Have you ever noticed – REALLY noticed – yourself acting in a certain particular way JUST to try to get the type of reaction you want out of someone else? We all have done it. We all do it. You pick and choose specific words or actions that you know will get the reaction you desire. I’m not talking about the GOOD ways in which this can work, such as in pep talks or motivational speeches, I’m talking here about your average passive-aggressive manipulative bullcrap.
You are irritated and want some conflict to let off steam, so you say or do the one thing you know will most likely annoy someone into an argument. Instead of just talking about the issue that’s bothering you. You want your child to do chores, but instead of sitting down with them and letting them help you come up with solutions, you bribe, manipulate, and threaten. You are in a relationship with someone, and you aren’t “thrilled” with it, so instead of just coming right out and saying so, you decide to act just self-centered enough so that SHE pulls away and wants to end the relationship. Voila! The responsibility for YOUR own feelings is taken off of your shoulders and placed squarely on someone else’s, and that other person is left wondering where THEY went wrong because YOU were too scared to be honest.
Have you ever figured out when someone is using this same tactic on you? And that, if you feed into THEIR manipulation, you end up being the one taking the action, and the one taking the blame, AND the one feeling badly about how things are working out, or badly about yourself, as if you have done something wrong in the relationship. And the first person now does not have to take responsibility for their own words or actions, because the focus has been shifted away from them, most of the time without the other person even being aware that it happened. Pretty neat trick, huh?
Why do we DO these things? Is there some written law in our society that says we are not capable of being responsible for our own feelings, thoughts, and actions? That we have to have someone else to put them onto, because that’s the only way we can deal with it within ourselves? What a bunch of crap. It’s no wonder so many people today are so emotionally dysfunctional and damaged. I won’t say I have any clue how to fix this, because I have done and do the same things, but one thing I AM learning is to RECOGNIZE when I fall into these “playing games” modes, or when someone else is attempting to do it to me. I think that might be at least one baby step in the right direction.

Penned by: Tricia
13 Comments »

