This morning I woke up around seven or so, saw a text from my friend inviting me to work out, and went right back to sleep. When I finally did officially wake up I wasn't in the greatest mood. I laid there for a while doing my creative visualizations, then I went to go make breakfast. So far the Perfect Health Diet (PHD for those in 'the know') has been a success. I made fried apples this morning, but I forgot that in order for those to really turn out well you need to use cooking apples and the only kind I had on hand were the eating variety. Last night I had written out a brief checklist of things to do. I sent a text to a manager where I used to work asking if he was still willing to be a reference, he said that he would and then told me that my former manager and him were sad that I had been let go. I told him that God had used this time to transform and heal me, then I said that he could feel free to pass along a 'hi' from me to anyone he thought might appreciate that.

I don't know what my issue was this morning, but when my friend called I was in a super low mood. We talked for a while, then we really got into it. I started crying and I said that I didn't know why I couldn't seem to get my life together. She gave me a pep talk, and I hope I always remember the things that she said to me, because they were what I needed to hear. She told me that I was smart, I'm sensitive to the needs of others, she told me to get out a sheet of paper and start writing some of these things down so I did. She told me that I worry so much about others I forget to take care of myself. Others have told me this, but I also hear how incredibly selfish I am, or can be, so I feel conflicted. She assured me that I am a good person who tries hard to do the right thing. I had forgotten about this conversation, but she took me back in time to the day she had been let go from her job. She told me that she had been laying on her bedroom floor sobbing, and I had stayed on the phone with her during the crux of the crisis.

The next call didn't go as well. My friend with the major health issues called me back, she had been eating when I called. I was slicing an avocado when she called so my hands were slippery from that and then they were wet from washing them. When we did start talking I could hear something behind her voice that I didn't like. She told me that it was resignation and that made sense once she verbalized what she thought that it was. She told me I was such a cheerleader in her life, the conversation could have ended there, but I tried to bolster her mood further and that's when things started deteriorating. After the call I felt drained and I realized that sometimes the best thing to do is offer whatever comfort and support you can, and then let others do whatever they will since you can't save anyone other than yourself, and sometimes you can't even do that. 

The visualizations were wild today. I started thinking about Jill and Jane's dad. I saw a structure similar in size to The Great Wall of China, but this wall was built out of steel or another metal with huge rivets every so often. We were on either side of the wall, unable to see each other until a huge laser went through the middle of the wall and shrank it. Then the wall became clear, not like ice or glass, maybe like Lucite. Above the wall were our children, floating in a bubble. I said that the girls could go live with him, then I fell to the ground and laid there until I saw something slice into my wrist. I watched blood pouring out of it in disbelief, he looked worried, as if he hadn't expected that to happen. Then I was dead and he was no longer able to communicate with me. The ground split between us and his half of the earth either started sinking, mine started rising, or both. I saw them descend into hell and I pleaded for them to be saved, but was denied.

Then I offered to take his place, we went back and forth on that for a while, eventually we were reunited as a family. This next part is really strange. My brother was offered a job, my ex is responsible for that, I saw the guy that I gave the poem to for a while and then I saw him standing next to my brother. That faded and then I saw him in his room that I have never seen in real life. I saw his hand reaching for the poem and then it was his wrist that was sliced and bleeding. That was really scary. I wanted someone to do something, the next thing I saw was someone stitching up his wrist and I was so grateful I wanted to cry. I saw blue thread and then I saw that someone was using the blue lines of the poem (I think I used blue ink) and soon the two of us had matching scars. I was told to hold my left wrist up to his, I didn't want to, but I didn't want to be disobedient, as soon as my arm got closer to his, I felt a pull that neither of us could resist and then I realized that our wrists were being sewn together.

No matter how much I love and care about someone, I do not want to walk around with my wrist stuck to theirs. I asked if we were going to be like this forever, then I saw our wrists separating until we were connected by a single thread. Suddenly whatever he had been standing on gave way, and then he was dangling by this thread. My arm got very tired, he was asked if he wanted to be connected to me, or fall into the abyss. I saw a wilderness of black ghostlike objects, as if we were seeing the charred remains of a tragic forest fire. That was option one for him. Option two is a little fuzzy in my mind, but I think it was a picnic, or maybe just a patch of grass. He chose option two and then the thread changed into a ladder that he could use. Once he had climbed up that I saw him and my friend with the health issues. Their faces kept flashing back and forth in front of me until it was almost as if they were the same person.

They were both ushered into a waiting room. When I asked why they were there I was told that there were too many occupants ahead of them. I looked back and saw stacks and stacks of bodies that were apparently waiting for a spot that had gotten there way earlier than we had. I wanted to stay with them, but I was led away. I was shown a very comfortable looking bed and told to lie in it, but I knew I couldn't just leave them there. When I asked if they could have my bed I was told that there was only room for one person in it so I said to go to them and tell them that one of them could have my place and I would sleep on the floor. Someone came back and told me that they had said I should have the bed and they would sleep on the floor. Then I asked if their names could be moved up on the list because they had demonstrated selflessness. This was acceptable and pretty soon we were lying in our own beds at whatever this place was.

