Online dating has taught me many things the first being that it is a dirty business. A great deal of dating websites are deceptive in their advertising. Once they get all of your profile information is when they inform you that you will have to pay to answer or contact any of the other persons on the site. That, my friend is the reason I have been on the only truly free dating website most of my single life. First of all, its kind of a false environment. People can be anything they want to be on the internet. I have met a few sincere people in person that I met on line in my experience. That being said, I am not jaded, as much as I am realistic in my expectations. I didn’t get a paid subscription till recently. I spent the $20 because the letters had piled up in my inbox and I was curious to read each one. I only got a subscription for one month. Just the possibility of meeting someone decent fueled my curiosity. Out of 100 items of fodder and fluff in the form of smiles, cards, and notes I was able to glean about five sincere notes of significance. I answered every card, smile and note just to say a thank you even if I wasn’t interested. It was worth it to spend twenty dollars to glean five real friendships.
I want most of all to be friends first and then I might be ready for something more!
Gone are the days when mutual attraction was a gauge for how to measure a person. In this day and age when a person can plagiarize or steal someone else’s identity with ease, as you could imagine I am guarded in my estimation of people. I solicited a background check before dating someone. All it takes is one bad experience and thereafter I proceed with caution. I say this laughing because I can laugh about it now. I am friends with many officers of the law and thanks to their expertise I have been able to avoid any possible danger. Now it just comes down to common sense in regards to getting to know someone.
The best online clubs do just that. They encourage and foster friendships. Like in real life groups are a good place to meet eligible singletons. Everyone knows someone who is single. Its a fairly safe environment to get to know someone. Girls become friends rather than competition. We help each other in our search and can recommend and keep each other safe. Without endorsing any particular club I will say that what I look for I would recommend an online dating service that acts more like a club. Real people get together off line and have an activity together. There is always a monitor in the chat room to keep things respectful. When you report someone, they are investigated by a specialist on the site and if found to be in violation of club rules are removed.
Overall it has been a positive experience even with all the romance scammers out there . As Kelly Clarkson put it so well: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Next time I hope to talk about how to set up a decent profile, as well as cues to look for in profiles that are just out and out , “wrong”.
it’s a dirty business
Posted in friends, family, love, relationships, sex on December 18, 2013 by jengrabesculpturewomen and men should be friends
Posted in Uncategorized with tags friends, men, relationships, women on December 16, 2013 by jengrabesculptureI think that is why women are sometimes better remaining friends with a man than a lover. A man asks to talk to a woman, she can make herself available to talk. What is the difference when she is in love with him or he with her? Well there is where it gets more complicated and intimacy can be challenging. If he is in love with her its easy I believe. He wants to come to her , to tell her all of his troubles and naturally so. Now if she is in love with him I think when it comes to talking she is willing to go more than halfway to meet him.
We all get tired sometimes and just don’t want to talk, we just want to ‘be’. Whatever that might mean to a person who needs to destress. Some people need to be with someone and talk it out. Tonight a friend of mine who I have been talking to for some time asked me if I was available to talk. I said yes, and as we talked for a while, I felt the intimacy slipping and so I wanted to leave the conversation. I see a pattern and there are silences getting more frequent between the replies. Instead of being patient and letting him continue to talk I cut him off and told him to go to bed. I failed as a friend and as a lover and I am sorry.
to Sigma, I say goodbye, but just for a little while
Posted in Uncategorized with tags daughter, love, mother on October 3, 2013 by jengrabesculptureat 11:16 am you were born. I remember the day very well. Your journey began with me in the month of October. I remember the morning sickness the inability to keep any solid food down. My bodies violent reaction to the the smell of anything greasy in the form of fried foods. I lived on ramen noodles so it seemed, for the first trimester. I did not know you would be a girl, I did not know what you would become and that your journey in life would take you so far from me, so far across the sea , to an island in the pacific called Japan. That your choices in life would include serving in our nation’s service on the USS George Washington. My beautiful girl lent to me for just a little while. What a lovely lady you have become in such a short span of 26 years time . Today we enjoyed a bowl of Pho with Tofu & vegetables together for lunch. What a fitting supper and enjoyable time together. The gut wrenching ache I feel in my stomach at your departure is reminiscent of the time you came into my life. What joy, what pain, what exuberance!!! My love stays with you always. May you be comforted in your loneliness out on the sea with this thought. I say goodbye, but just for a little while.
to Sigma
from your loving Momma
dream of losing self
Posted in Uncategorized on September 6, 2013 by jengrabesculpturedream awakens me at 1:30 am and I am terrorized. A man I know comes into my home unannounced he overtakes me and has me cornered in a lock and defeat is pressing on top of me. Fighting for my life , I break free from him and as I come to my feet beside him in a split second I grab a heavy metal object and bludgeon him to death; leaving nothing but a mashed pulp of a head for his shoulders.
