I think in terms of 'survival mode' lately...like getting through the day without wearing your heart on your sleeve...or tamping down how you really feel and promising yourself you'll cry when you get home if you have to, but 'not now.' The catch phrase survival mode actually comforts me because when I try to achieve that it may sound like I am just existing, but I am actually trying my very best to thrive, even if it does not feel that way at the time. I saw this article on the deep-rooted origins of survival mode and I find the link between (long, long ago!) then and now rather fascinating:


The extraordinarily high levels of social isolation found today provide perhaps the most important current example of evolutionary mismatch. When people feel that they lack supportive, loving relationships, when they feel lonely for extended periods, the consequences can be devastating. Social isolation has been shown to have effects on physical health that are comparable to not exercising or even to smoking cigarettes, and loneliness is also a major risk factor for most psychological syndromes, including severe depression.

...

But the catch is that in modern life, being alone more than one might like is rarely a serious survival threat. It may not feel good to consistently have nothing to do on a Saturday night, but that on its own is almost never a sign that your life is at serious risk. Because of our hunter-gatherer past, however, being alone too much often triggers a survival-mode state in us that, like all survival-mode states, creates stress and releases stress hormones throughout our bodies and brains. And chronically high stress levels seem to be largely responsible for the physical and psychological health issues that lonely people are at higher risk for. So the cruel irony is that, although being socially isolated is rarely an actual survival threat in modern, industrialized cultures, the state of being lonely does trigger stress and survival-mode states because of our hunter-gatherer past, and so being socially isolated does often end up creating a survival risk – but mainly because of chronically elevated stress levels driven by unnecessary and inappropriate survival-mode states. The brain is, in effect, tricked – typically unconsciously – into unnecessary states of survival mode, such as fear of abandonment, not because of actual survival-threatening circumstances, but because our brains confuse our evolutionary past with our modern circumstances. Every modern life is lived in the teeth of massive evolutionary mismatch, and the typical result is that we have far, far more survival mode in our lives than is healthy for us.

You can read more here:

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-embodied-mind/201212/survival-mode-and-evolutionary-mismatch

...the false illusion of true love

I can feel it sometimes, like a vision from a far away parallel universe. A vision of someone to love who loves me back. It feels so real sometimes, but I know better. It's just something I could do when I was younger and would go to my happy place, something I've never completely been able to shake off altogether...an ability to almost be somewhere unreal and feel like it is true. This morning, after having finally fallen asleep not too long before, I had the most intense dream and it was also very pure so though I knew I shouldn't be having it I didn't feel too guilty because of its genuinely sweet and spiritual aura. I dreamed I could be loved (in return!) and when I woke I was so very sad. I can still feel the sadness and, most of all, the heated resentment towards my alarm clock.

as seen on Pinterest

Speaking of alarm clocks...another reason I do not like them is because of how much they can startle you...sometimes so badly and unexpectedly (even if you did set it yourself the night before) you can fall out of bed. Certainly they are not very good for our health...I wondered about this and found this online:



"Although most Americans don’t equate the traditional alarm clock with being a threat to anything other than a chipper morning disposition, the facts tell us otherwise.  Conventional wisdom suggests that most attacks would follow an intense workout or stressful workday, but cardiovascular incidents of all types and degrees of severity happen in the morning – especially, right after waking."


 http://mhealthwatch.com/could-your-alarm-clock-trigger-a-heart-attack-21430/

 

Seeing this today via Huffington Post really helped. Since my own family and some people I know in other parts of my life are very, very anti-gay and often even hateful about it...well, I found reading this helped me feel better. It does not take the pain away of hearing what my own parents have to say about today's historical and heartening ruling, but it does help. I am so happy for the couples out there who can now legally get married!


  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-cheshire/supreme-court-ruling-and-_b_7673010.html

the article follows here:

Your religion is not being attacked. In fact, this ruling actually reinforces our countries commitment to let people live, grow, and even worship as they believe.

This ruling doesn't ask you to change any of Jesus' message.

We can still love.

We can still show kindness and understanding.

We can still show everyone they really do matter to God.

We can still marry the opposite sex, as well.

We can still feed the hungry and clothe the poor.

We can still worship God the way we believe we should. Even this Sunday, you can attend a church. Nothing has changed.

