Wow, so I learned a little something about
the Internet. You have to maintain the amount of space used on a blog that is
free. I had too many pictures and it wouldn’t let me post this, as I had
pictures of hearts on this page. So here it is two days late and only one heart - mabye next time. The story I wrote in my blog was rather emotional to write, so I needed some musical inspiration to help me, there is a link under the title.
***
Are you one of those people who begin to
panic when you realize that a holiday or special day is indicated on the
calendar...for example - grandparents day, secretaries days, an anniversary or
heck how about national marshmallow day...ha-ha OK, I just added the
marshmallow day, but who knows it could be on the calendar somewhere in the
world. Well here it is, another Tuesday in a week. A day that isn't the
beginning of a week, it isn't the middle of the week or a day before a weekend
begins. It's just a Tuesday, but for me, I woke to a question that was asked of
me last week by my younger son, and decided to make this a Topic Tuesday. I'm
hearing you, "Of course Stacey, why
wouldn't you?"
As many of you know I had been working a
very very temporary job doing inventory preps to get ready for a big inventory
for a store here in town. I even got my older son a job assisting with the
inventory as well. Before he and I left for work late Monday afternoon, my
husband and younger son had mentioned that they were going out for dinner,
something they don't do often, and I like to encourage that they do more often
than not. Adding my charming witty and joking way to their plans, I made the
comment, "That's great you guys can ponder what to get me for Valentine’s
Day," that was followed by my best Madonna strike-a-pose and extra cheesy,
try to be a hot chick, smile. (You had to be there to get the full comedic
effect) He knew I was being funny, but the joke was on me.
After work, we joined my husband and younger
son, who were watching television, jumping between the movie "Lethal
Weapon 2" and an old sitcom of "Two and a Half Men." Yes, the
men of my home are professional channel jockeys. Smile. Out of the blue as they
hopped between their shows of choice, my younger son turned around in his chair
and with a serious tone to his voice asked me what I wanted for Valentine’s
Day. I was rendered speechless at first as my immediate thoughts were that he
took my comment seriously before I left.
Now I wanted to answer like a kid that was
just asked what he wanted for Christmas, but I chose not to and I'll explain
why. Rather than ramble off my list of
list of what I'd love to receive for Valentines, I simply replied - "Something
that makes you feel good and comes from the loving feeling within your heart -
I will adore. I don't want to have to tell you want makes me happy.”
To me
Valentines is more than just candy hearts, flowers, cards, and jewelry Etc.
Valentines is a feeling inside you that is filled with many levels of love and
emotions. (HOLY CRAP! LOL – I’m Laughing out loud to myself, I can’t believe I
just wrote that answer, and my cat is looking at me as if I am so beneath her
ha-ha). It’s taken me 25+ years to realize the real meaning behind Valentine’s
Day. My confusion started as an
unrealistic day dreamer kid in elementary school. We had the typical Valentines
parties where you'd make this heart shaped pouch while dreaming/worrying if it
would hold thousands of your Valentines from your school mates. (My elementary
school didn’t even have 400 students in the school.)
They were always made out of paper doilies in
red and white that you had to glue together with a paste that some student in
the class always was caught eating. The glue would crack when it dried causing
anything you made to fall apart in your hands and the teacher would end up
using staples to hold the dang thing together. I did my damnedest to see that
every available decoration was on my heart pouch to attract people to give me a
Valentine, but no matter how hard I tried to make my pouch stand out, I was
always the Charlie Brown of the class, but thank goodness I never got a rock.
Smile.
A perfect example of having ones extreme
daydreams crushed is a math problem that never has the same answer twice. If we
had 25 kids in a class, 8 would put my name on their Valentines and usually two
would say, I would have given you a Valentine, but I ate it on the bus on the
way to school. As I grew through the years, Feb 14th, became just a day filled
with all the store heart shaped propaganda and fine cut diamonds that put you
in a trance as you gazed upon them displayed in perfectly illuminated cases on
black velvet. Oh, oh, and we must not forget those dang heart shaped chocolate
filled boxes that made you feel that if you didn’t get one of those, you were a
no body. Now all those things are nice, but being a single young lady just
after high school, my Valentine dream was nothing that came in a box, however I
would have still taken it if it had been drenched in Hershey’s melted
chocolate, cherries and whipped cream…..phew….is it getting hot in here?
