an existential keekah

Life. It’s just one damn thing after another.

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Archive for March, 2008

Not Ready To Make Nice

Posted by mmkeekah on March 30, 2008

Last night I had a dream about my friend – we were talking on the phone while she was at work, laughing about this and that. It felt so good, and so I suggested to my friend that we go to lunch. “We haven’t gone to lunch in so long,” I said to her. She agreed and wondered if I knew where her work place was at, since it been so long since we’d seen one another. I woke up smiling, excited about my lunch date… until I realized it was a dream.

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting

Forgiveness is something that once again is on my mind because of this friend, as I realize forgiveness and forgetting are two very different things. Once, a long time ago, I betrayed this friend and kept silent. Years later I confessed, believing the truth would be better than a lie. Knowing I could lose my friend, but also knowing I would deserve it. I wasn’t blind to my betrayal, nor to the fact it was my price to pay if it was meant to be paid. I was surprised and humbled when she selflessly offered forgiveness. I didn’t question the quickness of it, and I guess neither did she.

I’m through with doubt
There’s nothing left for me to figure out
I’ve paid a price
And I’ll keep paying

I learned recently that the real reason my friend let the break between us stay a break was not because of the fight about my ex-girlfriend or even her new boyfriend but because of the this one act of betrayal that she thought she’d forgiven me for but hadn’t. If I’m honest, I knew it wasn’t only about those silly fights. I knew what it was about and part of me thinks I deserve it.

It took me a long time to accept that I couldn’t change what I’d done. I can’t take it back, I can’t make it right, and I can’t make it go away. Ever. Regretting it won’t give anything but heartache. People are more than one particular act; rather they are a collection of many acts. Concentrating solely on just one act takes away from everything else that person has done or been to others. I am not that one selfish act I committed years and years ago. I won’t make excuses for it but neither will I live my life trying to make up for it. Because I can’t.

I know you said
Can’t you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kind of like it

In some ways, that one act allowed me to see what I am capable of – it allowed me to see that we, as humans, are capable of incredible goodness and terrible badness. All of us have the potential to be great and the potential to cause great harm. There is a line between good and evil and we all can dance on either side of the line. I know now, from personal experience, that good people do in fact do bad things without ever intentionally meaning to hurt anyone in particular or with little thought to the consequences until its too late.

The whole reason I confessed to my friend was because I realized my silence took away her right to choose. It took her right to learn and grow from her own life experiences because she didn’t know. It was selfish of me to lie about it because I was afraid of losing her. She had a right to choose her own path from that experience, and I denied her that choice by not being honest from the start. I don’t say this now to be a martyr or a victim. I just felt I’d grown from that scared, selfish girl of years ago to a person who understands that truth is the better than a lie of any kind, even a lie to yourself.

We all owe it to ourselves to look inside internally before judging people. Can you, dear reader, look back at decisions made in your own life, with respect to others in that life like husbands, girlfriends, lovers, wives, and honestly say you’ve never made a decision selfishly without thought or care to how it would affect someone else until it was too late? Can you throw around words like honor and integrity and honestly say you’ve never made a mistake?

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round

When I think about this friend now, knowing the truth about why she isn’t talking to me anymore, I go back and forth between sadness and anger. Denial and acceptance. I’m paying the price for my actions and I’m not surprised or even mad. I’ve also been judged without a word to me about the true nature of her anger, without a chance to defend myself. Not that I could. Not that I would even bother. I told her the truth and apologized without making excuses. I have nothing left to say and there is nothing I can do about the past.

It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

In the end, I owe her nothing. Not even my shame. It is mine to bear or get over if I so choose. And I choose forgiveness. No one is perfect. I refuse to dwell on a choice I made six years ago, in another life, as a different person. I will not spend my life attempting to make up for it. Nor will I allow myself to be treated poorly by the person I unwittingly hurt. Even if she has the right to be and stay mad, to not forgive, it is her own choice to make and live with.

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’

I personally have no regrets.

