When Coffee Isn't Just Coffee

Hey everyone. I hope this finds you all safe and well. Today I want to tell you a story, a story that is both true and hard to tell. It's hard to tell because of the truth it presents but its a story that needs to be told. I've held this true story back about myself for far too long and only now with the assistance of my therapist am I ready to reveal it. I am revealing this story about me because I want to be as open and candid about my life as possible. I've been guarded and held back much of myself for way too long. Truth doesn't hold you back, it sets you free. And I want to be set free. I've always held so much inside of me so tightly that its almost suffocated and choked me to death on more than one occasion. I need to let my truth be brought into the light so that I can face it, accept it, learn from it, and then let it go and move forward. So here's my story.

When I was in college I took a speech a class. And in this class there was a guy. From the very first day of class he and I just shared a connection. We began to talk before class every day and at some point we started walking out together talking. I knew he was married. He wasn't hesitant about revealing this fact. I can't say I didn't know or that he was lying to me about it. And I mean we were just talking. I loved talking to him and sharing things and I began to really enjoy his company. At some point, I don't know when or how, I fell for him. I really fell hard for him. But I knew it was wrong to feel that way about someone else's husband. So I kept my feelings to myself and we just kept doing our same routine. Towards the end of the semester, I believe there was about two weeks to go, he came up to me and confessed that another guy in my class who he talked to every day had a thing for me. He was too scared to say it to me though. Well, that shocked me because here is the guy I've fallen hard for telling me another guy has a thing for me. I didn't know what to do with that. I had no idea what to do or how to proceed. The next day of class, the guy I had fallen for asked if I wanted to join him for coffee after class. I knew I shouldn't. I knew this wasn't just coffee. I knew that this was more than just coffee despite myself trying to talk myself into the notion it was just coffee. My gut was screaming at me to say no and put a stop to it. But before I knew what had happened, there I sat across from him at the local Starbucks as he grabbed my hand and told me how much he cared about me and that he would love to be able to feel me up close and personal (note: I've edited this quote to make it far less adult than it actually was) and that he had fallen for me hard. This was it. This was my moment. I knew that this was one of those life defining moments. I could say yes and go down a very rocky, turbulent, wrong road with a guy who I had fallen for and who had me captivated completely or I could simply refuse and do the right thing. What was I going to do?

I sat there for a few minutes and I finally turned down his offer. So I did the right thing. I didn't act upon my feelings. But here's the truth that has been such an ugly fact to face for me, I wanted to. I wanted to throw caution to the wind and just say yes and suffer the consequences later. I simply wanted to just for once in my life throw my morals and my values out the window and just be with him. I was flattered. I wasn't disgusted or appalled at his offer. I was flattered. That's the fact that has haunted me for years. I wanted to be with another woman's husband and wasn't put off at all by what he was offering me. But I guess what I've started to see, with some professional assistance, is that no matter what I felt I did the right thing. Feelings aren't right or wrong. Whether or not you act upon those feelings whatever they may be is the issue. I wasn't wrong to feel what I felt because I really couldn't help what I felt but I had the choice to act on them or to walk away and that's what matters in the end. So my choice to walk away was right. And my feelings were just that. Feelings. I understand it all better now but I still do struggle at times with my feelings to begin with. I sometimes think I can control my feelings but maybe its just not possible for us as humans to control what we feel but the focus should be on the choices we make and the way we behave no matter our feelings.

And what about that other guy? The one who had a thing for me way back then. I never did take a chance on him. I approached him half-heartedly once and I never tried again. And our class ended. And I always wondered if I screwed up being so into this other unavailable guy that I overlooked the available guy who was ready willing and able who was right in front of me the whole time. I saw him about a year later and I thought was this fate giving me another chance? I decided to approach him when suddenly I realized he was with another girl. Oh the cruel irony of it all. I had my chance and as I look back on that class, I realize this guy did have a thing for me. It's obvious to me now the way he looked at me while I was giving my speeches and how he always asked me questions after I was done. And it just makes me sad. And upset. I beat myself up a lot for not seeing what was so clear and never giving it a chance because instead I was focused on some guy I was never going to have nor should have even been focused on. But you know what? As I realize now, that's just life. It doesn't make sense all the time. There are times we focus our energy and dedicate ourselves to the wrong people and things all the while we let other people and things slip right through the cracks. It's just a part of it all. It sucks. Its ugly. But it is what it is. Nayely Saldana is quoted as saying "we met for a reason, either you're a blessing or a lesson." Some people we meet are brought into our lives for a lesson. I believe that this is what these two guys were for me. They were surrounding me to teach me something. Now have I learned? That's the question. I think I am still in the process of learning what exactly the lessons were that I needed to know. But I have begun to pull those lessons out and with each day that passes I am getting closer to getting it.

