Black-and-White Thinking

I have not been able to find information on the artist :(

Last summer, almost a year ago, I decided that I had enough oomph in me to tell an ex that I'd been in love with him for a very long time. I'd never told him because it seemed so silly. As time had passed, from teens to twenties, it became more crazy a thought. Then suddenly, one Saturday afternoon in July, I had a chance, and I took it.

Boy did I ever take it. When I got him in front of me, I dumped a decade of thinking on him in a single evening. All of the things I never thought I could say, I said. Suddenly, I had no shame. Those years were behind me; there was no future between us. I figured I would live in the moment and do the thing I thought I'd never be able to do. Except he didn't leave. He stayed and listened. He was kind. And that's where everything went wrong. He told me we could be friends. I told him I could never be his friend - that was the whole point - and then the next day wanted a response. I poured my heart out! I wanted a response! We disagreed vehemently, and that was it. We didn't speak again.

It took me a year (I had to finish graduate school, after all) before I realized what I'd done, that I'd thrown away a relationship just because it didn't fit the mold I wanted it to. I wasn't mad at myself. I understood why I'd done it. I was scared, so very scared, and it was the bravest thing I'd ever done. But the year between then and now was a huge year of emotional growth for me, and suddenly I had more oomph left in me. I called him a couple weeks ago and said I was ready to be friends.

So now I'm trying, in spite of my emotional limitations, to be a friend to someone who I didn't think I could ever feel friendly towards. But somehow my capacity for patience has increased dramatically, and I'm recognizing that relationships can be tricky suckers, and that my black-and-white thinking has kept me from being with people I love. So it's worth the not-knowing. It's worth the gray areas, I think, not because it's easy for me. It's never easy. But I wanted something so much, I think I was willing to let go of my stubbornness. I want to be a person who has good with people, who doesn't have broken relationships all over the place. So, as it often does, this means that I have to let go of unrealistic expectations and go with the flow a little more.

Phew. Life is hard work, folks.

eBay customer rant

Stop eating people's old French fries, pigeon. Have some self respect! Don't you know you can fly?

~ Tracy Jordan (30 Rock)

I receive offers weekly where potential buyers literally beg me to sell them an item for a particular price. Now, I have a "Best Offer" feature on most of my listings, and I welcome offers, but I hate these interactions. Each of them is more insulting than the last. I reject them all, regardless of the amount. I am not your savior! You will not die if you don't have these shoes, or these hair clips. It is not my responsibility (as a stranger!) to take care of you. Do you go to the grocery store and beg the checkers to sell you groceries for less than the asking price? Is begging via eBay really your bottom? Do you need to debase yourself to feel worthy? Seriously, if that's all you've got, that's all you've got, but own it already! Be who you are without apology.

Rant over. Peace out.

Thrift Share Monday :)

Signed "A. Mountanos 1980"

I found this mug last week, and haven't been able to find anything like it. There is a Mountanos Coffee Company, and I have been able to find some strand of a connection between the Mountanos surname, and Turkey. It might just be a fluke, but I thought it was really neat, and maybe collectible.

This morning, I woke up to a hilarious passive aggressive email in my inbox telling me, in essence, how selfish and greedy I was being for not accepting offers of 25-35% of my asking price, and how the buyer would send me "[my] profit" as soon as I accepted the offer. Dude, if you only knew how I get by. It's really laughable. Sometimes I ask myself if it's ethical for me to buy low and sell high, even if the item is worth what I'm asking. Sometimes I wonder if I need to cap my profit on any one particular item. I don't know. I'm not making a lot of money. I'm paying my bills.

Last night, my car started acting up, definitely structural and not the engine itself (it was still running well), and now I'm sitting in my apartment debating whether I should drive it at all before my appointment tomorrow at my mechanic. I still have paperwork to wrap up for my work year, and I have to drive to my supervisor's office to get final signatures. I'm kinda trusting that the car thing will be fixable in one day, and I'll be able to finish the paperwork traveling tomorrow afternoon. Ah the life of a VW owner! It's blissful, really :)

Linking up with Apron Thrift Girl.

It's all about the afterlife.

Isn't this SO cute?

They always throw around this term "the liberal elite." And I kept thinking to myself about the Christian right. What's more elite than believing that only you will go to heaven?

Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

You can't control anybody.

 

I have no control over whether or not other people make poor choices, or whether they make good choices. I have no control over other people, period. That is a hard, horse-sized, pill to swallow, and sometimes, I think it takes a lifetime to try to do it right. So much of what we do involves our own imagined need to control other people. It keeps us from admitting our true pain, our unique weaknesses, and ultimately, our humanity. Attempting to control other people is an attempt to deny those things.

So maybe take some time today to think about the person or people that you wish you could control (Hint: They're probably the people you love the most, or your family, or both). Then take a deep breath, blow all of your breath into your closed hands, then lift them to the sky, and blow your troubles away. Blow away your desire to control, when it's an impossible goal. Blow away your defensiveness and blame. And while you're at it, you might as well blow away any shame you have at wanting control or trying to get it. We all do it. We're human.

Ah, the good old days...

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole. - Vaclav Havel

Do your own dirty work

So I've been watching Mad Men on Netflix. I'm on Season 2, and there's a scene where the Draper family has a picnic and leaves all of their trash behind. It's a metaphor for all of the trash in their lives that they aren't willing to deal with; they're just leaving it for other people to clean up.

