Good - Get After It

You're probably going to see this a lot in the near future, because when I heard Jocko Willink give this little speech on his podcast on YouTube, it hit me - deep in my bones and it's burning it's way into the center of my soul.  I hear Jocko's voice, but I feel God's prodding. 



Listen to it. 

Listen to it again.

Listen to it every morning when you first wake up.

Listen to it with your heart and soul.

Listen to it with purpose.

Listen to it until you get it.

Then, when you get it ...listen to it some more.

This speaks to the Warrior in me.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

The Stories We Tell

Last week I listened to a podcast on #MikeDrop; Navy SEAL Mike Ritland’s show, a podcast I’ve grown to love to listen to while I’m working.  In this episode, Ritland interviewed a woman named Emily Joy “GunbunnyActual” Hill. This badass was an Army Apache helicopter pilot and is as tough and vulgar as any sailor I’ve ever heard. At first I was a little reluctant to listen to the podcast, especially when I saw it was 4 hours long.  Not because it was with a woman, but because it wasn’t about a SEAL.  I’m in SEAL mode at the moment, learning, studying, listening, and being amazed at this branch of our Armed Special Forces. However, the Army will always hold a special place in my heart, and I wanted to see the insights this woman had to offer. I wanted to know what this Navy SEAL found so interesting about her. I was not disappointed.

Ms. Joy, who I’ll refer to as Gunbunny, came out of the gate flying, tossing around f-bombs like beaded necklaces in a Mardi-Gras parade. It sounded like she was fighting a head cold, sniffling into a napkin or two, or three, but she was also full of confidence and blunt honesty.  That got my attention right away.  I hate fake politeness.  It didn’t take long before she dropped the first of many, many hard subjects and truths into our laps when she started talking about being sexually molested by a family member when she was a young adult.

I struggled with wanting to turn the podcast off, or continue to listen. I have a hard time with victims, because victims often don’t face their shit. They lay blame, make excuses, and break beneath shame and low self-esteem and become weak and needy. I suppose it’s understandable … just not by me. It’s actually one of my triggers and I get angry around victims. I want to scream at them to suck it up, shut the fuck up, pull up their big girl britches, and fight for themselves – don’t let the world tell them they’re a victim; become a survivor, which only makes me a bully to already weak people. So, I tune it out, turn it off, or walk away. But, Gunbunny sounded strong and confident, so I stuck it out a little longer and I’m glad I did.  She has a terrible, sad, amazing and strong story to tell.  Her nerves are still raw, her voice quivered a time or two, and she struggled between what she wanted to say and what she thought was appropriate to say, but said what was in her heart anyway. So, I give her props. I became more impressed with her as the podcast went on – and 4 hours passed quickly.

But, she wasn’t the only inspiration during that podcast, Mike Ritland did an amazing job being kind, thoughtful, and respectful during the broadcast.  He didn’t TREAT her as a victim, he didn’t placate to her sensibilities or feelings, and he didn’t avoid the hard topic with kid gloves.  He wasn’t an asshole. I could tell at moments from the tenor of his voice that he struggled with some of the things she was telling him. A listener could tell he was hearing them for the first time. I could only imagine that warrior protector inside of him wanting to burst out and slay the world, defend the girl, and make things right struggle like Hell inside him. Yet, he kept his cool, and tackled some hard issues like rape, abuse, adoption, chauvinistic assholes, military demands and failures, women’s roles in special forces, death, struggles with identity and finding purpose AFTER service, etc. 

This isn’t a podcast for everyone, but it’s one I wish everyone could hear.  I admire Gunbunny for her courage to tell her story, and I hope she continues to tell it even more, as often as she can. I don’t personally know her. She could be an asshole, or she could be a saint.  She’s human like the rest of us and had to deal with some hard shit.  I don’t know how her tomorrow’s are going to be, but I’m hoping she finds that purpose she’s seeking and with it a little peace.