As I lie in a pool of sweat , breathing heavy, heart racing, I have no idea what that dream is about. I pray for God’s sweet peace and I fall asleep again.
5:30 am, I am awakened and God’s answer to the dream is in my thoughts. Self has been vanquished. For the first time that dream ends in victory not with defeat. I am at peace within.
3:03 AM
Posted in Uncategorized on September 3, 2013 by jengrabesculptureI awaken. The fan overhead sweeps air across my sore body from the work out I put it through. I light two candles and run the water as hot as I can stand it into the bath. I ease into the tub and let the hot water soak out the soreness as I lay back. Sleep won’t come without it. I let out some of the water and sit in the tub as the air cools the top half of my body . I get out and pat myself dry and back to my studio. Paint smells. I turn on the light, ” I ‘ve got to finish that painting,” I say to myself. The emotion is neatly packed away in a hermetically sealed jar. As I open it and smell it, everything comes back, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feeling. How is it that I can still stay so tied to my core? All that emotion flows into the stream of paint. I don’t have to feel it anymore, it’s all transferred into the alloys and minerals, light and shadow. Transferred but not forgotten. The sound of the 5:00 am train is roaring past. Rinse out brushes in the paint thinner. Eyes getting sleepy now. Would be nice to save the money and take a train ride. I haven’t been on a train in years. I remember I was in my twenties and it was New Years Eve in South Holyoke Mass…drifting at 3:00 AM
…you always hurt the ones you love…
Posted in Uncategorized with tags breakups, growth, relationships, single life on January 3, 2013 by jengrabesculptureThe dating scene. I am a regular member and have been for over 16 years. Oh yeah, except for that brief time I was married so long ago I barely remember what’s his name. It’s a pity that once people who were lovers don’t speak to each other anymore. Why is that ? We exchanged the most intimate parts of our body with another human being but we cannot talk with that person? I suppose it’s true that you always hurt those closest to you. Perhaps the shame that you both share or the disappointment makes it too difficult to see them in any other light than an outsider. Where is the love to change all that and make things different? How are some folks able to do that and not others? What makes us so different from each other and yet the same? Just some thoughts on the subject. I don’t have any answers in time it will all make sense. How are some couples able to bounce back from those differences and others are driven apart? Life as a single girl has its ups and downs. Here’s me, not at my finest hour, but hey heartbreak hotel ain’t a nice place to hang out!
escape is overrated
Posted in addiction, recovery, health on December 11, 2012 by jengrabesculpture“He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A friend of mines little ‘isms’ she taught me is that , “No” is a complete sentence. One of the things I can do for myself everyday by saying ‘No’ can help me choose a different path. A different answer than I would normally give to people I interact with. Choosing differently can bring about desired results. Saying no today where I normally might say yes is a step towards knowing what I want for my life. On the other hand saying yes to the positive people and spiritual support in my life brings about a different set of results. Choosing to accept the help my higher power gives is a step in that direction. It has always been difficult for me to ask for help with things in my life. As a result of not asking for help the consequences were disastrous and drama-filled. I enjoy working independently. Its a matter of personal pride for me to be able to accomplish something on my own. There is much in life that we need help to accomplish.
That’s why I would isolate myself. I would be content to drink alone. I wasn’t much of a social drinker because I knew I needed to drive home or be responsible for a group of girls. Now it’s important to me staying sober just one day at a time. I am what they like to call a ‘high-functioning alcoholic’ . It is only through him that I have sobriety and only through him that I have achieved the peace I sought. It could have been a whole lot worse for me. All those times I was mixing medications and booze. Somehow my higher power got me through all of it and I would still wake up to a new day with the same old problems, only now there were a whole lot worse ones.
Insanity has been described as trying to do the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. That insane way of living just wasn’t working for me anymore.
