Love and Life

Love is the strongest power in the world. Love can move mountains. As long as you love you live.

Love is fragile.

Of all the sayings about love, and there are lots more than the few I quoted, that last statement is the truest. Love is fragile. Everyone has heard of couples deeply in love who become the bitterest enemies. Because love and hate are flip sides of the same emotion.

Yes, the same emotion not opposite emotions.

Human beings are complicated and we tend to identify things in complex manners which we then try to break down into the simplest components we can. Emotions are perhaps the hardest for us to deal with because they are all interlinked. And the love/hate emotion is the most complex one of all.

Negative emotions are the easiest for us to experience. Positive emotions need support to survive. they need the determination of the person to feel them and not let them be overwhelmed by the negative emotions. Negative emotions can grab us and pull us into them very quickly and very easily and exert a grip we have to fight to escape. Positive emotions lift us up and make us drop our defenses so that we are more vulnerable.

So why bother with positive emotions? Because they are better for us. They show us all that is and can be good and help us be better people. But, yes, they leave us exposed to those who don't fight negative emotions.

Love is the worst for making us vulnerable because we want so much to be loved in return and to please the person we love and have them be pleased with who we are. Love that isn't returned will die or be turned into hate. Thus the reason why two people who loved deeply can become the bitterest enemies. The coin flips, the emotion is turned over and love becomes hate in equal measure.

Usually, love that is not returned will die away, sometimes in bitterness, sometimes not. It depends on the situation. Sometimes, love is eroded as events occur to make a person think that their love is not appreciated or returned or valued.

That's what happened with me. I used to worship my mother. She was the world's greatest mother in my eyes. As I got older and saw more of her flaws my opinion didn't change. She had sometimes overcome her flaws and sometimes had given into them but she was always trying to be the best she could be. And I loved her for it. She inspired me.

Then my father died and my mother was on her own. She rose to the challenge magnificently. She grieved then set about making her life her own. I was so proud of her.

I got pregnant for a second time but this time something went wrong and I ended up losing the baby. My husband and I talked it over and decided that was it, no more trying for children. I had lost the baby to the same illness that my second sister had lived with and I didn't want to run the risk of having it happen again if we tried for another child. I thought it was a genetic condition.

My mother, seeing one of her last chances to have more grandchildren being taken away, decided that was a good time to tell me I was adopted. No, no that wasn't a good time. Telling me during my first pregnancy would have been a better time so that I could have known the family medical history was pointless. Telling me after I had just lost my baby was a bad time.

And how do I know she told me only because she wanted more grandchildren? She told me so. She also told my brother he was adopted because he and his wife were debating having more kids because of what had happened with me. If nothing had happened, she would never have told us.

Some of the love I had for her died when she did that. How could a mother say such a thing to her child? Because despite not being born from her I had been her child since I was a couple of months old. For years I told myself that she had also done it out of love for me, to let me know I couldn't rely on the family medical history for any potential problems, and because she didn't want me making a rash decision by thinking there was a genetic flaw to worry about.

But her words stayed at the back of my head and whenever they tried to come out I'd push them back. I didn't want to bring that back up and open old scars. I didn't want to have her confirm that she was disappointed I kept to my decision not to try for another child.

However, telling me seemed to open a floodgate. For several years nothing was mentioned about me being adopted then I started getting little "confidences" when I spoke with Mom. Well, maybe my father had really been my father. There were three other children my birth mother had had and one looked a lot like me.

Well, I wondered. How did she know so much about my birth mother? Was this a person I had met when i was younger and never knew the biological relationship? Why is Mom bringing this up?

Then we decided to move back to the same city again. Mom had commented on not being able to see me and my daughter as much as she wanted. She was never close to y husband. So now we'd be in the same city and able to get together whenever we wanted. Or so we thought.

But Mom was always busy with some activity or plans with friends. Calling her was pointless since she wasn't home or was about to head out or have someone by or another call would interrupt us. So I told her to call me since I was almost always available. I know she complained about me never calling to my sister because she'd bring it up with me once in a while and I'd remind her I have tried calling. She tended to forget details like that though.

And every time we talked she'd say "We have to get together and spend the day" and I'd tell her "anytime, just let me know when you're free". The only days I wouldn't have dropped everything to spend time with her would have been days when I had a doctor's appointment. But she was always too busy.

Yet somehow it was my fault because I wasn't able to get over and visit at any time. I took the buses so I was restricted to their schedule, which wasn't great. I certainly couldn't afford to hop a cab over to visit every week.

And my love died a bit more.

