Singing Bowl Sanity

So yesterday was a bad day, hence no post. We all have bad days, it is an essential part of life. Ironically is was not the first time I'd experienced this particular kind of bad day, but it was the first time that it didn't sink the entirety of my day.

I had sent a text to a friend that I was "coming to terms with certain realities." The response was that she had no idea what that means. So here goes:

There is a freedom in acceptance of circumstances, even disappointing ones. I've spent the last few years idling in fear. Fear of what? Loss of all different makes and models. Yesterday though, I addressed those fears, looked them in the eye and said, "Bring it."

I've worked unbelievably hard to get where I am today. There is a part of me that gets tearful at the thought that it could go away and I would have to completely restart my life at this point but another part of me that no longer has the will to allow that to hold me back. Looking at those insecurities and fears and literally saying to myself, "That actually wouldn't be the worst, because you can clearly handle anything," is the nicest thing I've done for myself in a very, very long time.

Yesterday I had a heartbreaking conversation with my longest and oldest friend who lives overseas. This is a person who has championed me no matter what, and has never told me what to do or how to live my life but rather just was there when I needed him. I told him I was having a bad day and I needed to talk. I asked if he could message me when he was free. He messaged me back immediately.

I word vomited my entire heart onto a screen and his reaction was beyond supportive, beyond encouraging, and exactly what I needed. I felt bad pouring all of that out and when I admitted even that, his response was "I'm impressed." He gave me instant validation that it took a lot to say or type or admit it all and that he was there for wherever things went. It was an internet hug of the best kind.

Ironically I had made plans with a good friend to go to a Singing Bowl Meditation class at a yoga center for last night. I had arranged a sitter and was completely open to whatever I got from the experience. The two people that knew the reality of my situation that I had told I was going to meditation and may just cry the entire class, said, "That may be the perfect thing for you today and it may be no mistake that is where you will end up this evening."

They were completely correct. Honestly, I fell deep in love with hippie culture at a very young age. I miss Oregon, but I just couldn't handle the cold, gray rain with what was happening in my life at the time. Everything else about Oregon I completely love, and all of the hippie, yoga, realign, live organically and purely stuff, I always embraced.

When my friend invited me she said "You're literally the only friend I can take." I laughed because I didn't know if that was a compliment? Turns out it was a big one. 

Don't get me wrong, the class itself is weird. The instructor is in a class all her own, but my brain was turned off by force of sound and it was amazing. There were moments where my mind would get frenzied and then some sound or chant or hum would shut it down. It was perfect.

I left feeling a new wave of "rested," went home, had some tea and got some much-needed rest. I'm being incredibly calm and patient with my body today and am feeling more aware. It's one of those things that I definitely wish I could attend regularly but generally just feel blessed for having the experience at all. 

There was absolutely no mistake in that being the end of my emotional day. There were moments were I felt proud of myself for not reacting as I had in the past to the events that led to my near-mental collapse, and it reaffirmed the work I have been doing. There were regretful moments of "how did I get here?" Regardless, the singing bowls seemingly saved my sanity for the day and that is quite a powerful accomplishment.

Being forced to be still and embrace the chakras and heart centers and light? It was necessary and healing for my trauma. Listening to the calming and unusual sounds and just releasing some tension? Beyond necessary. I felt all the stress and I felt it dissipate.

It was a great gift from a friend that I didn't even know how desperately I needed and I feel so lucky to have been invited. I woke up ready to just take things as they come and not just face, but embrace the new realities.

Right now my body is physically challenging me and I'm in the midst of an intensive diet and eating habit change. Mentally I'm having to regroup, rebuild and prepare for anything. Emotionally I'm taking literally one minute at a time. The daily goal is just to not cry.

This is what I know: I will not be saying yes to much through the end of the year in terms of extra plans. I am in self preservation mode and can't let obligatory things get in the way of my sanity. I will drown it out with singing bowls if needed. 

I may not be posting as much, but will definitely do what I can for the remainder of the year. I will continue though, because that is what we do. We continue. So away I go. 