If you’ve got the guts, check out the podcast. If you do, get some tissues. 

https://youtu.be/RacEiK7cFgs

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Body, Mind and Soul... Day Three

Good morning and welcome back. Yesterday I promised to speak about the soul. For the sole purpose of reaching my life goals and dreams, I have to set my mind on what I want to achieve. I have to focus, fill my thoughts with the things that will help me reach those pinnacles.  I need to protect my body, mind and soul from people or things that will steal, detour, or destroy the plans I have made.  Not everyone in my life is good for me, some will not only destroy the plans I make by sabotaging my progress in my physical goals, messing with my mind and peace, but they will also seek to destroy my soul.  

From the time we are born we are told how important family and friends are, often to the point that we ‘put  up’ with toxic people in our lives because we happen to be related to them or grew up around and with them. We essentially are taught to be tolerant and acceptable of abuse if we had the misfortune of being born within an abusive family or on a particular side of the tracks. As a child, we have no choice.  As a young adult, we are often tortured during those transitional years of dependency to independence, and some of us have to navigate that journey into adulthood with an already damaged soul. 

Our souls are the most precious part of who we are.  Our exterior, our body, our skin, our faces, our strengths, our genetics, our culture… those are not the great and important aspects that truly define us as human being; those are the shallow parts.  The depth of who we are as a person is the part known as our soul. This is the part of us that defines the difference between right and wrong, compassion or apathy, love or hate, our integrity, and our self-esteem, etc. This is truly what defines our beauty.  But the world is shallow and most often can’t see beyond the exterior, physical, shallow aspects until we’ve entered into a relationship with someone, and thereby endangering our souls from the choices we made.

Come on, we’ve all done it. We’ve all at one time become infatuated with a beautiful smile, a set of dimples, strong muscles, or long, beautiful legs. We’ve fantasized about who we wanted that person of our infatuation to be, and it was good… while the fantasy lasted. But then we got to know the person behind the dimples, behind the muscles, behind the smile, behind the crocodile tears, behind the legs or the boobs, and that picture wasn’t as pretty as the one we had first imagined. Soon, those things we first found attractive was no longer eye-catching, because the soul became more and more evident. This has happened to everyone.  My question is this: How much damage did we allow to happen to our souls during this time of infatuation?  How much damage do we then cause to the next soul that comes into our lives because of the state of our now-damaged souls? Can you see the cycle?

We have to protect ourselves - our bodies, our minds, and especially our souls. We have to forget all that fucking nonsense that was drilled into us as children that we have to ‘put up’ with toxic people because they’re relatives or from the ‘hood.  We don’t HAVE to do anything or allow anyone into our lives that we don’t choose. If they’re toxic, selfish, detrimental to your own well-being, vampires that use, abuse, or take us for granted, disguised as friends but add no value to our lives, only there with their hands out when they need something – CHOOSE to protect and love yourself enough to walk away.  Choose to protect your soul. Choose to fight for yourself. Don’t allow them to infect your own soul and bring you down.

Here is a truth that I hope will change your life. It changed mine.  So, listen, and listen carefully.  IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO SAVE THE WORLD. It’s not.  We don’t possess the power to save anyone from anything.  People have to want to save themselves. This is what I’m trying to tell you today.  YOU have to want to save YOURSELF.  It’s God’s job to save other people’s souls, not yours.  If the world would concentrate on saving themselves, focus on being a good person with a beautiful soul, and then they will have a beauty that the rest of the world can see.  They will possess goodness, kindness, and compassion the world needs.

Protect your soul.  Stop allowing people to use you, to take from you when you have nothing for yourself.  Surround yourself with people who sow INTO you, who encourage you, who lift you up; not take from you, drain you, and takes advantage of you and what you have. Until you are strong enough to be an example, to be a light, you’re sacrificing your own light, your own soul.  How can you be a light when you’re filled with darkness, and pain, and your soul is so damaged from the abuse of those who claim to love you most?  It’s not selfish to cut these toxic relationships out of your life. Separate yourself - no matter if it’s a parent, a sibling, a gown child, an ex, a childhood friend, a neighbor, or a co-worker – it doesn’t matter who they are.  If they’re toxic and they have an ugly soul, or your soul is too damaged to deal with their drama – protect yourself.   

