A week off...

I have had the week off and it has been really nice.  I have been able to get some solo camping in and really allow myself to feel and realize what it is I am feeling around my life.  It's feeling pretty hard, confusing, sad and raw.  I went home to visit my family in April since finding out that my dad has esophageal cancer.  It's been a crazy all over the place ride.  It's been challenging to figure out what my relationship is with my dad?  I want to know that he acknowledges and recognizes me as his child and part of his family.  I can say I don't feel lovable to him or that I feel like his child.  I feel like it's a game of tennis where I am hitting him the ball and he doesn't want to participate.  It hurts like hell!  I hate feeling that pain and rejection.  I am not sure what else to do.  For now I continue to keep hitting him balls and hoping that maybe there will be one time he hits it back to me.  It's what I do best, hold on to hope that maybe it will happen.  I know it is exhausting me and I am growing so tired.  My heart is wanting to harden and run the other way.  
  It feels hard for me to know that he is and has been missing out on my life.  I see and have witnessed what he gives to others.  I am jealous and sad about it.  I am tired about hearing that maybe he just isn't a very affectionate man or doesn't know how to express his feelings.  I know he can and I have seen him do it with my siblings.  I guess maybe if I am to turn it around and see that maybe I just am too scared and am not capable of receiving it from him.  Especially since he is now " leaving".  It's an experience I know best in my core of wounds.  The biggest rejection of my birth parents leaving / giving me away.
 I wanted to make sure he knew that I loved him and thought of him as an amazing man before I left him in person.  He was only able to say "the feeling is mutual".  I have to believe that he means that it was too hard for him to express all that he wanted to say to me.  That in turns sucks and is painful.  I really would like to know what he thinks of me in his own words.  I also would like to know why it's been so hard to have a relationship with each other?  
  At times I just shut down and want everything to be over.  I know that we will never be close and that the relationship is what it is.  I am a silent fighter in that way... I will fight and keep trying til I am truly too exhausted to try anymore, then I just as silently walk away to protect my heart from further pain.  I am somewhere in between the fighting to keep afloat and the ready to walk away.  I am not sure what else I can do.  I have tried to reach out but it feels really hard.  I also feel angry that I have taken space and when I come back there is an urgency to connect and care at max capacity.  It feels hard because I didn't see or hear or feel like he was worried about me not being in their lives.  I only recently heard thru my sister that he was wondering why I wasn't communicating?  If he was so concerned why didn't he call me directly so that I was the person who knew this?  So we could work on our relationship?  This is where I feel angry and sad that he couldn't talk to me directly about it.  It's as if I am not worth it, or that it is too hard.  
  I know that when I am feeling or being seen as too intense I feel a sense of rejection.  I want to run and push that person away, because if they are not able to handle my intensity then they can't handle who I am and I don't want them in my life.  It is a part of my life and who I am.  Yes, I am intense, my feelings are big and intense and it is hard for me to contain them and hold them in.  I want it to be okay that I am intense and that I will still be loved even though I am at in intense place.  It makes me feel unlovable.  I have to remind myself that I am lovable with all my emotions and feelings...  

Am I Enough...? Jan 19th 2011

   I have been craving more culture and diversity in my life.  I look around at the magazines in stores... I watch television... I see the people in my town...  There is a very small amount of diversity where ever I look.

  I grew up with a caucasian family...  I grew up in a place where I was what made the town a little more diverse... This is something that is also true now.  There is more diversity here than where I grew up.  I live in a college town so that brings in some diversity.  

  The sports I am interested in are mostly sports done by caucasian people.  Climbing, snowboarding, there are a couple of other sports.  The question is are Indians busy studying or is it that some of these sports are for people who have money and live in certain areas? 

   When I was in New York over the holidays I was blown away with the amount of diversity that was around me.  I would have loved to have seen more of the queer diversity.  I think that is starting to show up more.  

   Really the places I would like to see more diversity is on shows, in magazines, as public figures.  I know we are starting to get to that place where there are more and more awareness of other cultures and genders around.  I find that someone is making it easy for people to stay stuck in stereotypes of what people are supposed to be like.   

  Take for example... the bachlor, it is a show I am drawn to like a bad accident.  Where is the diversity?  One guy after a wife?  The bachlorette... one woman after a husband?  Really you are supposed to find a  partner after only a few weeks?  I only see the choices being incredibly narrow.  I have yet to see a person of color be the main person... I have yet to see a man or woman on the show who is bi?  It seems  straight and narrow to me.   

   I know this maybe isn't the best example as a show to pick apart, but I am using it to say that it is quite frustrating trying to feel as if I am enough when it seems as if all I see around me are not people of color, or  queer people represented in the mainstream life.   I would love to know how people grow up and gain the strength they need to know they are enough and okay?  Even if you didn't watch TV, you still would notice it in magazines or movies.  

   There is always the white male who gets the main role in saving the world.  Even the female doesn't get the lead now does she really?  Then there is the black male who is sometimes the sidekick.  There is a heirarchy of who gets to play which role... it can be irriating after a while and makes watching movies boring and predicatble.  
 6-12-11
  I am starting to step into the place that I do know that I am enough.  This is something that I have had to accept for myself completely. Yes, I have moments of not believing it all the time.  Other moments of fully feeling it and believing it.  

grief for a father...

Feb. 12th ish...
 I found out a man has esophageal cancer...  Fuck!  The drs give him about 6 months.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.... really?  What does this mean for myself and my family?  Wow, this is a lot to take in.  It's a lot to take in beause this man is my father!  I just recently sent my parents an e-mail asking them if they want to have a relationship with me?  It's been about a year and a half since I last talked to them.  I just needed a break from feeling rejected.  
   

the shadow side...

  I am at a point in my life where I am putting up tons of boundaries around me and asking for what I need. This isn't the easiest thing to do at time.  It also is a place where I ask in more of a demand or ask in a snippy way.  I have discovered that if I don't ask in a more demanding way I might not be heard.  I have asked for my needs to be met in the past and I felt like no one was listening...  I had learned to shout or say nothing at all.  
  I have begun to learn I can ask for what I need and have people hear me!  It is such a refreshing and amazing feeling.   
  There are people I can no longer have in my life if I feel that my needs and requests can not be respected. I know there are people who will be able to full fill my needs with respect.  To those people I thank them.  To the other people I have to take care of me and leave that relationship behind me.  It feels confusing on one level.  It also feels so incredibly self loving and healing.  That is what I want right now.  That is what I am asking of myself and others.  
  I am excited to see when the day comes that I am able to soften, and shout less when telling someone what my needs are... I can feel it is right around the corner...
   I know that a lot of this has to do with the fact that I had needs and wants in the orphanage.  They were probably met only a small percentage of the time. I know and understand that I learned to meet my own needs and let my body just take over.  I would love to have a telescope that allowed me to look back at the little me.  Did I fight?  Did I just give up and then after I gave up I was noticed? Maybe both?  I know that some of those reactions are still with me today.  Sometimes I think it is the strangest thing... sometimes I think it is the most amazing thing how incredibly resilient little me was.  Babies are pretty amazing in that way and know how to get their needs met.  That's probably why I still work with children to really get that lesson drilled into me.  I thank them for those reminders... It teaches me that you can have both... needs, wants and to be loved for all of who you are!