Category Archives: Life at Work

*POP* *popopopopopopopopopop*

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Wow. Wowie Zowie.

I contacted Jan yesterday and told her I was ready to work my 5th step. She was very surprised that my inventory was done. After reading it to her she said I’d done a very good job. This was a very, VERY, powerful experience.

I’m adopted. I’ve always known it. I’ve always been okay and circumspect about it. I hadn’t realized I was in total denial about how much that hurt and how big a hole I had inside me, how totally wounded I am because of it. There is no way I can put into words how overwhelming it was to get in touch with that this morning. Jan said that I now get to write an inventory on my adoption and the adoption of my son (I gave HIM up at birth, the cycle continued). I can do that.

Ooooh!  Remember my horoscope from the other day? The last sentence of it  said:

Isn’t it time for you, too, my fellow Cancerian, to circle back and reclaim an early part of you that got lost along the way

Isn’t it time indeed.

After leaving her apartment I was standing waiting for the elevator and there was this huge mirror. I don’t spend a lot of time looking myself in my eyes in the mirror. Sure I do my hair, check my clothes, that kind of thing. But look at myself in the mirror? No. I’ve made myself do it now and again, okay rarely, but why you know? So there I was looking myself in the eye in this huge mirror and I thought huh. As I turned away, this little tiny voice in my head, clear as day, clear as a bell, with all the anguish of a terrified child, cried “Don’t leave me mommy!”  OMG It was me. Needless to say I fucking lost it.

I took my inventory to the beach and reread it at Jan’s suggestion to see what else would come up besides the two things I came away with.

Yes, I came away with some obvious things like how intolerant of others I can be, how judgemental, how prickly, how defiant and defensive, and (Jan added a new one) intellectually arrogant. We agreed, however, that all of those were the result of the damage we uncovered this morning and that if I deal with the core, the base foundation, the rest will work itself out.

So I came away with some realizations about my core belief structure.

  • Deep down I feel that I deserve to be left
  • I am deeply wounded by this and it is no one’s fault but especially not mine

What came to me in the car while I read and watched the waves?

  • Deep down I feel that I don’t deserve to be alive

And you know what? The truth will set you free. I feel GREAT! Yes, little voices have been popping into my head all day. Suddenly that little tiny girl is very vocal. It makes me cry. I see now my defiant warrior and exactly who and what she has been protecting. She can calm down a little. There will be times when I still need her but right now she can take a break. She’s pretty battered herself.

Wow. I feel free. And I feel like the bottleneck that has been building? The one that was going to kill me? It BURST. Yes, I have a long road in front of me and much work to do. Getting past the denial is the biggest part of the work and I’m okay knowing that the intense stuff that is going to continue to come up will continue to come up. I’m okay. I can handle it. I’m not afraid of hard, painful work. I’m afraid of what I can’t see. What I don’t know about me runs me.

This afternoon a deposit from a retirement account I thought I had closed showed up in my checking account. Several hundred dollars. I have an interview on Wednesday for a Web Publishing position at our largest employer in the area. A WEB job. That market is finally opening up and they are finally seeing my resume. D has texted me several times from LA and when I sent a text about the job interview he called me. Partly because he thought it was for the day he comes home and wanted to know if he needed to make other arrangements (bloody Mercury Retrograde *laugh*) but also to just chat for a second.  Right now it doesn’t feel important if I get that job or if D and I find our way. I’m just glad to have had this experience and to feel like I’ve FINALLY nailed what it is that has driven me in such negative ways all these years.

You know what really blows my mind? Today, all of this could fall apart and I’d still be okay. I feel really, really CLEAN. Probably all that salt water.

The Energy?  Is FLOWING.

Coincidence? I Think Not

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I’ve been going to noon meetings again. Need them greatly and I certainly have the time. I’ve missed my weekday noon meeting and it’s good to go back. We have some real whack jobs that go there and the five minutes before the meeting settles down to business can be a circus. Some folks are tired of the circus so they started their own noon meeting three days a week at another location. Thought I’d go check it out. Sadly some of the circus freaks followed so I’ll not make it a regular thing BUT…

I ran into two women yesterday at the meeting and things are going to change a bit in my life because of it. It feels momentous, mainly because I know how momentous my meeting with one of these women was over a dozen years ago.

My second sponsor, Mo, is the one who had me write a 4th step inventory on my relationships with men. I’d been acting out with men in unhealthy ways in sobriety and it was time to take a good hard look at it. It changed my life and was the beginning of 9 years of single celibacy for me. Life changing, life affirming, falling in love with ME. For those who don’t know the 4th step in 12 step programs is:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

I haven’t seen Mo in years and years. I sent Christmas cards for years but after about 7 I stopped. I never heard from her. When they asked for birthdays in the meeting yesterday I heard her announce 33 years and I turned and there she was. Looking fabulous.

The second woman I ran into, Jan, was called on and after she said her name she yelled out “Hi Cynthia!!” Just returned from giving her apartment up in LA to finalize her move here, she is someone I started walking about Greenlake with. She follows (and teaches) a Buddhist path and we had much to talk about, our paths are very similar.

I connected with Mo after the meeting and will be calling her this week. We have a lot to catch up on.

Jan invited me to her new place for tea. I accepted but warned her, “I’m a mess.” She said, that’s great, come on. After a tour and a hello fest with her dog, she made me tea and asked me to spill. She knew I wouldn’t be at a noon meeting if I was working. And I spilled it all. Tears and Tea. She said a few things that I found very interesting. She said in her experience, when someone’s life keeps getting burned to the ground, there is a reason for it. The universe believes they are capable of great depths of feeling and the ability to search very, very deeply within themselves and that they are forced to do it because of that strength. That her Buddhist teacher is a mess all the time because he’s always going deeper. That me wanting to put on the brakes is of no consequence, this is the life I’m in this time around. That someone has a lot of faith in me. And that it is time to dig deeper yet again. Oh she said that we have to die, almost literally die, in order to get to the other side. Well I have to ask, how close to dead do I have to get because some days I pretty fucking close.