When my mom died earlier this year from lung and bone cancer, she had almost completely destroyed the love I had felt for her. I cried for the first day because despite everything she was my mom and I had loved her. But my grief was already ebbing by the next day and before the week was out it was like she had been dead for years except for still thinking it was her when the phone rang in the evening or seeing something I thought she'd like made for her. Even that faded in a few weeks.

My mom wasn't perfect. But she changed a lot during the years when we moved away. Before we moved, we spent time together. Not every week but every second month we'd get together and spend some time together. Mom was driving then so she'd come over and pick up me and my daughter. She stopped driving while we were gone and when she did, she still used the buses to get around.

When we moved back, Mom moved in with her boyfriend of several years and became dependent on him to be driven around. She stopped using the buses. And he wasn't the type to be willing to drive around for someone he hardly knew. I was willing to work with the bus schedule.

But I was getting the impression that Mom didn't really want to spend time with me or my daughter. Somehow, whether because she had finally told me I was adopted or because she had rearranged her life to not have me in it when I moved away, it wasn't important to her to make the time to spend with me or to rearrange her plans to spend time with me. Or at least that was how it seemed to me.

I will drop anything, except doctor appointments (:P), to spend time with anyone who asks me for it. A friend calls and asks if it's all right to drop by in ten minutes or so, no problem, come on by. Meet up with them someplace? Sure, just will take some time to get there.

I know how important it is to let people know you want them in your life. Because love is fragile and can be killed so very, very easily. I'm sorry Mom. I used to love you a lot. I miss you and wish things had been different. But you rebuffed all the times I tried to reach out to you and let you know I still loved you and wanted to be with you. I do still love you. Just not as much as I used to.

Self Image, Esteem, and Analysis

I was talking with a friend who was applying for a job and had to answer one of those personality questionnaires some companies still use. He said it wasn't the first part that was annoying, how would you describe yourself, but the second part, how would your friends describe you, that made him wonder who thinks up these things. How are we supposed to know how our friends would describe us? It's not something we normally discuss.

It reminded me of the questionnaires I got in my course when we were doing the social interaction module. I wondered if someone mixed up the forms they were to give my friend. But it also got me thinking about self analysis.

One of the hardest things to do is to take an honest look at ourselves. We have our own self-image of who we think we are and sometimes, well okay usually, it doesn't completely match with who we really are. Because you know, we want to be people who keep our tempers, who react well under pressure, who have a witty and charming response to other people in any situation. We don't like admitting we have flaws and we really hate it when someone else points out our flaws.

Several years ago I took a good long hard look at myself. I had just experienced an event which tore apart my world and made me wonder who I was and where I was from and where I wanted to go. It took time but I looked at who I was and had been and decided on who I wanted to be. Some things I didn't need to change. Some things I had to change. And some things needed to be changed but for whatever reason couldn't be changed so I had to figure out a compromise.

To illustrate, I was a person who cared about others, that could stay. I cared too much about what other people thought, that had to change and could be changed without losing the ability to care. I didn't like confrontations and couldn't change that fact but needed to find some way to handle it. Well, if I wasn't strong enough to handle confrontations then I would have to be able to let other people do their ranting and raving without taking it personally and let it slide off. then I would have to work around the other person to do whatever needed to be done. That I could do.

Our self image and self esteem are vital to our interactions with other people. One message I'm always giving to people younger than me is that no matter what anyone else says, the only person they need to have approval from is their self. There will always be people willing to criticize, complain, tear down, walk over, and generally treat you as if you don't matter. Because you don't matter to them so why should they matter to you?

Despite how it sometimes seems, there are actually more decent people around than nasty people. But the people who don't personally know you won't put themselves out to defend you, they have no reason to do so. So it seems, from our viewpoint, as if there are more uncaring people out there than not.

In the end we all have to decide who we want to be. When people hurt us we have a choice. We can let them walk over us and make us feel worthless. We can stand up and fight back, making ourselves feel more miserable as anger and bitterness take over because the other person won't care and won't change. Or we can ignore the other person and be who we want to be.

It's hard to be who you want to be because there's so much pressure to conform and be one of the regular people, the "normals", to have the approval of others, and to fit in. Someone someplace will not approve of something you do or say and will be very happy to give you their opinion on how you should be acting. Just smile, make an appropriate polite and noncommittal response (I prefer "I'll have to think about that"), and let it slide away. It is your life and it is your choice on what sort of person you are.

There is only one person who lives with you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year of your life. So if you can look in a mirror and like the person looking back at you, you're ahead of the majority of the species.

There are still things I would like to change but realize I probably never will change. When I look at myself in the mirror, aside from wishing I was prettier, I like the person I see. And I know it's been a long, tough road getting to this point but the journey is worth it. Because I am a person I am proud of. That's really all that counts.