Posted in All About Me, friends, human condition, loss | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Thursday Thirteen – #43

Posted by mmkeekah on March 13, 2008

Thirteen Things

that

Make Up

A Mon-Mon

1. Once a month pedicures

2. Every three weeks manicure/rebase

3. At least 8 hours of sleep a night (yeah, right!)

4. Sex often.

5. Peanut butter kisses

6. Lots of laughter

7. Every 6-8 weeks hair cut and style

8. A shoe sale – no wait, a GOOD shoe sale

9. One hour massage once a month

10. Serious paryting at least one night of the weekend

11. No commuting! (yeah, right)

12. A good ribbing – either giving or getting.

13. Good old loving… the old fashioned kind

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Posted in List, Thursday 13 | Leave a Comment »

What’s your major damage, Heather?*

Posted by mmkeekah on March 11, 2008

I am well into my second semester at the local state college. In fact, I’m about two weeks away from Spring Break, which would probably mean more to me if I was a 20-something with no job, parents who paid for my college, and keggers to look forward to… ah to be young once.

This semester I took two courses and they couldn’t be further apart in curriculum. As my dear readers know, I decided to switch majors from Computer Informations Systems to Human Services. I have to pick a concentration, and since the older I get the less I like children (except for those I already hold near and dear to my heart, for goodness sakes please don’t go thinking I dislike your child, [insert your name here if you know me and you have a child/children] unless I’ve already told you to your face your children bother me, heh) and I really don’t want to focus on addictions, I’ve decided my concentration will be mental health/counseling (with an emphasis in counseling).

That’s right – I want to give advice for a living… what a stretch of the imagination. And I want to get paid for it.

So these first two semester I’ve attended classes whose sole purpose was to get me in touch with my own emotions, my own issues, my own anxieties and to own them. It’s been an interesting ride. This semester I’m taking a course called Intro to Human Services and the teacher is an interesting person to say the least. She’s already canceled one homework assignment, let us grade our own tests, and put us in partner groups with whom we share everything and anything we care to with regarding the topic of discussion that week.

My class is probably one of the best group dynamics I’ve ever been in – probably because we all like to talk, but we are also courteous, we care what others think, and we all like to hear each other’s thoughts. I have yet to get bored in this class and it runs anywhere from 3.5 to 4 hrs one night a week. I even enjoy the damn papers, which are few and far between. The teacher is a touchy-feely (not as in she likes to grope her students) who openly and freely discusses her past, her issues, and what worked for her as a clinical therapist. Plus she has really long hair and is kinda hippy, which appeals more and more to me as I get older.

This is such a contradiction to my other class because I am taking another course this semester called Structured Problem Solving, which is from my old major Computer Information Systems. When I decided to take this class, I convinced myself it was because I wanted to take a Database Administration course, which is true, and that it would be good for my current career, which is also true. This class is an introduction class to programming, which actually bores me to death when I think about it, but is actually quite challenging, which my brain enjoys.

So I am quite literally caught between two worlds – my current work world, which to be honest I’ve never enjoyed – except for the fat paychecks it brings me because IT always pays well unless you are dumb and don’t know how to work the system – and between this new and exciting world that I know nothing about but intrigues the hell out of me but probably won’t be nearly as profitable.

At some point these two paths will converge, and I will have to make a tough choice. For now though I will just keep taking both types of classes and see where it takes me. This has always been my most walked path in life, and it has yet to steer me wrong… well except for that six months I spent in Fon Du Lac, WI in the dead of winter on a data conversion that was actually as bad as it sounds typed out.

I don’t know which path I’ll take, which fork will appeal to me more but maybe I don’t have to know right this minute. Maybe I can stop and smell the roses (or loose leaf notebooks) along the way, enjoy the scenery so to speak (did I just say so to speak, eh gads, I must be back in school. [Insert serious eye roll here]) Maybe that will make all the difference. (thanks to Robert Frost for allowing me my loose interpretation of his words – I think I threw in some other literary reference as well. Oh well – Frost is dead, so maybe the other dude is too.)

