Love.....or obsession?

In the past few years, I've witnessed and experience different levels of love from the love that seems to be the love of your life, to the love that simply is just for now that you know can never be more. Love can be a beautiful thing, even magical. As the character says from Moulin Rouge "Love is a many splendid thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love. The greatest thing you'll ever know is just to love and be loved in return." Which, in the right circumstances, can be true.

But on the other side of the coin, I've also witnessed heartache, experienced heartache...witnessed cheating, lying, deceit, betrayal.....all components which are NOT a part of "Love." How can you claim to love someone yet find ways to hurt them so deeply? And intentionally?

I've come to the conclusion that love simply does not exist. Sure, people "love" each other, get married, have babies and die old together. But what about those that "love" each other, and after a short amount of time, get divorced, leaving two bitter, cynical, jaded human beings that don't have even a shred of love in them anymore? They claim to be madly in love...yet somehow they could find enough love to keep from royally screwing it up.

This leads me to one thought: love is simply and utterly misinterpreted as obsession. If you look at the world around you, how many people have obsessions/addictions? Each and every human being has an obsession of some sort to some degree. Whether it's a drug, alcohol, sex, money, food, exercise, work.....couldn't love also be described as just an addiction? Or an obsession? Obsessions come and go. How many people do you know that "fall out of love?" The typical response is that love is a choice, not a feeling. Well, duh! But you can choose to stick with it or abandon it. Abuse it, and the whole world will know it.

Obsessions come and go. So does love. I remember the days when I used to believe that love could outlast anything and fix anything. I was rudely awakened into realizing that love really means nothing, and that love is never enough. The world simply doesn't care whether or not it stays true to its word or not. People are heartless, only out for themselves and completely selfish in all its actions. It has simply been ingrained in the minds of humans since the beginning of time that love does not exist. Obsession is all there is, and to believe in such a thing as "love" is pure folly.

Pessimistic outlook? Well, yeah. But it hasn't been proven to me that there is anything more. I've seen marriages come and go, fail and succeed. But how many marriages are happy marriages? How many marriages that are years old are still as happy as they were on the wedding day? Very few..... maybe the obsession just lasted longer.

Prove to me that love actually exists, and maybe I'll change my mind.

But I promise you you can't.

Adaptation

I was having a conversation with my stepmom the other day, in which she made the statement "...you tend to take on the characteristics of the environment around you pretty well..." regarding staying true to my values and myself. It got me started thinking...

Over the years, I've had to learn how to adapt to an environment I've either been tossed into or have chosen to enter, and nine times out of ten, I adapt pretty well. Whether it was going to Arizona for a mission trip; or when I started at Golden West after first being homeschooled and then being at CVC; or when my mom died and I was thrown into a world of chaos beyond my control. I don't know when it was, but sometime in there, I learned how to adapt.

Some of these adaptations have been life altering and mind blowing, some have probably been for the worse, and some have just simply been necessary. But I have to ask myself, have I adapted so much that I don't know who I really am anymore? Have I allowed myself to take on the behaviors and values of those around me to the point that I'm not in there anymore? I ask myself this with full sincerity and hope to find not the answer that I'm looking for to appease me, but the answer that is the absolute truth.

I can't help but wonder about this. Especially in the past three years, I have changed so many political, religious and social views that I must step back and ask if this is really me talking. I believe it is. The political issues I'm willing to stand up for, the things I find necessary to defend my position on, I truly and fully believe they are what I believe and stand by. No one convinced me either one way or the other, and no one told me I was stupid for not believing them. As far as religion, these days, I really don't know what I believe. I stick to the core: what is sin is sin, Jesus died on the cross as a symbol of God's love for his people and resurrected three days later, God loves each and every one of us, and we are on this earth because he decided to bless us with life to give us a piece of what heaven can be like. But other than that? Why even wonder? If it's not going to make a difference in my life, I don't need to worry about it. And in my opinion, its all open to interpretation. Not the key points, but a lot of it.

I think that I've learned to adapt, but I've also learned how to find myself. If I hadn't been in some of the situations I've been in in my life, I definitely wouldn't be the person I am today. I think in learning to cope, survive and blend into my environments, I've been able to find the person who was waiting to come out and be me; I was able to pick the pieces apart and find who I really am, and for once, I can truly say I'm happy with who I am.