My ex left me for another woman, I have nothing against her now, but at the time I was angry. At some point in time this guy was given the power of this magic golden apple. He wanted to eat a regular apple, then someone showed him a golden apple high up in a tree. It works like the apple of harmony in ancient Greek mythology. If he threw it in the middle of people who were fighting, there was still discord, but the issue at hand would be resolved for good after the fight was done. This apple could also be used to find people (don't ask me how this works because I don't know either), he rolled it and it wandered around until it found the girlfriend huddled in a dark corner. She was told that she could have the man, or the money, but not both. When she said she didn't have any money the apple glowed and showed me money sitting in a safe I hadn't seen earlier. She was told to choose between the man, or the money, whenever she tried to object, the amount of money owed doubled.

The girlfriend pointed out that she didn't have much and then was shown a picture of me. I saw a tower of money that reached to the sky, then I saw my ex kick it so the money went flying everywhere. I don't exactly remember this next part, but then there was a figure with a sword. There was a girl child and a boy child. The girl child faded, the boy child grew, and then I saw that his name was Justice and he had come to bring more of it to earth. I saw the children I have in real life floating above me in a bubble and then I went back to the wall where everything had originally began. I told my friend that it was a bit like watching a movie that you don't know anything about. You can pause it at certain points and try to go backward which works to some extent. What I think is happening is there's some allegorical connection between the events I see, and my actual real life where we don't have things like magical golden apples that we can throw to find people and stop fights. 

I've decided it's a problem solving technique of sorts where I set aside reality and open myself up to the impossible. When I see things that couldn't possibly happen in real life I do question it, but I also kind of accept that this is perhaps another realm of my mind where the limitations we live with on a daily basis are temporarily suspended because clearly none of this is going to happen tomorrow, or at any point in the future. I don't have a lot of experience with things like lucid dreaming, but this isn't that. I'm fully awake while all of this is flashing before my eyes. I can get out of it at any point in time, summoning it is more difficult. I find that it helps to be lying flat on my back in a very dark room. Moving doesn't seem to interrupt what is happening, but getting up and going to another room can break it. I feel emotions, sometimes I'm smiling, other times I'm fearful, extremely sad, sorrowful, filled with regret, or filled with peace, or joy. 

Most of the time I use it guide me through things that are bothering me, but sometimes I just lay there to see what happens. Sometimes it is easier than others to get into, if it doesn't work fairly quickly I give up and try again later. I can think of a person, an object, an event, or an experience, and it's pretty crazy where my mind will leap to when I start out with something on a conscious level that quickly goes into what I must be thinking about, contemplating, wondering about, or imagining on a subconscious level. Sometimes I'm seeing things I really do not want to be seeing, but I try not to shy away from them because I think I'm seeing these things for a reason and it's usually revealed, but not always. It's like a dream state in some respects, there are a lot of repeating themes, I'm curious to see what my therapist has to say next time I see her. When things move too fast or I'm confused I try to slow it down and notice one particular thing or object. That seems to help.

I've wondered if this is a good thing to be doing, then I decided I couldn't really see the harm in it (aside from some gory imagery) aside from a potential waste of time. It's a new thing I've learned and I'm okay with experimenting with it for a while. Unlike hallucinations where I'm seeing (or hearing) something that isn't there, this isn't really frightening or terrifying since I know that I'm in this state and can somewhat control it or at least shut it down fairly quickly. With a hallucination I question things, then I realize that what I was seeing didn't really exist or happen and that is very scary. This isn't like that or a dream where bizarre things happen and you have no idea why that person you went to school with way back when is suddenly appearing in your dream. At times it has a certain Alice in Wonderland feel to it. As if I'm just wandering around a made up kingdom to see what there is to see because it is so unlike real life where very little of this is even theoretically possible. 

I thought that maybe I shouldn't write about these things, then I thought that it might be interesting to go back and read it at some future point in time. I was on the phone with a friend when one of the managers I used to work with called. We chatted for a while about why I was let go, he was on vacation when it had happened, he came back and I was gone. Apparently he wasn't told most of the story behind my release, he said he still didn't really understand it, we talked about personality conflicts and he said that there are those who are content to fly under the radar, and he didn't think that I was one of these people. He said that I had arrived, done things, and people had questioned why I was rearranging things and organizing them. He said he wouldn't change a thing about me, he said customers had responded to me, he thought that I had been informative whenever he had asked me for anything, and had in general been a good employee which is why he had no trouble recommending me for another position.

He told me that the other two women in my department had very similar personalities. They weren't as energetic or as outspoken as I was, and my manager had told  him to tell me that she loved me and was thinking about me which was super nice to hear. She said that nobody else in our department had worked as hard as I had. We talked a bit about the store philosophy and how he liked where he was at for the most part, but he wondered what other opportunities he was missing out on by staying there. He doesn't have a management background, he said he likes to use the Golden Rule and manage others the way that he would like to be managed himself. He's a pretty laid back easy going guy who is very intense outside of work. He and his wife bought most of what I had at the old house and then invited me over to their new place to see how my furniture looked over there. They have a set of identical twins and I offered to watch them if they wanted to go out as a couple, or needed some time to just be alone.