*My title is not actually in reference to any Heather I now know or once knew in a former life but is actually an tribute quote for a seriously classic movie, well classic for me in that I like it and I own it and yeah, that makes it a classic to me. Is it me or am I overexplaining everything tonight? What’s that? I always do this… who knew?

   
   
 

Posted in All About Me, Work | 6 Comments »

If Only It Were That Simple

Posted by mmkeekah on March 10, 2008

This past weekend Jeff asked me if I missed my friend, the one who I had a falling out with last September. “Of course,” was my response. I miss her a lot.

Such a simple statement, such a simple problem and one that could be easily rectified by simply me picking up the phone – me calling and saying hi, how are you – maybe even saying, “hey I miss you, this is stupid.”

It sounds simple at any rate… and yet even now, almost six months later, I still can’t do it. It isn’t really pride that stops me – that went away several months ago with the hurt. It’s simply the feeling that I am a bad person because I wasn’t there when her boyfriend dumped her – because I didn’t drive immediately to her house and let her cry on my shoulder.

It sounds quite simply like I was an ass – and I suppose I was – it wasn’t my intention to leave her high and dry because, as she pointed out to me, when Jeff and I had a horrible fight one night and I called her, she left a party and came to my side and spent the entire weekend with me. And, as she pointed out, she did call into work when I was terrible ill in the emergency room at a local hospital and required emergency surgery. As she pointed out to me, twice in my life, she “dropped her whole life” to stand by me.

Given that – it does sound like I’m the huge ass. I even admit – I was an ass. I didn’t mean to be insensitive and appear uncaring because the truth is I adore this woman – more than anyone I’ve ever known. She said she considered me a sister – but to me she was more. Mostly because I didn’t have a sister.  After seeing my friends who have sisters and the relationships they had with those sisters, I couldn’t compare my friend and our relationship to those sisterly pairings. I would have gone to the ends of the earth for her – and I won’t stoop now to comparing if/what I did during our time together to those two times she threw in my face so coldly in anger.

Because the truth is – I did fail her when she needed someone. I knew she was upset, but I guess I didn’t get how upset she was – because when I talked to her, she seemed sad but she seemed okay too. And she’d barely dated the guy just a few weeks, so I didn’t know the extent of her feelings. Maybe she downplayed it to me… maybe I wasn’t listening… or maybe I was tired. I’d had my own share of heartache and I was too wrapped up in it, and I guess I didn’t hear her pain. But she also didn’t share it. She didn’t call me and say, “hey I need you to come over and be with me” like I did when Jeff and I fought. She wasn’t lying doped up in a hospital, afraid of dying alone, barely remembering that she asked anyone to stay just in case.

See, the funny thing about me is – if I’m in pain – you know it. And if I need something from you, I ask for it. There is very little humility or hiding from me. I cry when I’m hurt, I yell when I’m mad, I laugh when I’m happy (which, if you know me, you know I laugh a lot). I don’t beat around the bush because, well to me, life is too damn short to pretend. Or to not ask for what you need, especially from people who love you.

I’m learning that not everyone is like me – again, such a simple thing to learn. Some people don’t ask when they need help – instead the expect you to know… just know… what they need. So where I failed my friend was in understanding that, when she called me that day, she needed me to come immediately over and be there for her. I wish I could do the whole thing over. But I can’t.

Nor can I forget what she said to me in email. I’m a simple girl – her words made me feel shame. I don’t like that feeling. So I don’t call.

For the very first time in my life, I wish I knew how to fix something which I didn’t even know was broke. I simply did not know that she was angry at me for not coming over that weekend her boyfriend just up and left without a note, a phone call, nothing. He called her eventually, and they got back together. I guess some things are easier to forgive than others. The anger I felt over her being unable to stop talking about my ex is over… although I admit it was a lot easier to get over that relationship by the simple fact I didn’t have to see her or hear about her from anyone. I certainly don’t regret that or even miss that aspect either.

But I do regret losing my friend. And for what it is worth now, I am sorry that I hurt her. It was never my intention.

If only it were that simple…

Posted in All About Me, Truths, friends, human condition | 2 Comments »