Dear Buddha

“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” 

~Unknown

Dear Buddha

I got this quote off another website, and upon reading the article, which said I should cut all ties with my now ex music man, I must respectfully dissagree. 

Tonight we had probably the most mature, respectful conversation since we've known each other. 

We went from knowing each other to I love you, to crazy chaos in such a short few weeks that tonight when we talked we both realized that neither of us had taken time to really get to know each other as separate people before we jumped into a relationship. 

I think finally we are both at a place where we realize as much as we care for each other, we need to take time for ourselves first, and each other second. 

Many people who read this may disagree, but I have learned through this short but interesting journey with the music man, that I put a lot of my issues, my fears and my hopes on him. My expectations of him were entirely unrealistic, and vice versa with him. 

The both of us realized tonight that while equally lonely and equally afraid of being alone we jumped at the chance to be with someone, before we took the time we needed to see who that other person was. That does not I sincerely believe, devalue our feelings but instead make them all the more important. 

In three short months he will be here for seven full days. For seven full days I will have the music man, we will get to know each other in person. Without all of the drama and miscommunication of on-line chatting. We will spend honest to goodness time with each other, getting to know each other. 

I have no expectations. I hope that we are both able to figure things out, that I can deal with the fears I hold inside, let go of the reservations I need to in order to eventually be in a healthy relationship. I called my sponsor, and he and I have plans tomorrow to work on these fears and these reservations. 

I know that one conversation isn't going to fix everything, but perhaps he has some tools I can utilize in letting go of the past. 

A friend of mine once told me "not every man is going to hit you" he knew my entire experience. He knew my father had hit me, and the men I had slept with in the past either echoed that, or simply used me for sex. 

The music man is the first honest to goodness man I have ever met and dated, and for his efforts he was given a bag-o-crazy. 

I am not saying he is perfect, we know Buddha he has his own share of crazy and has made his mistakes to. 

I am saying however that in order to have a healthy relationship I have to understand myself more clearly then I have in the past. I can look back over the map of twenty-odd years and see where certain things shaped the person I am today. 

I used to think I was happy with that person, that I could accept being alone...that eventually my prince would come. As a good friend pointed out recently however I don't have the opportunity to meet many men. I don't go out to bars, and even when a man does come my way I tend to excuse myself as quickly as I can. 

This comes from, as I told the music man, an unadulterated fear of men, even though I know there are good men out there. Really truly wonderful men, my fears are about me, not about them. 

I know that learning to trust again must now be my focus. For the last 18 months it really has been on not drinking, rather then changing my behaviours and past attitude towards men and to myself. 

Instead I have simply put up a wall between myself and them, I have a male sponsor but I have yet to disclose all my secrets to him, even though I have known him the better part of a year. I chose him because I knew he was safe and unlike female sponsors I've had in the past he's actually stuck around. I have not however allowed myself to fully trust him. 

This will change tomorrow. Today is the day I am reclaiming myself working on myself and letting go...as for the future? No more worries. No more stress, just new found acceptance. 

Baby Love

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

Dear Buddha

"To share happiness. And to have done something good. Before leaving this life is sweet."Buddha

Dear Buddha I whole heartedly agree. This blog is in part dedicated to the man I love but it is also dedicated to myself, to learning who I really am behind the face I show to the world. It is my hope that by writing this blog I will continue to celebrate the new love I have found, and share it with you but also celebrate my personal growth.

So let us begin with how we met, I flipped on an online radio station and heard his voice, I knew the moment I heard it he was it. The one. The forever after all.

In recent days and weeks we had some growing pains but I feel like we are on track now, we are setting up boundaries and making sure that we each follow them – for instance three days a week we both have free, and they happen for the most part to be the same evenings. So Friday and Saturday he works and on Friday I have my meetings, Sunday he does his show. Monday Tuesday we have free together, after my Tuesday meeting, Wednesday he does his show but we have time to chat back and forth, Thursday we have free together. So there really is plenty of time to spend together in the week but also live our lives and enjoy our separate interests.

