The fine line between love and hate

“We loathe ourselves for living and lying every day
in little ways that devalue and dishonor us”

Sarah Ban Breathnach, Something More

All I can say is that I’m very glad to be getting past the phase of hating myself. What a relief it was to give myself permission to stop trying to be perfect or even come close to it and loving myself for who I am.

It originates from being raised by a very strict, domineering father who could never be pleased. Just when I thought I may be getting close to making him happy, he raised the bar a little higher, making it impossible to ever feel “good enough.”

He died over a decade ago and we never made peace with each other. I never heard the words that he was proud of me or that he loved me . . . I only felt resentment from him.

After all this time I finally realize that he hated himself, his life circumstances . . . I was an innocent child who didn’t ask to be born, but paid the price anyway.

As a result, I grew up thinking that I really was that stupid little girl who could never do anything good enough and it has taken most of my life to love myself. I’m getting there . . . and I’ve made so much progress since I wrote this journal entry a little more than a year ago.

Originally published
August 12, 2007

It is not what you have or have not . . . but what you do with it. Not only “things” or possessions . . . but feelings within ourselves.

The thought never occurred to me that I had a self-loathing or hatred of myself. In my reading today, I realized that when we beat ourselves up over little things that we did or can’t do or thoughts . . . whatever it is . . . it is a form of hating ourselves.

When I think of all the times I have beaten myself up over things that I just COULD NOT do at a certain phase of my coming back to life . . . simply being social, walking outside to get fresh air but afraid I may have to talk to someone who sees me outside.

Hating our shortcomings, our human frailties and flaws . . . it is not the thoughts of self-hatred that are bad, it is what we do with it. The realization is a good thing and part of the healing. The healing comes in what we do about the things that bother us about ourselves.

Hate is a strong word, but it is a fine line between love and hate within ourselves.

Tonight I have given myself permission to hate myself for those things that keep me from being who I am, the best person that I can be. See it for what it is, feel it . . . I have to come to terms with those things before I can move past them . . . and love myself for who I am.

What I’ve learned today is that the feelings of hate and punishing myself go hand in hand and needs to stop. How can I move on if I don’t think I am worthy?

More progress, although I know I will have to address this issue over and over again before I come to terms with it . . . whatever it takes to be “normal” again.


Have you ever hated yourself?

Do you realize how wrong that is?

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Love and appreciation

We don’t know what we’ve got

Until we lose it

But it’s also true

That we don’t know what we’ve

been missing until it arrives

Don’t let a day go by without
telling that special person in your life
you love them with all your heart
because they could be suddenly gone

I’m a widow who speaks from experience
and so glad that I did and it made a difference
We treated each other as if it was our last day
Never parting without a hug, a smile and
three little words . . . I love you

Life is fragile
We are here one day
Could be gone the next
I have no regrets

Losing someone is one end of the spectrum
At the other end is searching and finding love again
Treating it with great appreciation and respect

I know what has been missing in my life
Someone special and unconditional love
I anxiously await his arrival
As I hear his heart beat

I Love You
Donna Summer
Lyrics

Well he searched and searched for nights and days

till he found the one he loved

and he wrapped her in his arms again

and then he thanked the stars above

that he found what he’d been looking for

and he stared her in the eyes

He said “I love you”

he said “I love you”

love you, love you

She stared him right back in the eyes

with a look of disbelief

then she gazed off into somewhere else

was it real or just a dream?

and she pulled him, oh so close to her

and she whispered in his ear

She said “I love you”

she said “I love you too”

love you, love you, love you

So together they will always be

until the stars fall from the sky

They said “I love you”

yes, I really do

they said “I love you”

yes, I do

I do, I do, I do, I do

So together they will always be

until the stars fall from the sky

so if you find someone you love a lot

you must never let them go

you just hold them tight with all your might

and you say three little words

You say “I love you”

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Trust

Trust . . . a firm belief or confidence in the honesty and reliability of another person . . . the thing that bonds couples together to help create a healthy relationship between two committed people.

In my opinion, there is nothing like that critical bond between two people . . . the warm and fuzzy feeling of safety in a loving, committed relationship to combine the balance of peace, love and happiness.

Trust is also key in our non-romantic relationships . . . the best friend who is the confidant, holding all the deep and dark secrets, always there when a shoulder is needed to cry on.

However, I think it is safe to say that most of us have experienced the intense emotional pain and agony of having trust broken.

