Leaving yesterday behind..

I'm going to warn you ahead of time - today's blog is probably going to ramble a bit..

To say it's been a rough weekend would be grossly over simplifying things. It's been rough, it's been sad, it's been angry, it's been enlightening, it's been a time of release, a time of relief, a time of self discovery and self preservation - and those are only some of the spectrum of emotions I've wandered through since Friday evening at 5pm.

We'll start off with how my day ended Friday.

Normally Michael - my co-worker gives me a ride to the bus stop just over 1/2 mile up the street. (Let me redefine "normally" b/c "normally" I get in my car and drive home! Normally in this case means since my car accident on 11/21) The bus usually comes between 5:20 and 5:30pm. Yes I've been waiting outside in the freezing cold for half an hour every day after work. Yes it kinda sucks - but I read to pass the time - standing or rather leaning against a power pole on the side of the street. Well I read until the street light goes out - which I'll NEVER understand why street lights EVER turn off after dark, but that's a whole different blog I'll post one day on things I just don't get!. So anyway, Michael called off work Friday - he felt bad (excuse the eye rolling here - Michael is a kid - 24yrs old who thanks to a short stint in the Marines, thinks he is THE SH*T and talks about how awesome he is pretty much all day. He didn't "feel bad", he knew our boss was out of town and he could get out of sitting in the office all day). But anyway since Michael wasn't at work I walked up to the Win-Dixie on the corner a block down from where my bus stop is. It was only 5:05 so I knew I had time to run in and get a couple things I needed. I even set the alarm on my phone for 5:15 to make sure I was out of the store in plenty of time to walk one block up before the bus came.

I walked out of the store at exactly 5:14, my alarm went off as I was walking across the parking lot. There were still 5-10 mins before the bus came so I figured I'd walk up the street to a closer bus stop - not worried about missing the bus b/c if it came before I made it to an actual stop it would have to drive pass me and I'd wave and the driver would stop. So I'm walking... walking... walking.. it's 5:20, 5:25, 5:35.. no bus. I don't worry, thinking well maybe it's late so I keep walking, knowing for sure there is a bus stop just outside the library a little further down the street. I get to that stop at about 5:45-5:50. Still no bus.. Still not worrying - or even agitated yet.. it's a nice night out - not too cool, not too warm - there's a nice breeze. I sat at the bus stop (there was a bench at this one) and thought I'll just read until the bus comes, maybe it came early and I missed it but another one will be coming soon.

Little did I know the bus I catch in the evening after work is the LAST time that particular bus runs it's route! So 6:15 - 6:30 comes and goes and I'm getting a little irritated by now. It's late, I'm tired I want to be home. I try calling the Wave Transit customer service # to see if I've missed the bus, if there's another bus coming.. no answer - I select 1 for customer service and scheduling - ring, ring, ring, ring. I call back and select 2 for Operations - ring, ring, ring, ring. I call back and select 0 for the operator - ring, ring, ring, ring. I call back and select 3 for complaints and feedback - ring, ring, ring, "hello - I'm sorry we don't have bus schedules in this department - call back and select 0 for the operator". Seeing a pattern here??? So I start walking - thinking either I'll run into another stop or I'll pass a bus soon. I knew my normal bus ran this route - again what I DIDN'T know was that my normal bus had retired for the evening and wouldn't be passing by again until the morning. So I walk, and walk, and walk - I mapped it after I finally ended up getting home and it was just under 3 miles I walked - from my office to where I finally caught a bus.

I ended up finding another stop with a different number than the one I had been calling - ring, ring, "hello" - "Yes I need to find out when a bus will be coming by this stop - or where the next closest stop is I can catch a bus". "Let me transfer you to that department" - "Extension 222 is currently unavailable - please hold - your call will be ordered in the answer it was received""We're sorry extension 222 is not available at this time - this box is not currently accepting new messages - goodbye". I went through this last step about 6 times before I finally go the lady to buzz the driver that drove the route for the bus stop I'd made it to on the walkie-talkie. (WHY IN GOD'S NAME DIDN'T SHE DO THAT TO BEGIN WITH?!?). So she tells me - via the driver - that there is a stop right around the corner - only 2 more blocks - and that bus goes to the mall (where I need to catch my connecting bus) and will be there at 7:05.

