A Place of Confidence…

Dear Reader,

I have been thinking tonight, in particular I have been thinking where all my inspiration has gone. I used to write some good letters now and again, I think it all boils down to when my health went from okay, to concerning, to bad, and finally worse. I stopped writing then, well, I stopped writing as often. I didn’t want to turn this space into a sick woman’s diary, or a journal of my declining health journey. Eventually, days turned into weeks and weeks into months, where nothing but my health was and still is at the forefront, and it is not great, but at least for the moment somewhat stable.

I used to write from a place called confidence, and I lost that in a just about a year or two, my confidence decided to take a train to nowhere without me. My life or living situation has not been great for about 11 years, but even then, I was happy, confident, or at least I saw my world more often than not with rose colored glasses. In my own weird way, I saw the good in a bad day. My days seem to crawl by, and I always said empowering things, and kept up the happy, or at least I tried to keep only the good out of my everyday.

For a while now, I have been looking for that version of me, because while now my living situation has improved, my zest for life, my endless fountains of hope, my ever lasting faith, seem to have a limit. Some days are good and others bad.

I am battling depression, which according to my neurologist has nothing to do with my epilepsy. There is so much about epilepsy that I learned along the way, that I’m surprised to learn one has nothing to do with the other.

I’m taking care of it though, some days are good and others, well they could be better. I have a psychologist, so don’t worry, I am not walking this dark tunnel alone. It’s not easy, but we will get there, wherever there is.

If you ever find yourself lost, in fear or panic or anything negative, or anything that is not you, please find help. Going through a difficult time by yourself may seem the brave thing to do, but remember, the ultimate act of bravery is asking for help.

Live, Love, and Laugh anyway you can.

Hot Cocoa…

Dear Reader,

As a sat alone in reflection, I realized, I can count my mother’s friends in one hand. It’s not because she is in some way anti-social or anything like that. The more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that all those friends of hers are real friends; and not people like the ones that are added on social media to fill a quota, or to win a popularity contest.

My mother, befriends people for a lifetime, and will go to the ends of the earth for them. Now, I am not even a little surprised that my mother, somehow, has found that perfect balance and knows when to be a mother and when to be a friend.

It’s not all roses and rainbows however, she has had to say goodbye to friendships, and I don’t mean in the poetic sense of the word. I mean, she has really been there for their last breath. While I myself attended the funeral of the guy who I considered my brother from another mother, I cannot presume to know the feelings she must have had.  I guess, you can’t put that under “walk a mile in my shoes”. That type of pain is unique to every individual.

Somehow, though, my mother is gifted with at least making you feel like she shares your pain, and to some degree I think she does.

Why did I think that?, today I realized I’m horrible at comforting people, I just feel that somehow, “you are not alone, I am here with you” does not cut it. Sometimes something so simple, is not enough, sometimes simplicity does not even begin to be enough for tears we all hope never to cry.

Ideally, in a situation where someone is suffering you offer them an ear, a shoulder to cry on, and for the most adventurous, a nice hot cup of cocoa and even a hug. Because why not, they should feel that they are not alone.

What do you think I did? Your very well versed in words and parle girl. Said, “you are not alone I am here with you”, okay so sure maybe I could have done better. Oh, but it gets worse… Remember that ideal cup of hot cocoa? I accepted it for ME!!!, to drink. And even now, in my realm of letters and words, nothing better than the words written by the King of Pop come to mind. Nor can I find an excuse for the hot cocoa. Except to say I really wanted one, not for the sake of reminisce of easier times, your girl simply loves chocolate specially in that form.

Just saying this to you, I see everything that is wrong with it. I should have been the one making the hot chocolate to warm the hearths and hearts of all the concerned. I should have done a better job at showing my care and concern.

Should have, could have, would have. Oh, the myriad of things lost in that dark hole of wonder where all the times in my life I wish I could do over, lay.

In days like today, I wish I had my mother’s gifts in dealing with life and everything it throws at you. If I could do that as well as her, I would truly be gifted.

So until next time, I will remind myself that my actions and reactions may not be picture-perfect, but they are mine, I will settle with accepting that I’m nowhere near like a Hallmark card in spur of the moment situations.

Red, Gold, and Green…

Dear Reader,

Today I am feeling silly, and if you had walked a mile in my shoes in the past year, you would know this silliness is new to me. At least for the past twelve full moons, I felt everything but positive, silly.

A song of my era came to my mind like a silly thought that was stuck to me like crazy glue. Like a song I just had to listen to get it off my mind. Well that song has been on repeat making me feel happy and silly at the same time. I was not transported to the 80s or anything of the sort, nor do memories plague me, more like I’m just happy to know it exists.