How can I keep believing?

For as long as I can remember, I've believed in God. I've believed that He has a plan for me, and that if I pray hard enough, go to church often enough, and obey Him enough that I'll find that path to divine happiness. Today, that has been tested and I just can't believe that anymore.

I still believe there is a God. I still believe I'm one of God's children. I still believe that Jesus was God's son, that He came and died on the cross to offer himself as a token of our salvation. I still believe that because I have believed this and still believe this, I have that salvation and will one day see God.

But I can't believe that there is a plan.

Once upon a time, I knew what my path was. I knew what God wanted me to do. I was counseled by other mature Christians who came to me and "blessed" what was happening, even before it was happening, and said they believed this was God's plan for me. However, that turned into tragedy, a tragedy that has haunted me for almost three years. One thing after another keeps surfacing and showing its ugly head in this situation....yet the only person affected by this has been, and keeps being, me. So much for a plan. If God had actually had a plan for me, why do I wake up every day wondering what the point is? Why do I walk around my day, not knowing what to do next, or how to keep on surviving? The last three years for me have been mere survival. I was up to my neck in debt, in sheer and utter self destruction mode, and on my last leg of survival. Where was that plan? There's no way all this is part of God's "plan." There's no way a God who claims to have plans for a prosperous future would make/allow me to deal with this each and every day. And that plan that seemed to be "blessed" and granted? I was lied to, manipulated, cheated on, chewed up and spit out by that "plan".

How can I ever believe that a "plan" exists for me and that I have a future?

I don't know how to keep believing anymore.

Things Fall Apart

In my senior year of high school, I had to read a book called "Things Fall Apart" in my AP Lit class. The book was about a guy named Okonkwo in a village in Africa whose world crumbles around him in a matter of a few weeks. He had it all going for him; he was a village elder, had three wives, a son who was blessed by the oracle and plenty of land to farm on. And then the English come to colonize. He goes nuts, accidentally kills the son of a fellow tribesman, his son leaves the religion of his people and becomes a Christian, Okonkwo and his wives are banished for 7 years because of his crime, and he eventually kills murders the English missionaries and then kills himself.

It's ironic. That class, I can say without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, was the best class I've ever taken, and do believe ever will take. It stretched my mind beyond even what I thought I could think, and made me think abstractly and completely out of the box. But in the second semester, it seemed that every book we read lined up with what was going on in my life at the time. When we started the semester, we started this book. At the beginning of that semester, I wouldn't have changed a thing about my life. It was going perfect. By the time Okonkwo's world was falling apart, mine started to too. All the preconceived notions I had of how my senior year should look like were quickly becoming wisps of dreams, thrown to the wind, left unattended and soon forgotten. We read Hamlet, which is the story of a tortured man eager to change the world around him. I could relate very well with Hamlet. We read poems and short stories, all of which seemed to seriously align with where my life was. But the one I definitely remember the most was the story of Okonwo.

I feel like that now. Obviously not on the same extreme levels that Okonkwo was feeling, but it always seems that just when things are finally starting to work out, my whole world falls apart and I'm left at square one, at the bottom of the pit, and I can't find a way out.

I've been told for the last seven or eight years that I showed signs of depression, which I never believed, or, never wanted to. I finally went into a counseling session to find out if I do or not. I've officially been diagnosed with mild to moderate depression, which in itself is depressing. I don't know why I feel like this sucks so much. I guess it's just one of those things that seems like I always thought I could overcome it myself. But I can't. I've never wanted to be one of those people who had to go talk to someone else about the crap in their life. I've always dealt with it myself. But I guess you can only yell at someone for no apparent reason other than just to yell so many times before it becomes obvious there is a problem.

