TJBTM: What I want to be when I grow up

As of April, I have changed my reading and tv habits. I stopped watching my favorite shows and reading my favorite novels. They were usually about crimes, murders and scary events. I loved the science behind the show Bones and watched every week. However, my anxiety attacked me personally and these shows made me very scared.

Last week, I went back to my usual novels. I realized I like the dynamic between the lead characters and the journey of their relationship. I was still sensitive to the crime and murder so I had to quit. Tonight, I tried watching a new episode of Bones. It was not scary and it was actually a episode very different from their normal scripts. The episode was still about solving a murder but it also was about a a person following them to make a documentary about their relationship between the FBI and Bones. At the end of the episode, they asked each character what they wanted to be when they grow up. I found this very fun and interesting.

I guess from a young age I knew I was going to be a scientist. I am not sure what age I knew to be a chemist. Heck, I do not know if I should be one now.. but that is another story. Making the decision to go to graduate school was easy. I figured out I wanted to know more about my field and have a deeper understanding about our world. I thrive to learn something new everyday. I love school. I love figuring things out and understanding phenomena at a deeper level. Honestly, when I retire I told my husband I want to work at FedEx. Think about how well organized and thought out a company has to be to guarantee an item to be anywhere in the world within 24 hours. Impressive and I want to know how. I also want to work at an airport. That is another example of a "well-oiled machine"!

I want to learn not only more about science and chemistry but about life. The saying we are only human really resonates with me.  We are allowed and expected to make mistakes however we should learn from them. We are fortunate to have the ability to not only analyze our mistakes but to adapt. I realized I am too robotic and I do not feel things. I bottle things up until the dam is at its breaking point. Now that I have identified the issue, I feel the way to adapt is to slow down in life and feel the emotion. I may not understand what I am feeling but I will give the emotion it's 5 minutes of fame and move on. Hopefully releasing pressure from a the dam.

Five on Friday

Hello. This is my first Five on Friday Post.

One: I bought yarn at my LYS trunk show of madlinetosh. I cannot wait to cast on these socks. However, I will finish a few more projects before I do. Well, at least that is the goal.

 Two: We are enjoying the deck and time outside. Every night (weather permitting) my husband and I have a 20-30 minute talk about life, the day and us. It has been the best improvement to our home.

 Three: Saved this little guy from my dogs. Hopefully he will stay cute from a distance :)

 Four: My current WIP. The Quicksilver shawl. I have only one last section!!! Hopefully, this will be done by the end of the day.... Fingers crossed.

 Five: I finished my nieces Azel Sweater. It was a super fast and easy project. However, there are several mistakes in the patter which is frustrating.

Thank you for stopping by and joining Five on Friday. More Five on Friday  can be found here.

TJBTM: The Meh's and Exercise

I decided to take some time off work and reflect. My plan was to just relax. Well, my mind does not stop which is the up and downside of anxiety. The first day off, I put a two coats of stain on the deck pillars and hauled the old deck boards away by 9 am. Then, work needed somethings done. Overall, the first day was extremely productive but in all the wrong ways. The next two days were the same as followed. Finally, I sit here perplexed.

The old me, before the panic attack never saw the relaxing and rest as a need therefore I pushed until the limits. I knew how to do that. I did it for years. I feel comfortable with that routine. That is the familiar to me. People know that is who I am. Now, I need rest, relaxation and me time and it is causing a ripple affect in my life. I know the right answer is to set a new status quo and to keep to it. But I can do the old me, I can work and push myself to the limits and be whatever everyone wants. I felt loved then, people talk to me as the need something from me. However, as I stopped being the push over, my friend stopped seeing the value of me. Therefore, I am lonely.

The loneliness leads to doubt, pain and more anxiety.It is embarrassing to me to need people so bad.... Ugh, I am not sure the right answer or what type of friend I am....  It is a vicious cycle of over thinking and analyzing. However, it is a hard one and I am struggling. Exercise and routine is what I need to get through this "meh" time. Here is to a day where I do not feel strong but I feel like there is still hope.

