Reply #7: I identify with Blue Iris and FWWM [View All]

[get the red out]

I was, to say the least, suicidal by age 28 and really on my way toward death. I was fortunate to have chosen to participate in life-saving change. I was just cursing myself for the million-th time this morning for not taking better advantage of my youthful "rebirth" at that point and moved from Kentucky to some sane state. But then I don't know but what I took the path I was supposed to take and had the experiences I was supposed to have. I have been through all kinds of thinking changes in the past 17 years that have brought me to where I am now, and at this point I am adamantly certain of the things I believe to be important, basically that treating our fellow living beings with decency (including the Earth herself) trumps all other contrived ideas, and that is important to me. I had to slog through every process I have slogged through to get here, from meeting my husband when I was a default Democrat (with no clear idea why I was a liberal), getting into listening to his hateful conservative radio shows with him and even wondering if I had been wrong in my beliefs and the "strong" conservatives were correct, to having an awakening and realizing that I absolutely could not go along with that anymore because it was against every small bit of ethical reasoning that I had ever managed to obtain, to now dealing with the opposite in me which is too strong of a focus and obsession on the neo-con evils.

I am convinced that the Universe doesn't give a care about how much money I make or what kind of house I live in, I believe it does care about whether I view the world more selfishly or less selfishly and whether I develop the capacity to care about others. So maybe there is more than one path to better thinking that each of us can get on, and if we miss one higher thinking bus, we might have to walk through pouring rain to get to the next bus stop, but we can catch the next bus to our destination.

I used to view myself as a piece of crap, because I felt that someone that had had problems such as mine was supposed to think that in order to be perceived as "good", but I realized that thinking that was just an extension of a character flaw long learned as a child that needed to be worked on and removed. Oh, I have read and heard from many sources that we pick our parents for educational purposes - so I guess my Mom can give me some kind of Ph.D. in the spirit realm, LOL! Bless her soul, I see now the terribly frightened person she has always been, trying desperately to stay in denial about her serious mental illness to the point of projecting mental illness onto others, including her children. What a horrible mental world to be stuck in, bless her soul, I wish I could make it better and I can't. Reaching a point of seeing her painful world, and not just it's consequences on my sister and I, has been a journey in itself. Seeing her as a sick person rather than my enemy was a huge turning point for me because I came to see that she saved my life when I was 28 by telling me she wanted me to die. My desire to defy her over-rode my slide toward the grave and I became determined to do whatever it took to live, just to piss her off.