It's 6:45 now.

So I walk to that stop and waited - needless to say my feet hurt, it was getting cold by now, I was tired, cranky and more than a little peeved at the whole situation. 7:05 the bus pulls up. YAY!!!! Don't get so excited - the bus driver tells me she's off and won't be going to the mall. She can drop me off near the freeway off ramp and all I'll have to do is walk over a busy road right where cars are zooming on and off the freeway and the mall is RIGHT THERE! Deep breath... in with the good air, out with the bad - Wuuuuuu saaahhhhhh. (you'll only get that last part if you've seen Rush Hour) "Ma'am", I ask the driver - "do you have any idea WHY the lady on the phone would tell me you'd be going to the mall if you weren't?!?!?" "Well she just assumed I would.. I should be off by now". She and I debated back and forth a bit - she was obviously in a fowl mood herself since she thought she should have been off by now and I was in more than a fowl mood b/c I'd just walked 3 flippin miles after missing my bus, then get on a bus that I was told would take me where I needed to go, ONLY to be told that I would have to walk some more, and over a busy on/off ramp overpass at that!! After me telling her more than a few times that I was indeed NOT being rude, I was just frustrated and confused as to 1. why my bus never came, 2. why the lady told me she'd take me to the mall if she wouldn't..(there are more reasons to my frustration of course, but those were the 2 that seemed most relevant to my conversation with her). She finally offered to drive me herself from the Wave station where they drop off the buses to the mall. It was probably less than a mile but I would have had to cross a major interstate to get there walking. I thanked her PROFUSELY! So I finally get to the mall around 7:30pm. The next bus I need doesn't come until.... are you ready?....

8:20pm. I got off work at 5PM. It's taken me 3 miles of walking and 2 1/2 hours to catch one bus, only to wait another 50 mins before the bus comes that will finally.. finally take me home. I hate shopping so wandering the mall just isn't even the slightest bit appealing to me, but I am hungry (I've kinda passed my normal dinner time by now) so I set the alarm on my phone and begin the search for a food court. I moved to Mobile in May of this year and have yet to actually step food inside the mall - I really really hate shopping. After turning a few corners and looking for one of those wall things that tells you where everything is - and not finding one - I stop a security guard and ask her where the food court is. She laughs at me - huh?! She says there isn't one - used to be but now there's only.. and she proceeds to name off 4 food places left in the mall. Only one of which I have any hope of finding anything without meat in it to eat. So I head to the Chinese place - there's a guy behind the counter yelling - yes yelling at the top of his lungs - BoBu Cheeka!! I didn't actually know he was saying bourbon chicken until I got up to the counter and saw the sign showing the special of the day - Seriously.

I had some fried rice - took my sweet time eating - and headed back outside to the bus station. I finally made it home at about 9pm. I was exhausted - cranky - sore - aggravated - irritated - any kind of peeved adjective you can think of - I was. I wanted nothing more than to kick off my shoes and fall directly into bed - clothes and all - I'd feed the cats in the morning. But nooo that would be entirely too easy lol - (see I'm able to have a sense of humor about this 3 days later. That's good right?) Why is that it's just impossible to lay down right after you get home - instead you have to have that time to "unwind". To just sit and do nothing. I know where I can do nothing.. in MY BED! Anyhoo I unwound and went to bed and slept like death till the next morning.