As for those two guys, every so often seemingly out of nowhere I will go back and remember. I can still remember so vividly everything about that time of my life regarding their features which is really odd with the guy I never even had a real conversation with. I don't remember anyone else in my speech class or what my professor looked like but I can tell you what both of these guys looked like, and I can remember exactly how I felt and thought at the time going through it all. I used to look at this time and coil up in disgust and agony over what I didn't want to face. But with time and with reflection, the more I open up about what transpired and face the full truth, I don't look at this event as a regret. I look at it as a life altering event that has molded me and helped me on the road to who I am and will continue to help me become who I need to be. So it's not something I am ashamed of now and I can tell because I am sharing this all in detail on my blog. That would've never happened a couple years ago. So I am growing and evolving and that's always a good thing. The truth can be ugly at first but as you confront it directly and go through it, it suddenly doesn't seem so ugly or scary. Just face it and you never know what you might find.

Until next time,
Thanks for reading
Mel

Willful Ignorance Isn't Bliss

Hello again everyone. Greetings to you from chilly November southwestern Indiana. Hope you guys are well. The topic of my blog today is actually inspired by a friend of mine's twitter conversation with another about people who claim the Holocaust didn't really happen and how that "opinion" is shared openly in college classrooms in a discussion about religion. My dear friend is Jewish and so of course naturally this guy assumed that her whole beef with him was simply because she's Jewish, and for no other reason. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not just Jewish people who are highly offended and completely appalled by this "opinion". As you've noticed by now I put opinion in quotes because to me this is not a valid opinion. I do my best to be as open minded and non judgmental as I can and understand that we all have our own viewpoints in life and it's many issues. But see, there are some things I just don't find to be relevant, valid viewpoints. And chief among these is willful ignorance, which is what you have to have if you believe that the Holocaust never happened and it was some big elaborate hoax perpetrated by Jews to get sympathy or whatever your particular crazy illogical nonsense belief is. See, you are denying an absolute historical fact. It's a fact. To try and make it anything else is beyond ridiculous and every time you spew that nonsense out of your mouth you slap the faces of every single Jew who had to endure the agony and the suffrage of those atrocious years. Every single time you deny this despicable event occurred you are mocking the families of those survivors of this event who have listened to their loved ones account the horrid details and who have had to comfort them while they relive those disgusting memories over and over again. I remember being so naïve to the fact that holocaust deniers existed. I truly never imagined that anyone could deny something like that. To me, denying the holocaust is akin to denying history. So imagine my complete and utter shock when I too was sitting in my college ethics class and we got on the subject of climate change and people who denied it's existence and impact on the earth when suddenly this one guy started talking about how there are many great hoaxes out there designed to manipulate the masses, chief among them the landing on the moon and the holocaust. Now, he had me with the landing on the moon being a hoax because I thought that was pretty ridiculous but when he had the audacity to say out loud that the holocaust was a hoax, I couldn't even form any words for a minute. When I finally did speak, I just said how offensive it was to claim that was a hoax and how could he think something so repulsive? He was smug himself and asked me if I was Jewish to which I responded that I am a Christian but my religious views have no bearing on your ignorance. That was all I said. It was all I could say to keep from getting into a fight with him cause I think I would have. As I walked back to my car and drove home, I just remember feeling so angry and so offended at the blatant disrespect and the extreme ignorance of this man. Then I realized something even more disturbing: he wasn't the only one who felt this way. He got this idea from somewhere else through some other person. That's when I realized just how bad this was. That people actually believe this and speak it out loud and get others to follow their teachings, to hell with what history proves otherwise, boggled my mind. I mean, do they really believe that over six million people weren't just exterminated by order of Hitler? They think the survivors who lived in concentration camps are just making it up? They were really on vacation somewhere? I just can't understand that kind of ignorance and I don't want to either. I never want to understand the way that kind of warped thinking works. The biggest issue for me is that these people think it's only Jewish people who could ever possibly be offended by or disgusted by their words and their beliefs. Do they honestly not comprehend that there are people out there like me who are not Jewish who just are utterly offended by their ignorance and their disrespect? It's similar to those people who think the only people offended by the use of the six letter racial epithet starting with the letter n are black people. I'm deeply offended by that term as well. And not that this is on the same level at all, but the ignorance shown when guys automatically think a woman is upset with them because its their time of the month is a smaller example of what I'm talking about. I don't know in that case if anyone besides me is offended by that ignorance but my point is that I am offended by ignorance, but actually I am offended by willful ignorance. We are all ignorant on things until we are educated but once we gather the facts and are educated and then we still refuse to accept those facts and form another "opinion" we are willfully ignorant. There is an anonymous quote that sums this all up quite eloquently, "we are all entitled to our own opinion but not to our own facts." The fact is the Holocaust, a systematic extermination of one group of people, happened. It's a documented historical fact. To form any other opinion or form any other conclusion is being willfully woefully ignorant and I cannot respect that opinion at all. I sincerely hope that anyone out there who is being willfully ignorant will at some point see the light and understand the error in their way of thinking.