A small happiness is like a small mercy. Judging from the year I have had so far, I call today a huge win for the happy side of things. Like you, I also fall, and about a year ago, I fell as far down as someone like me can. I lost my home, with everything in it. I managed to save a bit of my life, but 90 percent of it was tossed out with the week’s trash. All because I was blind to so many things. Ignorance maybe blissful at first, but it ends up hurting more than we know.

I wish I could think of a way back to the way things used to be once upon a time, but let’s face it, things, things will never be the same again. My health is not great, and it’s only getting worse, the people of yesterday are no longer the same.

I keep thinking that now I am so far from what I thought my life would be. I pictured a simple life, with a dog and two cats. A night in front of the television, possibly Netflix and a series or two, some popcorn and soda. In the company of someone, under a warm blanket. That is my definition of happiness. It seems simple enough, but it is so far away from me, it looks like a grain of sand in the distance. Who knows it that will ever be me, the world is changing so fast around me, it’s difficult to keep track.

I will say this for the favorable side of things, when the world changes around you, change as much as you need to but somewhere don’t forget who you are, who you were and who you want to become. Make change work with all of that in peaceful cooperation so at the end of the day you can still recognize yourself in the mirror.

T-Mobile Nightmare…

Dear Reader,

I don’t know what generation you are, but I grew up in a society where “The Customer is Always Right”; granted, that didn’t mean they actually were right, it just meant companies went out of their way to make sure the customer was always happy. A happy customer was a returning customer and at a time when Google Reviews were not available word of mouth was golden.

Lately it seems, however, that companies are set for self-destruction. There have been so many scandals that have been handled poorly by companies that have pretty much disappeared. Everything from poor products, poor representation of goods, to handling things badly.

Nowhere is this more true than with T-Mobile. I just don’t get how, when a phone has already been fully paid for, alongside paying for the products’ insurance, we must still return the broken product or else we need to pay the product’s almost full price.

That would be the equivalent of buying a car, paying it in full, getting it full coverage insurance with AAA; then one day out of the blue the car explodes, and you open the claim, where you proved it exploded, you get paid the damages by AAA; after which you get a new one, and a few months later AAA wants the carcass of what was left of your exploded car, or you will have to pay the car’s almost full price.

I usually ask, make that make sense and yet, I’m not going to. Trying to understand is like trying to learn a dead language in one day. I will simply add it up to the column is not personal, it’s business. I don’t live under a rock, I understand most of the time the business side of things is selfish and self-centered. There are exceptions to the rule. T-Mobile is not one of them. Nor will it ever be.

Now, here is the crux of the problem. I don’t mind returning broken equipment because it saves me the recycling fee. However, I have had such luck lately, that the return label and return products was so cheaply made that it was confused with trash.

Now for the odyssey. I was never given a digital copy of that return label, so getting a hold of the right person and insurance company was a literal nightmare that took more than one hundred days. Because of pin numbers unknown, that could only be set as temporary. Not to mention, I had no idea the T-Mobile representative would have the guts to tell me what she told me. ‘What is the use of providing me the number to the insurance claims department if my mother didn’t have a working phone line to begin with’. The only thing that crossed my mind at that moment was: “Excuse you”. Followed with, as you may have guessed, a lot of words in my mind that cannot be said out loud.

Assurant as I later learned to be the name of the insurance company that services T-Mobile does list T-Mobile on their site. Yet T-Mobile does not, which then leads us to the telephone to and fro, that feels endless, and frustrating.

Another thing I cannot understand, is how T-Mobile can create accounts it did not have before and even suspend accounts; yet it cannot look into a customer’s records to reactivate the account or to work out a way to help the customer set a payment schedule. Funny how their insurance company says, the line in question can be reestablished by T-Mobile, and that they didn’t have anything to do with that side of things.

It’s a ‘he said she said’, and here I find myself hoping T-Mobile does use those recorded conversations to train their staff better and to understand where they sorely lack. As past scandals and customer dissatisfaction has shown, even great companies and brands can fall.

Since I always leave you with some positive words, let me tell you that while people may not always be right, and while companies have reached a level of importance that allows them not to care; let us work in becoming better people not for money, nor for fame, but because we still remember what it was like when the customer was always right. That is too much to hope for, I know, but how about, working towards doing all you can to keep your customers happy. 

If I Wrote to You…

Dear Reader,

Someone asked me today, if I wrote a letter to you what would it say? For the first time in years my inspirational fast thinking writer self could not come up with anything amazing or at least a bit impressive to say. All I could think of was nothing coherent, your girl drew the biggest blank of her life.

