Now I am sure you have heard people say it before that you really never know what is going on with a person, and this is so true, and sad in some cases.  But when is it that we switch from just trying to be nice to a person because they are a fellow human being to actually caring about the matriculation of events creating the hodge podge of the person you are knowing now?  Is it when we meet some one and just somehow feel a connection with that new stranger?  Is it when you learn something personal and potentially detrimental to them as an individual?  Is it after you have spent years getting to know them and seeing them through the madness that is everyday life?

I am the kind of person when asked to do more I also hear you aren’t doing enough.  Literally the words play right alongside the request.  Most people do not get that about me.  Most people don’t care.  Most people definitely don’t get it.  The sad fact of the matter is that only on occasion do girls get what I mean and even rarer do guys.  Maybe more people get it than let one but that is part of my point isn’t it?  When do you let someone in enough to share who you are with them?  When do you let someone in enough to tell them hey you cannot just ask me to do something I do on rare occasions?  When do you let someone in enough to tell them that you are asking for something because you are lonely and desperate for someone to engage with?

Even more than that when do you learn to say no?  At what point do you care enough about yourself to be honest with something to protect yourself?  When do you wake up and think it is ok to be honest enough to say this thing you are asking for isn’t going to happen because it costs me too much.  How do we learn enough about ourselves to know when to say no?  How do we learn enough about someone else to know how to say no?  How do when learn to care about someone beyond just the fact that they are human beings who breathe and have their own stories?  How do we pick who we bake for and who we just let figure out how to pre-heat an oven on their own?  Is it based on our need or theirs?  When it is theirs is it really our own selfishness to be needed that we are feeding?  When is caring really altruistic?

So now would be as good a time as any to explain where the white knight title comes from… in the movie White Christmas Dean Martin and Rosemary Clooney talk about the guy on the white horse and how it can get awfully lonely up on the steed.  I don’t doubt this to be true, but it can get awfully frustrating having to ask for someone to step up after having explained how to do it.  I find that to be extremely lame, to quote a someone recently.  The reason being is that when you have to tell someone how to rescue you or come after you it insinuates that you had to deal with the situation alone to tell them how to rescue you next time and had to return in order to tell them that you wanted them to come after you.  Which clearly negates the whole act entirely.  So yes in that sense it is unspoken, but really when you take into consideration that no girl wants to be the one doing the pursuing probably means that no girl wants to be allowed to walk away.  Furthermore when you take into consideration that any person who hasn’t come after me isn’t in my life anymore, probably means I take the whole I am not afraid of you thing pretty seriously.  But really makes you wonder why I still walk away when we are clearly in the middle of something…. I unfortunately do not have a good answer for that.  It is just something I do when I can’t think of what else to do, maybe it is just a chance to give myself a minute to regroup, maybe it is because I know I have failed.  I do not know.

My big lesson that I am learning right now?  I don’t know how to say what I want.  Maybe because it sounds silly?  Maybe because it means I might not get it?  Probably because it is silly and frivolous.  I am a girl I want romance, I like flowers.  There isn’t anything wrong with that.  But saying that makes me feel silly.  Saying hey I do not want to be the one dictating everything all the time makes me feel silly because I do not know how to say that without being the one doing the dictating…  Just because I do not know how to ask because I am afraid of what comes next doesn’t mean I am not a girl who doesn’t want the white knight.  Just means I am the girl who understands reality and has learned to be pragmatic after all the things that have happened.  Sweet nothings aren’t something you ask for because you want them, they are the things you cherish because they are just that: sweet nothings that you don’t even notice until they aren’t there anymore…

This is all to say that my boyfriend’s mother died this weekend.  She has had a long and very arduous battle with cancer.  I understand this because I have watched a grandfather die of cancer and I have watched my cousin die of a disease that couldn’t be treated.  I am also aware of the emotions that are in the room when these things happen.  When the process gets going the event seems so big and seems so overwhelming, because frankly it is.  I am what is affectionately known as the distraction in these situations.  I can prattle on and on to invade the silence so that you are not just thinking about this horrible thing that you cannot do a thing about.  I am good at it and it comes natural to me.  This is good because I can also handle it when the prattling becomes just too much and the: “Oh my goodness will you just shut up!” comes. (And it always does).

