Losing Yourself in Giving to Others

When I was going through my second divorce, I decided that I needed some serious counselor to understand why I have seemed to fail so miserably.

Oddly enough, my therapist suggested that I was too much of a "giver" in my relationships. I laughed at her as I remembered all the times that I threw a tantrum when I didn't get the attention that I wanted from my spouse, all the times that I took a nap instead of cleaning the house, and all the times that I focused on my friends, career, and child instead of nurturing my marriage (well, marriages).

Furthermore, there were all the times that I could have been less selfish to my family and peers. During my days as a hooligan, I was often self-serving.

After telling her that she was a couple of sentences shy of being a quack, she convinced me to explore this idea.

I wasn't quite Machiavellian, but I was nowhere close to Mother Teresa. The best way that I can describe it is in terms of Anakin Skywalker.

Life was hard when I was young. I far too aware of the ugly in the world and I was frequently bullied. As fear, anger, and sadness made my heart dark, I turned into a defensive and hateful being at times.

Yet, like Anakin/Vader, I had a love that lingered beneath the chains of the Sith.

I had little moments of giving throughout my life.

For example, my biological father made the trip to Arkansas once and he bought me some new shoes. A little girl who was raised by a single mother in our apartment complex did not have nice things. She admired my new shoes and asked to try them on for a minute. After seeing how happy they made her, I told her to keep them. My mother was floored and touched at the same time. I still wore my ragged shoes until it was time to get new ones.

As a friend, I was always the protector. Because I had no issue being a villain in the cafeteria, I would take out anyone that upset my close friends with either rhetoric or my fist. For many years, I thought that I was doing a noble service.

Eventually, I had a change of heart. After years of watching the women in my family give to those in need (that's just want good Southern women do), I began to slowly make positive changes in my life.

I visualize the change in my heart as that of The Grinch.

This is great, right? Not necessarily. I went from one extreme to the other. When I started teaching, I ended up in situations where I would do the work of others, only to get through under the bus when the lessons weren't so great or to have all credit stripped from me completely. I have had two marriages that where "give and take" wasn't the mentality, but rather an "all or nothing" way of life.

I scrambled often to find a balance and I did not.

After my second marriage finally crumbled, an event that had been coming since before our nuptials, I went overboard on the giving.

None of the giving, gave me what I needed.

I gave tremendously of myself, my time, my heart, and my worry. I gave a handful of friends loans to help them in their struggles. I bought products to help people become more healthy and feel better. I made little crafts, I created little events.

I got nothing in return, nor were the loans ever repaid (even though I am a single mom that lives on a teacher's income).

Pity party time, right? Nah. 

It was lessons well-learned. I have to be wiser with what I give and to whom I give.

There are those that will always prey upon you during low points in your life: divorce, grieving, job loss, etc. They are always dressed up as friends and as people who want to help you in life somehow. These people know how to convince you that you are valued in their life, even if their hand wasn't somehow in your pocket. Yet, it is that "dog-eat-dog" mentality of which many Americans have become so accepting.

After depleting my financial buffer in helping people that I cared about and trying to get repayment for the money that I had given during that time, I realized that those people only cared about themselves in that moment and I simply gave them an opportunity to use. I had done this in various ways for most of my life.

Are there people who appreciate me? Are their people that help me in times of need? Absolutely. In fact, I have some of the most supportive and loving people in my life that one could ask for.

It was new people and the ones that pop in and out that were taking to the point of my emotional and financial detriment. It was never the ones who have consistently been a part of my life.

At the end of the day, I think giving to others is good for the soul. I will continue to find ways to give to others and others who will sincerely benefit from whatever I have to give.

Until Next Time,



LOVE LOUDLY!!!

The Best Apology of my Life

Angie had hair that was MUCH more 80s than this. 

When I talk about my childhood best friend, I am typically talking about a named Angie. She was and is my forever friend. Yet, when I first moved to Little Rock at the age of 9, Angie couldn’t stand me. I was a loud, obnoxious tomboy; she was a quiet, refined girlie-girl. In fact, she would wish for me to fall on my face every afternoon when I would get off the bus, run across the lawn, and leap off of a small retainer wall. I loved leaping off that thing and I never fell on my face, despite Angie’s wishes.

Where it all began for us. 

Our friendship began with a source of embarrassment for her, but a source of a secret comradely quirkiness. There was a day towards the end of 4^th grade when they combined two bus routes. The only seat left was next to Angie. She spent most of the ride looking out the window, straightening her frilly dress, and adjusting her hair. I was yapping away at anyone who would listen and being generally spastic. The driver would not let me move once some of the kids got off the bus, so we were stuck with each other in that hot, green vinyl seat. I was bored and she was annoyed.