Maybe now that we are not trying to stop others from getting married, we can finally take the time to figure out why our own marriages are failing; because, the argument that a gay-marriage is somehow soiling the sanctity of our third marriage, is as ridiculous as it sounds.

We can now focus on bigger issues that actually matter and impact humanity for the good.

We can still (and should) be accepting to the entire LGBT community no matter what differences we may or may not have with them, (FYI- we should have been doing this all along guys).

You know, I have always found it interesting how our religion, based so deeply in love, acceptance, and kindness, gets easily hijacked into political hatred and social judgments. We need to stop trying to legislate our own morality and ethics onto those who don't believe the same way. Jesus never did this. And in truth, most of us "Christians" disagree greatly on the tenants of what are "moral issues" within our own faith. In many ways, we are a herd of cats trying to steer the world. And, it's not working people.

And to my many friends in the LGBT community...Congratulations, my friends! I am happy for you all. As a proud member of the American community, I believe that you should have the same rights as everyone else. It's one of the things that makes our country such a great place to live.

Now my Christian brothers and sisters, you are free to carry on with your outrage, anger, and venting...

But, when you're done could you give the rest of us a hand?! Jesus' love is a pretty heavy thing to carry all the way to the rest world and we could use the help.

I am not sure why I am stunned (pleasantly) that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Marriage Equality, but I am. The news is just so wonderful and I am so happy for all the gay and lesbian couples in the United States who can now get married.

 

as seen on Pinterest

The older I get, the more I grapple with all the things wrong with me that would make me an impossible candidate for a mutually loving relationship, the more I accept my eternal "spinsterhood" and make peace with it. This slowly won, but fairly easygoing acceptance, however, does not change my views or deep belief that love is out there for other people and that all couples in love do deserve (very much) to be together, legally, spiritually AND safely. It breaks my heart that whether two people in love (who just happen to be of the same gender) deserve to get married is even still an issue in this day and age, but it is...still an issue. This is an excellent op-ed piece from last Sunday. Below follow some of the best parts, but you can read the whole article here:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-gay-marriages-moment.html?_r=0


Nothing about it feels quick if you’re among or you know gay and lesbian Americans who, in a swelling tide, summoned the grit and honed the words to tell family members, friends and co-workers the truth of our lives. Our candor came from more than personal need. It reflected our yearning for a world beyond silence and fear, and we knew that the only way to get there was through these small, aggregate acts of courage.


Same-sex marriage isn’t some overnight cause, some progressive novelty, especially not when it’s put in its proper context, as part of a struggle for gay rights that has been plenty long, patient and painful.




But it’s not so dizzying or difficult to comprehend when you think about the simple logic behind same-sex marriage: You can’t relegate the commitments and loves of an entire group of Americans to a different category, marked by a little pink asterisk, without saying that we ourselves don’t measure up. You can’t tell us that you consider us equal and then put perhaps the central, most important relationship in our lives in an unequal box. It’s a non sequitur and a nonstarter.

There have been ruined careers, scuttled adoptions, sanitized obituaries. There have been millions of same-sex couples who were married in the eyes of each other, of everyone around them and of any truly righteous god, and they waited and waited for the government to catch up.

Ask Jim Obergefell. His is one of the cases that the Supreme Court is about to decide. He sued Ohio to have his name added as a surviving spouse on the death certificate of his husband, who died in 2013. It wasn’t just a few years before then that they began making their life together. It was two decades earlier.

Ask Edie Windsor. Her protest of the estate taxes that she was ordered to pay — but that a widow with a dead husband instead of a dead wife would have been spared — prompted the Supreme Court to gut DOMA two years ago.

She was married in Canada in 2007. When her wife first proposed to her, she gave Windsor a brooch instead of a ring, so that the diamond didn’t prompt questions from co-workers.

That was in 1967: nearly half a century ago. So don’t tell her that the idea of same-sex marriage needs more time to ripen.

The below article really is helpful. I found so many results when I typed in "fear of reaching out," but this is one of the best I read. I tend to shy away from letting people know how I feel because I don't want to make them uncomfortable and I am (I imagine like a lot of people) afraid of being rejected.


"The fear of rejection is one of our deepest human fears. Biologically wired with a longing to belong, we fear being seen in a critical way. We’re anxious about the prospect of being cut off, demeaned, or isolated. We fear being alone. We dread change."

