Mae @ Rainydayinmay

What I’ve learned…

Published on February 28, 2016 by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

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With the close of February pretty much sitting in our laps, I’m forced to reflect on all it has contained. It has held the tragic death of someone eternally dear to me, an intense visit with my husband, moving in to my sister’s home, working with life coaches (which is an AMAZING process all on its own) the start of my minor string of 40 adventures before my birthday and so many millions of moments of greatness…

It’s time to focus on what I learned this month… The good, the bad and the ugly…

1.) that lesson Inside Out was trying to teach us, but I did not quite grasp: Our core memories have good AND bad. It’s what makes them real and raw. When we only want to focus on one side, we will easily see a pluthera of that light or darkness. We have to be careful.

2.) For this stage of life, living with my sister and her family is really awesome. I’m so grateful!

3.) Too Faced make up is cruelty free. It’s my favorite… HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS???

4.) Just because a movie is a Sundance Winner, (The VVitch) does not make it a great movie. Well done, yes. Interesting inspiration? Sure. Entertaining, moving, or anything else a great film should be? No.

5.) Cafe Zupas is the best lunch out. Ever. In all the world…

6.) We ALL stumble. We ALL fall. We ALL have our strengths, our weaknesses, our inspirations, motivations, etc… It’s up to us how we use them, or whether we wallow in our failures or rise in our strengths. We all need self-discipline, and we will all struggle. No one is exempt and one persons struggle is no worse than another’s.

7.) Having CONNECT as my word of the year was a fitting, is terrifying and it’s only February!

8.) There are best friends, then there are best friends, but best of all there are BEST friends…

9.) Forgiveness is less about forgetting someone’s trespass, and more about choosing to not nestle into resenting it, and moving forward while learning what you can.

10.) Feelings are a choice. NO ONE can hurt your feelings unless you choose for them to. Empowering stuff…

Bonus: 11.) the twix bar on the right is the best…

Only the lonely…

Published on February 10, 2016February 10, 2016 by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

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At my husband’s request, I took down my last two blog posts. While they were not meant to reflect him in a negative light, and I was coming from the place of emotional exhaustion and honesty, he felt they painted him badly…

The irony of all of that is not lost on me, I promise.

I’m stuck in such an uncomfortable place where my feeling don’t matter. Where I’m not meant to be considered. Where maybe the other person didn’t intentionally mean to hurt me so it shouldn’t matter, and where I am tired, convicted and crucified every single time.

I read the other day that I probably didn’t have depression last summer/fall, but instead suffered from loneliness. The entire chapter about this rang so true that I had to sit afterwards and admit that this was entirely possible.

Life is funny. I find myself looking at photos of kayaking, skydiving and all around adventuring and my soul literally yearns to take off on an adventure. I was supposed to be away for the weekend, feet dipping in the icy ocean simply so my soul could exhale and then reset itself, but that didn’t work out and now I honestly feel restless. I long to go, to do something significant. I’m itching to engage with nature. In reality, I’d likely be mauled by a bear and drown in the ocean, so it’s probably better I stay here and engage in the daily practice of feeling like an alien in a land I recognize but do not belong…

Tomorrow is Lent. Every year I give up three things that somehow help me engage with my WofY. {reminder: my word for 2016 is connect.} Every other year, giving up Facebook somehow seems to fit right in with my word. Whenever I’ve done it in the past, it’s fallen over my birthday and so I missed all the birthday love. This year Lent will end the day BEFORE my birthday… So that’s ironically fitting. :) So it’s Facebook, soda (because without intending to, I’ve found I am partaking in fountain soda much more regularly than I wanted) and sleeping past 6 in the morning. If nothing else, I guess I’ll be sleeping through my entire birthday, which is fine by me. I hate them anyway, and this year is bound to take the cake on horrible birthdays… I’m also vowing, this year, to do three things every day, for those 40 days: pray intentionally for my husband and our marriage, do something intentionally selfless, generous and kind for someone else, write for one hour (non-blogging or freelance) every day. If that day’s schedule means I have to wake up at 4:30 to fit it in, I guess that’s what I’ll have to do. I also want to have one real adventure and learn one new thing… Lofty, I know.