I didn't get the internship I've dreamed about to get me into a position at Starbucks Corporate in my dream city; I didn't get into Fresno State; I can't even afford Fresno State; I'm living at home....again.....for now, a year longer than I expected to; I'm worried about the people I care about the most; my dad is hanging onto yet another job he works his ass off for, and his bosses are completely undeserving and ungrateful for him; I've already lost one parent, I'm terrified of what will happen if I lose my dad; my mom only lived to 48, what if I do too? My list can go on. Yes, I work at Starbucks. Yes, my mistakes have led to a few positive things. Yes, I'm getting at least something to prove I went to COS. Yes, I can save up, move out and get to college. Yes, I'm only 22 and still have my whole life ahead of me. But whats the point? Whats the point if, in an instant, everything, literally everything can fall apart in the blink of an eye? Why do I keep trying and keep applying and keep hoping for things that I know without any doubt in my mind will just disappoint me in the long run, or even short run?

I've had three dreams in my life: to be a wife and mother, finish college with at least my BA, and live in Seattle. None of those are even near coming true. None of those are even in my grasp anymore. None of those seem to even be a factor in my life, as none of them are unattainable. I can't help but literally give up hoping anymore. Every time I've ever hoped for anything, it's ended up hurting me more than making me happy. I can honestly say without any doubt that the only exception to this was when I got my job at Starbucks. But even there..... I was training to become a shift supervisor, literally running shifts and learning what I needed to know....and then my world fell apart...and I handled it wrong. Then, by the time I was actually ready to promote again, my manager got fired. Then, our co-manager started training me, giving me resources and tools, and coaching me and actually set up an interview for me. Our District Manager flaked, and I didn't get my interview, and then we got our new manager. I love her to death, but I'll never promote under her. She's not interested in training anyone new. She wants to hire people who have already been trained. Which I get. But it just means that I have no hope of getting anywhere near where I want to be as long as I'm still living in Visalia.

Yeah, its a rant. But that's all I can do anymore. All that deep thinking and analytical breakdown I used to be able to do is gone. All that seems to be left are my survival skills, and sometimes I even wonder about those. Surviving doesn't even seem to be enough anymore.

Have you ever been on a mountain trail, high up and far away from anyone, lost without a map?

Welcome to my life.

Failing, Failing, Failing.

A couple of months ago, I got really excited about something. I found out that an oportunity for Starbucks partners was opening in Seattle, the chance I've been waiting for for 10 years. It was an internship in Seattle, the city I've wanted to live in since I was 12, at the company I've wanted to work for, and have the pleasure of working for. I'm passionate about my company, dedicated to its success, and would do anything I could to see it flourish. But I also saw this internship as an opportunity for personal gain. The opportunity to make connections in Seattle, so that when the time hopefully came, I could move up there and become a part of the bigger picture. With everything that has been going on, this was like my one last silver lining in a huge sky full of dark clouds. This was my last shred of hope. This is what that hope had to say to me:

"We appreciate your interest in exploring new career opportunities within Starbucks. We have reviewed your resume for the intern, Global Design - Seattle, WA position and have decided not to move forward with your candidacy at this time."

Another dream, another failure. They say that when you fall, your supposed to just get back up and try again. How many freaking times do I have to do this???? Seriously! I'm so done trying and failing every single time I try at ANYTHING.

About four years ago, I wrote a blog about being at the bottom of the valley (http://elisabethdoss.blogspot.com/2007/03/very-long-rocky-narrow-road.html), but finding some way to fall even further. How far is deep enough? Isn't it high time for me to find some way out of this awful valley I find myself in?

It's funny looking at the highly optimistic views I had on life back then. Life couldn't have been worse for me, or so I thought. I was in sheer and utter limbo, not knowing which college to pick or who to go to prom with. If I could go back , knowing what I know four years later, I would slap that stupid, silly, naive girl and tell her to grow up. She had no idea what life was like, and if she did, she would have spent a lot less time dreaming and being optimistic, and a lot more time working so she could have gotten somewhere. She would have accepted the snake for what it was, and gone on with her life. She wouldn't have been a weak princess needing rescuing. She would have been a princess worth rescuing. She had rose colored glasses on. In reality, she didn't need to be rescued; she needed to be left to the world so she could realize what life was really like, and get by on her own, as life meant her to.

I know I can't change the past. I know I can't change that. But I know what I can change. It's obvious and apparent that I'm meant for the ordinary. I'm not willing to accept that, but I know that the more I try, the more I fail. I've failed at everything I've ever set out to do. I'm not going anywhere, I'm not doing anything. And the more I try, the more I fail. I can't get back up anymore and speed on ahead. I'm done. I'm over it. Now, I just need to learn how to live with it.