I told you this was going to ramble a bit... sorry

Saturday I realized I needed toilet paper, garbage bags and cat litter. There are 2 Rite-aids and a Walgreens all within .6 miles of my house. Walking distance.. easy walking distance even. If any of you have cats you know there is NOTHING easy about lugging a 15lb box, bag or tub of cat litter.. from the grocery cart to the trunk of the car much less over a half mile! I went to Walgreens because I had checked out both stores online and Walgreens had the cheaper cat litter. The walk there was nice and uneventful up until the last block - where an old white man slightly resembling Santa clause came walking out of a gas station parking lot trying to flag me down. "Hey.. Hey!.. wanna go do something?" Ya that would be negative. I just smiled, waved and kept on walking. The walk home - omg by the time I got to my apartment I'd transferred the jug of cat litter from my right to left hand a dozen times, switched from carrying it under one arm to the other, tried carrying it from the bottom resting against my chest.. you name a way to carry it other than on my head and I tried. My arms felt like they were literally going to fall off! I was reallllly wishing I had my car back. The whole riding the bus back and forth to work thing - with the exception of Friday's fiasco - isn't really that bad. It's the needing to just up and run to the store and not being able to that really sucks.

Sunday afternoon I got into a vicious fight with a friend of mine via text messaging. You may or may not remember a blog I posted a while back about trying to understand people who were just un-understandable. That's her. In that post I also asked if there every really came a time in a friendship where you finally had to say enough is enough and cut that person out of your life. I'm sad to say now is that time. I text her while I waiting on the bus Friday -"OMG I think I just walked 3 miles" - thinking like most people she'd say really why? or something similar. Nope the reply I got was - "You wanna cookie". I said "no thank you, but I'm sure you could use one - something to sweeten that sour disposition of yours!" Probably not the best response but I was tired, sore, cold.. and so NOT in the mood for smart ass comment made for no other reason than she could make them. But I let it slide - we texted a bit more and I thought nothing of it. Well Sunday I was doing laundry and while I was walking from my apartment to the laundry building in the back of my complex a guy stopped me - he said hi, introduced himself - said he lived in the building next door and noticed that I watched tv alone a lot. (I sit in front of the window and my blinds are always open so at first I didn't think anything of it) He said he'd just moved to Mobile a couple of months ago and would love company sometime - then he asked me to dinner. I've been single for 4 years. Other than my ex-fiance I haven't been on a date in almost 8 years. Suffice to say I was a little startled - I was in an over sized t-shirt, cotton jammy pants, had not a speck of makeup on and my hair was pulled back in a wadded up pony tail. I honestly was so flustered I stuttered uh uh I suppose uh sure ok. I gave him my number in a dumbfounded stupor and wandered off to the laundry room. After I got home, sat on the couch and started thinking I freaked out.

OMG I just gave some guy my number and said I'd go out with him! I'm sure most of you are thinking uhh ok so what, big deal. I don't WANT to go out with him. Not even the slightest tiniest bit interested in getting to know him, hanging out watching tv with him or struggling with small-talk over dinner with him. Some of you are probably asking why not - does he have 3 eyes, walk with a bad limp, some horrible disfiguration, a drool and a slurp that totally makes him unappealing to me? Ha, you laughed - my job is done! =). No he doesn't. By societies standards I suppose he's an average looking guy - probably late 30's, early 40's - slightly balding on top - average height and size. So what's the problem? Me... I did the love the person on the inside thing - I was with a person for almost 4 years whom I never thought was cute. And I realized that shallow as it may seem physical attraction is a MUST for me. As much as I loved my ex in the back of my mind I always wished I was more physically attracted to him. Don't get me wrong - he turned me on, we had fabulous sex - I know that's way more info that you wanted to know lol - but looking at him never made me go WOW. I got butterflies in my tummy from the way loving him made me feel but I never got them from just being so turned on by him. So I decided that I'd never waste someone else's or my time initiating a relationship if I wasn't attracted to them. I know I know - I hear you - if you really LOVEEEE the person that's all that matters - attraction will follow - looks aren't everything. Well guys and gals - I've been there and done that and it does matter.. at least to me. And I've realized that while it might not "sound" super nice and it might "seem" kind of shallow that it's really not. EVERYONE has something that attracts them to someone...some "thing" they look for in a potential special guy or gal friend. For me - initial attraction is a must.