What does this have to do with failing you ask???  Well the fact of the matter is that I am not the rock.  I am not the friend that shows up so that you can cry for 3 hours solid until you are done 6 nights in a row because that is how you are coping with this horribly huge thing that you cannot control.  I am the distraction.  Huge difference.  I can do the crying thing because I am not selfish and I understand that everyone needs a minute to cry it out.  I can let anyone do that and I can be serious and quiet as long as you need me to.  Here is where my problem comes in: I cannot keep being serious, I need fun and I need laughing.  This is how my parents have taught me to live, cope and enjoy life.  This is how we deal with tragedy, and this is how we get through it all.  Because at the end of the day if you have learned nothing from The Phantom Tollbooth then you were not watching the part when Tock told him to just open the bottle of laughter.  I appreciate the need for the anger, the sadness, the tears, the yelling, the throwing, the quiet and for the numb.  I honestly do, but when you have spent as much time as I have going through crap you find you attract other people who have also gone through some stuff.  Which means you rarely run into someone who hasn’t lost someone before.

My boyfriend has never lost someone before.  I am finding that whereas I know he is feeling a whole heck of a lot right now I don’t know what I am supposed to do to help.  I can prattle on and that is cool but every time he sees me he more or less just falls asleep.  So I let him sleep.  We aren’t talking.  I know I am somewhat closed because he did pick a fight and it hurt my feelings, but I need to move on and I need to snap out of it.  It isn’t about me right now, and frankly it isn’t even about us.  It is about him, and maybe I am selfish enough to think it would be nice if it was about us sometimes… but it can’t be right now.  I am failing to keep that in the front of my mind all of the time.  Sometimes I am so keenly aware of what he needs I know it by instinct, but most of the time right now I have no idea and I am stumbling blind.  Feeling like a huge lame failure with no knowledge of what to do next, and when you are someone who has seen tragedy happen a lot not knowing how to help someone deal with it is a level of failure I was not expecting…

So for now I am letting him keep me separate, and responding when he talks even if it is awkward and hard, and we clearly don’t know what to say to each other.  I will keep letting him fall asleep and be away when he wants to be.  Because what else can I do but to keep moving forward, laugh a little, and put one foot in front of the other?

It isn’t like I have all of the answers or even that I am looking for them but I am someone who two years ago could barely afford to buy food because I made bad decisions and I put myself in a terrible spot.  But I worked long and hard (and am still doing so) to get to the point where I can pay all of my bills and still have extra cash to play with, then give to charity.  I got there, I worked hard.  I got two jobs.  I slept on couches.  I worked overtime.  I ate ten-cent noodles.  I trusted that in the end it would all be worth it.  I believed that God gave me a brain and a body that worked so I could use them.  This is not to say that every situation is fixable on your own; but it is to say that everything can and will be dealt with.  And I don’t see the sense in spending my time with people who try to make me feel bad for my progress against my selfish and destructive nature.  I bought a new car – I don’t see how that makes me a jerk, even if I wasn’t completely cool with it at first.

Furthermore, how do you tell people you are someone who gets respect from not just your peers but your superiors as well?  They see that I am a hard worker, that I have time that is valuable and that I am a person that is in demand.  How do you explain to people who it isn’t ok to get upset if you are not available at the last-minute.  I am not your last-minute substitute when someone else cancels on you.  It is not the way a friendship should work.  It isn’t so much to ask that you think about calling me in advance for things instead of the day of.  Things like this matter.  You can respect me enough to respect my time since I respect yours.  It is a matter of being selfless enough to be ok with the word “no”!  Especially when you hear it with an addendum attached that gives you another option. 

How do you tell someone: they are not as good a friend as they think they are?  How do you tell someone: I no longer know what benefits our friendship has?  How do you tell someone: you aren’t one of the people I miss?  How do you tell someone: it is time to move on?