I just happened to be thinking the other day about all the different places I have lived in my life, and it struck me that I have only ever lived in one real house in my entire life. Every other dwelling place has been an apartment. It was a rather strange, almost depressing thought. To think that I don’t have special memories of my childhood ‘home,’ but instead I have a compendium of memories of various apartments and townhouses, and at times I have to really think hard to remember the layout of a certain place, or how old I was when we lived there. The only stable unchangeable place was my grandparent’s house, in which they still live to this day.
I guess in retrospect it wasn’t so bad. But I sure do miss that house. The fact that that was the place where the majority of my abuse by my stepfather occurred mars and blurs the memories a bit, but there is enough good left for me to be thankful for how special that house really was to me.
I was 9 years old when we moved into the house in Davidsonville, Maryland. Even the name of the town invokes a slow and peaceful feeling of times gone by. The houses in the neighborhood were large and spaced a minimum of one acre apart. Our house was at the very end of a dead-end street, butted up against a magnificent cornfield that shone golden in the sunlight in summer and lay pregnant with promise during the winter. It nestled gracefully in the midst of over three acres of lush verdant grass, with one small end fenced off with a beautifully rough-hewn dark wood, ready and awaiting the horse that we were never to have.
The house itself was a pale sky-blue color that wrestled with the sky for attention from the sun. Lush flowerbeds lay at the foot of the house like ladies-in-waiting to the Queen. Walking inside, gleaming wooden floors beckoned you to slide across them in stockinged feet. Of course, you would get into trouble for doing this, but the temptation was sometimes just too great. The TV room, the large, mostly unused living room, the stately dining room. Passing by the double glass French doors, peeking out at the elegant brick patio that overlooked the 50-foot inground pool with water so clear that diving for pennies was almost too easy for words and a diving board that sat there and dared you to try to do a flip off of it.
The kitchen is next. One room nearly as big as my whole apartment is now. Beautiful parquet tiling, windows that look out over the pool. Off to the stairs. Huge master bedroom, of course, his and her sinks, a shower stall and a separate tub. I have trouble recalling exactly what it looked like. I didn’t like to linger there long. Down the hallway to the guest room. Modestly sized, and it never really did hold too many guests. Then to my suite. Yes. I did say suite. I had two rooms in that house. You walk in the first door, and there is my sitting room. Heavy white wicker furniture, perfect for a little girl, desk, hutch, chaise, three bookcases. (I told you I was a bookworm…lol) Through the far door into the bedroom. The same wicker furniture, double bed, two dressers, mirror. Windowseats in all of the windows. The window in the bedroom overlooked the front of the house, where I could look out on the front yard and the far end of the cornfield.
And I almost forgot the two most fun places in the house. The full attic, that stretched the entire length of the house, and which never held too much of anything as storage. My friends and I loved to go up there and play tag and make as much noise as possible if everyone else was on the first floor, because they wouldn’t be able to hear us. Then there was the basement. It wasn’t finished off, so it was unceremoniously grey and cemented, but down in that cool haven, my stepfather installed three arcade-size video games. We had Ms. Pac-Man, Baby Pac.Man, and Q-Bert. Oh, I couldn’t even begin to tell you the number of hours my friends and I spent down there wih those blipping and beeping machines, that I showed them how to rig so you could just give yourself credits instead of having to put in quarters. Man, I didn’t know too much back then, did I? I could have made a FORTUNE with those machines!
My gentle friend Karen, who introduced me to The Sword of Shanarra, which is STILL one of my favorite books, and tuned me into the fact that, yes, I CAN draw, or do anything else for that matter if I really wanted to. Her family was Mormon, and when her mother became ill and passed away I had a hard time understanding their faith, and I felt angry at her for a long time. Now, I wish I could go back and say what I know and feel today to her back then. She was the first person I EVER told about my stepfather and what he was doing. What a shame that she was just as much of a little girl as I was, and only could give me a hug and beg me to tell a grown-up.
The 2 1/2 years we lived in that house were some of the most frightening and most idyllic that I can remember. Quite a paradox, huh? Summers of pool-splashing, video-game playing, woods-exploring. Since I went to Catholic school, I couldn’t share a school experience with my friends in the neighborhood, but as soon as we all got home, Karen and Barbra and I were inseparable, jumping rope, reading, drawing, roller skating, toilet-papering houses on Halloween, bugging Barbie’s two little sisters and Karen’s older brother, plotting ways to terrorize the boy that lived on the other side of me. Winters of sledding, going to Blue Knob to ski every weekend.
It actually took me some effort to remember a lot of those things. The other things are darkly overshadowing. A nearly countless array of recalled abuse scenarios. Never in my room in this particular place, for whatever reason. I am grateful at least for that much. My room was my sanctuary. It was in this house that I gathered the courage to inform my mother of what was happening to me. It was also in this house that my mother flatly refused to believe me. Then a few months before we moved outof that house, she married him.
I had a set of drums in that house. I experienced that house being robbed while we were away one weekend. I had my first taste of champagne one New Year’s in that house, sanctioned by my mother (oh, I felt so grown-up, but boy did I think that was yucky lol). I skinny-dipped in that pool one night with Karen and Barbie. I cried, pleaded, and begged not to move out of that house. But move we did.
Several months later, I came to visit Karen. The people who had bought our precious house…they had TRASHED it. The pool was green. Those hardwood floors that my mother hand-washed every week were scuffed, scarred, and dull. The walls were drawn on. It was heartbreaking.
What a wonderful house that was.

Penned by: Tricia
3 Comments »

Hah, I am so late…but I finally got around to sitting down and attempting to rattle off my “100 things about me” super-meme. Feel free to skip if you start falling asleep by number 5. :nyah:
1. I was born in Maryland.
2. I miss it a lot sometimes.
3. I went to Catholic school for about 8 years.
4. I don’t miss that at all.
5. I was somewhat of a goody two-shoes in school.