This is YOUR life.  You only get ONE. You don’t get a do-over.

Protecting yourself, your body, mind and soul, is not going to be easy.  It will require dedication, determination, and devotion.  Love your body enough to do what is necessary to be healthy, to be fit to enjoy the things that make this life adventurous.  Love your mind enough to do what is necessary to be brilliant, open, and inquisitive, seeking out those dreams and ideas that will fulfill your life and give it purpose.  Love your soul enough to be a good person, a light in a dark world, deep love in a shallow society.  This is YOUR choice.  This is MY choice. 

I’ve been a lot of dates that remind me constantly of how much the world is so focused on the shallow outside, how much there is a lack of vision, drive, and determination in the pursuit of happiness, and how many dark souls are out there just waiting to use and abuse me.  It hurts my heart. I’m so disappointed in what I’m finding.  I had to quit dating before I fully lost faith in men and in society in general.  I’m an odd duck.  I actually care about the world around me and the people in it.  But I keep dreaming, I keep praying, and I keep working on MYSELF to become the best person I can, hoping that I may be a light for someone.  I can’t save the world. It’s not my job. I am responsible for everything I do and say, but I’m not responsible for what the world hears or how they respond.  I hope I am a light on a hill, and that is why I work so hard to make sure I protect and focus my love on my body, my mind, and my soul.

Until next time,

~T.L. Gray

Sunrise Healing

I’ve been watching the sunrise lately at different beaches.  There’s just something about it, something about watching that big ball of fire break through the morning clouds, rise out of the sea to greet me, that just does something for my soul.  I can’t explain it.  I can’t even really describe it.  I may have a whole thesaurus at my disposal, but in that moment, I’m speechless, without words, just full of feeling, full of life, full of appreciation.  Medicine to my bones. 

I’ll have to find my spot.  I know it’s out there somewhere.  Went to Indialantic, stopped by Starbucks and got me a warm Carmel Macchiato, and walked over to the beach to find myself surrounded by more than half-dozen of other people I assume arrived for the same reason.  Except they wanted to socialize instead of be in the moment.  It didn’t upset me my quiet was disrupted, but it did help me realize that’s exactly what I wanted… silence, solitude, an intimate moment with me and the world. 

Nature soothes me. It always has.  It was my beautiful sanctuary in my world of rage, of pain, of chaos.  As a child, I often ran to the woods to get lost among the trees, trails, and let my imagination take me on an adventure somewhere far, far, away. 

While the sun gets all the attention, I know that it’s not the only element that cleanses my soul.  There’s the wind, the waves, the water, the sand, the smell of salt in the air, the cry of the birds overhead, etc.  They all work together like a well-choregraphed symphony, each in tune, each have their individual parts to play.  It’s a movement that never stops.  It ebbs and flows, softens and builds, rises and falls, yet keeps going on and on and on and on.  This is how our souls also move… continually, non-stop, without pause.  Sometimes it’s in full motion like a hurricane, and other times a soft, gentle roll, yet its moving, it’s playing, it’s dancing, or it’s dying. 

The sunrise heals my soul.  My soul has taken a beating lately, and I can’t express the sunrise healing I’ve been receiving lately.  Let it heal.

Today the clouds are thick and the wind is a little hard, and there’s a little chill in the air, but… let it rise.  Let it rise. 

