A Personal Kick In The Ass

As I strive to find something POSITIVE to end the evening on before retiring for bed. I stumbled across something that was said to me on my birthday.

I originally had intended on posting about this shortly after my birthday, but things got messed up.

Ironically enough this person has a personal image that one would not seem to have the ability to say. Or the desire for that matter!!

I personally think that its those people are the true treasures in life because once they say something so profound and it hits deep, you never really forget them.

Once we find them, what we do with these people is up to us.

But here I was discussing the fact that I don’t honestly have that many years left to live on this planet, due to the disability that I have. And the response that I received? Well… read for yourself:

“Don’t let numbers like that worry you. It is not the years you get but what you do with them. Live each day to the fullest and waste nothing. You have just a good a chance of dying in a bus accident on the way to a gig in Houston as you do from your condition. We are all guaranteed to die, but each of us must choose to live. You always do, and it is one of the qualities that I respect and admire the most in you. Your condition has always been your challenge…never your master.”

Thank you, Dr. Froth.

 

Express Yourself

Three words. Just three. Doesn’t seem like a lot, but those three little words are the most potent ones in our language today. They also have the potential to be the most poisonous, if used callously.

I personally refer to them as the “make it or break it phrase”. Of course, I am talking about the phrase, “I love you.” These thoughts have been on my mind for quite some time and I couldn’t find the most appropriate venue to discuss them, until now.

Yet I still find it a difficult subject to talk about as we all have our own different belief systems on what love is or isn’t. You may find that you totally agree or totally disagree with me. No matter which side of the fence you sit, it still is something we all face at one time in our lives.

Personally though, I find myself going through great frustration when showing emotion or expressing feelings. I don’t know if it is a personal problem I have with the automatic response within a person or the immediate necessity for the building of walls to be built whenever the words are spoken/written.

I do know that there are several ways of “saying it without saying it”.

For example, “Love you!”. I think that in my personal experiences, this one is used the most. And it is the phrase that I have the most trouble with. WHO loves me? You? Your cat? Your creepy neighbor who doesn’t know how to iron a shirt? Tell me exactly, WHO loves me??

Then of course we have written form and not necessarily verbal.

“Love U” or “Luv U“. Let’s face it, with the invention of the text message and electronic mail, it has greatly curtailed our ability to speak properly. And it has nothing to do with character limits. I find this to be a lazy away of showing your emotion and feelings towards another. Of course someone loves me, but again who???

So let’s go even further. Has anyone ever just typed “ILY” or even tried to be fancy and unique and written “143”? (Each number representing the number of letters in each word of the phrase.)

1= I

4= love

3= you

Seems like a neat trick, doesn’t it? I will admit that when it was first used with me, I thought it was probably the neatest thing in the world. Now that I have become used to it, and more or less immune, it’s not so cute any more.

Three words. Eight letters. One phrase.

I was once involved in a cyber relationship where the woman never really once told me that she loved me. I know that I had, but that was because I thought I was in love with her. But she never once repeated it back. Even when I realized that the relationship was not something that was healthy or in my best interest to continue with, I told her that she was loved. And when she finally got the hint that I was ending it, I received “Goodbye, God bless. 143“.

I now realized why she never said it. It is because she never felt it or meant it in the first place.

Now I am not going to go into the different types of love, because then this blog would take forever to write and forever for you to read. Besides, my blog entries are far from formal and wander off a lot in the first place.

So then why do we say it? Or don’t for that matter. And when its said to us, why is it such a massive undertaking to share that back with the person?

I know that there are people in the world that just have a very difficult time expressing themselves. They feel vulnerable and weak. Others are insecure about themselves and probably the case there is that they don’t love themselves and therefore do not feel worthy of receiving another person’s love. Much less hearing that they are loved.

One must believe in their words when they speak. That is my assertion.

I am the kind of person that once I become quite fond of another, that eventually I will tell them that they are loved. Many times I have been spurned for my words or actions but I was confident in what I was telling them. Just because I told them that I loved them, should not have been an automatic sign that I wanted to jump into bed with them. It was more of an expression of caring for them as an individual and a way to let them know how much they really mean to me, that they are in my life.

And that is probably why I have so much frustration and difficulty with others when they decide to shorten the phrase or not really bother to repeat it back. As I said earlier, I know that people are not exactly alike. I cannot expect them to respond with “yeah, I love you too!”. A life in that kind of world does not exist.

My own rule of thumb has been “Don’t say it, if you don’t mean it.” And that includes saying something that you perceive that the other person is wanting to hear. I’m not saying that I go out and tell every Tina, Dina, and Harriet that I love them. Or every Tom, Dick, and Harry for that matter. But if you’re hearing it from me, you need to know that I am caring about you. That I’m not just full of hormones and want to find a way to eventually bond flesh. But you are important enough in my life for me to express myself with those three words. “I LOVE YOU.”