(more…)

Penned by: Tricia
5 Comments »

I just realized I haven’t written lately. It’s too COLD to think! For the past week it has been between 0 and 4 degrees here. Stuck in the house. COLD in the house because of the beautiful gap at the bottom of my door that I have told everyone I can think of about to no avail. It usually isn’t TOO bad in here, but with the temperature so cold, even with the heat up as high as it can go, it is still freezing in here.
Then there are my completely insane downstairs neighbors. They have a problem with my children making too much noise. Ok, yes, my kids make noise, I can freely admit that and apologize for it to a point, but they ARE just children, and being as it is a frozen wasteland outside and I have no vehicle here in nowheresville. I feel like I do the best I can. And this is also an apartment building. Now, I am a very compromising and understanding person. Come talk to me, discuss, let me know if my kids are being too loud, maybe I just didn’t realize. But don’t stand outside my door like a spineless coward screaming obscenities at me while my kids are right there listening, then call me foul names for absolutely no deserved reason whatsoever and stomp back downstairs and run in your house before I can get my door open. You just make yourself look like a complete idiot, and that does not inspire any type of respect or compromise within me at ALL. Here, boys, here’s a ball, why not play catch right over their bedroom? :LOL:
At least I DID get to see my baby for a while on Tuesday. Not NEARLY long enough, but right now I am taking what I can get. It’s amazing how much one person can brighten your outlook on everything, isn’t it? Especially when he is getting his butt kicked by a 9-year-old at Playstation! (Sorry hon )
I’m not sure what else I have to say today that wouldn’t turn into some kind of strange political rant. Let’s just say, Bush is one of the biggest idiots the world has ever had the misfortune to come into contact with.

Penned by: Tricia
5 Comments »