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Counting Stars

Counting Stars

By One Republic

I’ll get into the lyrics of this song in a minute.  I haven’t heard it in a couple years, but listening to it on my way home from work today brought me right back to a place in time when I was fighting for my life.  I can almost remember the very moment this song came alive to me.  I had heard it several times on the radio, and while I thought it had a catchy tune, it didn’t really mean anything. Yet, one afternoon I found myself sitting by the lake at my apartment on Alvin Street, watching the sun glisten on the water’s surface, ducks flying overhead, a cool breeze in the air, when a soft thought popped into my mind, whispering to me that nobody cared, that all the sacrifices I’d made in my life were for nothing, that all the love I gave was never returned, that I didn’t matter.  I’d just been invited to be part of an anthology with some of the writers I admired, had no one with which to celebrate my achievement. I thought I could easily slip into that cold, frigid lake and no one would even notice this selfish, rebellious, unlovable woman was gone.  I felt the pressure and judgment of the world on my shoulders.  All the voices of the people who told me I was making a mistake by getting a divorce, that I was disobeying and disappointing my god, that I was being rebellious and selfish because I wanted to be in love, that what I wanted was stupid, a fairy tale. I had the world.  I had a good career. I had a good marriage. I had a good family. I had a good inheritance. I had a good reputation. I had a picture-picture resume life.  My writing career was taking off, and I was beloved and respected by my community; a pillar they called me, a monument of strength of character.  I had everything a good Christian woman desired in her life. Someone told me once that I was selfish for not being content with the life I had, that my desire to want more, was an insult to the god I claimed I loved.  How could God love me for being so selfish? To want more was to distrust God.

I didn’t want riches. I didn’t want fame. I had opportunity to have both and walked away. I just wanted to be loved, to be wanted, to be desired… to be heard, to matter, to make a difference in this cold world, for humanity to love each other, not hate each other proving who was right. I wanted fathers not to hurt their little girls, and mothers not to be ashamed and hide behind pills, and brothers that didn’t steal and lie to each other, or sisters who supported each other and not be in competition, and kids who didn’t take the strength of their parents as a sign of not caring, and parents who remembered their kids were not their property but individual human beings with their own thoughts, ideas, plans and dreams. I felt at odds with the universe. 

I closed my eyes, felt the warm sun on my face, slipped my feet out of my shoes and edged by toes toward the cold water of the lake’s edge when this song suddenly came on my iPod and filled my ears, and the tears spilled down my face.  This was a song from me, to me, in that moment.  My inner-self called out to my spiritual-self, and the words never meant something more beautiful than what they did that cold, cold autumn afternoon.

Lately I been, I been losing sleep

Dreaming about the things that we could be

But baby I been, I been prayin' hard

Said no more counting dollars

We'll be counting stars

Yeah, we'll be counting stars

Counting stars… wow! One of my favorite quotes in the world, something that gave me strength through the years was from A Knights Tale when a declaration was made to change a person’s stars, to change the destiny the world had given them, to be more than what society deemed as acceptable. Before that movie even came out, my best friend in the world – who became the love of my life, made a promise that we would rise above our stations in life and change our stars.   I fought my whole life to be more than what I was born into, more than what society dictated, and I worked hard my whole life to rise above my beginning, my inheritance, and my lot in life.  No one was going to tell me my limits.  I pushed them, and I soared well above them. When my drug-dealing father was arrested, I was deemed a miscreant, told by a bigshot D.A. at the age of sixteen I was going to grow up and be nothing more than one of my father’s whore drug runners, a high-school dropout, and in prison before twenty.   I changed my stars and proved them wrong, living a clean life, a vanilla life free of drugs, gangs, cartels, and miscreants.   When I lost a college scholarship because I became a teen mother, and chose to keep and raise my baby, I changed my stars by paying my own way through college, and working three jobs at the same time supporting myself. When the love of my life died in combat and left me alone in this world, I still remember the promises we made to change our stars. I never forgot. I will never forget.  I’m not counting one star… I’m counting on changing many, many, many, many, many more stars. I have, and I will change even more. I’m still counting them, baby. 

I see this life

Like a swinging vine

Swing my heart across the line

In my faces flashing signs

Seek it out and ye shall find

Life isn’t about what comes at you or is presented to you.  You have to chase it down.  You have to go after what you want. You have to take a chance.  Yes, you can fall. Hell, you will probably fall a lot more than you’ll ever fly. Yes, you can grab hold of a weak vine and it causes you to crash to the ground, but that doesn’t mean you stop swinging.  It means you get back up and grab the next one and see where it takes you.

