Don't Give Yourself Away to Settle Someone Else's Score

I could start this post in so many ways, but I'm going to just jump right in where I sit right now. I had two telling dreams last night. Two in one night. I remember dreams at the frequency of about two a year or so. All indications lead me to believe that it's a combination of anxiety and hurt feelings this time. 

The first one was that A week past my move out date, I still had a colossal amount of stuff still at my old house. The weird thing is that it was things I was sentimentally attached to. I felt called to every corner to something that means something to me and I either had to leave it or figure something out real fast as far as packing it, moving it, and finding a place for it. I think it's a call to downsize not just my stuff, but my emotional connections as well. I'm unpacking at the new house and realizing just how little space is in the new place by comparison. The old house was 2,530 square feet with a full basement. The new one is 1,650 square feet with much less storage space. I honestly am happier with the smaller place. The HoA here handles the yard, thank goodness, because that jungle ravine at the old place was a lot to do. My biggest gripe is that parking is problematic as we are at the end of a blind alley and there's little space to turn around even my roller skate.

So, yes, I think that part of this dream was literal. I think it had some value as a message to reassess what is important to me. Don't burn hours on something that really isn't going to matter or that does not matter to me and lost sight of the things that are deeply important to my emotional well-being. I think it was also a call to divest myself metaphorically of things that are not serving me well. I think it's a call to go back and reassess what matters to me. Certainly a call to take better care of myself and manage my time more wisely. Don't give yourself away for something that doesn't really serve you or anyone else who needs it and appreciates it. And some causes are just lost. Let go. Let go.

The other dream is really rather comical. I dreamed that we were awarded the SSG Fox Grant from the VA. The awarded amount was $2.00. In my heart, I feel like we will get some portion of the $750,000 I applied for. We will not get all of it. We will get enough to change the scope of what we're doing. I think that dream was just another sign to me that all of what I'm doing isn't really that much and that maybe my heartache and isolation and heaviness are too dear a cost for the change I can make. I guess we all get disillusioned. Also, it seems that it might relate to a different situation in which I have done all that I can do, but my help may have come too late because it was never asked for. I offered it repeatedly and finally just begged to help. I used emotional manipulation and beseeched pride, family, love, appealed to dreams and passions, and pulled out every tool and trick I have to help and it may not mean a thing by the end of the week. It may just be another pain in my ass for $2.00.

So I chose today, instead of logging into the VHA site or putting on my shop shirt and shilling to the community, to go to the gym, to work on unpacking my new house enough that I might be able to live in it, to eat well and take care of my body and my brain and my heart. No one else seems as interested in doing that for me as I am for them, and at the end of the day, someone needs to do it or it won't get done and I'll fall all the way apart again. I am so much my Nanny's granddaughter. She never fell apart though. But you can see in her eyes when she tells certain stories, just how close she got. I hope I have her strength, resiliency, her giving and loving spirit, her fire and her wisdom, and her resourcefulness and her kind of quiet brilliance.

That's my big goal for today: to be a little quieter. Speak less and listen more. I used to hardly speak at all. I'm not sure what turned those tides. I'd like to find some middle ground on that. Perhaps ask my therapist. I'm not really sure what has me wanting to change myself beyond being self-conscious and worrying about it. Because what am I if not a chronic worrier?

More prayer, more gym, more settling, more writing, more painting. Yes, can I please paint? Is it selfish to paint when there's so much to do? Probably, but it really is something I do to take care of myself and I need some self-care right now.

So I'm going to log off here and go wash my glass dining table so that it's ready to set up. Somewhere, in a Doc Marten's box, are the screws for it. I have no idea what I've done with the box, but now as I write, I do. It's in the garage, on the floor. No idea how it got from the cat tree in the dining room there, but I remember seeing it now. Off to do a think that will make me happy. 

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