This is where the big text fight with my friend comes in. I text her asking for advice - you might remember I mentioned before that she's gorgeous - men.. and women fall over themselves to talk to her. She's one of those naturally flirty people who just knows how to do the social thing. Ya me.. not so much. So she says well just have dinner anyway - maybe you can be friends. Which may or may not be true - but I know me well enough to know that I don't do small talk - I don't go out of my way to make new friends - either I have a connection with someone and we just naturally hit it off or I don't. This guy that asked me out -- no such connection. So it goes back to the wasting some one's time thing. There are certain kinds of people I meet that I can just chat with for hours about an endless number of topics and we never run out of interesting things to say. Those are the kinds of people I make friends with. I'll never not be polite or friendly to someone I meet in passing, but I'm just at the point in my life where making new friends isn't going to be something that takes effort. It's not worth it to me - I'm ok being solitary. I'm not anti-social as much as just not overly social. At parties in school - which I never went to - I would have been that chic who was friends with everyone at school - but stood by the wall watching everyone else have fun at the party. At the club I was the girl who had a blast completely sober dancing by myself and then drove all my drunk friends home. Everyone has different social habits - those are mine. So while I was trying to explain to her why I didn't want to waste this poor guys time, or lead him on thinking we might become fast friends or possibly more she got really condescending and judgemental.

More rambling - but I promise it will all come together in the end!

I'm currently reading this book called Home with God - in a Life That Never Ends by Neale Donald Walsh. He's the author of the Conversation with God - an Uncommon Dialogue books I've mentioned in I think one of my other blogs. If you've ever had a problem (something just doesn't "feel" right) with what your "religion" of choice has taught you then I highly recommend reading his books. Well weekend before last I posted a blog where I mentioned that I had a really really bad night the weekend after my accident. Where I just laid in bed weeping and begging God to "take me home". I didn't want to be here anymore, I was tired of the stress of living up to other people's ideas of who I should be and always falling short, tired of never feeling completely loved and accepted unconditionally for WHO I WAS, tired of a variety of other things I won't go into detail about. In that blog I also said the next morning when I woke up - it was a new day. I started reading the Home with God book then. It was just too coincidental that I'd begged and pleaded with God to bring me home then picked up a book called Home with God. I'd gone to the library about a month ago to check out the 3rd book in the CWG (Conversations with God) series and any other book I could find by the author. I didn't even remember what most of the titles were. The ones I hadn't read yet were sitting on the shelf in my living room next to the TV. Reading has for as long as I can remember been my method of escape - reading and movies. I can completely immerse myself and get lost in the characters lives. When life on earth isn't seeming too appealing I'd always and still do just grab a book and start reading - or head to the movie theater.

After this I'll post some excerpts from Home with God in another blog that really stand out to me. What it's basically about is showing how we can be "Home" with God here on earth. It talks about how life really never ends and how death as we know it doesn't really exist. We don't end or stop when we "die", rather it transitions into a different phase or form of life or energy. We live as spiritual and physical beings while on earth - attached to our body, and when we "die" we become fully spiritual beings without the hindrance of the physical body we were formerly attached to. Death is in fact a re-birth. It goes on to explain how we don't have to wait until we "die" to meet God. We can talk with Him, commune with Him, develop a friendship with Him right now.. and it explains some of how to do that as well. Another thing it says is that every thing that has ever happened or ever will happen, happens by our choice, perfectly in time and reason. And that it all happens to help us experience all we've come to earth to experience and guide us to learning who we really are. Some things happen consciously, some subconsiously, some superconsiously, but all happen because we choose them.

I have to tell you some of this stuff hit home so deep and so true I cried while reading - I was reading on the bus on the way home the other day and had to stop and close the book. Some of it however sounded like bologna. I mean I can guaran-damn-tee you that I didn't consiously, subconsciously or any other kind of consciously choose to get in a car accident on my way home from work on November 21st. I mean why on earth would I ever CHOOSE to crash my car, to get all bruised up, to experience the physical, mental and emotional pain that resulted from the accident. All of a sudden the events of the days since the accident began to filter through my mind. I saw myself looking up information on the public transit system - finding an alternate way to work. I saw myself walking to the store to get things I needed. I saw myself arguing with my family and feeling so hurt, but then realizing that I'd been alone for a very long time and I'd made it ok.. and I'd make it ok this time too. And I thought... maybe the accident did happen just the way it was suppose to, at the exact place, the exact time and in the exact way that was perfect to guide me to the realizations I needed to know at this time in my life.