The old, but I'm not that old

Young, but I'm not that bold

And I don't think the world is sold

I'm just doing what we're told

Excuses.  The world if full of them, but we have to be willing to argue back with it, set our own limits, tell ourselves what we are going to do and how we’re going to do it.  We can’t be afraid.  We can’t think inside the box.  Don’t allow ourselves to be put in a box… too old, too young, too weak, too strong, too fat, too skinny, too uneducated, too educated, too smart, too dumb, too experienced, too inexperienced.  Tell the world to go fuck itself, and stop doing what it tells you. 

I, feel something so right

Doing the wrong thing

I, feel something so wrong

But doing the right thing

I could lie, could lie, could lie

Everything that kills me makes me feel alive

You can’t change or count your stars if you’re too busy living under everyone else’s judgements, ideas, and limits.  You determine what’s right and what’s wrong for YOU and tell everyone else to go fuck themselves.  Am I disappointing my god?  That’s between me and my god and nobody else’s business.  Live your own dream.  Find someone that supports that dream, and made damned sure that if you’re supporting someone else’s dream, that it’s their dream and not yours for them. You’ve got no right to dream for someone else.

I feel the love

And I feel it burn

Down this river every turn

Hope is a four letter word

Make that money

Watch it burn

Looking for the world’s definition of love or success, it’ll never work, it’ll never satisfy, and it’ll always burn.  It’s fire, it’s poison, it’s shallow, and it stings.  Too many people fall in love with the idea, the dream, the image of what they believe is love, instead of falling in love with the real person right in front of them. When they get disappointment because the person doesn’t live up to the perfect image that was created in their minds, they blame the person instead of themselves for building impossible standards anyone could ever hope to reach. It’s not fair.  We have to come to a maturity in our lives so that when we look at someone we are not naïve to their flaws, but embrace them, and love them just as they are in spite of them, not only loving the truth of who they are, but for the potential of who they’re capable of being because they too hold the power to change their own stars. The first step to counting stars is seeing the truth, exactly as it is in all its ugliness. But when we can’t even see the truth of the stars in front of us, how can we expect to change anything?  We change nothing and then we live our lives chasing THINGS… things that will burn or turn to rust, things we cannot control, cannot contain, things that slip right through our fingers and burn in front of us. We exchange our stars for temporary things, for temporary love, for temporary people… ideals instead of reality, fantasies instead of truths, we lose out on real love for infatuation and lust.

I could lie, could lie, could lie

Everything that drowns me makes me wanna fly

Take that money and watch it burn

Sink in the river the lessons I learned

Everything that kills me makes me feel alive

Songwriters: RYAN TEDDER

© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Can’t you feel it?  This song reminded me of the promise I made as a hopeful fourteen-year old girl, sitting with her back against her locker next to this dorky, long-legged awkward boy named James, dreaming with our young, naïve hearts of how we were going to change our stars. I felt that promise that day by the cold lake through this song, and it stirred something deep within me, and it’s stirring something else within me today.  I heard that familiar whisper during my flu delirium, reminding me that my love hasn’t found me, that though I’m loved, I’m never chosen, I’m never fought for, and that if I want anything in this world I’m going to have to fight for it on my own or provide it for myself. I understand now, I need a star counter, because I’m a star counter.  I could never be content with someone that can’t even recognize their own stars, much less who isn’t constantly counting new ones.  I won’t ever be silent. I won’t ever be content. I am bigger than this life, much more than the boxes offer.  I am at odds with the universe, because I too am expanding, seeking, and counting stars… and it’s time I got back to it.  

I too am a star.  My own sun, shining brightly, soaring in this universe, But I’m not one to be caught so easily. If you can’t even see me, the real me, then maybe I’m just a little too bright or a little too hot for you, or you just don’t belong in my universe. 

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Kiss the Girl!

Wake up! Get up! Move your fucking feet! Kiss the girl!