I have thought of her question, and all I can say a day before my birthday is, today, is a day I won’t easily forget no matter how many years pass.

My mother got an award for outstanding years of service and my epilepsy (walking into things walked into the display a few times until it crashed).

I have never in my life wished I could take back a day or a moment more than now. I recently lost so much, and I would lose it all again if I could undo that moment. I can’t and I have to learn to live with that.

All my mother said was “if you are okay everything else is okay, you matter most.”

I feel horrible of course, I even wrote to a place that makes awards but you can’t unbreak broken glass, just like you can’t unscramble scrambled eggs.

Imagine if I could fix it? It would be amazing.

Anyway, I never said dreaming was bad, I guess I can dream for now, and very soon wake up to the reality of life, live in the present and try to be better tomorrow. 

I need to remind myself that there are worse things in life happening around the world. Somewhere, someone celebrates their birthday, while somewhere someone is crying over a coffin or a grave. Of all of these, breaking something should barely make the radar.

So, when you feel like the weight of the word is on your shoulders for whatever the reason, communicate anyway that you can, because someone somewhere is listening and even if they can’t carry the load with you they will walk alongside and encourage you to go on, or lighten your load and move forward. As someone said to me today, even if you take two steps forward and one step back, that is still progress, slow as it may be, it’s still progress.

So keep moving forward as best you can, you and I will eventually get there.

Consequences…

Dear Reader,

We usually never know the consequences to everything we do, of course, we know things like if I drop a glass it will break, or if I cross the street without looking I may get run over. There are other things though in life that you and I do, that we never get to know how they end, or what is the result of them. Certainly most of those things are in the realm of good things and we hope, that by making some smile, we have kept away a tear. Or by listening to someone’s diatribe we have some how helped them sort out their thoughts.

Today, someone who is far younger than myself has in his own way become my light in the dark, granted he does have words similar to those of Bruce Lee and has the mind set of an old soul, but it was not that really, it was actually just how simple he sees certain things, like dying. He looked at me and said, “If we die, we die, and whatever happens we won’t know until we get there”. There was no thought about religion or a religious faith, it was just matter of fact. Like if we all must meet with God then we shall wait until we get there to know what the experience is like and not spend our lives obsessing over things that have yet to happen.

Being the age that I am today, of course, I sometimes wonder what would God think of me? What would he think of the life I have lived or the choices I have made? And even if I have come across these questions many a time in my life given my many periods of poor health, I always put more weight on the possibilities and more consequence and depending on how good a child or friend of family member I was, I was either at peace with myself or worried sick thinking God may not like me.

Today it took a child to make me realize, the fact that I exist means God already likes me, what he thinks of me after my creation is something that is solely up to Him and me to know at a designed time.

It took my nephew for me to remember what I always tell you, to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. To put it mildly if I am really interested in God having a good opinion of me then I should strive like my nephew to be the best version of me I can be.

We are our own worst enemies at times regardless of age, but remember you can also be your own best friend. In case you were wondering as to the age of this wise child he is only 15.

God bless children that remind us why we are here.

I’m Blue…

Dear Reader,

When I started letters to the world I always wanted to focus on the bright sides of things when possible and when not possible at least be able to show you somehow you are not alone dark times also happen to me.

You know somehow, I never wanted to admit I am sad, I am blue I am less than happy. Admitting something like that would be to be like admitting defeat or so I thought. God bless parents who know when you are doing less than okay and tell you it’s okay to fall, it’s okay to fold, its okay to throw in the towel sometimes because we are only human after all.

I am blessed with family like that. I failed, a fell, I folded, I gave up, and they were there waiting for me as I made my way back up. They, like me know it’s okay to fall because like dust I will rise, like hopes I will float and like dreams I will continue on. Because going forward will allow me to see the other side, but for now, I am blue I am in the verge of tears and all I can do right now is accept it and get help, because I am not God or anything close to it.

I have my own Everest, my own challenge and step one in a a challenge is accepting that the next steps forward cannot be taken alone. So thank you family, thank you mom, thank you bro, thank you sisters, thank you friends.

Let us walk together in a journey that will be difficult but will also be rewarding because anything worth doing requires work. So I will put me first and give a like on my life.

Go forth dear reader and treat yourself like you want to be treated by others and the rest will follow.

Godspeed.

Helicopter…

Dear Reader,

Have you ever been on a helicopter? I never thought I would be but sometime around March 19th, 9-1-1 had to be called, because I apparently had a flurry of seizures. I don’t remember anything or anyone. All I remember is hearing the rotor blades spinning and and me waking up in another hospital then acting unlike myself and hitting on the nurses, and doctors and asking for my husband.