Everyone keeps saying that God just has some huge, marvelous and amazing plan for me through all this. I used to believe that. But I just can't anymore. I've heard God speak to me, had counsel from other mature Christians on what I should do, and followed their advice. And obviously somewhere in there, someone was wrong because it bit me in the butt. I can't believe that God has a plan that will blow my mind, because if we're all here for his glory and honor, shouldn't just being here be enough? Shouldn't just living and breathing be enough to keep him satisfied? Well, yeah. Honoring God, doing the right things should be enough. So it's wrong to say that God has some huge, elaborate plan for each of us. That's bull crap. He has huge plans for some people, but not everyone. I'm tired of people using the excuse of "God has a reason..." to hide behind so they don't have to admit that they are hurting. Yeah, God has a plan, but your also pissed, hurt and sad that your plans didn't work out, right? Then stop hiding and admit it!

Failure happens. Everyday. Some of us just happen to live a life of failure. Those who find nothing but success, I'm happy for you. I'm excited for you. You got your crap together and figured it out.

But some of us will never know anything but failure.

If I could turn dreams off, I would do it.

If I could pretend that all this doesn't hurt like hell, I would.

If I could lean on God any more than I have in the past or am right now, I would.

If I could succeed, I would.

But all that is futile.

Static

Static, as defined by Mr. Merriam Webster, means "lacking in movement, action, or change."

This is where I am. Right here, right now.

I'm approaching the end of a four year journey in which nothing, absolutely nothing, has come out of. If anything, I've screwed up more than I ever gained from this mess I've come into. Now, I'm static. My life has gone, and is going, no where. I'm still at the entry level of the job I've been at for three years, I'm living at home (again), I've never lived out of a 20 mile radius of where I've lived for the last 21 years, and there's not a chance any of that is going to change soon.

What sucks the most is that I could have prevented this, all of this, in high school by just sucking it up, taking out student loans, and going to school where I had planned to. Or by moving to Seattle in the first place. Since my parents never have cared if I go to college or not, I could have been in Seattle already, established residency, and been halfway through school already. I could have been done by now. All if I hadn't been a stupid human.

Sometimes I don't regret the idiot decisions my heart made, and sometimes I do. I look at the friendships and relationships I have now, but realize that I'd still have those even if I hadn't been an idiot.

But it all comes down to I thought with my heart and not my head, such a thing that I will never let myself do again. Logic is very much what is true and good in the world. As Spock says in Star Trek "Logic gives the advantage over emotion that no one can understand. It gives you the ability to control your emotions."

I realize now that I must remain logical, more so than emotional. I must retain what little dignity I have left anymore, and be logical about my choices. My emotions must no longer control my life, or even have a place in my life. Emotion has done nothing but get me in trouble and break my heart. Because everything has been my fault thus far, I'm taking responsibility of my actions and refusing to let emotion ever rule my life again.

I will be static. And I will change no more.

The Helping Star

There once was a star that shone brighter than all the others. Not in worth or brilliance, but simply because she did things beyond her abilities and traits, and was always willing and able to do what others couldn't. She was the Helping Star.

One night, she woke up to a perfectly beautiful view of the Earth. "Oh, how lovely! Maybe tonight I can finally just watch the Earth and see what everyone says about it. Maybe tonight I'll finally be able to see the glorious mountains and the grassy plains, and the deep, vast oceans. Maybe tonight I'll be able to rest."

Just then, she saw a bright light go whizzing by her. "Help me!" said the comet. "I'm headed for God knows where, and I can't stop! I don't know where I'm going! I'm scared!" The star, seeing just how terrified the comet was, turned her back on earth and started following him. She caught his hand just before he hit the moon, and pulled him back to safety.

"Thanks!", said the comet. "What's your name? Why were you so eager to help me?"

"I'm the Helping Star. I'm here to help people." she replied.

"Oh. Well thanks. I passed all the other stars, and they just ignored me and pretended not to hear me."

"Not a problem, little comet. Try to be more careful next time you go somewhere."

"I will!" said he, and he lit up and flew off towards the distant, much slower this time.