"You're doing it wrong, Angie Dawn!"

All of a sudden, she channeled her inner Mork and started saying, “Neener, neener, neener, neener,” as she peered out the window. Ms. Prim and Proper had intrigued me. I said, “What in the world are you doing?” She blushed and said, “Oh! It is just something that I do sometimes. Try it. It feels neat.” There we were on the bus, in unison, quietly whispering, “Neener, neener, neener, neener.” We have been best friends ever since. We are still complete opposites, but she did teach me how to do my make-up and wear more than jeans and sweatshirts.

However, there is always someone who doesn’t get mentioned in the story of my best friendships or the story of the boys that changed my life.

Scott.

Scott came riding in my life on his bike full of imagination, adventure, and attitude. He sized me up and decided that, despite being a girl, I was a worthy adversary; he made me his partner in crime instead.

He would probably say that I was a part of his Foot Clan.

This kid looks like a wimp compared to Scott. 

We met at a patch of blackberries on my street. He was mouthing off to the nosy neighbor who demanded that he stop eating the blackberries. He demanded that she give her kids decent names (seriously, her kids had awful names). I thought this was a perfect opportunity to demonstrate some 9 year old defiance and joined in to prove how tough I was.

Except we were mini-metal heads

Imagine Veda and Thomas’ friendship with My Girl, but without the wimpiness of Thomas, the morgue in the Veda’s house, and the kiss. We were that close, but not close enough to kiss. That would have been completely incestuous.

We spent our afternoons riding our bikes around the neighborhood behaving as miniature, blonde vigilantes. We even had a secret hiding place for notes under a loose brick on someone’s retaining wall in order to communicate when I was grounded, which was often.

It could happen in Arkansas.

There were numerous adventures that typically ended up in one of us or both us of getting into trouble and always treated as if we were being overly dramatic. For example, we went hiking into the ravine in our neighborhood and thought that wild dogs were chasing us. We ran up the opposite side of the hill, in someone’s back yard, and eventually on a service road. My mother laughed at the wild dog story.

We were also chased my an ax murdered one Halloween. After were were done running for our lives, we discussed that we had proof this time – my pillow case had lost all of its sugary contents because the material had been sliced (by the ax murderer, of course). My mom said that we got worked-out and I must have snagged my pillow case while we were running.

What my former neighbor is probably doing now. 

From my window at night, I could see my neighbor opening his crawl space and dragging out something in a bag that was very heavy. He also had a shovel. He would dig in the dark for a very long time and when he returned his shovel to the crawl space, no heavy bag was returned.

I peddled as fast as I could to meet Scott to discuss this the next Saturday morning. It was obvious that this man was burying a body, right? We went into surveillance mode, but we eventually got bored and went on to play NES. My mom claims that our neighbor was gardening at night because of his work schedule. Uh, huh.

There was another neighbor down the way that looked freakishly like Prince. He would drive his Camaro too fast for our liking. We first noticed where he lived while we were messing with The Old Man’s Koi fish. His tidy, gnome-like house did not match his flashy exterior. There had to be a secret there. 

That "stray dog" must have had opposable thumbs. 

We watched him for weeks and say no movement. On one of our stakeouts, we noticed an opened parcel with something shiny sticking out. When a “stray dog accidentally” knocked it over, a golden throwing star fell out. HE WAS AN EVIL NINJA!!! Scott and I became heroes that day as were made sure to rid the world of his weapon of mass destruction. I didn’t bother to get my mother’s opinion on this. She would probably have said the “stray dog” wasn’t real and she certainly would have made me search the woods and apologize to Ninja Prince. 

One of our last adventures was in the middle of a fight (he had locked in a playhouse with the most perverted boy that I had every known and after beating the boy up and throwing him out of the playhouse window, I stormed home). Scott rode his bike to my house and declared, “I know we aren’t speaking, but we have until midnight to get to South America or the entire world will explode.”

It was the best apology from a guy that I ever received.

Unavoidably, puberty came and interfered with our adventures. He became friends with the biggest basketball-headed jerk that I had ever met and Angie had begun the process of helping me transition into girlie things. Our adventures were over.

Scott is a part of some of my best childhood memories and I credit him for helping build my imagination. Because of my friendship with him, I knew how to get in the dirt and play imaginative games with my own little boy. The level of silliness shared with the both are priceless.

Some part of me never will. 

Where is Scott now? He lives in the country with his beautiful wife with a family of critters to wrangle with every day. He is a good guy and probably one of the most awesome people that I will ever know.

P.S. Did I mention the time that Angie’s dad, who was a police officer, busted us throwing rocks at cars? I didn’t mention that to Angie or my mother.