The Holiday Blahs

The last few days have been blah for me.  Not sure why, in fact I am in one of the best places I have ever been in my life.  Things just seem to be going my way on most fronts.   I have great friends, a warm house, good kids, a job that I love… a job… Maybe that is the reason for my blahs… not that I have a job…

 Job=Money, Money=Happiness…

Money is tight everywhere and happiness seems to be diminishing.  

Money isn’t everything but it sure makes the world go around and affects our moods.  During the holidays it seems to get worse….working in retail I have seen a shift in attitudes. 

Being a single mom in a single income house doesn’t leave much extra for the holidays.  I think of all the things I want to do and gifts I would love to give then reality sinks in…. barely scraping by every month doesn’t leave much for the extras. 

I know I am not alone in this.  There are many people without jobs, others who have taken cuts in pay, barely scrapping  wondering how they are gonna do all the things they want to do this Christmas.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are not about what we can buy…although the marketers for Black Friday think so… they are about being thankful for what we have;  Thankful for family, friends, warm beds, food on the table even if it isn’t a full spread turkey dinner, thankful  for the reason for the holidays. 

Thanksgiving… we live in a free country. 

Christmas…we are free from the bondage of sin and death

Freedom is something we take for granted daily and something we disrespect by putting ourselves in the bondage produced by thinking money is everything…. 

Chameleon

I left the story in the last post with meeting the woman I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. That was in 1993.  We lived together, I went to school, and raised a couple little ones for a year and a half.   We loved each other and worked well together on building a home.  I was young and not secure with myself or my sexuality. 

At this point in my life I was doing what I wanted, needed to do.  Many people in my life were telling me I was wrong; that my relationship with her was wrong.  Emotionally I was up and down.   I was searching spiritually for the right path.   One day a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door and I let them in.   It was obvious from family pictures on the wall that we were a couple.  They brought out the Bible and pointed out all the verses that condemned homosexuality.   My partner got angry with them and tore one of the pages out of her Bible and told them…”well it doesn’t say that now does it”. 

I have been a chameleon all my life.  I learned to change my behavior and my desires based on what was going on around me or what the people around me wanted.  With all the peer and family pressure my reactionary personality took over.  Although I loved her, I left her.  I thought it was better that way.  Make everyone else happy, and God happy too.

Being a chameleon is not a fun way to live nor is it very happy.  It also causes a lot of pain for the people you are trying to change for.  You can only be someone you are not for so long.  Then you break and people get hurt and confused.  Many times they try to change you back to what you had become.  When we wear masks...or misrepresent ourselves we are doing an injustice to ourselves and others.

  

This was not the end of that behavior for me; in fact I struggle daily with not reacting to the desires of others; wanting to change me in order to make others happy.   One thing I have discovered in the last couple years is that I have to know myself before I can put an end to this madness…   Getting to know your self is not fun work either J

Today I am ME nothing more…. Nothing less…

Did you know?

When people find out I am a lesbian one of the first questions they ask is “when did you know?”  I look back and think about this question a lot.

I grew up in a small town… population -50 as referred to by Cory who is from California… with very small town mentality.  I don’t even think I knew there was such a thing as a lesbian until I was 19.  What I do know is that I felt closer to my girlfriends and was more distraught about losing one of them than I ever was losing a boy…  don’t get me wrong I had boyfriends and did the whole dating thing… a little too much.

I got married at 20. That is early and I barely knew the man, we had only known each other for 3 months when we got married.  Looking back I know that I was just looking for a stable life.  Not that my childhood was unstable but I was not comfortable being alone.  I was not comfortable with who I was.  I think that had a lot to do with not knowing who I was. 

I married and alcoholic which I knew nothing about either and in the beginning didn’t realize because I was drinking right along with him.  When I got pregnant, on our honeymoon, I started to see the light…. A little too late….

I was working as a hairstylist so I got to know a lot of people… different kinds of people… my world opened up.   I fell for one of my clients and realized it was more than just wanting to be best friends with her… being married I put it in the back of my mind.

Things went downhill fast in our marriage… by the time we were married for two years his alcoholism had gotten much worse… he was not working… so I was supporting the family, cleaning the house, taking care of the baby and I was pregnant again and he was suggesting a threesome… “bring a good looking girl home with you”  I was afraid to do that because I knew that was very dangerous for our marriage.  But I started exploring my sexuality.

After I had my 2^nd baby things were really bad in the marriage and I left him.   I knew at this point that I did not want to be with a man… that my love was going to be a woman. 

I had a two year old and a 6 month old at this time and I worked full time so there was not much time for a social life but I found  time and eventually met the woman  I thought I would spend the rest of my life with…..

I don’t know if this answers the question of “did you know?”  It is my opinion that no parent in their right mind would encourage same sex relationships because of the hardship it puts on them.  Not that my parents knew.

Society is definitely heterosexual promoting so even if I knew I would have suppressed it and gotten married because it was the “right thing to do”.  

That suppression of who I am caused many hardships and caused a lot of pain for me and others….so again I say pretend NO more…