We have today, and that’s it. I KNOW I am supposed to make the most of it, but quite often I don’t pay attention to how significant the gift is… It’s a real gift. It’s the best gift, and I don’t want to be that girl on the couch wasting it, because I might emotionally feel like being that girl. I’ll regret it if I go through my life doing what I feel like, because these days what I feel like isn’t going to lead anywhere good…

Wish me luck on my intentional Lent, and journeying boldly and bravely through the 40 day countdown to my 40th birthday, or better yet- join me. :)

The last day…

Published on January 29, 2016 by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

I’d had a plan to leave my husband, in spring. It had been a homework challenge, with counseling. Then it became a “what other choice do I have, if he doesn’t want me?” sort of option, which evolved into an “I want this to happen.” sort of scheme. I had set my deadline so far away because I honestly believed he would step up and proclaim a fight for us. Everyone who really knew me realized this. I just couldn’t utter those words myself because the rejection of the one person who truly, deeply knew me was already destroying me. Once I spoke those words into the world, they were real and if he didn’t, I felt like it would be the death of me.

The last afternoon, before life truly fell apart (and seven days before I no longer had a home or a family) my husband and I had a great afternoon together. We had connected more in the former 15 days than we had in months and I felt filled with hope. I had been out-of-town for a couple of days and I’d missed him so much. I told him as much, when I returned. We went for coffee, shopped a little and sat talking for a long while. It was the sort of conversation filled with laughter, memories, dreams and a thousand other veins of talk that only could be truly made sense of by us- the livers of the life we were in. As the sunlight streamed through the windows of that second floor room where we sat, I felt so overcome with how grateful I was for my life, how deeply I loved that man and how desperately I wanted our marriage to last.

I fell asleep snuggled deep into him, inhaling him and just forcing myself to live in that moment. I had no idea what tomorrow held…

With a fierce punch to the heart, also known as disastrous hind sight, I was smacked with all of this today as I sat for a minute looking back on my Instagram stream. There on that day, in that room, was my daily photo. Because, as we were walking out I knew I’d want to remember it forever. Forever I will…

It’s so hard, with the magic of hindsight-vision, to not simply hate yourself for what you threw away. Regardless of the hows, the whys or the other factors- I had my own responsibility in the situation. While it’s true, I felt (by that time) that I had no choice in the way it all played out- I now see differently. So today, tear-stained and feeling so rebroken, I have to hold on to the memories to soothe the ache, and keep moving forward.

I breathe…

Published on January 28, 2016 by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

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I’m working two jobs, these days. From full-time student to juggling two jobs of which I won’t see any fruit until long after bill due dates, and even then those dates will have looped back around. That’s ok. I actually really love both jobs, and my favorite part of them is connecting with people. A smile and a friendly interaction can really change the course of their day.

The really awkward part about starting to work at entry-level jobs is that the majority of my co-workers (and in one instance, bosses) are the age of my kids. I have loved getting to know them and the conversations that have blossomed, but there is this voice calling to me from deep inside that tells me I’m a loser, and I’m a failure because I’m there, scraping to survive with 24 year olds who are just growing up.

Am I 39 and just growing up?

I’ve been able to silence the voice, thus far, because honestly it really doesn’t bother me. A little maybe, but not for those reasons. For the reasons that I simply worked really hard and invested my everything into a life and a family which are just fine without me. I am very proud of committing and focussing to be the very best I could be, for them, for my life’s work and purpose. Things changed. I got sick, (depression) and consequentially this is my life now. It is, at times, so lonely I can’t even gasp for air… At other times, it’s the memories of my family that get me through and make me smile. The tears are always there, behind the eye lids. Sometimes they spill, sometimes they flood… But still, every waking morning I come closer and closer to accepting my fate. Am I behind other women my age, professionally? Significantly… But life is not about work. It isn’t about “success” in the world’s eyes… I have lived my life and loved so incredibly much, that maybe in some ways I’m ahead of them too… At least, for a large part of my life, my priority was where it should have been. And now, now my life is that of my twenty year old co-workers, only I could be their mother.

We do the best we can, and that’s simply it. I’m doing my best, succeed or fail, this is all I’ve gone.

All of my friends are either solid in their career, or still at home with their kids. They don’t get it, and that’s ok. I’m learning that I don’t need to be “gotten”. Again, I walked away from that too. A single mom friend said to me, “At least you don’t have kids. I am so jealous of your new start and second chance.” I guess we’re all there, comparing what we do or do not have to someone else. Believe me, this is no beautifully ideal new beginning. I’d rather have someone to hug, someone who needed me and whispered “I love you” as they fell asleep…

Last week someone asked me what my life feels like. I try not to think about it, but when I do (If I’m honest) my life feels exactly how I imagine hell to feel. Complete isolation from true personal intimacy and living within the very deep and fragrant realizations of my short comings, mistakes and failures… The only difference between what I can imagine to be hell and my reality is that I at least can move forward and try to build something new. I don’t want to, but that’s my choice. Either do, or succumb to bitterness. So I do. I wake up, I pray, I read, I go to work. I come home. I learn. I actively show love to the people I see, the best I can. I fight a painful night of sleep with the most horrifyingly vivid dreams, when sleep wins. I wake up and do it again. I try not to resent the laundry when I fold it and it is only my clothes. I avoid the kitchen (haven’t cooked since November) because it reminds me of what I don’t have. My life is the polar opposite of the life I both gave up willingly, and was stolen from me. I breathe. In every moment, that is my only consistent and sane decision…

I breathe.

