I woke up this morning with a heavy heart. Lately that's nothing new. I feel completely and utterly overwhelmed by my life. My wife and I live hundreds of miles away from any family that we have to speak of. We are cut-off from that emotional necessity. We have some very close friends that we consider our extended family, but of course it still lacks a little something. I am working at a job which is never boring, but it's essentially the same job I have been doing for the past 15 years. I have not been able to "rise above" my current status, and it's mainly because I lack a college degree. So, despite my intelligence, and the fact that I have trained more than my share of people who now have better jobs than me over the past 15 years means diddly-squat, because I am still answering phone calls. So I feel completely frustrated that I am "stuck" where I am at with no seemingly possible way of attaining more money to improve our current situation.
My wife has been unemployed for almost a year now, but of course, being ever-resourceful, she has created online stores in which she sells items which feature designs that she has created herself, or just sold stuff that we had laying around on our ebay store.
She has an aunt - her mother's sister - whom she lost contact with just before we got married. She finally got in contact with her aunt this past February, only to find out that her aunt has a very aggressive form of cancer, and since that day has been shuttled in and out of the hospital. No one in her aunt's family is working, so it has fallen to me and my wife to try to come up with the funds necessary to take care of the body when she dies. (I hate to be blunt, but there's no delicate way to put that.) Funeral homes do not have payment plans for services rendered after the deceased has passed: they need all funds due upon time of death. Harsh reality.
On top of ALL of that, there is of course the stress of day-to-day living. Traffic, rent, groceries, gas, etc. Not to mention that I have college finals coming up in a week and half.
It's a huge load on my shoulders - and one that I really didn't mean to burden you with. But I promise you, there IS a point to this.
As I was saying, I woke up this morning with a heavy heart. Despite the fact that I am trying to write a positivity blog, I am on occasion prone to depression. I got ready for work, started my car, and the radio came on. The song was "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick.
This was exactly what I had been feeling earlier this morning. I have felt that since I began asking for help from friends and family to assist my wife and I in covering the costs for the upcoming services that I have pushed away several people. In a sense, I reek of desperation, which is the complete opposite of what I was expecting. I was expecting people to rally around me with words of encouragement, a few donations - whatever people were willing to give. That hasn't happened as much as I was hoping. Not that I am not grateful to the people who helped out, but my expectations were different.
And so, because I have been feeling unsupported, and blog readership as a whole is down (so not many people are actually reading this) I felt like that song was playing for me. What it was actually doing is just playing into my depression, I now realize.
At work this morning, still feeling down, I practiced my Ho'oponopono techniques, and soon came to realize that neither fretting about the past, nor worrying about the future made any sort of a difference right now.
Right now, I'm fine. That's all that matters. Right now, I'm alive, I'm happy, I'm loved. And that's when the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Because that's when I realized that the Cheap Trick song that came on was not the soundtrack to my pity party:
It was the Universe talking directly to me. I want you to want me, I need you to need me. I'm begging you to beg me, I'm loving you to love me.
Wow. It amazes me what can happen when one is clear.
Love,
J.C.
P.S. More Ho'oponopono training posting tomorrow!
