uR, I really love when you drop by. I feel like you're in my head saying exactly what I need to hear. I can slowly feel myself taking a much needed step off my this place I'm stuck in. I owe that to you and all the wonderful people who lend a listening ear and some words of encouragement, support and advice.
I took a tiny nap today (!!!!) and I woke up with the sentence, "don't take it personally, it's not about you" in my brain. It immediately released a weight I was carrying around in my chest and I could breathe a little deeper. I immediately popped open my journal to capture the feeling and sentiment.
It reminded me of The Four Agreements so I ripped that book out and wrote them down in my journal, too.
A big component to the book is that it's not so easy to just decide to live by the four agreements 109% and voila! your life is better. Nits a journey, too, to break old habits and create new ones.
I'm going with it. It's helping the suction release from my arse in this stuck place I'm sitting.
H usually texts before he calls to talk to D before bedtime... Around 8 pm. He texted tonight at 4:30 asking if he could call. At first I thought, "ugh, how annoying, he must have grand plans tonight in NYC and can't talk to D later so he wants to talk to her earlier. Blah". Then I said STOP (a la you, uRworthy!!!).
I reminded myself that assuming gets me no where, I'm 99.9% wrong when I do it and it just makes me unhappy! jealous and bitter for no reason. I reminded myself that it's not about me and maybe he forgot about the daylight savings fall back.
When he called he asked D what she had for dinner. She said, "it's 4:30, dad, I haven't had dinner yet, jeez!" And he said, "4:30???? Oh, I forgot that I'm 3 hours ahead of you. I'm an idiot. Well, sorry for calling so early."
It kind of made me chuckle. He's 3500 miles away calling his daughter and forgets there's a 3 hour time difference. Ok.
Anyway, long story short... It wasn't about me so I tried not to take it personally.
AND after reading Sandi's recent post in Card's thread about being friends, I'm backing off of that, too. I need to make new friends. I do. I need to stop leaning so hard on old habits. I don't want to be his buddy. We hang out as a family pretty often but a lot of it is unnecessary. I need to cut back on that. Not completely but some.
Trying to make some movement in the right direction. It's small but feels good.
Card!! I wish we had something like what you described! My D loooooves rare books and she is named after a famous literary character so she's been asking me for a first edition of that book forever!! This book would be insanely expensive so it's not an option but she'd LOVE a place like that.
The only thing that I know of that is similar is The Huntington Library. A great collection of rare books and writings (a Gutenburg Bible among them), illuminated manuscripts, the first printed collection of Shakespeare's complete works, Thoreau's original Walden, etc. I've been planning on taking her and I'd love to go just the two of us. Books aren't really H's thing so it's a great bonding moment for us.
I need to see if we can get into UCLA's rare book library. Chances are they won't let a 7 year old in but it's worth asking! Thanks for the idea, Card!!