One of the things we gave them was the yellow playhouse that my children had gotten from family members on the other side. I had tried selling it, but I had no way to deliver it so I ended up just giving it to that family because I knew that their girls were the right age and they would enjoy having a house in their woods that was just their size. I could have asked for some money, but they came to haul it away and that saved me the hassle, I'm a generous person and I guess I've never really regretted that even though I can see how it would have helped me financially. I didn't pay anything for it and I didn't do anything to load it up onto a trailer. We had use of it for many years, I try to be the person who honors what feels right and just go with that. The friend who had called me after he got off of work told me that sometimes you second guess yourself by going against something you had initially thought, and then years later you look back and wished you had just gone for it which I guess is some of what the visualization process helps me with in a weird way.

Regardless of what happens next I'm glad that I'm taking some steps forward. Despite my breakdown this morning, overall I've mostly enjoyed my time off. I think I needed some time to just rest. I tried to think about what my therapist said when I felt guilty for doing nothing earlier. The gift of rest is so important to me. I was frustrated with my life and then I thought about what she had said. She didn't say use this time to find another job, to spend time with my family, to get things organized, to get into shape, to fix every single thing that's holding me back and preventing me from moving forward, she told me to rest. I've always been a hard worker, I've always looked forward to challenges, I haven't been nurtured or emotionally supported so those are still areas of my life that I'm learning more about. Life is one ongoing adjustment and decision making process. I'm glad I was fired even though I wish things would have gone differently. Hopefully the store does well, I find a job where I'm better compensated for what I bring to the table, and I have fabulous new and exciting adventures ahead of me. I'm still a bit nervous, especially about the girls and the money situation, but I wouldn't trade this time of rest for anything. 

I feel like I could write for hours tonight, funny what a couple days off of fiction will do. 

All my best,

Jess

P.S. I'm so glad I took a walk and decided to come to the library tonight. It felt positively decadent to get into my car and drive to the library in another town, but upon reflection, I've decided I'm worth it.

j

P.P.S. I almost forgot one of the coolest things that happened today. A guy I've known for years, but don't speak with regularly, told me he would gladly be a reference for me if I wanted to use him. It was so unexpected and appreciated that I want to do something to repay him, but I know that this is his way of thanking me for sticking up for him after he got fired last year. He did something very wrong, but he paid his dues and I do not feel that gossip about the event was a valid reason to let him go. We all make terrible decisions at some point in time. To me the important thing isn't that you messed up big time, it's how you respond after the event. He is genuinely sorry, he fully admits that he made a mistake, and I feel bad that his past haunts him the way that it does. Another cool thing that happened was getting a Valentine's Day card from my aunt. I'm going to hit some store and pick some up for the girls, but not until the day after because then they'll be much cheaper. What I pay for the cards won't have any affect on the sentiment and it will make me feel good about doing that for them because I do love them and cherish them in a new way now that I've realized they may no longer be living with me...

I just remembered another thing that I saw when I was doing the visualizations. I saw the guy who had reported me to management and an image of how hurt I had been after that. When I wanted to know why that had happened I was told that it was a test of the relationship and that we had both passed with flying colors because we hadn't sunk to the level of blaming the other person and we had both been accountable for our actions and forgiven the other person. I don't really know what to make of that, but it did make me feel quite a bit better. When I saw him standing with my friend I realized that they both felt very unloved and unworthy of love, but they denied feeling this way and said that they were fine. I tried to tell them that I loved them both, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. I suspect that they have very similar personality types, but it may be that they have similar issues, or similar childhood injuries, or there could be no connection other than the one I'm making in my mind. I sent him a text telling him that he was enough on his own, or something similar, I forget exactly what I said, and I tried telling her the same thing, but without the response I wanted. Loving others is tough at times.

Another thing I did was send a text to my mom apologizing for being short about the knitting conversation. When she didn't get back to me right away I was a little concerned, then I decided to let it ride since I done my part and whatever she wanted to do was up to her. She must have had a busy day at work, but eventually she got back to me and told me that no apology was needed, she had fun playing Scrabble with me and my brother, and that we should do it again sometime. I thought that was very classy of her and it did help repair the relationship. I told her I had gotten into knitting to try and have a better relationship with her and suspect that the reason I never progress on projects is because it isn't a passion of mine. I know I could learn how to make cool things and maybe someday I will, but just the admission was enough today. Whatever anyone wants to make of my time off is up to them. I feel as if I've done transformational work and I'm much more in love with this version of myself than the 2017 one although she was what I did with what I had at the time so I'm not going to judge myself too harshly. Library is about to close, going to go to the store and buy myself a treat or two. Feels like I could use one after these past few days...

Tons and tons of love!

J

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