Look, Life knocks us down. I think the abusive bitch really enjoys it, because she knocks me out quite a lot.  It seems like every time I stand up on my feet, dust myself off, and start picking up my pace to make a little bit of forward motion, she’ll drop a damned 747 out of the sky to fall on my head. But, I’m indestructible, immortal, and a freaking superwoman, because I choose to be. What’s your excuse?

Listen, I have my moments where I want to lay there on the ground and just cry because of how unfair life can be, is, or will always be.  But, I’m not five-years old.  Add forty years to that, and a whole lot of responsibility never really having time to be a brat. I’m jealous of you spoiled mother-fuckers that always had someone else looking after you, cleaning up your messes, wiping your noses, and patting you on the head telling you what a good job you’ve done.  Take your participation trophies and wrap them up in your dirty diapers, and go suck on your binky. I don’t have time for your pity party.  Believe me, I’ve been trying to have one for the last few years, and it isn’t working!

Hey! Knock it off.  Suck it up, Buttercup.  It’s time to get up. It’s time to move, even if you don’t know which way to go, move anyway.  The sad part is not moving, being stuck in the moment, being mired in the muck of self-pity. Learn this lesson: Life is NEVER fair. NEVER! Fair has never existed, and it never will.  This is a stupid concept ingrained into our psyche as children and we carry it with us throughout our lives, beating ourselves up when LIFE throws us a monkey wrench.  We are taught that WE are in control of the bullshit that happens in our lives.  That if we are good, good will happen to us.  That if we are fair, fair will find us.  BULLSHIT!  You tell that to every abused child, cancer patient, soldier’s widow, the betrayed, the rejected, and the good-hearted discarded because keeping up is hard.  Life is not fair.  She never was. She never has been. She never will be.  So, get up!

Want to know what you control? Nothing, except HOW you respond.  That’s it.  That’s all the control you have.  You can’t control the universe, you can’t control the weather, you can’t control the ocean’s tide, you can’t control someone else’s response, you can’t control God, you can’t control the economy, you can’t control anything. You can bribe, manipulate, lie, and scheme, but you can’t control anything in life except how YOU respond to it.  That’s who you are.  Not who you say. Not who you think. Not what some piece of paper says, by degree or birth certificate.  You are how you respond to every little and every big decision you make.

Stop being a pussy. Stop being afraid of making a mistake.  Fucking make a mistake, because you’re at least living, doing, deciding.  Stop hiding. Stop wallowing. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop WAITING for the right time, the right person, the right circumstance.  Stop waiting to win the lottery. Stop WAITING and start fucking moving. Start making decisions. Start making choices. STOP making excuses.  I’m so fucking tired of hearing excuses.  I hear it at work, I hear it at home, I hear it in society all around me.  I hear it out of my own mouth.  The mantra is … “I can’t… because. I won’t… because. I don’t… because.  I hear that bullshit a whole lot more than I’d like to admit.  But, that’s the problem. Until we admit to ourselves, until we recognize our reactions, our inaction, and our whiny excuses… we can’t change them. So, as a society, we keep ourselves distracted with bullshit, nonsense, shit that don’t matter,  so we don’t have to hear our souls crying out to open our fucking eyes. Because to open our eyes to the truth is to be faced with the choices that define us.  We WANT to be fair.  We want life to be on Easy Street. We want someone to change our diapers for us, to take away all the shit we’ve produced, and give us a clean diaper so we can soil that too.  Feed us, because we don’t want to learn to feed ourselves.  Hold our hands, because we don’t want to face the struggle it takes to walk on our own. Coddle us, because our little feelings are hurt. Rock us, because we’re sleepy.  We bitch about putting on ten pounds, all the while stuffing our feelings.

Move.  Choose.  Kiss the girl - life!  She’s right in front of you.  See her.  Stop thinking about whether you’re making a mistake, or will there a better option tomorrow, or will she love you back because all the girl’s you’ve kissed before had hurt, abused, and used you?  Stop being a fucking coward and kiss the girl. It’s better to have kissed, than to have missed your opportunity, because guess what… life will continue without you.  All you’ve lost is the opportunity to really live. To live in the moment.  To get out of life ALL that you can in that moment… whether it ends up being a mistake.  Even from our mistakes, we live.  I have a life full of mistakes, but not ONE regret. 