I am not a lazy person.  First, I am a busy person.  I have two jobs, a social life, the need to keep a clean house, and volunteer every Sunday.  I enjoy being busy; I am good at it, and I get more done being busy.  Furthermore, I have learned that not everyone can handle the kind of schedule I prefer to maintain.  This is to only illustrate that my idea of relaxing and chill is definitely not what other people choose.  Third, I don’t single task very well.  I just can’t do one thing at a time.  Don’t get me wrong; I can complete a singular task from beginning to end but just cannot focus on that one thing alone.  I am typically checking email, listening to music and talking on the phone while at the office.  That means I can stop on a dime and do something else as needed, which for both of my jobs is extremely necessary and makes me good at them.  Finally, I don’t like sitting still. Just sitting is weird to me.  I will do it, but it is generally in the accomplishment of a task.  I pace and fling my hands in the air when I talk.  I twirl my hair and doodle when I think.  I bob and sing when I listen to music.  I don’t even think that I sleep laying still.  Still isn’t something I do well.

So back to my lazy Saturday…. I enjoyed it but it got me thinking about why didn’t I get more done.  Then it went further to why is it people are still so surprised by how busy I keep myself, even on my lazy days.  I would think that if someone wanted to be my friend, and furthermore, if someone was interested in me in the dating sense, they would be less shocked and more accepting. Or maybe they aren’t simply shocked.  Maybe they are astonished: ”How can you do all of that?” I definitely get that response often enough to make it a plausible explanation. It is weird to me that what I do is so different. To reiterate, not everyone should or can do what I do.  What I mean is I don’t know how come I hear constantly from others “I wish I could make time to volunteer” or “I wish I could pay things off” or “I wish I could…” So on and so forth.  Not everyone has learned the value of making the time to do the things they say that they want to.  And certainly not everyone has learned that having what you do have requires giving up something else.

One of my favorite lessons that I have learned I learned from a professor of mine in college; he called it “being intentional.”  He is one heck of a dude.  He actually started chapel late one morning because he walked past one of the students and noticed that he was down and needed someone to ask him if he was ok.  Instead of scurrying on his way and hoping that someone else would check in on him, Lenny stopped, took the time to talk with this student and listen to his answer.  He was intentional about something that he made a priority, which is exactly my point.  Priorities matter a whole lot.  A Nooma video I recently watched during small group was about sea shells and Rob’s children.  It was also about knowing what you are saying no to in order to say yes to something else.  You cannot pick up a floating star fish if your hands are full of tiny bits of shells.

Recently, I had a friend say that her big goal for her new year (her birthday was this last month) was to be better at time management.  When I asked her what that looked like, she did not have an answer. Then when I asked her what she considered a priority, she, again, did not have answer. Then when I asked her how much time she had that wasn’t spent at work, she still had no idea.  Here is my point: if you want to say yes to something big, you had better realize what it is you are getting yourself into.  Anything worth having will cost you something; there is no such thing as a free lunch and it is important to keep in mind it isn’t always a monetary cost that you incur.  I understand what I am working toward and I know what I am saying no to.  Some people don’t agree with me and that is fine.  But the leadership I have seen in my life and have taken note of makes me proud to say I have learned from some wise people and I like the result I am witnessing.

This is the question that I have been struggling with semi-recently, and honestly I still wonder daily how much more I can take.  When I was growing up my father would tell us that it would never take much effort on our part to stand out in a crowd.  This is something that still makes me giggle when I think about it, probably one of the most honest and simple truths he imparted to us.  But the reality is that you don’t have to try hard to be more than mediocre and get noticed for the work that you do, getting noticed is the easy part, get appreciated?  Well that is a horse of a different color entirely.

Like I said leadership is hard, it takes diligence, perseverance, patience, kindness, selflessness, tenacity, discipline, consistency, indifference and a whole host of other characteristics.  Some people are born leaders and some are cultivated and pruned through training.  But what do you do when your leadership let’s you down?  When you have a team that can’t come together and work as a unit?  When you have a dynamic that is so utterly dysfunctional it barely survives?  What do you do when you can’t help but see the inevitable doom that lies in wait for the team that cannot be a team?  I’d like to think you walk away or you step up.  But there are a few problems I find myself faced with when choosing either option.  First one is that no work environment is flawless, and whereas I know this to be true I’ve certainly been in situations that have worked far better and with a whole lot less drama.  Which means that moving on is the one to choose.  Second is that I have not been at my current location for a year yet and let’s face it leaving in less than that amount of time shows a whole lot of lack of commitment on my part, therefore option two to stay is what is the wiser of the two.  Third issue I notice is that the leadership is faulty in more ways than one, biggest being it doesn’t lead, learn, nor listen; therefore leaving is the way to go.  Next issue I run into is my own natural bitterness toward mediocrity, no one wants to be around a sour puss and the parallel is true in the work force, no one wants to hire a bitter bitty.

