Making Sh*t Happen.

I’m about to go on a Manifestation Retreat. Where I will spent a week in the jungle at a beautiful place with amazing people. Before that I’m going to spend 3 uninterrupted days in Santa Monica. I haven’t been able to spend as much time there on my previous trips to LA. Circumstances that were out of my control happened, and well frankly, Shit Happens. I’ll be spending time with my cousin, who after a long time of not being close, we have reconnected. I am grateful for that connection being strong again. She was there for me during a period in my life when I felt like I had no one and even if we aren’t in each others lives in the future, I will always be grateful for the guidance, support and love she has given me. So needless to say, I’m really fucking excited about having three solid days with her. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for about 6 or 7 months now. It’s a big event, and a potentially huge trip for me. It has the potential to be life changing if I really open myself up to it. I can walk out of it a different person. I like to think I have a decent intuition, and it’s been going crazy with this trip. Like I have the sensation that something big will shift and will change. I really really hope that feeling is right. I’m ready for a change.

 

I’ve been thinking about manifesting. I’ve been reading articles about it and trying to wrap my brain around what it is. I suppose the basics of it is that you wish (maybe not the right word) something into your life. You welcome this presence of something, whether it’s a better job, a relationship or more money. You can manifest whatever you want. I’ve been struggling to come up with something to manifest. Whether I should want to try to figure my life out, or finally figure out what I want to go back to school for. Or if I should even just manifest the idea of knowing what to manifest for. In one of my late night brain scrambling over thinking sessions, I got to wondering what I would really want. I mean REALLY want in life. What the one thing is that would make my life worth something, give it some meaning it doesn’t currently have. I got to thinking about family. About the family I have, and the family I want. How I spent a lot of time hating my family. Hating the blood in my veins and where I came from. I viewed my family as a diseased dysfunctional resemblance of a family. We were just people who were related by blood, we aren’t family. For some reason the word family never really struck any kind of a chord with me. Growing up everyone in my immediate family was on different pages and while I knew that in some way we all loved each other, it never really felt like my friends families did. Where everyone knew what was going on with each other, and knew each others favorite colors and television shows. Those things that might seem trivial but in reality can bind people together.

 

I got a box of my grandpa’s genealogy research. He had always been very into it. When my grandparents lived in Texas, my grandpa had a wall dedicated to it. He had the family tree on his side, as far back as he had been able to go back, and he was always ready to talk about the people on it. He loved our ancestors, and the stories that came with them. I like to think in those later years of his life that he truly loved the idea of family. Not that he didn’t before, but maybe that growing older had softened him to a point where his years as an Army Officer weren’t front and center, where his emotions were a little more readily available. I wish I had listened to those stories better. But I was a kid, and honestly, didn’t give much of a crap about it. I listened as well as I could and remembered bits of it, but only now do I realize how cool it was that he had taken years to find those people and those photos. The research he had done hadn’t come out of thin air. He loved family. I know I have a tendency to idealize him, and to view him and my grandma through rose colored glasses, but despite the flaws that were there. They were good people. They did love their family and they managed to love each other for 73 years. 68 of which had been spent married. That’s such a rare thing, and I’m proud of the fact that I am a byproduct of that in some way. That because these two people loved and continued to be together through good and through bad times they stayed. They didn’t run at the first sign of trouble. Because of that they created a family. It was not perfect, not one family is, but at least to me, they managed to create something that was unconditional love. That’s what I felt from them. Even when grandma was starting to disappear into her Alzheimer’s and grandpa succumbed to his pancreatic cancer. They still fought and loved.

 

I find myself wishing that my parents could have been that. That they could have made it work like Grandma and Grandpa did, but it’s not a fair comparison. They’re very different people, and they had very different circumstances to overcome. Now, I am grateful that my parents didn’t stay together, trying to keep a sinking ship afloat. While the aftermath of it all was the beginning of the most painful and difficult part of my life, it was the right thing, and it made it us better people. I was very resentful towards everyone after my dad left. I still can’t bring myself to say anything but that. It felt like he left like a thief in the night, and while I have talked to him about it and can understand his reasons behind it. It hasn’t lessened how I feel about it. I’m not going to try to alter my feelings to make it easier to understand where either parent was coming from. I felt that way for a reason, whether or not it’s right, it’s how I felt, that the only justification I need for it. I was angry after that, and hated the idea of family. I hated happy families. I hated sad families. I hated families point blank period. They all could fall off the face of the earth for all I cared at that point. I’m happy to say that I don’t feel that way anymore. I think if anything that whole period has now made me more grateful for family. Even though the extended family I have isn’t really close. They are still my family.

 

Through the thinking about what I want to manifest. I think it’s that. I want a family. I want that family that I craved when I was in the pits of despair. The family that I resented for being close and knowing each other, for supporting each other. I think, maybe for selfishly, I want the chance to break some cycles that I know I have the possible capacity to continue. I want to be able to right some wrongs, and to be able to give my kids what I didn’t have. It does sound like stuff that a lot of people say, that they want to give their kids what they didn’t have. But it’s not about giving them a better education or giving them better toys or being stricter than your parents were. I want to give my kids the chance to live their lives without looking over their shoulder wondering when the other shoe will drop. I can’t protect them from the demons of depression and the grip of self doubt. I can give them a better foundation. From the bottom of my heart, or maybe my toes, (that’s how deeply I feel this) I want them to never ever EVER have to question if they are loved. I want them to know every single second of every single day they live and breathe that they were wanted and they are loved, forever and unconditionally. That the only thing I want for them is to find something that makes them happy and gives them joy, to do that. Not to have to spend their lives feeling alone and isolated, wondering through that veil of darkness, if they were an accident. I would even be so bold as to ask for a partner to have this family with that has the same want. To have that family that never stops loving, never stops caring, never stops supporting, even through the shit. I would wanting to have a love like my grandparents to it, but that feels like a very tall order. It’s probably not, but my brain will tell me that it won’t happen. That I don’t deserve it. That I’m not good enough. It’s the fucking trickery of depression. I have my brain wired in a way that it will probably always try to tell me that I only deserve to be alone and miserable. At a young age, I resigned myself to the idea that I would be alone forever and be sad. That my only companion would be depression and that fucked up comfort I took from it. I’m starting to see that it’s not the case. That if I can get myself to a point where I’m ok with myself and I recognize that while I’m not the best, the richest, the prettiest, the smartest, or the whatever you want to put there, I am so much better than I give myself credit for.

 

 

So maybe that’s what I’ll try to manifest while I’m on my retreat. Recognize how good you are, how much better you are than you give yourself credit for. Maybe I’ll even give manifesting for that family a try. Whatever I put into it is what I’m going to get out of it.

So I’m gonna put on my big girl pants, break down some walls, and take a huge leap of faith. I might have to crumble a little, but out of that big things can be born.

 

Let’s make some shit happen.