You can read more here:

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/03/17/deconstructing-the-fear-of-rejection-what-are-we-really-afraid-of/

This is another example of taking peace (and happiness, especially in relation to "book happiness," which is a self-contained happiness that is far less likely to disappear than other kinds!) wherever I can find it. I am so glad to see L.T. Smith has a new release. It seems like it has been forever since her last one! I love the cover and I love that I can count on this being a really nice and wonderful read because I have yet to be disappointed by this wonderful writer. This is next on my TBR pile as soon as I finish reading for my job :)

As I have continued to struggle with my insomnia and face that things are changing in my personal life, I will take any peace I can find whenever and wherever I can find it. I was believing the wrong things, which has lead to my unhappiness, and I was looking to happiness outside of myself and it really is true (I truly believe this) that you really cannot be happy when you care too much about what other people think and when your happiness comes from another person. As some of the things I have not wanted to believe are true really are true and this sinks in I took solace in the weirdest places, like in my "Fringe" dvds and sad songs and in how somehow Mary McDowell's voice is so darn soothing and it makes things seem like they are going to be better. I know how silly that must sound, but just as I love the "Fringe" cast, I find "Major Crimes" to also have one of the best ensembles ever in a tv show. Everyone on the show has something to contribute and though my insomnia continues to be a bear, it is nice to have "Major Crimes" to keep me company.

from cafepress.com

I gave up coffee back in April, but this is what insomnia feels like to me.

from: "How To Stop Hating Yourself" (lifehacker.com)

"If you dismiss the things that do not matter; if you remove those things from your mind and focus on what must be done; if you understand that your time is limited and decide to work now; only then will you be able to get to the finish line. Otherwise, you will be dissuaded into living a life you aren't interested in.

Side note: You need to handle failure and obscurity better. You may be in a tough place right now where you feel lonely or like a loser. No worries, we've all been there. But it's time for you to realize how common these things are, and that they're experienced by even the most successful and happiest people in the world. Those people get past them, and you will too."

As things in my personal life have really started to get a bit overwhelming, I find myself disliking myself even more than usual. This article is really, really insightful and helpful:

 http://lifehacker.com/how-to-stop-hating-yourself-and-start-down-the-path-to-1688096718

 

from thoughtcatalog.com

I will say this for mean and painfully blunt people: you always know where you stand with them! To find out that someone who has always been civil, even sometimes very nice, to you actually does not like you is far more painful than knowing right up front that the mean person cannot stand you!

I think of this one person I know and how the way they look at me says far more than the words that come out of their mouth. :( 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best:

I think this would be less hurtful if I weren't also facing the inescapable inner knowledge that a friend I recently made has changed her mind about me and is slowly drifting away. :( All the signs are there and I know it is only a matter of time before I lose her friendship. I am not very good with making friends, I never have been. It is like all the bad things within me (my loneliness and even, I am ashamed to say, my sometimes intense tendency to show my feelings too much) can be suppressed for a while, then, one day, just rise to the surface and really scare people off...

I am struggling to deal with the conviction that someone I like a lot just cannot stand me and I found this article online which has a lot of good things to say, including this:

But in the end you realize something very important. She just doesn't like you. She just. doesn't. like. you. Something about the essence of you has her angry, jealous, annoyed, whatever.

This thought should be freeing to you. Because you're off the hook. But as it's freeing, it can be overwhelming as well. Why doesn't she like you? Aren't you so likable? Didn't Mom tell you that you're the sun to her shine? You think you're pretty swell. Are you wrong? Does everyone hate you but you, and you're compounding your dumbness by missing that?



Read more at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationship/blog/24294-some-people-just-dont-like-you#rrTw29br6XGFUX1E.99

Fringe therapy

There are times lately when I think the only thing I still care about is watching "Fringe" on what feels like an endless loop. I have no passion for food anymore and really only eat because I have low blood sugar and I cannot concentrate on a book for longer than twenty minutes without putting it down. Even music does not feel the same to me lately. I blame this on both me and my insomnia, which lately (because insomnia actually feels like it can take up residence inside me) feel like the same thing.