It seems like the subject of emotions has come up quite a bit in the past few days since I posted about it. In my parenting class, the discussion turned to how as children, we are taught to suppress our emotions. Then, as time goes on, the more emotions are suppressed, the more “issues” amass that we have to deal with each and every time we have a problem, because we need to sift through all of the old stuff we have not yet dealt with to even get to the new problem, which we probably also will not deal with because of our previous conditioning, therefore just adding more junk to the already overflowing pile.
There are so many ways that our society teaches us to squash every trace of emotion, to “be strong,” as if being emotionally dysfunctional could ever truly be a strength.
“Stop crying or I will give you something to cry about.”
Is this not the singular most daft, nonsensical statement ever to be uttered? If there wasn’t something ALREADY wrong, why in the world would I be crying in the first place? So, in essense, I cry about something I am hurt over, and instead of being listened to, I get hurt. Pretty clear message there. I better not show that I am hurt, or I will only get hurt worse.
“Shhh, everything will be OK.”
This seems to be a good sentiment on the outside, but let’s evaluate this. You are crying because you are hurt or for whatever reason, and someone is telling to to hush, that everything will be OK. For whom? For them, once you are quiet and they don’t have to face your emotion anymore? Or for you, whose healing process of crying has been interrupted in order to suppress said emotion? So, you stop crying, and the problem is fixed. Wouldn’t that be a grand thing?
“Shut up.”
“Stop being such a baby.”
“What are you crying about NOW?”
“Toughen up, stop being such a wuss.”
“What a wimp.”
“Crybaby.”
“What is your problem?”
“Stop crying or you’ll go to time out.”
“Go to your room until you can pull yourself together.”
“Cut it out.”
“Get over it.”
I am sure many of us had these things said to us, and even hear ourselves on occasion saying them to our own children. The old “I am becoming my mother” syndrome. Of course, the very purpose of these words are actually to suppress emotions of any kind. While in the past this was generally more common for boys, nowadays it applies almost universally to both sexes. Although it still is more socially acceptable for women to be emotional, yet they are still viewed as the “weaker” sex precisely because of those emotions. (Face it, if you saw a female senatorial candidate burst into tears after a speech, would you really think she was capable of handling the job?)
Have you ever heard a baby cry? Even if it wasn’t your own offspring, didn’t you have an overwhelming desire to comfort that child, to stop them from crying? Didn’t it make you extremely anxious and uncomfortable to hear that crying for any length of time? How about when you see a toddler in a grocery store, having a full-out emotional tantrum, just letting all their frustrations come OUT…isn’t that irritation you seem to be feeling really an uncomfortable, anxious, even jealous feeling…like, if I am not allowed to display my emotions, then this child shouldn’t be able to either? Or how about if an older child cries? Don’t you sometimes think they should be better able to “handle” things that happen? Maybe you agree with the other kids that tease him that he is a big crybaby?
Let’s examine these feelings. We, as human beings, are the only beings on this planet to be able to truly feel amny emotions, and express them. This is a BLESSING to us. Yet we seek to suppress it. Whatever for? When could this have begun? And for what purpose? A lot of people that speak on emotions talk about “animal instincts” and “baser desires” and all other kinds of bullcrap, in an attempt to downplay our emotions, to associate emotions only with animals and lower beings. But truly, emotions are not intrinsically instinctual. Animals aren’t really feeling emotions when they are violent, when they attack their prey. Instincts, yes, of course they have. And they follow them. Humans, however, perhaps they have some instinct to kill, but think on all the other things involved if we endeavor to kill another of our kind. Guilt, anger, trepidation, excitement, even pleasure and desire. And of course, most of us would never kill another of our kind at all. Animals know nothing of this. So how in the world could our complex range of emotions be considered even remotely animalistic or “beneath us?”
In fact, I would propose that it is our very suppression of our natural emotional complexities that leads directly to many of the problems society faces today. So many of us have hurts and pains that we have never been allowed to express. But if they don’t come out in SOME way, we are destroyed. If only we knew. So, those buried emotions come out as anger, rage, inappropriate emotional displays, the inability to feel many emotions at all or to identify them, or turning all that pent-up emotion either inward or outward, hurting ourself or others. Whie crime has always been a factor in human beings, because, well, we feel anger, the types and intensities and, for lack of a better word, sheer INVENTIVENESS of crime over the ages has steadily increased, fueled by our ever-growing fascination with weapons built for no other purpose than to hurt other human beings, and by increasingly violent television, movies, video games and other message bombardments that train our minds that only the “tough,” meaning physically strong and overpowering, can survive and “be cool.” Seems like the farther we try to push our emotions under the surface, the more determined they are to show themselves anyway, but in destructive ways, because the underlying suppressed hurt and pain and rage doesn’t know any other way out.
How do you feel when you have had a really good cry? I mean, the kind of cry where you are helpless, big heaving sobs coming up from somewhere inside of you, tears streaming in hot rivulets down red cheeks, snot streaming out of your nose unchecked and uncared about, holding nothing back? When it is all over, when there are no more tears – how do you REALLY feel? I know how I feel. Clearer. Better. More able to think about what is really going on. More able to solve whatever problem has presented itself, or to move beyond what hurts I have experienced to bring the crying on in the first place. I fail to see how this could be a BAD thing. If you stop yourself from crying, if you hold back the tears, do you ever notice that the next time you allow yourself to cry, it seems to last longer? The hurt HAS to come out. The only way I have ever been able to figure out how to truly get it all out to the point where it is healed is by crying. I think part of the reason I stayed stuck for so long is I did not allow myself to cry. At ALL. I would beat myself up if I did cry, tell myself how stupid and weak I was to be crying. All that ever did was make me feel worse.
So what can we do? Well, unfortunately society as a whole can’t be turned from its course. But we can do a lot to change our own attitudes towards emotions. And to teach our children how to REALLY “handle” them. It’s hard. I can’t lie. I still find myself saying those suppressive words, just wanting the child to be quiet. No one ever listened to ME…..why should *I* have to be the one to listen?? That’s my own past hurt and pain speaking. But really….so WHAT if a 9-year-old boy cries a lot? He has been through SO much this past 6 months. The only thing he knows how to do to deal with it is cry. But when he does, he gets put down for it. How horrible for him. I have been making such an effort to stop doing that. To just LISTEN to him. Not to offer a solution, not to tell him everything will be fine, not to tell him to get over it, it happens to everyone. To just LISTEN, and let him know that it’s OK to cry. That crying and being sensitive is NOT a bad thing, or a sign that he is gay (because so what if he is, gay doesn’t equal weakness in any case), or weak, or any less “manly” that any other boy. That in fact, this crying will only help him to become a better person, to be able to deal with his anger and hurt, and TRULY put it behind him, so that he can grow up to be a kind and gentle man and a fantastic husband and parent who will never treat those that he loves badly, because he CAN deal with his anger, and won’t externalize it the way he has seen men in his own life do. I hate that I am the only one who will probably ever give him that message. But maybe…just MAYBE…if I give it to him enough during this time when he really listens to me….maybe it will be enough.
Cry. Cry about whatever you need to. Whenever you need to. Hit a pillow. Scream. Let it out. It’s OK.