So what do you do when you feel your attitude reflecting your leadership and you don’t like that reflection?  What do you do when your our tenacity and stubbornness isn’t helping you be you?  What do you do when you can’t decide what is the right answer?  Sometimes the only answer is to wait to decide, but in essence waiting is making a decision with passive latent conviction that you incredibly unsure of.  Maybe the answer is that when it comes to being an adult and living with the choices that you made you do what you have to until you can do what you want.  So you stick with the job that you love at the place that you don’t enjoy till you can work less and be free to volunteer more and take a job that pays less monetarily but means more to you.  Maybe you just keep plugging away because you can see the progress you have made and that makes you proud of who you are.  Maybe you slowly move on and up because life is change and change is fun.  Perhaps when your leadership fails to lead you lead yourself and you be the person you can respect even when you don’t think that you can.

But the fact of the matter is that more often than not you can see when the end is coming.  Let me tell ya the end sometimes flies at you a million miles an hour.  What is far more sad to me is when everyone else can see the end but the one who can do something about it just ignores it.  I refer specifically to work, relationships are a whole other ball of wax.  In the last few years the economy has been rough, which has prompted many different articles explaining how to be happy or how to measure your happiness.  Ironically enough most of these articles to me are in the “Well Duh!” category, which seems to me a waste of time but they are being printed and people are reading them.  Because maybe people don’t expect to be happy?  Or maybe they just don’t think you should like your work?  With most of these articles there seems to be the corollary of when to move on when you aren’t happy, more or less there are all kinds of articles telling people how to see the writing on the wall when it is there.  I just wish some people would look.

One of the things that I will truly never understand is how people don’t know when it is time to move on.  More on that specifically later but for now I just want to say that I don’t understand stagnation.  Maybe it is the way my parents raised me – to want better, to be the best I could be and not to just be satisfied because the job is done but more so when the job was done right.  Maybe it is the life I’ve led, I’ve been that girl to hang on too long to a relationship or the employee who just did enough to get by.  But I am at a point now in my life where I don’t see the sense in just sticking something out or waiting for something to get better.  I figure you’ve got two options when you think it might be time to move on.  First is to just walk away and give up as soon as you see the warning signs.  The second is to push through and try to make things work longer.  On occasion this works and sometimes it is a futile attempt to salvage something that is already finished.  But the reality is that the second option is typically the hardest to make work.

Walking away and not caring is easy, why?  Because if you aren’t there you won’t see the damage that followed.  But sticking it out?  Yea, that is very difficult.  Because at that point you have committed to the situation, you have invested yourself into a possible solution and you have decided that it could one day be better.  Who would want to walk out at that point?  But the fact still remains you saw the end was near long ago and if you haven’t actually seen a change or at least a small improvement you do still need an exit strategy.  Because let’s face it the writing is on the wall.  After you have chosen option two when do you give up?  When do  you walk away?  That is up to you, but you have to know the longer you try to work it out the harder it will be for you to get out smoothly.  Remember that the best way to tell when the writing is on the wall is when it stops being fun.  Your job isn’t something that makes you sad, it shouldn’t be just a paycheck your entire life, and bumps in the road will happen but you need to learn to tell the difference.

Life is full of them and you should pay attention.  This is important because when you think you are building something these signs will let you know what your progress is.  The reality of the situation is that you cannot have a real actual relationship with someone based on text messages that only go one way.  If you are the only one asking the questions or initiating the conversation you should move on.    Furthermore a relationship cannot be a relationship if you don’t actually spend time with the person during normal hours of the day.  Don’t be so delusional that you miss out on what is right in front of you.