In my life I’ve trusted way too many people who didn’t deserve that trust . . . now I struggle with the issue of trust. Loving someone doesn’t naturally bring trust for me . . . it must be earned.

When it comes to trust, my intuition is on high alert which is the opposite of what it once was before I experienced that awful feeling of trust broken. Maybe it depends on the degree of the betrayal, how many times trust was broken and the confidence we had in the person that determines how we are able to trust again . . . it could depend on the person and the chemistry between the two people.

There are two people in my life that have had my complete trust . . . my mom and my husband.

How about you?

Who do you trust the most in your life?

Do you have a problem with trust?

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Love . . . ageless and evergreen

“Like a rose under the April snow

I was always certain love would grow
Love . . . ageless and evergreen
Seldom seen by two”

lyrics from the song

Evergreen - Barbra Streisand

Many people live and die a full life, never feeling the emotions of this song. As I listened to this song today, I realized how blessed I have been to experience this kind of love in my life.

In the past month or so I’ve had some really bad waves of sad emotions that like to slap me down like the waves of the ocean in the midst of a fierce storm. The sad feelings from a broken romance momentarily make me promise myself to never fall in love again, to run when I feel it happening.

I have received messages and comments from friends that have made me think otherwise. One of those messages was one of the most beautiful I have ever received . . . his exact words . . . “Sorry u keep getting hurt, but if one stops trying they’ll never find love again. True love is worth the pain.”

He is so right . . .
to live the words of this song is worth it.

I used to think that one could not be lucky enough to find that kind of love twice in a lifetime, but I did . . . and I found it again with my first love, even after being hurt by him since I didn’t close my heart to love. 

Not just once and at different stages of my life . . . my first love has shown up at those different stages and perhaps we will reunite at yet another stage of our lives.

I’m trying to accept circumstances of life . . . once again. Just as I was so blessed to feel this kind of love several times in my life, God won’t let me keep it . . . love lost too many times, one to death, another to world politics and yet another to impossible life circumstances again and again.

Fate and destiny are strange that way . . . when God deems me worthy to experience true love again I won’t want to run away.

Have you experienced love

 that is ageless and evergreen?

Lyrics

Love soft as an easy chair
Love fresh as the morning air
One love that is shared by two
I have found with you

Like a rose under the april snow
I was always certain love would grow
Love ageless and evergreen
Seldom seen by two

You and I will make each night a first
Every day a beginning
Spirits rise and their dance is unrehearsed
They warm and excite us, cause we have the brightest love

Two lives that shine as one
Morning glory and midnight sun
Time we’ve learned to sail above
Time won’t change the meaning of one love
Ageless and ever evergreen

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Finding your pace

My pace changes with my life circumstances, although I prefer a slower pace that is peaceful and harmonious. On the other hand, I loved the fast pace of the corporate world as an executive assistant. At this time of my life, I would call my pace “go with the flow” as I go back and forth through various changes.

There have been times in my life where a slower pace is what I needed, but my restless nature would become bored and crave going against a swift current to shake things up a bit.

In my working days, the swift pace I had to maintain was tempered by one long weekend every month. JR and I both had the luxury of earning more than a month’s worth of vacation . . . the reward for being loyal long time employees. What worked for us was to work hard and then take off and unwind for that one long weekend a month . . . usually camping at Disney World. Of course we took advantage of those really long holiday weekends.

We enjoyed the versatility of camping at Disney since we had the best of all worlds there, depending on what pace we wanted to follow. It seemed as though he and I were always totally synchronized as far as the pace we individually needed. We also had our times of indulgence when we would stay at one of the expensive Disney hotels and spoil ourselves in luxury.

On those slower paced weekends, we would ride our bikes through the woods, stopping along the way for a packed lunch or just hanging out on the man-made beach enjoying nature and relaxing. Our favorite thing to do was to get up before the sun came up in the morning, get our coffee ready to go and hop on the bikes to the beach area to experience night turning into day, enjoy the birds and squirrels coming out to greet the morning and experience the marina coming alive. I’ve just described my favorite pace of all . . . my favorite place too.

Then we had those fast paced weekends where friends would join us and we would pack in as much Disney magic as we could handle, running from one theme park to the other like we had never seen any of this stuff before, acting like big kid tourists. In those times, going back to work was like relaxing.

What is your pace?