WIP Wednesday

Sorry, I am late to the party! Joining Ginny's Yarn along today.

This is a bit of a weird post. The past couple of weeks I have been working really hard to getting my knitting spot ready. We bought our first home last October and wanted to replace the deck. The deck was in bad condition and really needed new floor boards and a new stain job.

Here you can see our little buddy on the nasty old boards.

I took a couple of days off of work, sanded the rails and spindles. After I stained them the deck was starting to show some promise. I also stained new boards in the garage.

 Finally we put in the new boards and added some furniture.

 Lets just say this is my favorite place to knit and just be.

 Enjoy your week!

TJBTM: Acceptance, family and community

Wow, two posts in one day. Yep, I am having an emotional day. Watch out :)

I struggle. I struggle with acceptance. I know why but I am stuck. I cannot get over it. Basically, I am adopted. Everyone says it was a chance for a better life. While this is true, it is also the bitter fact that someone gave you away. I have always been told to feel grateful and thankful for this second chance and that it is true sacrifice to give up a child. I cannot imagine this sacrifice. I do feel thankful and lucky to be given a chance to thrive. However, that is not all I feel. I am angry and confused. To the best of my knowledge, I was left in a basket outside only days old. I have no idea where or why.

I feel like this longing to be accepted, to not lose anyone and maintain relationships at any cost is due to the fact I was abandoned at a young age. I struggled making friends, finding my place within a community. Now, after a long and over due reflection, I feel like I am just this person, an empty shell who is here to please others. I have no idea sometimes who I am.

I know one thing. I am a survivor. An abandoned child left, a person who tried so hard to find friends and yet struggled to know what a good friend truly is, the idea of suicide because I was not worth it.... all of this is in my past. And that is where I am going to make it stay. I want to be strong, work through my anger of past events, fears of being left all alone and not worth saving so I can move forward and love myself for who I am. I am worth being here and there is only one of me.

I know true friends, family and love. It is worth fighting for and pulling through the extreme lows in life. I feel we can not truly feel bliss until we have felt absolute pain.

TJBTM: Who cares?

Something I have struggled with for a long time is deciding who's opinion matters. In my last post, I discussed the event with my dad on vacation. At my age then I was not strong or wise enough to realize that the jeweler's opinion does not matter. The older I get, the more I realize the amount of people's opinion I should value, is a very small subset of who I currently have.

Currently, I care about every opinion stated about me. This is a ridiculous and impossible standard to keep up.  Thinking about who should be on the list is very different based on what the opinion is covering. For example, my work and productivity should be judged by my colleagues and management. In addition, I also care a great deal about my students and their opinions. However, I will not really seek any personal opinions or insight from them. Just like, I will not look for my work performance standards from my knitting friends. There are appropriate and useful opinions that can better oneself and help us grow. Beyond that, it can just be nonsense and unrealistic suggestions founded by naive opinions.

The person who I value their opinion the most about personal growth, happiness and life advice is my dear family and close friends. I believe we are family and friends because we have the same morals and goals. We have had similar dreams but different experiences which can lead to helpful insight for each other. 

Setting this new idea into practice. This weekend we attended a baseball game. It was a lot of fun! We were celebrating my husband's birthday with our family and his parents. My husband is a Starwars fan and as such, we decided to go to the Starwars day at the ball park. While leaving the stadium, everyone I was with used the restroom and I waited outside. A man came up to me and touched my arm to get my attention. He said you look like "Chewbacca", where is your mask.... He was clearly drunk however I was hurt by the comment. My first reaction was I must stand out of a crowd that much for him to say that to me?? However, after the car ride home thinking, I came to the conclusion I had a great weekend. Why let one comment from a complete stranger, who's opinion does not matter to me ruin my day. I won't. I will just move forward and not care. Instead, I will tell you I had a great time and love my family so much. That will define the weekend.