The Blanket Bumble - Best Friend To The Rescue

Last month on vacation my daughter left a little blanket at a Holiday Inn in PA between NYC and our home base of Bainbridge, PA. At this Holiday Inn we didn't have the best experience before the blanket leave behind. I don't know if it's a male thing but my husband wanted to make sure we left with what we paid for and not a cent more.

With his vast hospitality knowledge we left with quite a discount and without the blanket. This was the first trip where I allowed my daughter to pack her own stuff. There was no judgement and just a few guidelines as far as what to pack, and what she could and could not bring. She asked if she could bring a small blanket for the plane and I said yes.

She grabbed a little pink one she had had since she was a baby and off we went. It made it to hotel #1, my best friend's house, NYC, and then the final hotel before departing from our possession. We realized it had not made it into the rental car for the journey back to home base the same day we checked out of the hotel and my husband called to confirm they had it, to then have it set aside and  sent back our direction.

When I was younger my uncle had taken me on trips with my cousins from time to time to Baltimore and such. I was the little anxious girl who couldn't travel without her stuffed animals. I once left like 5 stuffed animals in a hotel as he was not one to remember the excess stuff in the midst of adventure. I was beside myself. One call to the hotel and one FedEx box later, they came home to me less than a week after the departure.

I asked my husband after his quest for better Holiday Inn service to handle the exchange. I was ill-prepared for the drama that would ensue. 

First I was harassing my husband every other day, which I'm sure he loved about, "Oh did you call them? Did they give a tracking number? Did they return your call?" The responses kept varying from "I am waiting for the Manager," to "Oh they are emailing me the tracking number."

I started to think he was just saying whatever he need to in order to get me to leave him alone. It was the most obnoxious thing. The whole time I'm texting my best friend about the whole thing and she's agreeing with me that it sounds like the hotel is dropping the ball or hating on us for the lax customer service commentary at check out.

There is this song and dance around everything and people saying it has been sent or that a tracking number will be emailed for three weeks. Three weeks of the weird, broken and strange communications or dare I say lack there of.

Finally I call myself and the employee says they never got a credit card number. I give them the card number. It's not working. Impossible but technology is fickle. I give them a debit card number with money to be spent in that account. It doesn't go through. Impossible and so I say, "I think it's the system you're using." What do they tell me to do? I have to call FedEx.

Then I call FedEx and they inform me that they just changed their system. In order to give Holiday Inn the shipping label I must set up a personal Fed Ex account, buy said label and EMAIL the Holiday Inn people the label and wait for them to send. This seems like a LOT to ask of front desk associates who haven't though to USE THE POST OFFICE instead, or have yet to figure out the new mode of FedEx.

Finally my friend says, "Do you want me to just go and get it?" This thing is 90 minutes away. The stubborn mom part of me wants to win the blanket battle and make this hotel get their shit together. They have it. We want it back. Will my daughter live without it? Absolutely, but seeing as they still have the damned thing, can we just have it back?

Best friend to the rescue. Calling to say it would be picked up was another great adventure. I gave the name and spelled it and gave them the pick up window. They said "Okay, but she needs to be prepared to show ID." They can't figure out FedEx but card like a bar for a blanket apparently?

Yesterday I got the picture, my new favorite picture by the way, of my best friend outside of the hotel with the blanket on her shoulder. Operation Blanket Retrieval was a success! She selflessly offered to send the blanket by way of the post office, a genius idea by the way, tomorrow and I said not to. I said to wait.

This may seem odd but the entire exchange has kept me in a weirdly pensive perspective. I realized that, one small thing left behind was a weird stress. No one was losing sleep but it ricochet'd into an argument and nagging between my husband and I, my daughter just wanted a blanket back, an experiment in horrible customer service wrapped in weird karma, making things work for yourself, and best friends coming through in ways they ALWAYS have, with small steps for your child and huge steps for humankind.

It's just a blanket right? But that blanket was a baby shower gift from a friend that my daughter likes. I tried to buy another but they no longer make it. I tried to have it shipped and give an establishment my money to return my item to me, only to have it be, for lack of a better phrase, as shit show. My best friend selflessly volunteered to go and get it and return it and now I'm left, calm, grateful, highly amused and in no rush for return.

