"No Labels...just Life" blog: My Poor Son

My son is growing up with a slurry of men in his life. I left his dad and then one, two,  three, four boyfriends later, I'm hoping that this relationship sticks. 

Maybe it's because I just say yes to whoever will have me. Actually, I think that's pretty much it.

Until I'm with a guy - then I latch on like there's no tomorrow, no yesterday...only right now, this...

My poor son.

I feel like a terrible mother.

I left.

I was the one.

I broke his father's heart.

And now his father is dying of congestive heart failure...

With a six-year old boy the only one to take care of him...

Because mom is off with her boyfriend.

"Which one is it this time?" his dad will ask.

Actually, that's a lie. His dad doesn't want to know any more. He just wants his son safe and happy.

So do I.

"No Labels...just Life" blog: Surviving Mental Illness - and the Stigma that Can Make it Even Worse

I watched an amazing show last night on TLC with my boyfriend and saw this guy who hadn't left his house in like ten years because of PTSD. (Click here for full episode.) My situation isn't as extreme as his, but, I have a lot of PTSD from my abusive childhood and the abusive relationships I've been in, and, I deal with social anxiety on a daily basis. I've also recovered from a suicidal depression that lasted from October 2014 to April 2015. I don't talk about it much because there's a huge stigma associated with mental illness. There's a tendency to blame and fear the sufferers, and there's the idea that these people are merely shells of human beings that will collapse under the weight of life at any moment, so it's best not to invest much time in them and to keep your distance. And maybe that's true, to some extent. I know I collapsed earlier this year and I've been slowly - but surely - getting back up again. 

Because of the stigma, I hid my depression from almost everyone. When I disappeared in March from family, friends, jobs, and church - changing my phone number, email addresses, and deactivating all social media - some people were angry with me, some were worried about me, some were both, and some didn't even notice. I do want to say I'm sorry to those of you who care for me and just want to see me thrive, even though my brain convinced me that I had nothing to offer this world and should just leave it. I also want to say I'm sorry to those of you from whom, even now, I try to hide my mental illness with the hope that you'll think I'm just a badass human being. Yes, there's a stigma, but letting you know about it is better than blind-siding you with it when I start experiencing symptoms, because there's no hiding it then. 

I'm doing the best I can - with lots of help - not to act on symptoms and function and thrive in society. It's been a year since my suicidal depression started and five months since it ended; I'm proof that you can survive and recover from any mental illness, no matter how you feel - even if, every single day, you don't want to exist any more, with no end in sight - you just have to hold on and get help (I promise, there's at least one person who's been through it and understands). And then that beautiful day comes, maybe after months, when you realize, "Hey, I've made it, and I have a purpose here on this Earth after all; I'm not finished yet." 

I didn't work at the restaurant today (I'm so grateful to have found a job making pizza, because it's simple, I'm great at it, and it's so perfect for someone like me). So, to continue to thrive as a human being, I updated my website: [deleted] (I'll purchase a new domain name in a few days when I get paid). It's simple for now, but I'm hoping to catch some work here and there using my many talents, like I was before the depression hit, and eventually it'll be full of all of the amazing things I'm doing. :)

For now, though, I'm going to do laundry, put clothes away, put dishes away, vacuum, clean the apartment, cook something, and make this a nice, relaxing place for my hard-working, amazing boyfriend to come home to. I can't believe I'm in a relationship with someone so spectacular - so I want to nourish that, too.

"No Labels...just Life" blog: Oh Yeah, I'm a Photographer...

Disclaimer: I'm having font issues. I think it has to do with starting these posts on Facebook on my iPhone and then editing them on my Blogger app and then editing them on the Blogger website (all using my phone). Okay, now that I've explained why there are so many different fonts intertwined (if you even see them, like I do), here's my post:

It's funny; I'll start to post on Facebook and then my status update turns into a paragraph. I'll never forget that friend who commented on a post of mine who said, if a post takes me twenty minutes to write, it belongs on a blog and not Facebook. It's not that I had to heed her criticism, but, little did she know, every status update has always taken me twenty minutes, lol. So, maybe that's not "normal" Facebook activity, and maybe she was right.