I guess I should share with you what’s got me
feeling rather warm, but my story is that it is the wood stove – that’s my story
and I’m sticking to it, but for my readers… lean in close to your computer - I’m
going to share a secret with you about my unrealistic thinking; it’s just you reading this right? Check to
be sure that nobody is looking over your shoulder at work? Kids are watching
Barney? OK, here it goes, I lived with the hopes that maybe one day I'd
be whisked away like some lucky golden skinned girl with long locks (which
I have never looked like in my life) in a romance novel that just had her earth
shook by some handsome guy riding a big black horse on the beach. He extends
his hand down, and of course I grab it (Come on ladies feel yourselves grabbing
his hand it’s OK, it’s just a hand.) and he pulls me on his horse with him and
we go riding into the sunset. I’ll leave the rest for your imagination. I don’t
want to be accused of writing a porn script. *wink*
Well needless to say, when I did leave near
beaches, no pets were allowed. Dang the
bad luck. Now when I got married, for the first three years I tried to make
Valentines something extra special, but my ability to do so always ended up
like a gas covered paper airplane landing on a flaming barbecue. (I see now
that I was trying to hard then) I learned that over the year I found that
making a cake and card got the job done. (Obviously I didn’t try as hard after)
I know sad to refer to it as a job. Stick with me now, as Ricky would say on I
love Lucy – Lucy you have some esplainin’ to do. So let me share a story with
you to esplain’. (I tried to write the word as if Ricky Ricardo was saying it
in person.)
The Woman with the Broken Heart
AKA: Wilted Flowers
written by: Stacey L. Bolin 2/6/2013
A woman had made the mistake of letting a
family members kind gesture burrow a negative hole in her heart on beautiful
sunny Valentine’s Day in the early 90’s. She had always had serious, and I mean
very serious issues, with sneaky people who try to take advantage of nice
people. Many years ago she stood idly by as she watched this happen to her
husband time and time again, because when she would express her distrust for someone, she was accused trying to be a controling untrusting bitch. She had been a stay at home mom with a two year
old son and another one on the way, so to say that she wasn’t emotional was an
understatement.
She had made a cake and had all the fancy icing with cinnamon
hearts, she had gotten her husband and son cards and had a special dinner made waiting
hot in the oven. All day long like she felt like a kid in a candy store -
waiting anxiously for a card, a phone call filled with loving words, flowers
delivered to her home, something, but knowing money was tight and her husband
wasn’t the spontaneous romantic type, she also told herself not to get her
heart set on anything like this. She was very disappointed when the day slowly
turned to night and her husband had come home with only a story to tell her
about his day at work. After dinner they sat in the living room and talked. He
was so proud of something he had done that she could see he was busting at the
seams to tell someone. She had hoped what he had to say would reveal a card
with his hand penned words of his love for her. As the words to his story grew
long with explanation, she felt a sense of panic being to consume her.
He had always been a person that loved to do
good deeds for people. He had a kind and gentle heart, which is just one of
many reasons why she fell in love with him. But this one time was when she
realized that even the ones she loved could hurt her without even realizing it
and to this day, he never understood how something so simple could hurt her so
deeply.
He went on to tell her a story about how he
made somebody smile, never realizing that he had fallen victim to another
person’s sneaky verbal manipulation. A lady who was a secretary in the office
for the company he worked for was always sharing her personal stories with him
and decided to make him feel sorry for her. She went on and on about how her
boyfriend was not attentive to her, didn’t make her feel good, and he’d never
given her flowers. She knew perfectly well what she was doing, and with him
being a nice guy, he never realized that the kind gesture that he was about to
extend would haunt him for years to come. On his way back from a job, he
stopped at a vendor that had five gallon buckets, displayed in a 7-11 parking
lot, on the corner of Woodmore and Church Road, which were filled with flower
arrangements. It was at that moment he picked up a bouquet handed over his last
seven dollars and headed back to the office.