Penned by: Tricia
7 Comments »

New Potter Book Coming Out
It appears that J.K Rowling has FINALLY finished Harry Potter 5, entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And, true to form so far, this book is more than one-third as long as the last book, with 768 pages. 768 pages!?!? What child do you know that would willingly sit down with a book that size? Even if it IS a Harry Potter book? All I can really say is it BETTER be worth the money, because I bought the hardcover of all of the previous ones, and I would like to keep the collection intact, so if it is a bunch of worthless drivel and filler like much of Goblet of Fire was, I will be mighty pissed. Apparently the publication date for the US and some other countries is June 21st. Perfect timing for a refreshing summer read. As much as I hate to admit it, I am looking forward to it.

Penned by: Tricia
5 Comments »

Well…I have had an interesting day and a half. My internet connection suddenly became very intermittent the other day, and after speaking to several tech support people, we were all really at a loss to explain why. It was very frustrating. I even attempted to sign on to other service providers, with no luck. I was beginning to think maybe the modem in this computer was fried. That would have sucked. But then…an amazing thing happened. I figured out the problem all by myself. :LOL: What’s the big deal, you ask? Well, if this was my Mac, there probably wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place, since I know that computer inside and out like the back of my hand. But on this one, while I do have a familiarity with Windows, I am not that arrogant to think I can just go in and start tinkering with everything before learning exactly what it is I would be tinkering with. But, thank goodness for Compaq, I must say. Their help files are some of the most comprehensive I have ever seen. So now…I am back online, and the particular thing that did this will never be seen on my computer again.
But anyways, aside from that, things have been all right. I have been feeling a bit lonely, a bit isolated, but I am working through it slowly. I was thinking the other day about why I react to things in certain ways. I mean, just as a part of my general nature, not even as a result of things that have happened to me. I have always had some faith in astrology in regards to explaining things in the universe, so I poked around on a fw sites. I always knew that my sign is Cancer, which makes me a water sign, but for some reason I never researched the full meaning of what being a water sign entails. It was rather eerie, actually, how much this explains.
The following is from Tryskelion:
Water is the element of deep emotions, of the subconscious mind, of purification, and of constant change. It is the element of absorption and germination. It is the perseverance and courage needed to endure the long gestation, the nurturing and supporting role.
Water is the element of deep, enduring love, and of the deepest sorrow. It is the courage to continue on a difficult path with no end in sight; an enduring rage born of long, silent suffering; and the hope that springs eternal from forgotten wisdom, held deep in the heart where the old knowledge still waits. When you know what to do, but you don’t know how you know, that, too, is Water – for water rules intuition, racial memories, and psychic powers, too.
When expressed positively, water emotions are fluid, changing as the need of those surrounding demands. They are reflective, offering others a glimpse of themselves and their emotions they might not otherwise see. Water emotions expressive positively are nurturing and mothering. The changes Water brings are slow in coming but constant, as the running stream gradually erodes the mountain in its way over the centuries.
Water emotions expressed negatively can lead to deep depression, manic-depressive tendencies, and spite and revenge.
Water magick involves friendship, marriage, fertility, happiness, healing, sleep, dreaming, psychic abilities, and purification. It is a feminine element, the color of the deep, blue sea. It rules the West, and the Autumn months, when rains generally wash over the Earth.
You know that song “Killing Me Softly?” That’s how this web site made me feel. Like it reached into my soul and plucked these words directly from it. Those few paragraphs essentially sum up the core of who I am, before environment and happenstance ever had a chance to shape things differently. And, in a way, these words kind of help me to focus more on what I am trying to BECOME…not that I want to be exactly what those words say, because I am my own person, but they give me a shape, a direction, and I like the direction it points to.
This society always puts such stress on NOT showing emotions, on hiding who you are behind some false mask that must be put forth in order to be “in” or “politically correct” or whatever other term people come up to explain the fakeness away. I think that is one of the biggest reasons that I have had such a hard time just being ME. I feel things SO deeply, and express them for the most part without regard or thought to the way others will react to those emotions. And there are many who are just not able to deal with that. And it is quite understandable, but in my intrinsic desire to please everyone, I have learned how to supress such emotions, whether they are happy or sad, so deeply within me that now most of the time I have no idea what it is I am really feeling. Unlearning that conditioning is proving to be quite challenging. There is so much emotion waiting inside wanting to burst free that I fear if the dam breaks the emotions will just float around and pop up piecemeal, whether it is an appropriate time for that emotion or not. Uh oh, did that even make sense?
Anyway, I am not quite sure what it is exactly that I am rambling about, but getting it out helped me to organize my thoughts a bit better, Thanks for listening.