Be grateful and glad in all things, and when all else fails… rant?

Published on January 26, 2016 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay1 Comment

A long time ago I truly grasped the lesson & importance of being grateful and glad in all things… Then something got lost, along my journey. I sunk deep into a terrifying depression, which I couldn’t truly understand while drowning in it, but strangely and intricately do now. Within that depression, a great many things changed. I had lost, along the way, the importance of being grateful and glad in all things. Truthfully, I felt like I was barely surviving. My perspective of all things, from my parenting to my marriage, my education to my skills and talents, was all seen through a filter so far from reality. In the end of that chapter, I partook in a very time sensitive decision, going in a direction where I believed I would actually be needed, valued and wanted. The truth, outside of that sludgy despair however is that I was far too emotionally sick to really know what any of that looked like. Depression is a beast… Sometimes it can lay at bay, on the surface, and it feels like you’re out of the sea. That’s the best I can explain it.

I wonder what would have looked different if I’d been able to hold on to my sense of being grateful and glad in all things? In all things would mean in the sea of depression or other illnesses as well. In isolation from the very people you live with and love. In abandonment from relationships which fed your life. In the joy and celebration that comes with great blessings… In all things.

I lost this sense. My sense. And over the past many days I’ve been reminded and validated upon the path of reclaiming it. I am someone who needs relationship with people. This is not a character defect. This is not a deep, emotional flaw. This is how I am designed. I am crafted to thrive on connection with others. Our society promotes surface connections, declaring that true friendship is talks of sex, meeting for drinks and Facebook collections. None of these are friendship. Sure, friends CAN talk about sex, share a drink and be connected on social media, but when one, two or all three of these things make up the bulk of your “support system”, there is no support. We have a need to be entertained in all things, and have had this need for independence shoved down our throats. There is this weird parasite in our thoughts that we mustn’t allow ourselves to be too vulnerable, too needy, too dependent upon someone else. What is wrong with us? And we can go through a season in our lives when we form a real, true and deep connection with someone but that tapeworm of ridiculous garbage will live again and try to destroy it. While I suspect we all have the same need, but different life circumstances have left us scarred and unable to heal it, I at least know for sure that I do have this need. In the core of connecting with others, conversation and interactions I thrive. Without that, in any form of isolation, I wither. I can be grateful and glad in all things… In all times. In all seasons. That is my choice, and one I must make and work to retain. Whether it is times of togetherness or isolation. But the intentional connection thing is something I am going to have to be sure to do, as well. In all things… It is the cure to my depression, the cure to that childhood lie stitched upon my soul that I am unloveable. We were created for community, and within a community I must live…

I was already thinking these things, relearning and newly realizing these things, and at this very place in my journey when my pastor, Sunday, spoke on this very idea. I can’t take credit for it at all, as I am merely recycling other people’s wisdom with my own commentary. One thing he said Sunday which hasn’t left the forefront of my brain since then was that a study conducted in 1984 polled people to see how many close friends they had. The average number among the majority was 3. The same poll was taken within the last year or two and the majority answered 0. ZERO. NONE. The majority of people have no one whom they can trust, confide in, rely on… And the very best part of friendship is also being trusted by someone, listening to someone and knowing you are reliable. What has changed in those 22 years? The internet, the mass web of social media, the rise and growth of video games and our 700 television channels waiting for us. Beyond technology, not much has changed. This is sad to me. There was a time when lunch with friends, long distance phone calls and actually, truly knowing someone, were normal. Now, they are occasional treats. We say we are busy, but we aren’t. We are programmed to be “busy” with tv shows, video games and our cell phone obsessions. I remember paying steep long distance bills and buying phone cards to talk to friends for hours. Now? Now I could go a week without a single conversation and NO ONE PAYS LONG DISTANCE anymore!

This totally turned into a rant, which wasn’t my intention… Be grateful and glad in all things… I am grateful to realize this, and glad to know that this epidemic is easily solvable. It just takes altering our priorities and intentionally connecting with someone. Engage in a conversation, get together over a cup of coffee or dinner and talk. Listen. Love. It’s easier than we think. Maybe not as easy as turning on the tv or gazing at our iPhones, but it is so much more rewarding… We idolize our electronics, but the truth is that they don’t give a damn about is.