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Constant craving

Even through the darkest phase
Be it thick or thin
Always someone marches brave
Here beneath my skin

Constant craving
Has always been

Maybe a great magnet pulls
All souls towards truth
Or maybe it is life itself
That feeds wisdom
To its youth

Constant craving
Has always been

Lyrics from the song

Constant Craving
K.D. Lang

I’ve mentioned that I have not really moved on in a meaningful relationship since my husband passed away although I have found “love” online and went through the resurrection of my “first love”. In all cases of "potential relationships" I have kept them FAR away . . . where they are safe, where I thought they could not hurt me . . . but they did anyway.

As I’m currently in the midst of the phase where I am truly “embracing my solitude” and have actually accepted the fact that I can be happy living the rest of my life alone, never to find love again . . . sometimes feeling I am better off . . . especially after going through old journal entries and feeling the “pain of the relationship struggle” again.

Above all, there is nothing worse than the feeling of constant craving, as I was feeling in this journal entry from last year . . . sometimes we need reminders, huh?

 

Originally published sometime in 2008

As I’ve drifted through my meaningless life the past couple of days, feeling like I’ve hit rock bottom and ready to emerge from the ashes of nothingness, I have been trying a form of self-hypnosis as when I quit smoking.

The constant craving has got to stop . . . it is driving me crazy. I can’t take anymore. Tonight my attitude has flip flopped from even last night . . . I don’t want to feel love, I don’t want to have feelings for anyone, I want to love myself, depend on myself, be happy by myself . . . go back to the “embrace my solitude” mentality, but not just for now . . . forever.

Maybe it is because I have given my heart away and had it broken. I’m scared it is going to happen again. The constant craving draws me back. It is just boredom and I need to change that part of my life.

Before I met JR, I was hurt so badly that I never wanted to feel love again, but I did . . . at first, it was in the form of embracing my solitude and loving my life and having a satisfying and fun job. When I met JR, he chased me relentlessly because I really didn’t want to be bothered, but he was determined to win my heart. I fought him just because I didn’t want to feel love again, which I related to pain.

It is time for the constant craving to go away and for me to find happiness in the real world and forgetting about love from another human being. The roller coaster ride of up and down and back and forth has got to stop.


It has been approximately a year since that entry was written and I am very happy to say that the “constant craving” is under control . . . the roller coaster ride stopped, although I do get periodic cravings.

Having said all of the above . . . never say never . . . another lesson I have learned in life!

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Finding a purpose

I’m still searching for that feeling of purpose

in my life, you know, the one where you

can hardly wait to get up in the morning.

That feeling is my measurement of finding purpose in life . . . it means total happiness for me and the peace that comes from that kind of happiness. I’ve found that happiness and fulfillment many times in my life . . . but it escaped me and hasn’t found its way back to me.

Sometimes life reminds me of a used box of puzzle pieces . . . the box shows a beautiful picture on the cover, but are all the pieces included? Will the beautiful picture emerge in it’s entirety or will you be left with missing pieces?

It seems as if the last couple years of my life have been about figuring out what I want for the rest of my life . . . what will make me truly happy.

The hardest part was accepting my life circumstances and coming to terms with the sudden changes that seem to continue year after year. All the twists and turns have at least brought me to the place of acceptance where I can now concentrate on my ultimate goals of just being happy and content with who I am as a person.

The past year has been about finding my purpose as far as finding a way to survive financially and also give me that feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment. Work is not about the money for me . . . it is the accomplishment of what I do and how that makes me feel.

It has been over a year that I saw the changes happening with the economy as far as my online business. I’m an internet retailer . . . my sales started taking a nosedive way before last year, but I made enough to keep things going and had no idea of knowing the turn the economy would take.

The year was wasted on two jobs that I am not suited for . . . I should not have been persistent since there were still jobs available from the profession of my old days of working corporate jobs that almost made me crazy. I was being stubborn and wanted to do something entirely different . . . sometimes it seems like I failed miserably although I don’t see it that way because I tried to go “outside of the box” to be true to myself.

Now I’m having to turn that box inside out just to find a way to survive financially, but it is ok . . . perhaps these economic times will bring me to the purpose I would have never imagined. I do believe that everything in life happens for a reason.

Have you found your “purpose”
or are you still searching?

Do you look forward to getting
out of bed in the morning
or do you wonder . . .
why bother getting out of bed?

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