Thanksgiving 2020

 This year is a different year this year.  If you had asked me at anytime before February 2020 if the world would ever have a new virus/disease to wreck havoc I would have said no.  We are advanced.  We have vaccinations now and why would something new come along? Wrong.  I had it but it started in September.  Anyone who says that virus wasn't out in the world until February is wrong.  I flew home on an international flight in August.  I wasn't all the way over it until December.  I went to five doctors and no one could really tell what I had and so no medicine they gave me helped.  But this isn't about that.

It is about Thanksgiving and the year I learned it wasn't about the food.  Coming from a family like mine you would think I would have always known that.  I don't talk about my mother at all. This isn't about that either.  

     I will always cook Thanksgiving dinner even I cook for no one but myself.  Why? It is about the year I had to get to Kroger before they closed and buy deli turkey and stove top stuffing.  The only thing normal was the mashed potatoes.  We may have had green beans also. Why? Someone else's selfishness and lack of caring.  I realized this day is not about the food that year.  It is about sacrifice and love and being together.  

It really is ironic now that I missed the normal family Thanksgiving to be with my mother and make sure we had some semblance of Thanksgiving.  So, it was just the two of us.  I got the little food I had been able to find at Kroger ready while the home health care nurse changed her wound bandaging.  We ate.  

Then we laid in her bed with the tv on.  Took a little nap.  Then we watched the parade and there was a dog show on.  We always loved to watch dog shows together.  

It will always hurt that I was the one there 24/7 who made the sacrifices and did what was needed but then I was the one who ended up where I am.  That is why I don't talk about her and don't think about her either.  My love is gone for her but she isn't the only one.  The favored one is the same in my book.  The selfish one who caused us to eat deli turkey and stove top stuffing that year.  

Lesson learned but it doesn't change the way I feel now about either of them.  It just makes it okay that I cook every year even if it is just for me and my cat, Willie. I can even though I know it isn't about the food now.  I will still honor the tradition even if it is alone and this year for the first time in five years I actually am okay and can see all the things I have to be thankful for.  

I conquered my demons unlike some who never will.  I never gave up although it felt like I was as close to giving up as I'd ever been.  I was but I got through it.  I always wanted to know how to not care and now I do.  But there is a lot I care about.  But that feeling of not giving up on a person without being heartbrokenly sad making it so hard to stop trying with them is gone.  That is not me anymore.  I finally learned how to get closure and how to not care.  Best thing that I ever learned.  

Hopefully next year will be more normal.

Sweet & Pretty and the Sting

 One year and 8 days have gone by since I wrote anything here.  I've written lots in my journal but not here.  I think when I bought that lock necklace and locked it down I didn't want to write here anymore.  Who knows who is reading this and never says a word to me. I did lock it down majorly.  I've found that people inside the walls can still get to you and so you shove them against the wall and that is where they stay.  I'm down to two I guess who are there all the time.  They worry about me so much after what I confessed to doing June 22nd, 2019 that the first thing they say is "Are you okay?". Even when they can't talk I get that and I say I'm ok so they know to go back to what they were doing.  I hope and pray and feel pretty certain I'll never be where I was June 22nd, 2019 ever again.  I don't feel like I will.  I took my doctor's advice and since then things have turned around and gone in the opposite direction. I don't ever want to go back to that place again.  It was really scary for awhile how close I came to something I really don't want because I didn't care about myself that night at all.  The reason I didn't was because it didn't seem anyone else did either.  It has always seemed like I was the forgotten one but then if I wasn't made to feel that way I ran away anyway.  I know why now and I also know I'd rather be the one who runs away than the one left standing feeling forgotten or overlooked or less than anyone else.   

Come February I took a huge step of dealing with what was the catalyst for June 22nd, 2019 or maybe I should say who was the catalyst.  Eventually I said what I wanted to say to this person but left out the night of June 22nd, 2019.  It hasn't mattered much except maybe I got some insight.  But there I was again.  You see all the things in yourself in someone else.....all the pain, the hurt, and everything else that makes you connected to someone but they don't want to fight the demons together.  Some don't even want to admit they have the demons.  You've been too busy pretending like you've got it together to some so that person you pretend to be is who they think you are.  I must be really good at hiding all that unlike these other people or really it is probably because I do have gifts to see and know things others wouldn't. I'd really like to know the "why" behind some things about others.  I can tell my "why" but so many others can not do that.  

The thing is I went through some things a whole lot earlier in life that most other people did.  Been there, done that.......twice in one area of my life and several times in another. Some people reach out to me because they know I've been through what they are going through already.  I get the "you missed your calling-you should be a therapist or counselor" all the time.  Maybe it is because I have 6 months of an internship to do to get my Master's in counseling.  Something I probably never will finish. Then there are the secrets I will never tell of things I've been through. 

Someone asked me about a month ago if I still used my mind and thoughts to focus on others who needed a little bit or a whole lot of karma.  The answer was no.  I am in a place where I just don't care anymore.  If it isn't going to matter in a week or month or 6 month or in a year or never then why would I waste time on letting it matter while it happens to me at all?  However, either people come across their own karma because they do deserve it or I don't even have to consciously focus on them anymore. 

It is uncanny how some go through the same things you do when you do or after you do.  You don't even know until much later and you shouldn't even know either.  It is a fluke the way you find out.  The empath in me wants to reach out but will not anymore.  Read above and you will get why.  

I'm probably a very bad person for enjoying that others end up in the same places I've been due to their behaviors, actions, and a whole lot of karma catching up to them.  But there is a difference.  I have never treated anyone the way I've been treated.....ever.  I've played tit for tat with several.  I haven't been able to fight the natural instinct of revenge until recently.  The rule has been I will and I can make you suffer a whole lot more than you made me.  You start it but I'll finish it. I've never been someone you want to have as an enemy because of that.  I'm a Scorpio and known for that sting but I'm also an empath and that is my first instinct when dealing with others. Reason for the nice sweet and pretty Scorpio sign as a tattoo in one place and then a wicked looking scorpion in another. 

Sweetness or sting......you decide which.  Although these days you won't get anything out of me at all.  That's the not caring you see.  But I take a little bit of pleasure in knowing karma dealt you a few life lessons you needed to learn and I still feel the caring too.  I am the sweet & pretty and the sting at the same time.