Cleaning up, or dealing with, your own garbage is a time-consuming and thankless task. All one gets is perhaps a self-directed pat on the back. Sometimes only you know what you've done. The greenbelt in front of my house is a full-time promenade for the neighborhood. It's always packed with groups of people and children, especially after school.

On a walk last night with the dogs, I noticed that there was trash everywhere. The riding lawnmower had been through, and made lots of big pieces into many more little pieces; it wasn't pretty. I didn't know how to handle it. Do I pick up other people's garbage to set an example? Do I ignore it because it isn't my problem? I thought about making signs that say "Respect the Greenbelt". It seemed like a communal message, "Let's take care of our shared space". But I know that I very rarely, if ever, am able to get someone to do what I think is right, so maybe I'll just hold off on the sign-making for right now.

Sometimes I wish I could throw my messes on someone else's doorstep. But I don't. "Why not?", you ask. Because I wouldn't go shit on someone's doorstep just to make them smell it. If it isn't productive, I don't need to whip it out and throw it around. That just causes more pain for everyone. There is no deserve. No one deserves pain. We all just kind of deal with it in the best way we can, and hopefully, along the way, we won't cause more of it.

Hopefully.

When is enough, enough?

There was a time, in the early part of my illness, before I knew about my semi-retarded pancreas, when I gave up hope. I actually gave up. I stopped taking my medication. I stopped caring about what I ate. I gave up. This was a pretty short period of time, but I remember it seeming like longer. I wanted to stick it to all the people who thought they knew what was going on, who thought I was lazy and manipulative, the people who called me a liar. I don't know how not taking care of myself showed these people much of anything, but I remembered feeling powerful. I was taking control of my own life.

Feeling in control has become a hidden, but vital, part of my self-concept. When I feel in control, I feel calm. I feel like I know what's going to happen, and I don't have to be afraid. Relinquishing control to other people, letting other people drive the car for example, is difficult for me. Being in the driver's seat gives me the satisfaction of knowing that all will be well, and if it's not, I can blame someone else...or myself; this isn't really a well-thought-out personality structure.

Within intimate relationships, I am black and white, all or nothing. I get what I want or I don't get anything at all. These two extremes are both satisfactory options. But this is an impossible way to live. No one, I repeat, No One, can successfully live this way. No one can be in control and in relationship with other people. This brings me to my current predicament.

I want it all. I want it all right now. And if I can't have it, then I'm going to forget about it, because in the middle of black and white is longing and pain-painful longing. That gray area means that some things are not set in stone, that circumstances and people may will change, that I don't have control. My heart aches at the thought. I am one who needs firm plans: What are we doing; where are we going; and when are we leaving. I won't die if I don't have the answers, but I will feel some anxiety. I'm working on that.

Putting my life on display means relinquishing control. It means allowing people to judge me, to create opinions of me, and even speak those opinions to others. It means setting aside my ego and allowing people to be people, me to be me, God to be God, and knowing that somehow, in the midst of all of that, everything will be okay. I'll keep you updated.

Who will save my impatient soul?

Sometimes you can't have it all. Sometimes what you want isn't good to have right now. Sometimes it will never be good, or maybe it will be good later. I can't answer this question for you; I can't even answer this question for myself.

That's the thing about thrift. You can't have what you want at the exact moment that you want it. You have to wait for the time to be right, for the thrifting planets to be in alignment, so to speak.

Now I love to spout the wonder of thrift in every aspect of life, but when it threatens to delay my happiness, I start to waver. My western mindset threatens to overwhelm the wisdom of simplicity that permeates my soul. It shouts, "You need this now...not later!...Patience is not a virtue; it's a sign of weakness!" And so it goes; and so it goes.

When I was a kid, I didn't think I was very pious. I thought that in the big battle of good and evil, I probably leaned more to the latter. Late at night, I begged God to save my soul, my poor little eight-year-old soul-it was bleak. I look back on that now and think, "I want to give that kid a hug, and maybe some more dinner." I don't know if I've moved too far from that. I still need a hug, and more dinner. But at least I love myself; that's growth. But I'm still impatient, and hope still scares me. If I want something, I believe that I won't get it. If I love something, I will lose it. If I am impatient, I will be punished. Still pretty bleak, huh?

Thrift isn't hopeful for every one. Thrift looks like trash, like loving someone else's trash, and that isn't attractive to a lot of people. But I'm not giving up on trash. Trash is a beautiful thing. Trash, I love you. And I will be patiently waiting to find you, or for you to find me, whichever comes first.

The Lure of NEW

I've gone from worrying about giving up thrift for a man to going to IKEA tomorrow and containing my bouncing desire to go into debt with new furniture for my new super-small apartment. I want a new bed, and a new mattress, and lots of fun containers and shelving. I will not get all of these things. I'm not that rich.

This past week, I had to let go of something I've loved for a very long time. I had to let go so that I could fully move on with my life, put all my trust in God, etc. But giving up what I love in the interest of the greater good, the Kingdom and what not, makes me squirm. I start to feel entitled. "Oh yeah God? You have the nerve to ask me to to do that after all that I've done for you lately?" God and I really get into it, or I get into it by myself while God patiently listens. Either way, it's cathartic.

I think it's okay to want things, but I think that what makes me uncomfortable is the need for those things. There is a lot that I want that I may never be able to have, but when I rest my hope on getting things I want, rather than on the future hope of total universal redemption, I don't get to share in the joy of God's plan. I end up disatisfed and bitter because I haven't gotten my way. This is impossible stuff, mind you. I have no power over my own wants, but I can make choices that reflect my dependence upon God, rather than my dependence upon my own power.

Sermon over. Peace out.