Today I will seek to be sane through a connection with my higher power. Amazing how life flows when connected with that same higher power. No longer do I have to seek thrills and escape.
Just for today I don’t have to seek an escape. I am living my life, problems are there, just a different set of problems. Not the kind of problems that come from consequences of poor choices and poor associations. These are the problems I thought were so bad I had to escape from them. As it turns out, its the same problems everyone has to deal with only now I deal with them sober.
It’s good to feel a sense of peace. Way more fulfilling than escape. I underestimated the power of peace of mind.
First things first…
Posted in addiction, recovery, health, mind & spirit on November 13, 2012 by jengrabesculpture11/13/2012, 18:58
“Let us spend one day as deliberately as nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.”- Henry David Thoreau
Just for today I will be guided , I will reach for the light instead of stumbling in the darkness. I will offer my hand to my most personal higher power to guide me in His steps. I will listen instead of talk, for the tender ever-present voice of my guide saying here is the way, walk ye in it.
Into the dark
Posted in Uncategorized with tags art, cerebral, dark on October 4, 2012 by jengrabesculptureInto the dark I go… When I am working in the studio a first step I take is selecting the tone I want to set for the overall picture. How I select the color of paper or the color of the background I want to work into depends on my cerebral choice. If I am going to work into the dark, I will select a darker paper and use white conte’ or color pastels to work the figure into the ground. If I want my image to pop I will present a wash into the background and use black and white conte’ crayon to emphasize the image and make it stand out against the background. Selecting gray paper and working into the gray I move and the hand and eye work together to express. Inside is a terrified person desperately trying to cover the nakedness I feel. The vulnerability that I covered , the shame of life now feeling regret where once I was proud, I laughed , I sang, I was moved by the moment. Casting all cares aside I stay in the moment, focusing only upon what I see.
Today I am feeling melancholy. So much of life is do-it-yourself. The only problem with that is it can wear on you after a while. Always trying to lift others up when they are falling. Spending a great deal of time working hard to make progress and move forward, there is always people who are more scared than you that come into your life. They do not want to admit they are terrified. They use a phony sense of bravado to get through each day. They are willing to risk all to save face. I understand this person because I used to be like them. Drowning in alcohol, cigarettes and mood-enhancing substances, sex, relationships to get through each moment. Not thinking about the cost to myself or others. There has never been any real joy associated with addictive substances.
I realize now that I did not do it all myself. There are people that have come into my life to teach me something in the great earth school. First in teaching me how to love them, second in teaching me something about myself. I have not always been successful learning how to love. Love came as a result of trying to just understand them, spending time contemplating a way to communicate with them rather than ignore them. I was taught The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When I felt stomped on and kicked around as a result of my own choices I overreacted and decided to do something about it. I decided to live by my own rules. I found out I was a dictator. I did not like the results so much.
Happiness is overrated. Joy is what I want. Real joy. The kind a baby feels when it recognizes a familiar face. I have had moments of pure joy. A great deal of my life was mirth: wine , men , and song. Now I just look for joy. It counters all the sadness, and awful regret I feel. To seek a sense of right living, to do no harm to live as far a possible in peace with all. Even if that idea separates and isolates me from others who would disrespect that ideology. I do not want uniformity. I like diversity.
risk blooming
Posted in addiction, recovery, health on September 30, 2012 by jengrabesculpture“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.” Anais Nin
In searching for an affirmation this morning I came across this one. With power it speaks to me. I am truly sorry for the people I have wronged in my life when I was addicted and in pain. To finally be set free from all of that is a lifelong process that begins with a choice. For this moment, this hour, this day I will choose. The only really meaningful apologies are the ones we make with the intention of not repeating the same harm. I wanted to get myself together and grow spiritually first before I apologize to the people I have wronged. I have the power to forgive myself.
I am 14 days without cigarettes, I saved 86.00, and one more day of my life.
It makes me wonder what I did before I smoked. Certainly I must have had something I did that was satisfying to me. It was suggested to me by former smokers who have quit to focus on what I want from life. Also to dedicate that time to something worthwhile. I am going to ponder those two things. I just know that quitting has opened a whole new world to me. A world of knowledge , discovering things, and a devotion to learning. Perhaps it was always there, but the addiction kept me preoccupied.
I want to focus more on learning.
jengrabesculpture 