Reconnecting @ MindSay

I have done a lot of soul searching lately. I have looked back on all that has happened in my life to try to figure out where i am and what/who i have become. i have had good relationships and bad ones, difficult times and happiest times, i have had some bad experiences but also some amazing ones; have failed, but also succeeded...just like im sure everyone has. yes, i do realize that i have gone thru some diffucult things in my life - more than most peopple and worse than some, but i have realized that i have also had a better life than some people and that i shouldnt take things for granted. there was a large chunk of my life where i really felt like i had no friends, no love, and no hope...life felt like a neverending struggle; like even breathing, the most basic function of existance, was a chore. at the botton of that phase i actually tried to end my life, and by doing so i realized that there were sooooo many ppl that cared for me, but that i had just been too stubborn to see it; too depressed and locked in my own mind to understand anything that was real in the outside world. from that point on i tried to open myself up and trust people, but i found it very difficult because i had closed myself off for so long. i found that as i opened myself up to one person i would alienate and shut out other people which was not what i was trying to accomplish. i shut out some of the most important people in my life; the ones who had been there for me and loved me since birth; the ppl who took me in when i had nowhere else to go; the ones who had basically been my best friends - the ones i could tell anything to. I made them feel like horrible people. i made them think that i hated them and that i didnt give a shit about what they had done for me, and in reality i cared so much about them. i love them with all my heart and the last thing that i wanted to do was hurt them..and thats what i ended up doing. not only did i do that to them, but i did that to some of my closest friends who were just trying to look out for me. i lost some of my best friends and while we have still kept in touch i know that their trust in me is gone. most of them just dont understand me anymore since i have strayed so far from the path that i had originally been travelling on.

my senior year i hit the top of insanity. i managed to alienate and piss off everyone in my family that had kept their faith in me that i would get back on the right track. i had even worried my biological father and his mother, which i had really never done. i got mixed up with the wrong guy. a guy that all he wanted was to use me, but i thought that i loved him. i honestly wanted to spend the rest of my life with him at that point. so much so that i was willing to abandon my family, my school, and my future. i even left the security of my home and decided to live from house to house even going to milwaukee to live with my brother for 4 days. i was able to be thrust back into reality and a sense of sanity when he broke my heart. i was thrown from a high into an ultimate low in a matter of seconds and i wasnt sure if i was going to be able to handle it. but my friends were there for me..even the ones that i had made feel inferior or that i made feel unwanted..they stuck by me and helped me get out of a dark time in my life. with the help of my friends and my family i was able to pull my head outta my ass, move back home, and go off to college.

about a month before i started college i met another guy who i thought would be the love of my life. we became best friends almost instantly, which is exactly what a good relationship would be based on, right?...wrong!! i was so caught up in that relationship that i let my first semester in college go to complete shit. my relationship was going down the drain and i became so depressed that i didnt want to leave my room. i sat in my closet most days and didnt move until right before my roommate came back. which made my grades go down since i didnt go to class. but i figured i would make my relationship work because i loved him so much...eventhough he was cheating on me and the girl he was cheating on me with was making my life hell. i figured that i would just make up for it second semester. when i recieved a letter from my college over xmas break i thought that my life was over...i spent the next semester trying to prove myself to my college that i wanted to be there and that it really mattered...it was easy to do that once i made the decision to dump the one person in my life that, at the time, i loved more than life, but he was no longer making me happy. it was a very difficult time, one that my mother helped me thru. i was able to finish second semester with a B average.

this past summer i have spent most of my time in illinois meeting many new people and making wonderful friends and adding people to my "family". i thought that leaving wisconsin would help me get away from all of the drama that i had come into contact with..it in fact did not help and i have realized that i let drama come into my life. because i have a complex where i feel that intense need to fix things that are going wrong i invite the drama into my life. i have realized that i just cant do that anymore..i cant put everything aside in my life just so that i can not only add more stress but lose a sense of myself. while i will always be there for the people i love (friends and family) i cannot give my all to them, i must keep some of it to myself. this will be the most difficult thing i will have to do, but i believe that i can conquer it, and when i do i hope that it will drastically help my life.

i have been trying to become a better person. i am in the process of mending lost or broken relationships with people that i love while still meeting new people and maintaing the friendships that i have. i am also trying to keep a sense of myself. being bi polar and having PTSD can make those things slightly difficult, but i am going to keep my head up.

i have finally met someone that i have been able to connect with and who i think is actually right for me. hes eccentric, kind, funny, sexy and just absolutely adorable, and he accepts me for all of my flaws (which there are many). i truely love him. and i feel completely safe with him. there are no words really to describe my exact feelings. he and i are starting a journey together that i hope will last a lifetime. i am very happy and excited that i get to share my journey of life with him, because there is no one else on the face of the earth who i would rather share this with. he makes me want to be a better person and he motivates me to get my ass into gear in order to achieve my goals. he makes me feel whole, and that is one feeling that i never want to lose.

so thats my revelation for now...i am continuing to learn every day..and hopefully i will understand a little more about this insane thing that we call existance..but until then i will just try to keep my head up, keep persevering, keep trying to survive and keep trying to have some balance in my life.