I lived for nearly twenty years doing the ‘right’ thing, the practical, the responsible, the ‘good’ thing, and I don’t regret any of it, because it was to fulfill the dream of being able to provide a certain life for my kids.  That was my dream.  However, I didn’t do a whole lot of living in that era, nor the era before . I was too busy trying to be good, to be right, to make responsible choices and so afraid of disappointing everyone else around me, of disappointing God, and of making a mistake.  THAT was the true mistake.  Because all that did was steal life from me.   

I’ve got some heavy choices before me, and many of those choices paralyze me because I’m so afraid of making the wrong one.  I’ve spent so much time being afraid of the consequences of those choices, because I know life isn’t fair.  I’ve felt the pain and suffering of an unfair life.  Those burn scars still hurt today.  But, this is me this morning, puckering my lips… ‘cause you know what… I want to kiss!  I don’t want to just kiss, but I want to rip my clothes off and make beautiful, passionate love.  If it turns out to be a mistake, at least I had an orgasm, and my toes curled, and my stomach had butterflies.

Kiss! Kiss!

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

---

 [KK1]

Falling in Love... Day 7

Sometimes, as men, women… humans, we can be terribly blind.  We are often so busy in life, looking ahead, looking behind, looking all around us to be in the present, and yet still be ignorant to what is standing right in front of us.  It’s not because we can’t see, it’s most often because we’ve created this ideal in our minds of what we’re supposed to see, that we miss the reality, or better yet, the potential. 

Hindsight is a bitch.  She’s that nasty, arrogant know-it-all that shouts, “I told you so.”  I despise her.  I work so hard every day to not let her get a leg up on me, but I often fail.  It seems the more I try to open my eyes, the more I miss.

Life is so fluid.  People come and go, some are only around for a small flash of time, while others who’ve gone before stop by, come right in without knocking, and kick their feet up.  We deceive ourselves into thinking we can control the flow, but that’s another lie we tell ourselves.  We even wrap those lies in commitments, promises, vows, and contracts, but all can and are often broken, because life isn’t something we can control.  We can’t promise tomorrow, because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and doesn’t belong to us. We can’t make people stay, love us, fight for us, or even remember the promises they’ve made to us… or the promises we’ve made to others.  We can only determine how we respond to the changes as they happen.

Today is a sad and happy day for me.  One friend is leaving today, and it breaks my heart something terrible. He was a source of comfort for me at work, yet life changes. I wish him a lot of luck in his adventures, and hope the best for him. I’m also happy today because a boat load of my crazy writer friends suddenly showed up out of the blue.  Though we haven’t really gathered together in a very, very long time, the chemistry is still there and it’s like we never left.  I’m so excited to have them back in my life again.  They were such an inspiration to me.   

I’m sure there’s a reason my Insomniac friends have popped up lately.  I’m learning there’s a time and season for everything.  I’ve been avoiding my greatest gift for the longest season, but I know it’s time to get back to it.  There are no coincidences.  It’s not an accident that the last couple of weeks, I’ve been contacted by different members of this group in various ways.  I’m not the same person I was. Life has changed me, but it didn’t change my gift.  I recently removed “author” from my profile because I felt like such a failure for neglecting my gift for so long.  I felt I let my fans down because I allowed the heartaches of my life to keep me from releasing my work.  I felt I let my friends down by running away. Yet, here they are… as if it were yesterday.

There is was right in front of me all along.  I didn’t realize I felt all this disappointment in myself. I thought my writing was suffering because of space.  True, lack of space hampers, but I used to write anywhere.  I was blind.  In my quest of falling in love with myself, I didn’t think I’d have to deal with this part of my life, but this is a very big part of who I am.  I am a writer. I am a scribe. I am silver-tongue. I am a record keeper. I am a steward of imagination and creativity.  I must forgive myself for my neglect.  My imagination and writing gift was, is, and will always be my first love.