Feeling happy about her valiant save, but slightly worried she had missed most of her view of the Earth, the star went back to her post and sat. She looked down on the Earth, at all the people and thought "I wonder how they all do it. They have all this time to waste; all this time they could be helping each other. I wonder what they do to help one another."

Just as she was going to wonder some more, a baby asteroid zoomed over her head, and yelled "Help me!! I got lost when we were making our rounds on the belt tonight, and I can't find my way back!"

The Helping Star quickly pursued it, grabbed it's little hand and broke it's collision course toward the planets.

"Thank you!", said the little asteroid. "I didn't know how to stop. We're always going, going, going in that belt, and I've never left before! This is the first time I haven't been moving in thousands of years."

"My pleasure," said the Helping Star. "This is what I do. I'm here to help all the elements of space, all the people that come up here. I'm here to show the men on the sea how to get to and fro. I'm here to ensure everyone has a way to go."

"Can you take me back to my mom now? It's cold out here in normal space." asked the asteroid.

"But that's clear across space!" said the Star before she thought. "If we leave now, I'll miss the rest of the night and not see the Earth anymore." But as she said this, the asteroid's eyes started to tear up and it started crying. He was, after all, just a baby, and probably missed his mom terribly.

"Oh, alright. I'm sorry. I know your cold and scared, and you want to be with your mom. She probably misses you, and is scared too." So she took the asteroid's hand and led him back across the solar system to the belt. It took many hours to get there, and when they got there. Everything was in chaos. Nothing like this had ever happened before. But everyone knew where his mom was, and led the star and the asteroid to her.

As the star was turning to leave, the baby asteroid grabbed her and gave her a hug. "Thank you, Helping Star. What would I have done without you? I would never have seen my mom or my friends again. Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

The star, touched by the gratitude, hugged him back and zipped across space so she could get back in time to see the sun rise on the oceans. As she rounded around Mars and could see the Earth, she saw trouble starting again. A group of space junk was crashing towards earth, and there was no way they were going to stop themselves.

"Help us, help us!" they cried in unison to her. Because they were so used to just floating around space, they had no way to help themselves, and they couldn't move fast enough even if they could. The star raced towards them, tied a net around them, and tugged them back out of the gravitational pull of the Earth.

When she had gotten a reasonable distance away, she stopped and let them out. "Thank you ever so much, great star of Helpfulness! We would have become 'shooting stars' and would have ended our beautiful float around space.

The star smiled weakly, and said "Of course. Try to be more careful next time. Who knows if anyone will be around to save you. It's not safe to play around planets with gravity." and with that she drifted back toward the earth, tired from the night and full of sadness that this was her normal routine.

As she popped back to her post, she looked at the earth. The sun was already shining on the half she could see, and she had missed her sunrise. In the thousands of years she had been shining, she had never seen a sunrise. Her job started with the setting of the sun, and ended when the sun was already out. As much as she loved her job, she was sad.

As the day wore on, the star, sad and alone, wondered "What would happen to me, if I ever needed help? What would happen if I ever got off course? Who would help me?" And with that, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

The next night, when the sun set and the moon rose, and the stars shone in the sky, the inhabitants of the earth saw a sight they would never forget. Up in the sky, the biggest shooting star they had ever seen, or ever would see, was plummeting toward the earth, with millions of little shooting "stars" behind it. To Earth, it was beautiful. But to the sky above, it was a sad event.

That night, the star had been helping a moonbeam find it's way to earth, and had lost her balance. She knew she was going to fall to the earth, and be no more. But she also knew that she would get to see all she had wanted before. She didn't even yell for help, but as she turned around to look out at space one last time, she saw some that made her cry. Behind her, coming from all places of the galaxy, objects were flying toward her, trying to save her. Asteroids, comets, other stars, moonbeams, sun rays, even space junk, were all coming to try to save her. "No!", she yelled. "If you follow me, you'll be burned up, and all the work I did to help you will be for nothing!"

"But what will we do without you? We can't live without a Helping Star," they all cried after her.

She replied, "Help each other. Learn how to coexist, like you are right now. Don't rely on others just to help you, but love each other and help each other. Now please, go back. I can't be helped, but it's okay. You can all learn from me now."

As she said this, she looked back to the earth and saw the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. As she looked toward the horizon, the sun was beginning to rise over the ocean, and she smiled.