Dear Buddha

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Dear Buddha 

I completely agree that looking too closely into the past or the future can cause mass destruction, but here's my thing if you do not look at your past behavioural patterns how can you change future ones? In my addiction I was the tough chick, a nod from me and someone was either welcomed or excluded from our group, and it was a rather large group. We were "The" in crowd, everyone knew us and they all feared us. I fed off of that, because it made me feel good, and special. 

When I look back at that person I know exactly what happened to turn me into her, into the bully I hate seeing in the mirror, the girl guys were too intimidated by and the women were haunted by. I was either with you or I hated you there was no in between. 

Rarely did I try to sit down and try and fix a friendship or try to understand the other person's point of view. 

For two years my now ex best friends girlfriend and I did not speak because I thought she hated me, so I ignored her every time I saw her. Now she is one of my closest confidence's now that the friend is gone. From that I have gained another amazing friend, two great friends after two years of ignorance and fear of being seen for the selfish person I really am, though they would never say that. 

In my last letter Buddha I mentioned that I worked in a shelter, I do this all year around with the same charity, even though the job changes the tasks change I am still there. I get paid from November until March the rest of it is volunteer, I live off of my disability check. I do not need this check, I continue to do what I do because I love it, but also because if I attempt further education I will have to go to work and to school and I cannot handle that as well as all of the other commitments in my life, namely my wheelchair bound mother. 

Some of you reading this may say "awww" don't. The truth is I probably could handle school, work and my mom but as it is I have little time for myself and I am still learning how to balance the work I do, with helping mom, taking care of the dog, taking care of myself as well and for those of you with more tools then I you'll say thats nothing, but for me it really is a lot. I have a lot of skill building and tool gathering to do I know this and slowly but surely I am working my way up to it. 

For instance as much as I love working with the single mom's, the homeless, youth group, day camp and all the other programs we do I know that I cannot continue to volunteer my time from April to November and live off of only nine hundred dollars a month, not if I am wanting to build a future for myself. I know Buddha you say we need to think about today not tomorrow, but tomorrow comes every twenty four hours and I need to start putting a nest egg away, just in case. 

So far the Universe has provided me with everything that I need to be successful it is time I take those tools and utilize them instead of continuing to sit on my ass and wait and see what happens. The man I love is very far away and both he and I have plans for our future, in that future I see marriage, children and a house. Money aside I remember what it was like to grow up hungry, to watch my mother starve so my family could eat, I will never allow my children to go through the pain of seeing that. 

I need to get a new job, at this point I am looking more towards retail. I work well with customers and I enjoy helping them, I'm great with customer service so I think that as long as I can find a company that has room to grow I can do well in that sort of industry and frankly as much as I love the volunteer work I do, the constantly needing to be there emotionally as well as physically is a bit much after all these years. I am starting to think working in a retail industry that keeps me a little more anonymous from the clientèle could be just what the dr ordered. 

I don't know much about my future but I know if I do not make some changes we won't have one. 

I have been talking about this with the partner too, the more he looks at his future I know he sees the same fears that I do. How will we survive, how will we make it as a couple if neither of us can make it alone, and we have to both work on that and figure it out. 

Baby Love