I have been getting into this whole FaceBook thing and I just cant get the hang of it like some people can. Then again, I didnt catch onto the MySpace thing very easily either. I think I will stick with Mindsay for a while, if only because its the easiest one to operate!

 

Facebook has its good points mind you. I have been able to reconnect, and check in on, some of the people from my past (whether thats good or bad I will have to decide). Its actually quite cool to see who is still friends with whom, and where everyone is in life now. Some people have 50 to 100 friends on there. I think I have 6 or 7 (if you cound the ones I asked to add me). I am much more fond of Mindsay in that respect!

 

Anyone around here have FaceBook accounts?

My friend Cris and I worked together back in the Philly area, more years ago than I care to admit.  We really didn't know each other all that well, I suppose.  But we got on real well, had similar senses of humor.  I thought she was awesome, actually.  Not long after we both quit working at that company, she sort of vanished.  And not long after that, I moved across the country.

 

A couple years ago, I got an email from her out of the blue.  We reconnected.  Had a couple phone calls and email exchanges.  I told her I'd mail her a real, hand-written letter.  And I did.

 

It came back as "moved, left no forwarding address."  Her email address also stopped functioning.  "User not known."  Phone calls were fruitless.

 

In the ensuing years, I've thought of her now and again, and quite a lot, lately.  So yesterday, I decided just for the hell of it to post an ad on Craigslist looking for her.  I returned home from work to find an email from someone going by the name "CJay" who said, "I thought you'd heard.  Cristin died of an overdose."

 

That's it.  No further information.  I naturally wrote back asking for details, hoping we were talking about two different people.  But it put a fear in me.  I went online and started looking for her any way I could.  I searched obituaries.  Nothing.  I looked up her name in the directories.  I did find one that had a different address than I had for her.  Still in Brooklyn, though.

 

Anyway...  Cris and I chatted this morning before she went off to teach her yoga class.  She's calling me back tonight.  She laughed when I told her about the overdose comment.  She doesn't smoke, drink, or do drugs anymore at all.  She did ask if I nearly had a heart attack when I got the email.  Mm hm.  You could say that.

 

I emailed "CJay" again, who admitted he gets his kicks out of sending emails like that.  I called him a twisted fuck and told him to seek therapy.

 

Asshole.

 

 

Speaking of reconnecting...

 

When I was a teen, I was really good friends with this couple from my church.  They were probably in their late 30s at the time.  Not exactly what I considered old enough to be my parents, but they sort of treated me like one of their kids.  (Oh, they didn't have any, but I wasn't the only teen from church they "adopted" that way.)

 

Anyway, years later, they adopted a baby.  When Hope was nine, I met her for the first time since she was a baby.  This was the last time I actually saw her parents; it was on one of my rare trips home.

 

After moving to California, I discovered her on one of the instant message programs I used to use, and we chatted once or twice.  Hope is 18 now, and a college freshman.  She has a MySpace page... and she's pretty wild (like many teens from our home town).  She's also apparently not into guys these days.

 

We've reconnected, too.  I was totally unsurprised that she's not "out" to her folks.  Can't imagine that would go over too well with them.  But it's great... given my history with her parents, I sort of regard Hope as a kid sister that I'm only starting to get to know.

 

 

I finally got my taxes done.  Sucks.  Between state and federal, Lorelei and I owe about $1600.  Bleh.  Good thing I have three paydays this month.

 

 

So yesterday was St. Patrick's Day.  I'd initially planned to hit one of the local pubs to "celebrate," even though I generally don't like this "holiday."  But I spent my time trying (successfully, thankfully) to track down Cris, instead.

 

Why don't I like this holiday?  I am, after all, Irish, to a great extent.  (Sage O'Cardigan, that's me.)  Well, I don't like it because it's a joke of a holiday, for one.  It's an American holiday that isn't given much of a thought in Ireland.  The whole mythos of St. Patrick... the snakes were figurative, y'know.  It was about converting pagans to Christianity.  And that's not something I actually look upon with much favor.  Wonder how Patrick would feel if he could see how the Catholics and Protestants have been killing each other over the centuries.

 

I really wanted some colcannon last night, too...