Until next time,
Mel

Guilty No Longer

Hello everyone. I hope this finds you all happy and well. Today I want to tell you about the breakthrough I had at therapy this week. I discovered something about me that at first knocked the wind out of me because of the sudden wave of clarity it brought to me and the absolute randomness of it. We were sitting in my session talking about something completely different when suddenly the overwhelming knowledge that I wasn't to blame for my cousin's death hit me. I have previously written about how I carry the guilt of her death around with me and how I can't let go of that guilt in my heart even though in my head, I knew I wasn't responsible in the least for it. But I have spent the last four years torturing myself over the thought that I could have done something, anything at all, to change the outcome of that tragic day in July 2009. The guilt I felt was all consuming. I couldn't see past it. I couldn't escape it. It was as much a part of me as my heart and soul are a part of me. So, when this feeling of clarity came over me, it threw me for a loop. I had no idea why I suddenly felt it, not just knowing it in my head, but actually feeling it and knowing it in my heart. I stopped the conversation I was having with my therapist and told her exactly what had just occurred. We then spent the rest of the session, about twenty minutes or so, talking about this new development. It was the strangest occurrence of my life quite honestly. But it was one of the greatest single moments of my life as well. And what I really want to talk about now is freedom. True, genuine, actual, spiritual freedom. I have never even known this kind of freedom could exist. The chains in my heart that wrapped all the way to the farthest reaches of my soul just fell away and suddenly I was free. The cell door flung open wide and my pardon had been signed. But I still couldn't quite understand how this happened. When did this truth reveal itself to me? And me being the type of person who has an insatiable curiosity, these answers were something I had to find. But it didn't take me long. What I felt inside of me was the reality of the situation. There was nothing I could do to stop what happened to her. And the past four years I had spent trying to find someway to forgive myself for that unforgivable mistake. But the thing is, and this hit me suddenly as lightning strikes a tree, was that wasn't the proper question to ask. How do I forgive myself? The right question was how do I stop blaming myself for something I had no control over? I didn't even answer that question consciously. Somewhere in my subconscious mind, which can be full of darkness and can be a master manipulator, the truth revealed itself to me. I didn't need to forgive myself. I needed to stop blaming myself. And I did. One of my biggest weaknesses is my inability to let myself off the hook for the mistakes I've made in my life. And I thought what I had done, or not done in this case, was something I couldn't let go of or let myself off the hook for. But now I get that there is a difference between forgiving yourself and not blaming yourself. That seems so obvious doesn't it? But at the time, before this moment of clarity hit me, I couldn't see that or understand the difference. And that understanding has made all the difference in my life. I now am free. I now have no bondage of guilt keeping me down. I don't hurt any more over what happened though I do still miss my cousin every day. But I don't have the guilt inside of me. That monster is gone. And that's a wonderful reality to live in. I don't want to ever go back into that prison of darkness. With this lesson I've learned through this process of mine that I didn't even realize I was going through, I won't go back to that place. That's life isn't it? We are all works in progress doing our best to be our best. And we all just have to take it one day at a time and hope that in the end, the lessons we learn help us reach the zenith of our potential as people. I wish that for all of us on this earth. It's been a long, hard, difficult journey to get to this place of understanding and there were definitely some very ugly moments involved. But what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger. I embrace my strength and look forward to the next step in this journey along life's pathway.

Until next time,
Do your best to be your best.
Mel