!  My children taught me that.  No matter what happens I know I will survive, grow wiser as I grow older.  One thing I will always believe, the very best is yet to be as long as I live all out as little ole me!

The Kiss of The Unknown

by Aashdoda

© June 14, 2011

          The kiss of the unknown is a very hard thing to savor sometimes when it is messing with my love life because someone thinks it is right to take my identity and pretend they are me to my love, then take his and do it to me.  They try to extort money, manipulate, fabricate heart wrenching stories just to get what they want, more money!  It may not be personal to them but to me it is very personal.

          I've never been a woman to be trifled with and as I age far less so.

          "Get a job!  Get a life!" I snap back knowing that's the only way anyone gets anywhere in this world.  "You want something then go earn it."  I understood this at age 8.  I went and got my first job throwing newspapers so I could afford to buy jeans my mother wouldn't because she told me we didn't have the money.  It was so elementary to me it was like adding 1+1 in school and it equaled the action of responsibility.

          Being responsible for my own need to have a warm pair of jeans was my first experience with learning that I was responsible for what I do and do not do.  I saw that I could do without them and be cold or have the jeans I wanted and stay warmer on the long 2 mile trek to and then again from school every day.  Colorado's cold isn't the most unforgiving around, no moisture to speak of most of the time makes it milder than most climates however, there are days that isn't the case especially when the snow was up over my knees.  I simply saw no need to suffer because I had the will to change it, no need to whine or feel sorry for myself.  I saw no need to argue about it with my mother.  She had clothed me the best she could but the pants I had were hand-me-downs and thread bare unlike the ones I wanted.  I simply saw that I could change the situation if I applied myself and did it.

          I had no reason to disbelieve my mother and every reason to help myself.  In fact that was a long standing joke in my family because I was all but born saying, "I myself."  Stomping my tiny 16 month old foot in protest because I wanted to tie my own shoes like everyone else, never mind the fact I hadn't a clue how.

          In the process of life I have found that it is paramount to be responsible for what energy I am creating and bringing into this world.  In life I am either corrupting or blessing every situation and everyone I touch.  I'm not a victim so scams are lost on me early in the game.  I live by feel and I know when I'm being played even by the best.  The subtlest lie leaves a faint smell of stench I've grown up with and I recognize it anywhere.  The hardest place to catch it is on the internet because most of human communication is nonverbal which betrayers feelings are able to keep carefully hidden behind a distant computer screen.

          The internet is nothing but the unknown, throw a heart into the mix hoping to look only to for the love of a like minded soul to spend time with, something that can grow into a relationship and hopefully find that special someone to grow old with, and suddenly without warning your ISP is hacked, your conversations hijacked and I find myself in the darkest place I've known in years.  I'm flying blind!  I hate it but this is what our world has come to, the stage between the real honest communication between two people and the growing technological seam popping of progress where upon the improvements haven't caught up to creating that perfect environment where real honest communication can't be faked, barring of course the choice to lie.

          Lies are so much more than a slippery slope.  They cause the liar to slip and slid and struggle to remember the details if it's going to be convincing but the fact they are tearing their own soul apart in the process is the real tragedy.  Every lie is a paper cut to the spirit and soul, some eventually festering with infections that are hard to stop.  In time the tissue itself will rot and fall off, disintegrating the limbs one by one until it's too late.

        At 8 I figured it out, responsibility was simply an act of responding, choosing how I wanted to act.  Reacting is a gut level response without thought, without choice put into action.  Often desire is a great motivation to react without thought or care to someone else's feelings and situation.  Reactions can be both good and bad but generally I see them as uninformed ignorance or choice to be ignorant and thoughtless.  The only time reactions are helpful to me are those born of my already predetermined by conscious considerable choice how I have chosen to live my life with healthy and appropriate boundaries, enforcers of those boundaries.  Cross those boundaries and I will react with a verbal declaration to go no further or..., that is when I lay out the consequences of proceeding further and reveal my considerable powers of will and action that will in fact enforce the undesired conclusion.  I'm tough and hard if I have to be, far more than any diamond thought it could be.

        I have been a woman scammer's seem to think is a push over on the internet.  I am as kind and nice, thoughtfully soft and womanly nurturing, as I appear to be.  I don't have a desperate bone in my body.  Living alone is a pleasure of its own though not knowing me they can't begin to size me up, I am a woman after all.  Cross me however and my mother's instincts and survival mode or self preservation will instantly kick in and I am a bear to deal with.  I will play with them just to see how far they intend to take the game, waste their time and efforts before I slam them much harder than they could ever see coming.  Mess with my heart and I will not let that go. 

        I never mess with other people's hearts or affections.  I live the Golden Rule and I never expect to be treated any other way than honestly.  The heart is a primal place no one should ever be cruel or dismissive, nor betray the confidence of intimacy established.  I believe it to be one of the most heartless things a person can do is to betray anothers trust, because it betrays the entire relationship and leaves scars that sometimes go so much deeper than is possible to know.  Why knowingly or unknowingly destroy someone because you think, and think is the operative word here, they have something you want?  Love in particular doesn't come along every day.  It is the most incredible blessing I have ever known and been honored to experience, a sacred treasure beyond anything that can be described.

        As I've waded into the internet dating scene looking for companionship with the potential hope for something more to grow out of a basic healthy relationship I realize that the kiss of the unknown is immensely sweet or devastatingly sour.  It has been my unfortunate experience to have tasted the sour of life so much more than I've known sweetness.  Websites have tools at their disposal to make this kiss of the unknown much safer for all of us yet they still do not use them, statistics tools that track IP's from the country of origin.  All it would do is tell those of us looking if the person is in fact telling the truth or not at the beginning.  It is a very sad commentary on humanity that we still need to govern some people's behavior.  At least this would give many or us a real chance to find the real thing.

        Even so the loneliness in my heart says give love one more try.  Just because a few apples in the barrel are rotten to the core, spoiled and nasty, doesn't mean the entire barrel is a waste.  The kiss of the unknown lives in my memory now just as it always has with both agony and ecstasy.  I simply choose to look hopefully toward the later mindful of the former and the games that reveal which I'll find under certain circumstances.

        I am in awe of the human spirit and it's resilience!  The eternal optimist I am perhaps I have more resilience than I ever dreamt.

        Here's to love and to life!  I plan on getting the best of everything I can, earning it.  I will learn when it hurts, and I'll kiss every toad I must to find one special enough to keep here beside me that wants me for the same reasons.  Rotten apples aside, love is worth the risk, the pain and the fear of the unknown kiss.