If you want to date a girl pick a girl in your league.  Pick a girl who is interested in you.  And pick a girl who actually tries to be with you.  If you want to pick a girl who is out of your league, more power to you, but be sure you get to know her so you know how to woo her.  Like if she has a blog, read it!  It could be instructions (just saying).  If you pick a girl who is interested in you, really?  Are you a masochist? Why wouldn’t you want to be with someone who wanted you?  If you think it is just because she doesn’t know the real you or has come to the reality that you are the one, then examine the facts.  Facts being the time you have known each other, the time you have spent together and the amount you know about her.  If she isn’t interested in you maybe you don’t actually know her the way you think you do.  If you pick a girl who doesn’t try to be with you maybe there is a reason.  And I don’t mean she doesn’t stalk you so you should move on.  I actually mean that if she doesn’t ask you about your day when you ask about hers she probably doesn’t care.

Please just notice the helpful hints and take them to heart.

…for not being the friend I thought you were

…for hanging out when all I could do was cry

…for being selfish and not noticing that I needed a hug

…for being crazy and not knowing when to stop

…for being who you are to make me who I am

It is without your mistakes that I couldn’t have made my own.  It is with my own mistakes that I have come to accept me, love me, and respect others.  It is with mistakes we find bravery, courage and knowledge.  The bravery to move on and try again.  The courage to live and love on after it all fell to pieces.  The knowledge of how things were, how they are now and how they could be.

So thank you for being imperfect and flawed – you helped make me who I am today and I like me.  Thank you for hurting me and giving me something to walk through.  Thank you for giving me a reality to see beyond my own context and comfort.  Thank you for showing me who you were, really and truly, so I could make the choice on my own about your worthiness to be allowed to love the me you helped create.  Thank you for being the villain in my story so that I could see the heroes and the heroines.  Thank you for not always being that bad guy so that I didn’t see it coming.  Thank you for being the good guy for a tiny bit and giving me some happy memories, because those memories are in fact good ones and I do cherish them.  But thank you for letting them just be my memories, not stories shared.

Thank you for being human and a part of my story.

This revelation was confirmed throughout our evening.  First with a few hot topics that we were not supposed to discuss in front of the guy in question.  Important ones – like ex-s, debt, money and even jobs (or work).  Here is the thing shouldn’t you be able to have those conversations with someone you are in a relationship with?  Like a hot topic – I get that – for example y’all just had a fight about whatever the issue is, and we are not to discuss it because you haven’t dealt with it.  That I get, a hot topic like that is entirely different than just in general not being able to discuss a list of things with your “significant” other.  Especially things with such gravity and substance as the ones she was giving me.  Trust matters, at least to the extent that you can discuss that reality of your life with the person you are choosing to spend it with.

The other thing I noticed was how the two interacted with each other.  He very obviously wants to be married eventually, and very much wants a traditional woman to be his housewife.  This was evident by how he referred to religion and his face when he came in and dinner wasn’t ready.  My friend – not so much the traditional type and has been wholeheartedly against marriage ever since I can remember.  Don’t get me wrong when push comes to shove she can be very nurturing and somewhat Suzy Homemaker, but when push comes to shove isn’t something that you vow at a wedding forever.   His face when she made a comment about religion I have heard her make off handedly for years, was not one of agreement nor approval, add that to the list that we do not discuss.  After all of this do I think she and he will be walking down the aisle and saying their vows of love in front of those that have helped shape them?  Not a chance – furthermore I am not convinced she does not think they will either.

Like Mr. Beardsley said, “It isn’t going to bed with a man that proves you are in love with him it is the getting up and facing everyday with him that does.”  If I was in a relationship with as many hot topics as this one I’d really just rather be alone.  Because if you can’t be yourself with the someone that you miraculously found to put up with you how can you possibly be with them for any length of time?  Eventually the mask has to come off.  It is just the way time works out.  You should be able to walk into a room and feel those warm fuzzies in your belly, the butterflies that make you happy and the joy of just being able to say hello.  In my experience every relationship that is successful has them.  They obviously matter and allow you to be yourself around that person.