Penned by: Tricia
2 Comments »

Holy Verbosity, Batman! Two posts in one day! :LOL:
I HAD to come back to tell you guys about this, because I am STILL laughing my behind off. OK, so I am sitting on the couch, helping Gregory with his multiplication. We are pretty engrossed in it. Donovan goes off to the other room. No biggie, I think, he’s probably in the bedroom taking more toys out of the toybox to add to the cornucopia of madness already strewn across the floor. I go back to 47×8.
Then, I look up at the clock, and realize that over 5 minutes has gone by. No noise. Anyone who has a toddler knows that no noise is NOT a good sign. I call his name, and hear a door shut. Ohhhhhhh, good grief, what’s he doing?? I get up, and head for the kitchen. As I round the corner, I hear him. In the bathroom. I open the door with trepidation, it turns out with good reason. Picture this. A small boy wearing a Mickey Mouse pullup and a football sweatshirt and a huge grin, sitting on the floor of the bathroom with a bottle of Windex, which has already been sprayed all over the walls and floor, now with the cap unscrewed and about a half a second from being upended all over the bathroom rug.
How the boy even got a hold of the bottle, I guess I will never know. It is usually kept in a box with a latch that I never would have thought he could open. I guess little Houdini-in-training just proved me wrong. So, after panicking and snatching the bottle away and checking him to make sure he hadn’t gotten any of the fluid anywhere on his face, I strip him down and throw him in the tub to wash him off. While he sits in the tub, all happy and giggling like nothing ever happened, I mop up the windex off the floor and wash it off the walls, both of which take me at least three times to get all of the soapines out. As I am JUST finishing the mopping, suddenly Donovan gets it into his head that it would be SO funny to lay down in the tub and kick his feet as hard as he can….of course, sloshing water all over the side of the tub onto my freshly mopped floor. :crazy:
So, as I am mopping for the second time, he is squirting me in the backside with his little fishy squirter. Does anyone want to buy a slightly used toddler, cheap? :nyah:
Finally, the mopping is finished, and one slippery boy wrestled out of the tub and back into a pullup before he gets that little gleam in his eye that tells me he is thinking about the reaction he might get by peeing on the bed. He refuses all attempts to don him with any further clothing, so the battle is given up, and the newly clean and sweet-smelling child is let go, whereupon he runs into the living room, brandishing a toy light saber and singing “Spiderman”.
Aren’t kids the best?? :lovey:

Penned by: Tricia
10 Comments »

Well, this was refreshingly interesting.
Tricia
The first name of Tricia leads you to assume considerable responsibility and to prefer to work independently, without direction or interference from others because you have very definite ideas of your own. Your mind is quick to comprehend and you can be depended upon to do any job well. Because you tend to be somewhat of a perfectionist, you might insist on doing too many things yourself instead of delegating jobs to others who might do less satisfactory work. This name does make you quite direct and straight-to-the-point. Your verbal expression does not reflect your inner thoughts and feelings, and you often wonder why people react to what you say. The influence of this name does not promote the friendship that you desire or the relaxation and naturalness you should enjoy with people. It is a name that makes you far too practical and serious-minded, and makes it difficult for you to act with spontaneity. You could suffer physically through head tension, with eye, teeth, or sinus problems, headaches, or mentally through worry.
From Kabalarians.com
It’s almost eerie how accurate this is. I am SUCH a horrid perfectionist. I am the kind of person that jumps in and does it myself because I can’t stand how someone else does it. Whether their way is OK or not. Since having children I have really made a concerted effort to stop doing this, since of course this comes out as jumping in and doing things for my kids when they are perfectly capable of doing it on their own, albeit not exactly the way I might do it. I figure KNOWING how I am is the first step to making it a little more bearable for other people.
The thing about verbal expression struck me the most, however. The way I speak into this box is SO not the way I speak in real life. In real life, my mind bumbles and fumbles trying to find words and expressions, my lips trip over phrases and syllables as if the words were glue. When words do come out, more often than not they are not correct or appropriate words, especially when I am upset, anxious, or angry. I do wonder sometimes why people react so strongly to things I say, when in my mind I mean one thing, and out of my mouth comes quite another. And half the time I don’t even realize this has happened unless it is pointed out to me. Let’s just say I am lacking in some simple social graces. I really don’t know where I can acquire these graces at this late age, however, Maybe that’s just how I am. A lot of times this is why I blame myself so harshly for failed relationships or problems. I feel like I am constantly saying the wrong thing, and being misunderstood because I cannot seem to express myself correctly. I feel so much safer behind this keyboard, with a delete button and a preview mode. I am always so shy and nervous around people, trying to watch what I say so I don’t sound like a babbling idiot. This is the part that makes me not receive too many friendships from people, or if I do, they soon tire of me and leave me behind, wondering just what the heck happened. Maybe I am just meant to be more comfortable alone, typing away my feelings and thoughts in a kind of solitary reverie where I can never hurt anyone, and they can’t hurt me. Not exactly realistic, however, is it? Social anxiety is not a fun thing to have…
Ohhhhhh, and check this out! I am an official winner of The Five Award!! Thanks Hayden!