When I cannot sleep at night, which is often, I watch my "Fringe" dvds. I bought the complete series back in November and I am already on my third "start over." I only watch it after I am through for the evening and too exhausted to clean anymore or do anything even remotely functional. I am seriously starting to wonder if the fact that this is the only thing I watch anymore means there is something seriously wrong with me.

And then I realize, each time I start over again, that Walter is "Fringe" to me and that I wish Walter were real (not John Noble, whom I like but nowhere near adore as much as Walter, the character he plays) and that he is the heart of the show, though the entire cast is just magnificent, all of the ensemble creating wonderful nuances in each of their characters.

Whether Walter is trying to find the 'perfect' strawberry milkshake recipe or is playing his favorite music (on vinyl, ranging from Bach to Bowie), he is both endearing and brilliant in what he loves and how thinks. 

The double-edged sword of knowing you are not loved and knowing you have waited so long you would not how to love, even if you finally did ever find her. An unexpected song plays on the radio and it might as well have punched you in the stomach, it hits you so hard. 

The tears in your eyes are falling so fast and hard you have to pull over and you wonder how it has gotten so bad that the slightest little thing...a favorite song coming on, something forgotten at the grocery store, your phone left at home...can leave you undone.

You can feel so sad about how things have turned out in your life (and also mad when you realize a lot of it is your own fault) and how you strongly suspect you have met the person you could really, truly love but they do not feel the same, could never feel the same, and so you look for anything to help ease the pain and you see this and you think maybe you should not be beating yourself up for feelings you know you should not have:
 

 

Sometimes we love people who can only be in our hearts, not our lives...I like this pin because it says to me...that, sometimes, we have to just love people silently and that it is okay to do that when we cannot and should not out loud...♥

Sometimes I feel like I can exactly pinpoint the last time my sister and I really got along and were even maybe good friends who would have had a connection even had we not been related. It was 1985 and my sister was a Madonna fanatic...even going to school, like a million other girls across America at the time, dressed like the singer during her "Desperately Seeking Susan" days. I liked Madonna, too, but my like was very lukewarm compared to my sister's and other than that we had little in common with our music interests. We hadn't since we played David Naughton's 1979 "Makin' It" so much on our turntable we wore the single out.

One day, though, my sister came trough the door, having just returned home from shopping with her friends at the mall and she pulled out a cassette from a Sam Goody bag. She really liked the single "I Didn't Mean To Turn You On" and like me she would often buy an entire album just based on having heard one or two songs at the most. Back then you really had no choice unless the 45 single just happened to be backed with the other song you liked.

I didn't pay much attention to what she was playing until I heard this amazing and frenetic thumping coming from her room. Enticed, I went in and asked her what the song was and she told me it was Robert Palmer. And all I could think of was how different this song sounded from "I Didn't Mean To Turn You On" and how much better and less scary and dark it was too. The song title sounded like an insult (who wants to be called 'hyperactive' after all?) but actually proved itself to be a really poppy love song/anthem the more my sister played it.

There are days I think about how much we both liked that album and how I sometimes actually mourn the loss of the relationship we once had, the way we only really had each sometimes when our parents were not getting along or our mother was mad at both of us or it was too cold or rainy outside to play with the neighborhood kids. I hate nostalgia, I really, really hate it...not because I don't see the appeal of wanting to go back to better times, better days (I do), but because I don't see the point. There are no time machines, after all, and regression is hardly healthy, mentally or physically. Still, some things are easier said than done and you can't deny those times the heart misses what it misses...

Maybe, but maybe you could also say: sometimes you can ruin things and never get the chance to get that first impression back.

I tried everywhere to find something about what happens when (or at least you are pretty sure) your first impression with someone was actually okay, but the second (and third and fourth and so on) impressions are the ones you have mucked up. You did not try to botch things AND, in fact, you continue to flail because you like the person you have messed things up with so much. I find it so very heart-breaking and utterly bewildering that the more you care about things and people, the more you can totally mess up and even ruin things with them. :(

Really, I do not know where I am going with this except to say that I am flailing a lot lately in many areas and I am finding, much to my horror, that my attention span has become so poor I can barely read a book straight through anymore, the one thing I always had to escape my own thoughts. And a buzzed up, but unfocused brain makes it very hard to sleep, which takes another way of escaping away from you. I have never been a big fan of Hemingway, but when I read this quote from him my heart went out to the guy because I think I know exactly what he meant...