It's not just me...

Doesn't it suck that the people closest to you have no real idea who you are? In my case it's mostly my family, but it can be true with long-term friends too.

It's not their fault, really... not entirely anyway. As we get older and our opinions and lifestyle change, we hide things from the people we think won't approve. It would be nice if the people who "love" us would make us feel comfortable enough to share everything with them, but let's be honest... we are all judgemental and close-minded to something, even the best of us.

And then, of course, we all have those people in our lives that just don't listen. You try to share parts of yourself with them and they either don't stop talking about themselves long enough to absorb it, or they are the type of person who has already formed their opinion of you and nothing you say will change it. I have had both of those types in my "inner circle" and I had to finally walk away to save my sanity.

When you break it down, it's all about self-preservation. I get the psychology of it, it makes sense to me, but sometimes it just feels lonely. We just want people to like us, which is why we essentially lie about who we really are, but what we truly want is for people to like us for who we are.

It's much easier with new people in your life. You can tell them things about yourself and they can accept them or not and you're not too emotionally invested when you or they have to walk away. But with family and close friends there is too much at stake - too many years of history to risk. In most cases it's just not worth the argument, especially with family because you have the rest of your lives to be around them or you can cut them out completely, which is sometimes more painful than helpful.

It really is a balancing act, constantly having to remember who in your life knows what about you and who in your life you can tell certain things to. Imagine what we could accomplish as individuals if we freed up that portion of our brain for better purposes. It would probably just give us more room for song lyrics and quotes from our favorite movies, but it would be nice to have the option.

In the end, interpersonal relationships are just complicated and stressful. I'm not sure there is any way to get around it shy of living alone, having your groceries shipped in and ordering your underwear online.

People are Strange

My beliefs are so strange they even confuse me sometimes.

I don't really believe in anything supernatural, but I still do Tarot and light candles and smudge Sage. I wear a Pentacle ring every day and charge my jewelry on the Full Moon. I long to have my house full of incense and crystals and stones. I would love to get the point where I practice specific rituals on a daily basis.

I call myself an Atheist with Pagan Tendencies. I say that I believe in the "Power of the Earth"... whatever that means! In reality, I can't really explain what I believe, I just do what feels right. I don't feel like I need to know everything in life (or after-life). There are things that we will never know the answers to and maybe we shouldn't.

All we can do is sort out the best way to keep ourselves sane and if that falls into a specific belief or religion, or a dozen, who is to say that we're doing it wrong?

Ignorance is Marital Bliss

A lot has been going on in my life recently; separating from my husband being the catalyst, it seems. I've been struggling with depression for years and I think my unhappiness with my marital situation was the root cause, although I never really fully formed that theory. It's not that I don't love him as a person, even tho we disagree on nearly everything, but I just don't have any romantic feelings for him and I haven't in a long time. Again, however, I never really fully formed that into a conclusion until recently. I honestly thought that since we had been doing it for so long and I never knew anything any different that I didn't really have the option to change it and do something else. It was my own ignorance and fear keeping me from being happy.

Looking at my life now, I'm most excited about being single for what is really the first time. My excitement is not in having the opportunity to meet someone new or to pursue relationships, serious or otherwise, but in being left alone to make the decisions I feel are best for me. I'm most excited about getting to be myself without worrying about someone else's opinions or criticism on a daily basis. I never really realized how much of my time was spent on wondering what he was going to say about what I was doing, the choices I was making, the paths I was trying to discover, and then dealing with the opinions I knew he was going to give me. We see the world from completely different perspectives.

It just occurred to me today how many silly things I would keep from him: the times I forgot the keys, let the car battery die, left the front door wide open... stupid things that normal people would laugh about, but I didn't tell him because I didn't want him to think that I was stupid and make fun of me for it, or even know that I was capable of such mindlessness. It was like our lives were a competition all the time and we were (and still are) afraid to let the other see weakness. That can't be normal. Or if it is, I vote no.

I think what I'm most looking forward to as I look at what I want my life to be now, is in having all of the POWER back in my life. The power to make decisions without worrying about criticism, have opinions without worrying about being judged, being myself without worrying about being mocked.

At 30 years old, I finally feel like an adult.

Faith

I had an interesting revelation recently. Nothing life-altering, really, more like an insight.

My parents live in what I would call the "Deep South". Ocilla/Tifton/Fitzgerald, Georgia. My dad had a heart attack and was admitted to the hospital in Tifton and then Albany, Georgia. For a week straight I've been hearing religious comments from the nurses and the other patient's families. All of them were specifically Christian (and mostly Baptist) statements.

Two of them were repeated often, by various people:

When faced with good news, "God was here today/yesterday, etc."

My favorite is: "I don't know how people without Faith get through this."

I capitalize the word faith because in the Christian culture faith is a tangible, specific idea relating only to the Christian god. When they say "people without faith" they truly mean non-Christians, not just atheists. They are almost all completely unaware that faith can exist in any religion but their own, and if it does exist, it is wrongly placed, or even "a deception by Satan" as I have been told personally.

People only have the strength to handle life's tough situations if they have Faith in God, therefore Strength comes from God alone.

This is the same argument that religious people make about morality. People can only behave well if they are religious (or are of a certain Religion, depending on who you ask), therefore Morality comes from God alone.

This idea that only god makes these things possible seems to go against my opinion that religion serves only as an outlet for Man's egocentrism, but it really doesn't.

Being Strong or being Morally Just is really just the gold star you get to wear for having enough Faith in your God. It's the pat on the back you get from yourself and others for being more Righteous than the next guy.