So I have one week to write an inventory. It is different than the ones I’ve done in the past. Instead of columns, it will be free form writing, asking that I be guided and that I ask some very basic questions. What am I so afraid of? What is holding me back? What are my core beliefs, the ones that are killing me? Just a few simple things like that. What I do know is that I have fallen out of love with myself. I don’t know who I am any more.  I want my life back. I want my spark back. I want to feel lovable again in my own eyes and I don’t, far from it.

What is interesting to me about all of this is that these two women are now book marks for my life and that I ran into them in the same place on the same day and was given the same assignment by both of them. Both are here in my life to help me love myself again.

The new inventory is more about my life in general and not just men but you can bet there will be at least one man on it. Among other things like jobs and parents and friends. One week. I got started last night but have much further to go.

She said that I am still in a relationship with D whether we think so or not. The fact that we are in some kind of contact on a daily basis proves it. There is much still happening there.

Last night D called me. Very briefly, he made sure it was brief, and that is okay with me. I’m not up to much and neither is he. He’s going to a family wedding over Labor Day and I am feeding and loving his cat while he’s gone. Not only that, I’m taking him to and from the airport. It’s the best way to handle the key issue (only one front door key to the building) but it’s also a way to see how things are going. Am I comfortable in his presence? Can we be just friends? Keeping my oar in so to speak. We are both benefiting greatly from the current solitude, I getting some good work done, and I’m assuming he is too. His neighbor, who adores me, is moving and D and M put together a few boxes of stuff M doesn’t want for me to paw through. Oh yeah, this relationship is far from over. I just don’t know what it actually is.

Anyway. I have this feeling that this work with Jan is going to change my life as much as my work with Mo did in ’97. I sure hope so. Something has got to give. I want to love myself again but I seem to be stuck.

Oh. One other thing.  The more time I spend away from my coven the more I think it is right. I might stay but if I had to decide today, Iwouldn’t. I will miss some of those people terribly, some of them have been so very kind.  But the path doesn’t feel right.  I had to initiate in order to know that, it’s a catch 22. Yes, parts of it do feel right but not enough to stay. I am following a very curvy Cyn Path and I don’t have a clue where it is leading but I have to trust this, that I will be lead. Things are going to get much simpler before all this is over, that I sense. More paring down is coming, please let it just be things like the fact that I have too many tarot decks… I know I’m a hermit but don’t take all the people out of my life.

But god damn it, send me a job. Please let this process open the way. I need to eat and pay the bills for crying out loud.

Poll ~ No Fire Sale

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Someone recently asked if I had a shop and I said that I used to.  Well, I’ve decided to try once again.  I must sell many precious items, I really need to raise some money, and will be opening my Etsy shop again this weekend.  I have many completed items of clothing and tarot pouches and pagan decoration thingies as well as some items which are close to completion that I set aside and will now complete.

Some items will be hard to part with so I will be agonizing over a few things as well.

Please speak up and let me know if this is something that folks might be SERIOUSLY interested in. Times are tough on the economic front and my prices are what I consider highish.  I need to know if I’m being realistic.  For instance, I’m considering selling the turquoise faery jacket for $300 but that might be ridiculous… I want this stuff to SELL.

I’ll be selling the  following as well as many other items:

I’m Home

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And I feel like shit. It was good to get away but sucks to come back to reality.

Mr. Furnace and I have restructured our relationship. He’s just not ready to exist together in certain ways and if he were a girlfriend I would totally recommend that he spend some time on his own healing from the last disaster. So he’s going to do that. The love is still strong, still there, the caring, the camaraderie, the let’s have coffee or hang out or have dinner, all still there. We just need to take the R word off the table for now. And while that makes me sad, yes, quite sad, no doubt about it, we have not nixed the idea for the future, just not NOW.  We had a good talk today, it was healing in it’s own way, we’re on the same page. There’s hope still there (but of course no promises). We are still both interested in the idea of being together as a possibility at a later date, just not NOW.  It was clear it wasn’t just me and wishful thinking. The right stuff is there. But darn it any way.

I’ve got nothing better to do that’s for sure. I need to heal my own damn heart. I’m a mess still.

I admit I’m pretty destroyed over this job loss.  Not because I miss the job, I don’t.  I’m grateful they let me resign gracefully so that my record is clean. But I’m scared about the future. I’m tired of being broke and tired and scared and and and and lonely and alone.

I was fine on the vacation.  Did stuff, hung out with dear friends, one of whom I haven’t seen in a decade at least.  But I woke up this morning to drive home 550 miles (which I did in 8 hours including pee and gas breaks) and I can’t stop crying.  Just crying my eyes out.  I wondered if, or more accurately WHEN, that was going to happen.

I’m not digging planet earth all that much today. . .  She is a harsh mistress.

I Simply Don’t Know How To Say This

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I had a funeral for a friend this week, I lost my job, Mr. Furnace and I are having communication problems and because of emergency oral surgery last week he has no time or energy for me, and I’ve taken a leave of absence from my coven.

I’m a leaf on the wind, a very sad leaf, and I don’t have a compass.

I feel like a pariah.  A Big Fat Pariah.

I’m going to go sort things.  Maybe I’ll find some answers in the process.