So, now that I'm transitioning from Facebook blog posts to actual blog posts, here's the Facebook status update I was writing just now, copied and pasted and edited to be even longer than the paragraph it originally was (and one of these days I'm going to have to thank her publicly for getting all this started, but, for now I'll keep her anonymous since there's clearly still some passive aggressive resentment, lol):

Days off are sometimes weird for me, if I have more days off than I've asked for, but, I'm an intelligent woman, and I understand that when business is slow, in order to stay in business (i.e. make money), the restaurant has to cut costs. Restaurants aren't places where cooks are supposed to be able to make a full-time living unless you're the manager, an assistant manager, the owner, the chef, or the sous chef. That's why, even though it freaked me out when my hours when cut at first, at this point, I don't take it personally. I love my job making pizza, and my bosses know that, so I'm no longer worried about my hours or my wage. I figure everything'll work itself out as long as I keep doing a good job. But on my days off, when it's not the day I have off to be with my son, I do get to thinking, "Hmm, so, I'm not making money right now...if I don't like that...and if I want to change that...how am I going to change that?" 

I've decided today is photography day. Yep! Many of you know I'm a photographer but stopped when I got steady work elsewhere, even though I had only just gotten started after taking photography at Cal State. It's time to pick my camera back up and start shooting again. Well...before that, it's time to pick up my Wordpress website-building skills and build myself a new website so I can market myself so I can start shooting again. :P

I'm brilliant, and I have so many talents - marketing, publicity, websites, photography, music, writing, editing - I could easily be making money with all of those when I'm not on the clock at my "real" job. All I have to do is actually do it. Maybe my letter to Work Ethic is being answered. Or, more accurately, my prayers...don't let me leave God out any more! 

I'll even say it again:

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, both good and bad. I pray that you remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to You and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen.

So...let's be useful!

"No Labels...just Life" blog: In Love

When I started working at [restaurant deleted] back in July, I fell in love. I fell in love with the people, the food, the atmosphere, the experience, the building - everything and everyone. I still feel that way. I'm telling you, it's a magical place.

But I can also tell you, the MAIN reason I fell in love is because of Chef [name deleted]. I know amazing food when I taste it, I know perfection when I experience it, and I know a hard worker when I see one. My grandfather was Chief Civil Engineer at Camp Pendleton here in Fallbrook back in 1948. He built 20 acres single-handedly off Alvarado St between Frolic Way (the road he paved and named) and Emilia Ln which are still in the family. He worked on the property morning and night in between working all day as a civil engineer, carving out reservoirs, building houses, barns and bomb shelters, planting trees and plants that grew every fruit and vegetable from A to Z. He wasn't just a hard-working man, he was a genius - brilliant - and he was my example...that this is the kind of man you want in your life, as a woman. 

And so, I don't talk about it much because [choosing a pseudonym: Bernard] is very private, and, because it's a delicate situation, working under him as a pizza cook and falling in love with him at the same time. But, that's how I fell in love - I get to make the best pizzas in town at the best restaurant in town for the best chef in town (and the best restaurant owner in town; [owner's name deleted] is another brilliant, hard-working family man, and so I have nothing but respect for him as well). Chef Bernard works six days a week, morning til night, and even goes into the restaurant on his "day off" to make sure everything's running smoothly. When he's on the job, he's executing his menu flawlessly, beautifully, and quickly, dancing to music in the kitchen and having a good time, loving what he does.

Sure, some things stress him out when they don't go the way they should, and some people get on his nerves when they don't perform at his level of expectation. But that's just because he knows exactly how things should be and how they need to be executed, and you better be on board, because he's the one steering the ship. The chef at any restaurant is never the "easiest" person to work with; my former boss at [let's say Pizza Hut], where I worked on and off for a decade, used to say, "If you don't hate me, I'm not doing my job!" It makes me laugh a little when Chef Bernard is tough on his crew and they have a hard time with it, because Bernard's not even as hardcore as that former Navy hardass, Harry Marsh, whom I used to call "Mr. Harsh" behind his back...and yet, to whom I'll always be grateful for whipping my ass into shape as one of the best pizza-makers around. 

So, speaking of gratitude, I burst at the seams with it most days at [the restaurant], thanking God for landing me there, because that place, like I said, is magical. I'm even sad any time a waitress or a cook leaves, because those crew members have become like family to me, every single one of them. When you become a cook and you're good at what you do and you have the privilege of being at the restaurant all the time, and you end up at a place like [this restaurant], you can find a hell of a lot of things to be grateful for. [This restaurant] just blows it out of the water (to continue the Navy analogies, lol).

And Chef Bernard simply blows me away, every day, and I was dying to tell the world.

"No Labels...just Life" blog: My Creator, I'm Yours

After the terrible day I had yesterday - 6 hours of waiting in San Diego at various coffee shops and driving around the city - I never did get to see Louie. 

I guess I can't entirely call it a "terrible" day. It was actually the end of a pretty hard week, and it culminated in my complete deflation and acceptance of God being in charge. Yeah - God, whom I haven't mentioned once yet on this blog besides saying I was listening to Christian radio yesterday, is really the One calling the shots, and things are much better when I let Him.

Last week was my week to work on step 7, when, after having identified which character defects stand in the way of my usefulness to God and my fellows, I ask Him to remove them and replace them with their opposites - character virtues. Really it's the 7 deadly sins and 7 heavenly virtues, by don't think for a second that this God whom I'm turning my life to is some orthodox Bible God - no, He's just a God of my own understanding, and if you were working the steps so you didn't drink and die, you'd get to choose your own concept of God, too, because that's how it works. I guess you could supposedly choose a doorknob, they say. If you do, let me know how that works for you - me, I need something a LOT bigger than me.

So, my sponsor said if I wasn't willing to let a certain defect go (mine in order of frequency are Sloth, Pride, Wrath, Lust, Envy, Greed and Gluttony), that I should embrace it and do all the things I want with it - I mean really follow the defect as far as it can go. I started the week off thinking that I was letting them go; on Sloth day, I prayed, "My Creator, I am now willing that You should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character - especially sloth - if it stands in the way of my usefulness to You and my fellows. Grant me strength - and diligence - as I go from here to do Your bidding. Amen."

I wanted sloth gone. It's really in the way; sometimes I go months without opening my mail, and my former roommate and my boyfriend can both testify to the fact that I don't do enough laundry, dishes, cooking, or other chores. At work, sometimes I get comfortable and don't work as fast as I should to get everything done. I could even be working harder as a mother; giving up custody to his dad is the easy way out. 

So, praying that prayer, I'm really asking for God to change me and make me a better person, if it be His will, and then I take actions towards that end, like opening my mail, cleaning, cooking, calling Louie and planning our visits.

Sloth day was good; then came Pride > Humility, Wrath > Patience, Lust > Love (Chastity ain't happenin', so don't even), Envy > Kindness, Greed > Generosity, and Gluttony > Temperance.

Now, apparently, and I won't go into specific details, the rest of the defects were much harder to let go of. I mean, I would do the prayer, and then throughout my day I would notice myself doing the exact opposite, and every single time, the consequences were terrible. Even yesterday, I was a bitch to Louie's dad in the morning - wrathful instead of patient - so naturally he was a jerk right back (it took my boyfriend to point this out to me - I thank God for that man). And don't even get me started on Gluttony. My best friend Jessica and my sponsor both know where that one took me, and it wasn't pretty. Greed and Envy - that one affected my work relations, as suddenly I was trying to get more hours at work or a raise and making people's lives more difficult than necessary, when really, shit, if I opened my mail on time, or shit, if I PAID the toll on those two toll roads in the first place, I wouldn't have an $80 bill that turned into a $205 bill because I didn't pay it because I didn't open my mail and because I thought I could drive on toll roads in Otay Mesa and get away with it.

After all my pondering this week on the human condition, with evolutionary psychology and all that crap, really the thing that gets me to change my ways is acting like the biggest douchebag possible and dealing with the painful consequences.

That's when I surrender to a Power greater than myself, and I really, finally, do mean it when I say:

My Creator, I am NOW willing that You should have ALL of me, good AND bad. I pray that You NOW remove from me EVERY SINGLE defect of character which STANDS IN THE WAY OF MY USEFULNESS to You AND my fellows. Grant me STRENGTH as I go out from here to do YOUR bidding. Amen!"