Penned by: Tricia
3 Comments »

Thank you to everyone who had such nice things to say about my Seven Wonders post. It was a refreshng exercise for me in looking at the positive side of life. It is something I do not do nearly often enough, and sometimes, in the midst of thinking about the negative, I forget that the positive is so very pervasive and fulfilling, and that even the negative things can sometimes contribute to the positive. I am going to try and remember that more often.
So…news from the homefront. Gregory went back to school yesterday after the extra-long school break of this year. I miss him, but it sure has been quiet during the day. :nyah: I bought a set of clippers and endeavored to cut both of my boys’ hair. Despite it being the very first time I tried, and having bought a crappy set of clippers (ugh), I think I actually did a halfway decent job. Gregory is usually very picky about his hair, and even he said he liked it, so I felt that was an accomplishment. Go me!
On a fantastic note, I am officially a peecee user now!! I don’t have my WHOLE new computer, but I have paid enough on it to convince the woman to give me the tower, keyboard, and mouse, which along with the NEC monitor I have now, I am able to utilize!! Man, this thing is FAST! I am in total nirvana. 800 megahertz, 40 gigabyte hard drive, 64 megabytes of memory (ok, I will need more, but it’s a lot more than I had before at this point heh). And oh, the things I can SEE….I must say, I don’t know how much I realized how differently my ancient Mac viewed some things online. Not a BAD thing, necessarily, but I certainly missed a lot. I can’t wait until the day I can afford to get an eMac, cause I am feening, but this little baby will do for now, especially when I finish paying for it and get that 17′ monitor that goes with it! Thank you AGAIN to everyone who donated something to help me realize this dream, I couldn’t have done it without you!
*sigh* One other thing going on is I told C I would set up a time to meet him so that he can see Donovan. As much as I feel like this is the ADULT thing to do, I am already regretting it. The man was never a parent before, what makes me think he will be one now? I feel like he is using Donovan to try to get to see me. I don’t know how to make it any clearer to him that I DON’T WANT HIM anymore, that I have someone else I am SO SO happy with. C will never change. He has already reverted back to putting me down just like always, and we have barely spoken. She asked me yesterday why I got in contact with him when I KNEW this about him. Why do I still feel tied to his opinion of me? I had to become brutally honest with myself. I needed to know just how my feelings stood regarding him. Needed to know if I was still weak. I still haven’t found out why I still care what he thinks about me. Maybe it’s just a manifestation of that habit I have of looking outside of myself for validation. Perhaps I can just use the knowledge to grow some more within myself, until that feeling, too, is gone. I am not proud that I faltered in this way, but I AM so glad that I found out that I am finally free of the crippling connection I had to him. I am no longer in love with him. I can see him clearly. And I know that I do not need him in my life just to be a father to my children. My kids would be better with a father, true, but they would NOT be better with a father who abuses them and their mother, and doesn’t give a crap about anyone but himself. My kids deserve more than that. And so do I. And I have already made a step to receive better…MUCH better…for myself. And my children need me to take that step for them, as well.

Penned by: Tricia
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