I don’t really know what to do, I’ve had seizures before and normally I could remember almost everything leading up to them. Until the last two times, in which I don’t remember anything and lost days entire, but what is worse is the feelings of depression, fear, anxiety, and panic it left me with this time around. The first time my brain didn’t enter the equation all I remember is asking the paramedic what I was doing on the floor. This time, nothing, just remember talking to my friend and lightly remembering saying a thing or two.

I know somewhere in there I laughed because I could not forget everyone telling me and my mother growing up that I was faking everything. It turns out the reason I could not remember anything when I got injured was because it was happening in the middle of a seizure more than likely.

Now I have to see a neurologist on Monday and inform them about the latest happenings.

This time unlike all the others I been trying to deal with the fear that this event left me with.

I guess I finally understood that I am not suppose to stress or be depressed.

It took me nearly a year to get diagnosed because there was another neurologist telling my mother is was no big deal, and he didn’t even bother giving me medication and not even a week later after getting seeing by him I ended up in the hospital from a seizure and apparently there are different types of them, I could not tell you what type of even happened to me, all I know is I was out of it, and don’t remember my conversations or anything, and I’m struggling to think it’s like my I.Q. dropped a few points, and the things I should have no problem doing even writing you this letter is difficult.

I hope someday I will get back to my normal self.

Until I get back to myself, I hope you are still there and read me when I come back.

Just Do…

Dear Reader,

As I have often said, if you are sad be sad, if you are happy be happy. Be you, whichever you happens to wake up that day, be that.

The last three months of my life I’ve gone through things I don’t wish even on my worst enemy. I was strong, I stood my ground, I was the rock, until I wasn’t. My rock exterior crumpled into fine sand, and just like monoliths before me I too fell. Swiftly and suddenly.

I could no longer pretend to be okay, neither should you. There are times when if life gives you lemons, the lemonade you want to make will still be sour, will still be unpleasant. The pain will still be there. But like all things that are not exactly pleasant, eventually, that too, shall and will pass. The trick is not to hold on to it longer than you have to. Let it go and release it.

The problem with us, is we have yet to learn to let go, of events, people, memories, and the like. I am not asking you to walk around alone, and unseen. What I am saying is, live the moment, learn from it. Good or bad and then let it go. Letting go does not mean forgetting it. Try never to forget, that’s the goal. Live life in the present. If you spend your days saying… “I could have been, I used to be, if this or that had not happened my life will be like this or that”. That my dear reader is what we call regret. While regret is not a bad feeling to have, try not to make it your partner for life. It has a tendency to blind you with what could have been and does not allow you to see what could be.

So, let’s try to look at things more as they could be. Let’s try to lend a little less focus on could have, should have, would have, and focus more on I could do, I should do, I will do. You will amaze yourself with how much you can accomplish in the coming year.

Wishing you all the best always.

No-Win Situation…

Dear Reader,

You must have heard of the win-win situation. It’s one in which no matter the path taken, the choice made there will be gains either way. Have you ever heard of the opposite “lose-lose situation” or a “No-Win situation”? Well, it means no matter the path taken, the choice made you will lose.

I have been on a no win situation more than once in my life. I don’t think I have noticed it much though because of my undying habit of looking on the bright side of things. Recently I was thrust without warning into a “No-Win” situation. Right when I saw the gravity of the situation, I knew it would end badly for me at least. I tried to hold on, but that’s like trying to stay on the Titanic hoping by magic it will make it to New York, we all know how that ended.

So you must be wondering, WDCD? (What Did Clao Do?). I picked the lesser of all evils. In other words, I did what any wise computer geek would do when a computer blue screens without return. Wipe, reformat, and reinstall. Okay, so us humans are not computers or programs. So I just made things as they were before I got there. Yeah that far back. Granted I could not recreate the whole experience to the letter but an improved semblance of it. Now it’s just a matter of time and “hanging on” as a really nice cross stitch I saw said.

The difficult part is the waiting, because we all know what happens, when your life, your routine, the company you keep changes. Eventually you like the change or you get used to it, it becomes your habit and as we all know for some, habits are hard to break, specially those that keep you in your ideal circumstance.

You can’t always get what you want, but you will always be provided with what you need. Fair warning though, you might want to make a chocolate cake, and God will provide you the ingredients for a salad instead. He’s not saying you are fat, he is simply saying a time for indulgence is not now.

Remember that for everything there is a time, and a season. If your season passes, it will come back again and even if it’s not the same, it will be what we need then.