I have no idea what tomorrow holds. I cannot control life, love, or time.  But, I can choose to decide to love myself, and love the gifts I have been given.  We are to value the things we love.  Just as we value the people we love in our lives, how we consider their needs and do what me must to meet those needs, so is the same for every part of us.  To love myself completely, I have to love all parts of me.  Believe me, there are many parts.  Many, many parts.  I may not be ‘hard to carry’ (btw – I misquoted my friend yesterday.  He didn’t say I was hard to carry (that’s what I heard), he said I was hard to keep up with, that someone with my level of ambition would be hard to keep up with unless my partner had a similar level of ambition for themselves.  That while that enthusiasm is attractive at the beginning to any many, unless they were my equal, they would struggle to keep up with me and I’d have to carry them.  In other words, I’m too much for the average guy- he’s going to have to be strong and something extraordinary – my superman), but I’m great at flying.   

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray

Falling in Love... Day 6

I had one of the best weekends, spending it with the people I love most… well, most of them anyway. I also set out to check off a couple more of those adventure goals I’ve been working toward.  My current quest is to find, explore, and take pictures of all the lighthouses in Florida.  Being a peninsula, surrounded mostly by shoreline, I’m thinking this adventure will take me a while to complete. I now have a new adventure in the planning stage of sailing to the Dry Tortugas for a couple weeks.

The reason I set up these adventures for myself is because I neglected me for so long, putting everyone else’s needs and wants before mine. I was a big sister, a parent, and a wife.  It’s what we do. Now, I’m not really any of those things and have been so lost, like a ship without a compass.  It took me a while to even discover what I liked to eat, what made me happy, what makes my soul sing.  Many of the things I’ve discovered are things I’ve always liked, but there are many new things I didn’t even know existed for me. I didn’t know me, but I’m learning more and more about me every day, and I love the woman I’m discovering.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine recently, and while I know his words were meant as a compliment and in no way pointed at me in accusation, they still hurt very much.  I was told that I was very smart, inspiring, radiant with positivity, a beautiful soul, unique, strong, independent and someone they very much want to be friends with and have in their life, because they want to develop those virtues for themselves.  He told me these qualities are what make me very attractive …at first… but.  There’s always a ‘but’.  Even though this was coming from a friend and not a date, I still felt my walls cave in and heaviness fall, causing that familiar huge knot to form in my throat. BUT… he said, this also made me hard to carry.  Every conversation from every failed relationship I’ve had where I was told how much I was loved, but… came crashing in on me.  All my exes still love, respect and admire me.  All of them.  Yet they are weak and none strong or brave enough to choose me, to love me.

I don’t need to be carried. I don’t need to be saved.  I just wanted to be loved. Am I supposed to dumb myself down, act like I can’t take care of myself, be cruel and selfish so that a man can feel comfortable enough to love me? As much as ideologically this sounds ridiculous, I believe it’s true.  I see it evidenced every day in society and have felt the pain of it in my own life.  I won’t change who I am, even if this means I’ll always be alone.  I would rather be proud of myself and of the beautiful soul I am, than lose that part of myself because a man isn’t strong enough to stand with me, to let me love them, and have courage enough to love me back.  A weak coward has no room next to me.    

So, if loving me is so hard to carry for a man, then they don’t deserve me.  I want a strong man, a man that will love me just as fiercely and I will love them, who will fight for me just as strong as I would fight for them, who would believe in me as much as I would believe in them. So yes, a shallow man only interested in a pretty face or a pretty body will NEVER be happy with me.  A weak man who is so insecure he needs a weak woman to make him feel strong, would NEVER be happy with me.  A coward too afraid to touch the sun, doesn’t deserve to bask in its light.  When I love, I love with a love that’s real, deep and true… not superficial, not shallow, not vain… and so only a man that knows how to love with real love will ever do. I will not make apologies for that. While all men think they possess this kind of courage, strength and power… I’m learning very few ever do.

Bottom line – I choose to love myself because I know I’m strong enough and the love I have for me is unashamed, deep, real and never hard to carry.

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray