Balls Of Steel

 

“A really strong woman accepts the war she went through and is ennobled by her scars. “~ Carly Simon

In the mess that is current life, I was feeling very determined to come back for all of you and share a tale during the lull of commotion and weirdness.

A story you may find humor in, and that’s okay. And others might find astounding.

For those of you who watch “The Walking Dead” you might be reminded of the one liner that Negan says: “You got some beach ball-size lady-nuts on you, coming in all kamikaze like that.”

This is one story that I feel would illicit a very similar response.

Last Friday (Cinco de Mayo) I went out to downtown Austin to see some live music. Three varying musical acts in three different venues. The last of which I have spoken about when I was doing concert reviews on this blog.

With most bands comes merchandise. With merchandise comes the responsibility of someone to watch over it all and take part in the transactions of sales.

I was sitting around waiting for the music to begin and I felt something strange come over me as if someone was watching.

I gazed over at the merch tables and a young woman was gazing what I thought could have been in my direction. She seemed happy and content in her little chair. Smiling and waving. But I was not 100% sure if she was waving at me or at someone behind me. I was not very close, probably twenty feet away so there could have been anyone in that line of sight that she was communicating with.

I went past her on the way to the rest room, but I was not paying her any attention and she shouted out to get my attention. However this being a live music venue, I could not understand what she was saying. So I moved on ignoring her.

I returned to my usual place near front and center of the stage and I noticed movement from the table, her eyes locked on me the entire time. I knew she was about to come over to me.

Unfortunately, she had no idea that she was actually invading my personal space. Since I did not know her, I didn’t make a fuss about it.

And then suddenly …………. LET THE GAME BEGIN.

She leaned over into my ear and asked if I knew how to slow dance. The band was playing a slow song so it was an appropriate question for the time. I shook my head no.

The next question was straight to the point. Are you married?

Wow!!!

Time for situation control. Since she was in my personal space and I was actually getting uncomfortable, I told her that I was married. I had hoped she would at least take a few steps back. All I got in response was this loud “Awwww!” and she promptly and swiftly returned to her post at the table.

A little while later in between bands, I stepped outside to watch people and grab some fresh air. Wouldn’t you know it, she came outside and headed straight for me!!! Charging like Custer’s Last Stand.

Again, she wasted no time in asking where my wife was. I simply said “she was not here” and she nodded. Then very sheepishly asked if she could give me a hug.

After lying to her twice… I began to feel rotten. So I allowed her request. To which she slipped her arms around my neck and squeezed very tight. The side of my face buried into her chest for a couple of seconds before she let go.

She stood there, hanging on to my wheelchair in awkward silence. Again in my personal space so I turned my head the opposite direction. Several minutes passed and neither one of us was talking until finally she let go and returned inside.

She and I would exchange glances again and she blew one more kiss. I waved back.

I thought about this experience a few hours later and I began to realize something about her. Something that I felt was very unique and special about this young woman.

We always talk about those creepy people that come after us, but we never hear about those who choose to be respectful in their approach. So much to the point that all these warnings we hear about people that we begin to question every little motive of everyone else.

One thing was for sure. She knew what she was looking for and she went for it. The moment she realized the answer was NO, she stopped and went no further.

At the moment I said to her that “my wife was not here” she honestly could have hinted or insisted on participating in something on the side. But she did not. She left it alone. She obtained the information she was seeking and dropped it.

I also want to point out that she was full of courage in going after what she was wanting or at least curious about. She followed through. And looking back on it now, it was a different and refreshing approach as she had more guts than a lot of single MEN that I know. From personal experiences and listening to other men talking about this issue, there are so many men who lack that kind of confidence.

I want to say that I know a lot of men who could really learn from this young woman.

The Ex Explosion And The Power Behind It

not ACTUAL girlfriend!

 

“Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don’t love.”~ Jack Nicholson

This morning I was met by a friend request from an ex-girlfriend… again.

This is probably the third time I have dealt with such a request within the past four years. Each and every time, ultimately was denied and then blocked. It didn’t matter which social media was used either. MySpace or Facebook.

However today had a little bit of difference as her Facebook profile and cover photo were of her at her wedding which apparently happened sometime last year.

I still have no idea what it is that she is wanting. I don’t know what it is she thinks the connection is. Even though I have on more than one occasion expressed to her personally that I no longer wish to have any communication, any socialization with her ever again. That we should leave the past in the past, and hold on to the memories that we have. The relationship happened and then ended almost twenty years ago.

And yet this morning, I receive yet another friend request on Facebook from a completely new Facebook profile. The difference being that her last name is hyphenated. Is she only doing this to make a statement to show that she did in fact get married? Is she attempting to be a thorn in the side to shove it in my face that she is married? I don’t know. Honestly, I just don’t want to know.

I then spent the next two full hours losing myself over it all. Until I spoke with someone else who was there and willing to just listen.

I felt and heard myself getting so animated as I spoke of this rather brief situation that had happened. I mean how DARE she come after me with yet another friend request after she’s been told more than twice that I want nothing to do with her?? After all, who does she think she is???????

I even felt a bit light-headed once I had actually stopped talking to take a breath. And that’s when the person that was listening to me slapped me with a hardcore lesson in reality. A lesson that I hope to be able to share with you as you read this post.

As I reached over and grabbed my drink to take a sip, I heard them respond to everything that I had shouted and screamed and bitched and moaned about.

“Why are you giving this so much of your energy?”

Crowbar to the nuts in 3… 2 …. 1 …….. wait for it ……………………….. BANG!!

What they were telling me made sense. What I had told them, I couldn’t take back. I was exposed. I was out there and I had allowed everything to eat me up inside. A person that I haven’t seen face to face in nearly twenty years. A person in which feelings for have drastically changed. A person that I don’t even want to be bothered with- I had allowed to bother me.  

Then I was given a bonus lesson through an analogy:

If someone gives you the finger. It is up to you as to whether or not you do or say anything in response. You have that power to take care of you.

Are you going to just laugh at the person? Are you going to ignore them? Or are you going to stand your ground and pick a fight?? 

YOU have all the power in the universe to take care of you. It is your choice in how you deal with that particular situation that you have found yourself in.

Another analogy as a bonus-bonus was then presented before me in the statement of:

You cannot control who is going to knock on your door. You can control whether or not you answer the door and how you deal with the person who is knocking. Or you can choose to ignore it and just wait for the person to go away and stop knocking. It is all within you. 

And so we should take the lesson of knowing what is worth spending our energy on, what are we going to do with the power that we have in taking care of ourselves.

Here I was… on my eldest brother’s 50th birthday, and just days away from my own birthday. More information on its importance as the day arrives.

And then realizing that I am in the middle of making plans for a Round #2 with someone that I never thought I’d lay eyes on again. Once more, more information on that as it happens.

And yet with all these happy and positive things happening and about to happen in my life, the fact was that all of my energy was focusing on my ex-girlfriend’s attempt to contact me. The power was handed over to ex-girlfriend and all focus was on her, rather than being in the most happiest of moods because of many personal triumphs and celebrations.

What do you use your energy on? On what should you use LESS energy and power on? On what should you use MORE??

Don’t Short Yourself On The Benefit

“One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.” ~ John F. Kennedy

I could have sworn on the life of my music collection that I had discussed this before but when I went back through the pages of history in this blog I could find nothing.

Strap in, hang on tight. Because with history comes action and with action comes consequence.

Let’s do this in steps because I’m not sure how long we’re going to be here:

1. HISTORY: Ever since the first time that  I moved to where I live currently back in early 2005, we’ve had our social services coordinator.

I’ve discussed that job position many times but had been talking about many people. However in late 2005 into early 2006, there was someone that was fresh out of college, fresh out of getting her degree in social work. Or at least, her license for social work.

Let’s face this ongoing fact: My neighbors then and still now, are old enough to remember World War II. And I can NOT recall the Vietnam War??

But what am I to do as a young adult with nobody around me or my age group?

When this new social services coordinator came into the job in late 2005… I thought I could choose her. NOT in the sense that I wanted to date her because I felt that would be crossing a boundary. But I just didn’t see any problems with doing something menial… you know, going to a movie, going shopping, taking in a meal. Whatever the case may be.

There was this little tiny thing that was in the way, and I had no idea it existed. Now in 2014, I call it the Book of the Devil. 2005 however, I didn’t know it at all.

Its the social worker’s Code of Ethics. (COE for this blog’s purposes.)

I had never heard of it. This social services coordinator was hiding behind it. And I kept getting shot down and I did not know why. Until one weekend I decided that I would search for this COE myself. I found it in a PDF and I opened it and started to read all of its pages.

It took hours. Practically the entire day of reading the “DO’s and DO NOT’s” of any person in the field of social work.

It was incredible. And if we’re being honest, a lot of it is FUBAR.

Although it did explain to me why this social services coordinator was being such a terrific butthead to me about wanting to go do something over the weekend and hang out.

At long last I had pushed this girl’s buttons too far and the words came out “If I am going to be your friend, then I cannot be your social worker.”

Touché. Game over too.

But hell at least at long last I had an answer. She also had other boundary issues where I would be myself, nice and complimentary, and she was taking it all in as harassment. Once someone else had mentioned that she had a pretty dress on. She said thanks to them, and THEN I said that I agreed. And five minutes later she took me into her office stating that what I had said about her dress was inappropriate?

Umm, what??

She didn’t last long at her job though. She quit and when people attempted to give her farewell gifts on her last day at work she turned down everyone and everything that was attempted to being handed to her. Destroying everyone’s feelings in the process in the name of the COE.

I have since grown a full-on hatred for the Code of Ethics that social workers must abide by.

The problem is that I am too friendly and too social of a person in my young adulthood for COE to be slammed down on my toe like a wall of denial. The COE and I do not click at all.

Now I get and understand that some social workers will have their own PERSONAL boundaries as well as the boundaries set within the COE. So I tend to believe that with each social worker it depends on personal boundaries as far as professional boundaries are concerned.

SITUATION IN CURRENT SPACE & TIME: Enter two more social worker interns for 2014. Almost ten years later after the nasty SNAFU that happened with someone with a social worker’s degree and some pretty high walls for their PERSONAL boundaries which led into their PROFESSIONAL boundaries.

I will not say much about them. They were here for a few sessions to hold a group for remembrance and now that area of time has passed.

But knowing it was going to be held by social worker interns, I hedged and attempted to stay far, far, far away from it all because of the ugly past that I did have. In the end I found myself going inside of the room and joining the first session/meeting so very very very late in the hour that they were going to be there. I had ideas of what it was SUPPOSED to be about however I would be proven to be very wrong.

So I stuck with it. But I was flighty for sure!

This group met once a week for an hour for a total of LESS than ten times.

So it really didn’t give a lot of people who wanted to participate a good deal of time to get settled in. As I had mentioned in the last meeting that things were just too short because we were just getting started. However, I had to keep in mind that these were college students, hired by an agency to do their internship.

Those two words stuck in my head though like flies on stink…. social worker. Even IF they were interns.

I backed off. I backed WAY off. Even though I put on appearances that I was there and I was participating. I ended up going because of a bit of a connection between the two interns. And that was fine. Because I knew based on the horrors of 2005 and 2006 that this connection soon to be severed and cut into shreds any ways.

The relationship DID have an ending and it was most definitely in sight. 

That’s the other thing….. dealing with relationships ending. It also caused me to sit back during that last meeting, refuse to eat, sweat like a hog, and keep as quiet as possible unless one of the interns had asked me a personal question.

I backed away from the group. Sat behind the couch with a pillow against my chest and stomach, clinging on to it for dear life.

I attempted not to make direct eye contact with either of the interns. But that quest failed miserably. The two of them were the kinds of people on this Earth that actually LOOKS at you while they are engaged in conversation. Me having my face to the floor would have been very obvious to them, and they would have definitely called me out on it.

Even more horror dripped across my sense of hearing as I heard someone else ask “Do you gals have Facebook?”

Ohhh GOD NO!! PLEASE NO!!

I stopped. I attempted to melt into the background. But I listened with great intent.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that the answer to the question of  “Can we friend you on Facebook?” is an emphatic NO. I know this!!!

After reading the Book of the Devil… its not allowed. My everything however turned and did a flip when I heard the two of them fumble and bumble like a comedy duo routine of whether or not they could add anyone to Facebook. Their final and official answer to the open question was “We’ll ask and find out. But do not get upset if the answer is no and we never hear from them again.”

Good show, ladies. Because I am calling BS on that one. They both knew the answer. And they both knew that the answer was NO. They knew that answer long before they started. But perhaps they will ask, if maybe only for the sake of knowing for sure that the answer is in fact NO. The only reason that the answer would become YES is if these two were to abandon their COE and come up with their own personal boundaries with regards to communication and socialization with anyone that was involved in the group.

THE PROBLEM FROM THE SITUATION: Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t call BS and I think that’s because I would WANT to be wrong. I just think that based on the horror and experience that I had as well as talking to other people in the social working field, its not going to happen. So right now, I’m not crying about it.

But I totally and completely robbed myself.

I think that people (even social workers) can agree that what happened to me many years ago was insanity and that the person back then did not handle the situation correctly at all.  However for me to take those memories and experiences and apply them to build a wall around me when I first go into this group meeting to fight against these two interns, was unfair both to them (as people) and to me because I was short changing myself from receiving the full benefit of the services that these two interns were actually offering.

But because of what happened in the past, I didn’t fully participate and therefore I didn’t fully take on everything that I could have. Even if there were professional and personal boundaries. I am aware of those. It doesn’t mean that I need to shoot myself about it because there is this belief that I need to avoid any and all situations where the COE would come in and just stop everything because whatever was going on and/or being said was crossing a boundary.

I was called gregarious today. After looking that word up, I totally agree. I am a very gregarious person. In fact, that’s going right next to being called a RENAISSANCE MAN by LFC. Hand in hand, you know????

And for me to be in a social situation where there’s a undefined boundary that can be sprung up in my face just is a major conflict with me.

Instead of attempting to avoid the landmines of life, I need to charge forward and attempt to receive anything and everything that life has to offer to me. These two interns, I had nothing personal against them. They were uber nice and kind. One of them reminded me of someone from my past that I had a serious crush on and currently working on getting past– but that’s okay. Its going to happen. And its definitely not her fault. 

I did learn my lesson though. I definitely cheated myself out of some thing. Whatever that some thing is, I will never know. Because I cheated myself out of it by stepping back and retreating based on experiences. That was definitely foolish!!!

And now there will be no second chances. No second guesses. No second tries.

Even though something is uncomfortable, never short change yourself out of any opportunities that may fall upon your path. Because you just never know.

I was successful in taking photographs of the group as a whole. And I got a few shots with the interns as well. It was something that I definitely felt that they were going to say NO to, but they didn’t. And that was their choice, not mine.

And I wrote down the URL to this blog for them and gave them my e-mail address. So they could be reading this, you never know.

Just don’t do what I have done and rob yourself of opportunity, benefit, and glory… just because something makes you feel uneasy or horrible. Step forward and march on strongly and you never know what will be the spoils of your victory in war.