Since I met him I have found that I have to re-learn the social norms of an adult relationship. It is new for me, this communication and trust thing. Trust someone you see every day in person is one thing but putting your fears aside and trusting someone who you cannot always look in the eyes is a very different kind of trust.

The more we put the drama, the stress and the fears behind us, the more I begin to see the road ahead, what I hope will happen, or think could happen.

I really am trying not to have too many expectations, because expectations destroy everything in the universe. There cannot be a plan of any sort really; it has to be one of those things that just happens as we go. This is the most nerve wracking part, because whatever the universe throws at us, and it could be anything, is something we need to deal with, as it comes, there is no planning for it. No knowing what could happen to either of us in the long run.

This frightens me, I am really trying hard to be the best girlfriend I can be, but the truth is I have had exactly one live in boyfriend in my life time, I do not really know how to do the dating thing or the girlfriend thing well.

I have to remind myself there is no reason to be jealous of any girl, he has shown me several times that I am the only one he wants, now that the drama is behind us, now that everyone we know online understands we are together. The more I learn about him the more I have to smile, sometimes he can be really subtle about showing me his feelings and other times he will outright “claim” me as his. Both approaches work for me.

Some might call it cavemen like in its behavior, but really it’s a reaffirmation of what we both believe, we will be together. There were like I have said, hiccups, miscommunications and hurt feelings, but I look at only a few days ago to today, where we both know exactly where we stand and what we want and I smile.

I smile because many people who care about me who know every detail told me to walk away to call it quits before it really starts to hurt and I kept saying no because I did not want to regret anything. If we are going to do this, try to be together and make it real then it has to BE real, we must communicate, we must work on the problems rather than walking away at the first opportunity.

For the first time in my life I really am trying to take responsibility for my actions for things I have said and done that hurt him in order to be not only a better person but a happier person. I don’t know if he knows how much he means to me, or how much I am willing to fight for this to work.

I feel like if I just give up and walk away I am making the same mistakes I made in my addiction and I never want to go back to that, ever again.

We have a lot of differences him and me but we also have some similarities. We think a lot alike, though sometimes I have problems either voicing my thoughts or taking the time to listen to the thoughts of others. Sometimes it takes me awhile to compress what I think and figure it all out, which can sometimes get me into trouble.

While we live in different countries we are not that far apart, he is a geek and I….well I don’t really know who this version of me will turn out to be, but I am excited to find out.

This week alone I have gone through some changes, I have been spending more time at home focusing on myself, for a while. That actually sounds less selfish then it is. Really what I have been doing is focusing on things that make me happy, in my real life I spend a lot of time taking care of those around me helping many people because I love to do it. But the last week or so has really been about “me” about meditating, relaxing, getting my hair and nails done, silly little things like cleaning my house, hanging out with my dog. Things that I feel are vital, absolutely vital to the security of my soul. And I have to say it feels amazing.

For the first time in my life I am really and truly taking a look at the person I am and the person I want to be.

For most of November to March I worked in a homeless shelter *as I have done the past six years* and although I loved it I really did not take time for myself, I didn’t go to meetings, or check in with my sponsor, I did not even touch my steps.

In this week I have made it to two meetings, fellowship with my support group and friends as well as checked in with my sponsor half a dozen times. I am proud of this not because it makes me special but because even without an excuse it is just generally hard for me to reach out for help when I need it.

I have also witnessed two people in my support group sliding dangerously back into their addiction, a year ago even six months ago this would have pushed me back as well, today I know however my job is to pray for them and be there when they answer the phone. To keep them accountable to their truth but only so long as they are willing to take my suggestions, I cannot live sobriety for them only for myself but I can guide them.

This is my 29^th year on this earth and it is my hope that I can open the door to a new future for myself, this begins with this blog, but also with a new job, a new boyfriend and a new great of amazing friends. So I hope you enjoy travelling with me.

Baby Love