Maybe that blanket lives at Aunt Angela's awaiting for my daughter's triumphant return and will be the story of her six year old self. Maybe that blanket shows up with a Christmas package. Maybe that blanket shows up in October some random ass day because my best friend is sick of looking at it. 

All I know is this, we will never be staying at Holiday Inn again, and with the blanket bumble comes simplistic reminders of ALL THAT WE HAVE. I'm so lucky I have a best friend willing to go that distance in every sense. I'm lucky I have a husband that tried but got distracted and I'm lucky I'm so stubborn and persistent that the blanket didn't end up in a donation bin for no good reason. My daughter is lucky she has a mom who cares about a pink heart and peace sign blanket and that her mom also chose the best person in the world to be her only Aunt Angela and drive to fetch that thing.

These are my Thursday thoughts! We are so close to Friday!

The Friend Fade

I've gone on about ghosting and such before, but a long time ago I did a personal journal about what I like to ominously call "The Fade." It is something that used to wear on me heavily and make my heart hurt, but now, recently in fact, I have healed enough to talk about what it all really means.

If you get on Pinterest you can find a million memes and articles about friends drifting apart and ghosting and outgrowing each other and everything to trigger you back to whatever social stuff you went through that makes you a little more attuned to things now. I've gotten sucked into the Pinterest quote and notes and have mixed feelings about whether or not it is helpful, but you can find some wisdom for sure.

I'll share my experience then, and what I have learned from it and how I use it now, and hopefully it can help some others feel less alone.

Before I had my daughter I had a tight knit group of amazing co-workers and befriended someone physically, spiritually and mentally beautiful. She and her family got my pregnant self, my husband and my newborn and infant through our first year as a family and I will forever feel grateful for them and miss them like crazy. Just typing this I'm welling up. They were the best ever.

I think being around them was our first taste of a second family home in Florida and we loved it. I considered her parents to be my daughters grandparents that were close by and considered her and her sister all aunties. They were our second family in my opinion.

Parenthood was rough on my husband and I. There were so many really uncomfortable and unfavorable things at play during that first year as parents and I struggled as a mother to balance everything. Looking back now, I wish I had been more open with my best friend about what was really going on but I can tell you, my family is still healing from some of the pain and trauma from that time period.

By the time my daughter was three my gorgeous Tampa best friend and I were barely speaking much. She hosted my child's first birthday party and was my greatest help and she was gone from my life, just a name on a friends list, a person in the background. At the time it felt painful, awkward and anxious but after a lot of reflection I now understand how and why we grew apart.

Between my friend getting her own adult life with her wonderful boyfriend together, getting away from parental units and getting into school, and with my being a fresh mom with a workaholic husband and no fun money or availability for much of a social life, the shift started easily, although perhaps I was too tired to call it out for what it was. She did so much for me and I miss her daily.

When I was starting to get into my worst, darkest stages, when I was very lost and beginning my year long struggle with job changes, weight loss and adulting stuff, that was when the fade began. I didn't feel abandoned in a time of need, I felt like I needed to let her grow and thrive because she was considerably younger than me and very much allowed to go and have fun and be young without my old self getting in the way.

The fade started with simply changing a lot of plans often, and things coming up. If it wasn't one of us, it was both of us having a hard time scheduling and committing. As I became less available due to family circumstances, it made it easier for her to step back more and more. The tagging on social media posts stopped. The liking of the pictures and statuses became few and far between. The texts went from daily to every other day to once a week to once every couple weeks to maybe once a month to nothing. 

After a few months of almost no contact I scraped together money for Christmas gifts for her and her sister because she'd at least touch base to say thank you, or so I thought. I figured then I could check in and try and talk to her. I messaged her mom to confirm they received them and she sweetly said her sister loved them. I didn't hear anything from best friend about it. Ever. We didn't speak for 6 month after I sent the gifts, until the car accident.

She messaged me and apologized for the lapse in communication. She said she wanted to come bring us lunch. The day of the plans she fell ill and couldn't come. We did the whole, "another time," song and dance well with each other. I may have messaged her some well wishes about having no malice that we just didn't fit in each other's lives anymore. The cancelled lunch plans, however, that was the last I ever heard from her 3 years ago.