As her husband told his tale, she
felt like she had just been slapped by a strong hand wearing a razor covered
glove. She was having a hard time containing the lump that was rapidly growing
in her throat as he went on to describe how beautiful the rose, in the center of
the arrangement was. She felt her heart begin to pound and just wanted to run
out of the room, but found the ability to ask – “Where were her Valentines
flowers?” to which he replied innocently – I didn’t have enough money for two.
She melted into a pool of tears, something that he had never seen her do. He
had no idea that he had completely broken her heart. He tried to cover it by
saying that he had forgot it was Valentines, as he knelt before her while she
sat in her chair. It was too late, the damage had been done. People for years
told her to let it go, forget about it. So let me ask you men and women out
there, if you had been in this situation, the one who’s significant other remembered
another, but not you? Would you just
forget the hurt you felt? Could you
forget, or would you just tell yourself some lame excuse? Would you address the
other person who had been praying on your loved one? Unfortunately during that time she was non-confrontational and taught herself how to live with a fear she had now believed to be true. The fear of being forgotten, by the one she loves
the most, which haunted her with every day closer to Valentine’s.
Over the years she was able to slowly glue
the pieces of her broken heart back together and needless to say, his flowers
we’re not welcome in their home for many years. It wasn’t until August of 2012,
when they both fully understood why she had reacted in the way that she did and that her
husband never knew of the sexual assault that had happened to her four months before they met.
***
My reason for sharing this story with you is
that it was a huge life lesson for me – any why you ask? I was the women in the
story. I’m not proud of my behavior then as I was suffering from a traumatic event from
my past that I had chosen to block, that was briefly triggered by the hurt I
felt at that moment I learned about the flowers to the secretary. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t pissed at this ladies
actions, but I no longer cry about it and I no longer try to take ownership of
what the women in the office had done. I no longer wonder what had I done
wrong, as the answer is nothing! He was being kind and she was taking advantage of his kindness.
Through a process called Congnitive Therapy, I am able to disassociate myself from the hurt I felt about the flowers and finally tell the story without feeling emotional sorrow. I am told this feeling means that I have figured out how to understand that it wasn't anything I said or did that made another person do what they chose to do.
I am choosing on this day to go past it and was the reason I wanted to share it today. I used to laugh at the people who claimed that the more you talked about what hurts you, the better you begin to feel. They're right. The past is the
past, and as I walk the road to whatever recovery that will eventually be bestowed upon me, I
have learned a new way to bring my Valentine’s heart back to life and looking forward to what the future has instore.
Today, I am learning how to understand the
sexual assualt and painful memories that are triggered in and out of my daily life. I walk with my head up and carry a smile because I still feel I have to hide that there are days when I'd rather be home under the covers and hide away from the world. I am choosing to reach for the strength to forgive those who
deserve forgiving. I can’t change what happened in the past, but if I keep
reliving it, I’ll never know what my future is. I feel like Virginia when she
learned that there really is a Santa Clause and that it is the giving of one’s
self, of their time, of their touch - that is the true gift of love and means
more than any gift you would get in the stores. That with every card, or gift
that is given, and don’t get me wrong, people like the material things, I know
I do, but If I had to choose something materialistic vs. a gift in the form
of compassion, passion, love, caring, listening, understanding, trust, a walk
hand in hand, and so much more, I’ll give up the material item and enjoy the
icing on cake - the ability to share these feelings of love with the one I hold
most dearly in my heart and enjoy and appreciate the gift of life, family, and
togetherness we have shared over the past twenty-one years.
Many thanks for taking time from your day to
read my words. Please understand that everyone handles things in a different
way. I just wanted to share my story with you. I’m not looking for sympathy and
I’m not trying make you feel bad in anyway shape or form. This is just a life
lesson that took me years to study for…I’m passing, but only with a C+ for now.
Smile.
Until my next post – Blog ya later alligator.
As to the special man in my life - I'm sending you a song. Thank you for being patient with me. I know I had not been the best person to be around years ago. Thank you for waiting to let me show you the real me that has been trying to get out from behind this wall I had built around myself. Elephant Shoes Forever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_lfpr9bT7k