I've realized that:

• I'm a lot stronger and more resourceful that I thought.
• As much as it hurts that I don't have a closer relationship with my family - the relationship I don't have has left me with an overabundance of love to give to the child I'll soon have.
• I'm not reliant on having a car to take care of myself and do the things I need to do - doing things might not be as convenient - but they can be done
• I really do have a passion for photography and seeing the beauty and simplistic complexities so visible in the world if you just LOOK.
• I am NOT a victim of circumstance. Even though things may not always happen the way I think I'd like them to - I can always choose to turn things around and to my benefit.
• I've been wanting for the longest time to get up earlier in the morning to start walking before work but have always been to tired - now I'm used to getting up 40 mins earlier to catch the bus - how coincidental is that.. lol
• The relationship with my friend who always seems to be so damn negative had a purpose - and now that I've realized it's purpose I can move on.
• That the past is truly the past and it's time I let it go. What was "meant to be" was evidentally only "meant to be" for the time it was and something new and better will come along once I wholly and completely LET GO of what I've been holding on to.
• It's ok for people you love to move on and be happy without you. You served a purpose in their life the same way they did in yours. They just realized your purpose sooner than you realized theirs.. it's ok to be happy it didn't work.
• It's ok to love MYSELF - and I shouldn't let what other people say or think effect me or hurt me the way I do. I know my heart - GOD knows my heart and we both know I'm ok just the way I am.
• I have a long history of behavior based on events that have happened to me in my past - and to change that I'm going to have to face those things head on, acknowledge they happened, admit they only have power to hurt me if I let them and MOVE ON to becoming the person I know that I am inside and choose to be.

Some of these things had absolutely nothing to do with my accident directly, yet all of them are realizations I've come to since and as a result of the changes in my life the accident caused. There are many more too, but I know this is already pretty long so I'm going to wrap it up soon..

Last night I went through my phone and deleted all of the numbers of people who had been a part of my life, but who I am no longer in regular contact with as well as people I am in regular contact with but no longer need to be. They all served a purpose and that purpose has been realized. I went on my computer and deleted old pictures I'd kept of my friend with the bad attitude and other friends - memories of the times we had together. Conversations that messenger had autologged - back when I used it.. The pictures - the laughs in the conversations - the love those friendships brought will always be safe in my memory and I no longer need to hold on to physical momentos of those times past.

I've started reading up on meditation and possitive self-affirmations. I taped to my bathroom mirror a piece of paper with the following statements:

I love you. I appreciate you.
I forgive you of any mistakes you have ever made. Today is a NEW day. The past is gone.
I choose to begin anew, better, wiser, kinder than before.
I choose the path of excellence bcause I am unlimited in how wonderful and productive and creative I can be.
I treat others as I want to be treated.
I respect the rights of others, and I choose to respect myself. I am grateful for my life, my health, and my intelligence

On my refrigerator:

Every day and in every way I am getting better and better; I am becoming more and more
I am peace. I am love. I am joy
Health and wealth are my birthright, success my tool, kindness my standard.
I am beautiful and loved RIGHT NOW, for I accept and express the goodness which resides within me.

Every morning when I get up - while I'm making my breakfast I read the ones on the fridge.. while I'm brushing my teeth I read the ones on the bathroom mirror.. and by doing so I'm making the conscious decision to alter my life to fit these statements. We all can be the person we feel we are inside. We all can make the decision right here, right now to STOP letting the past events of our lives - and the present ones effect the life we live, the way we act, the way we think of ourselves.. and the way we react to how others think about us. We can choose to be the very best us we can be. Imagine the greatest version of the grandest vision you can about the person you'd choose to be if you had a choice - THEN CHOOSE TO BE THAT PERSON.

Love and Blessings...

Mollie