We're still on each other's social media but I check on her and she seemingly doesn't check on me. The people who knew us as besties say they are surprised that we don't talk anymore. I sent her messages just saying, "I hope you know I think the world of you and wish you well," and such for awhile but then just wanted to let her be.

Sometimes I wish I could write her a letter and tell her about how messed up things were and how I wish I had been more aware, awake and engaged with her to be a better friend. I wish I could say I understand how and why she outgrew me but all I want is good things for her and wish we could check in from time to time. I wish I could apologize for not being more present for her issues while wrapped in my own. But I realize that things turned out how they should, whether I like it or not.

About a year after we stopped speaking I realized how badly her exit had messed me up. I spiraled into a very dark, self-hating, world-hating, negative place. It was a learning experience I needed to have. I needed to make the mistakes I made to get me to where I am now, but it still was shitty. I found the wrong kinds of friends on the "rebound" from losing her, which somehow made it all even worse.

Sometimes I think she knew it all. I think she saw me kind of starting to wither and maybe she just couldn't do it so she just politely excused herself from the table and never returned to dinner. I often find myself wishing I could tell her that I'm okay now; I'm better and still working on my growth.

I cry typing right now because I hate that my daughter only has small memories of all that my wonderful ex-bestie and her family did for us. I hung onto so many silly things from her just because I liked remembering when we were good and close and happy. I talk to my daughter about her on occasion. I like to remind my daughter that she has always been surrounded by good people and love, even when we had rough times. 

The friend fade is rough though. She's not the only person it has happened with but I feel like with the rest of the situations, people have moved onto new cities, bigger opportunities and different horizons but we still do that check in on social media or text where we just say, "Hey I'm so glad you are doing this," or "Congrats." Her and I don't even have the check in. We don't have anything anymore, and that still breaks my heart a little.

If she reads my blog, which I highly doubt, then now she knows all this stuff. If not, the hippie part of me just wanted to put this into the universe because it's part of the healing and growing process.

I've experienced other versions of the fade as well, some with a friend return, and others with a complete ghosting effect but none of it is an easy thing. I don't think I'll ever stop wishing we could feel closure with things. I will always want that kind of resolution, but I'm smart enough to realize that's just not how life works. 

My other sad musing is that, we lose out and experience the fade because we hit rough phases of life that we are so engulfed in that we can't adequately share and reach out to those we need the most during such trials. Maybe it is age but I feel like, we often have these friends that we just hold close that we claim are our "everything" and "always," those people that we will never picture our life not having around, and then they move on and we look back fondly but realize that we can actually live without them, perhaps we just enjoyed things more when we had them by our sides.

I lost a lot of good people that I was very close to during my family trauma. I'm just now owning most of it, and finding my way to talk about it with everyone that survived all of my whims and flakiness in the midst of it all. There's been so much shame and regret to work through but I can now have some real conversations about it. 

I still hold hope she'll message me one day. I've seen it happen with other friends and I will always hold hope, even if we're 80, that we can reconnect. I've made peace with the fact we probably won't. To quote Pam Beasley on The Office, "And it only took 3 years to summon the courage."

Losing my previous Tampa bestie has made it easier for me to endure the whims of other friendships and learn how to balance the positive and negative aspects of those relationships too. I've learned that I have to walk away peacefully knowing that, I put the good vibes out there for a friend but they must return and reciprocate by their own free will. I can't make them be the "kind" of friend I want or need in that moment, that day or that situation. 

Losing her has made me appreciate the longevity of other friendships like my Oregon friends from college and my two oldest friends that have known me since Kindergarten and 3rd grade from Pennsylvania. We still talk regularly. Losing her has made me grateful that I had someone like her to call a friend at all. Sometimes it is more bittersweet than other times.

I've seen some sappy articles about this on social media but this one is from the heart. Some of you will know exactly who I wrote this about, and those of you who have never heard me mention her, now you know why. 

I will always be grateful for the role she had in my life. I feel blessed that I knew her when I did. I feel blessed I can still see her on Facebook and Instagram and know that she is doing okay, thriving even. If you have ever lost someone like this, it can trigger many different reactions and emotions. It happens to more people than we can imagine, and it's often a tough tale to tell, but for today I'm glad I shared mine.