TJBTM: A Trip Out West with my Dad

One event in my life that I never forgot was a road trip with my dad. It was at a weird time in life when I was becoming a teenager and in my dad's own way he wanted to build our relationship. As you may or may not know, I am adopted. My father is white and I am not. I forget often that I am not white and socially do not see myself different from my family in appearance even though it is obvious we are not of the same nationality.

 My dad and I celebrating my birthday, 2014

We hopped in the truck early morning and decided to drive as far as we could. Somewhere in South Dakota we pulled over for the night. The first weird incident was the hotel. The hotel had a single bed and they were confused why I needed my own bed. My dad has was tired from the drive and it became heated fast that the room was not what he had requested. One roll-away bed later, everything seemed fine. The next morning we woke up to a flat tire. This was annoying but fixed pretty fast and we made it to Wyoming that evening. My dad was trying to make the trip enjoyable so he asked if we wanted to go shopping. He wanted to get my mom something as well so we went to a local jewelry store. The sales person there started talking with my father and my dad explained he wanted to get something for his wife. The sales person assumed that was me. Instantly, I felt naked. I felt disgust and uncomfortable. How could someone think that I was my dad's wife. EWE! My dad is not the emotional type. He was like no that is my daughter and moved on. I was so upset and very unclear why I looked like I could be his wife. I was around the age of 14... Ewe.

The trip was 7-8 days long. The rest of the trip I stayed in the truck. My dad did not understand why I excluded myself. I would not go shopping, or hiking or anywhere. I literally sat in the truck while he visited all of the sites. It is still unclear to me why I did not tell my dad how uncomfortable I was. I am not sure why I could not get over the sale's persons mistake. All I knew was people saw me and my dad as some sick relationship. I was crushed. My dad became annoyed by my lack of participation. I really wanted this trip to be something fun but I could not fix it. I know in the end it was silly and a mistake but it was how I was perceived by the outside.

Writing about this experience helps me with clarity and understanding. I too have a son and he is not adopted. However, he is fair skinned and I am darker. People ask me about the difference especially when we lived in the South. However, I address it when it happens and explain to my son people can be naive and cruel without intentions. For example, while getting my son from after school another child asked if I was his mom. He said I don't look like him. I explained I am his mom and we do look like just not the same skin color. I do not want my son to have the negative experience I had and I feel the best way to prevent an issue is by addressing the problem and talking through it. At this point, my little man does not seem to care. I hope he continues to feel that way.

A side by side photo of my son and I at roughly the same age

(I think we look pretty similar)

TJBTM: Therapy and the journey forward.

Hello. Over the past few months I have been experiencing new emotions. Anxiety at extreme levels.  I knew I needed help. I have been talking with a therapist weekly before and now bi-weekly about the next steps.
This past weekend was a ridiculous amount of stressors. Little things that added up. I knew that everyone has stressors and deals with them differently. How come when I experience them, I have massive anxiety and lose myself? My therapist explained what was going on through an example. Lets say you are having the worst day ever, many things going wrong and then you accidentally drop and break a glass. The broken glass on any other day would not be a big deal but today with everything you are dealing with it is all it takes for you to lose it and start crying. There is an emotional "cost" with these events that you have to pay.
Over the years, I have had many events occur. However, I never paid the emotional cost associated with events. I never sat down and let the tears follow so I could move forward and get on with life. Now whenever the "glass breaks" I crumble because of all the other emotional events I have holding in. I feel like the Hoover Dam and I am going to crack. I need to think about these past experiences (especially now when I am learning to heal and move forward) and let the tears flow. I apologize now but the next few weeks (or longer) will be blog posts that make me feel something. While all the post may not be bad experiences, I know I will be crying either tears of joy or sadness to be able to move forward. I hope if you are having trouble with anxiety or moving forward this journey will help you as well.