Life Path #5....

The Life Path 5 suggests that you entered this plane with a highly progressive mindset, with the attitude and skills to make the world a better place. The key word for your Life Path is freedom. In the pursuit of freedom, you are naturally versatile, adventurous, and advanced in your thinking. You are one of those people who is always striving to find answers to the many questions that life poses. The byword for the positive Life Path 5 is constant change and improvement. You want to be totally unrestrained, as this is the number most often associated with the productive use of freedom.

You may be one of the most compassionate of people as the 5 is surely the most freedom-loving and compassionate Life Path. Your love of freedom extends to humanity at large, and concern for your fellow man, his freedom and his welfare, may be foremost in your mind. A great Life Path 5 American President, Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and ended slavery in America. As the ultimate progressive thinker type, your potential in government, the law, and other positions of authority is unlimited.

You are a good communicator, and you know how to motivate people around you. This may be your strongest and most valuable trait. Because of this skill, and your amazing wit, you are a truly natural born salesman. This ability to sell and motivate extends to any sort of physical product all the way through to whatever ideas or concepts you may embrace.

You abhor routine and boring work, and you are not very good at staying with everyday tasks that must be finished on time. On the average, the number 5 personality is rather happy-go-lucky; living for today, and not worrying too much about tomorrow. It is also important for you to find a job that provides thought-provoking tasks rather than routine and redundant responsibilities. You do best dealing with people, but the important thing is that you have the flexibility to express yourself at all times. You have an innate ability to think through complex matters and analyze them quickly, but then be off to something new.

A love of adventure may dominate your life. This may take the form of mental or physical manifestation, but in either case, you thrill to the chance for exploration and blazing new trails. Surely you belong to a group considered the most worldly and traveled. Clearly you are not one to pass up a good venture. You have quite a lot of the risk-taker in your makeup. If you aren't putting your money at stake, you are surely open to a wide variety of risks in your everyday life. Taking the conservative approach is just not in your nature.

In romance, you hate to be tied down and restricted. This doesn't necessarily mean that you are unfaithful or promiscuous, but it does mean that a good partner for you needs to understand your nature. A relationship based on jealousy and having tight reigns is not going to work at all for you. A partner who understands your need to be free and trusted will find you trustworthy, even if you aren't constantly available and totally dutiful. It is important for you to mix with people of a like mind, and to try to avoid those that are too serious and demanding.

If you are living on the negative side of the Life Path 5, you are apt to be multitalented, but suffering from some lack of direction, and there is confusion surrounding your ambition. Restless, discontent, and impulsive, you may bounce from one job to the next without accomplishing much at all. A negative Life Path 5 can become very irresponsible in tasks and decisions concerning the home and business life. The total pursuit of sensation and adventure can result in your becoming self-indulgent and totally unaware of the feelings of those around you.

Consider The Source

I have a good heart and a good life.
I feel a joy that I can't even explain
when I think about the life I have actively
participated in creating.

For the people who know nothing about my
life and base their opinions on hearsay and
flimsy details, come to me. Talk to me. And,
consider the source of your information.
Everything comes through someone's filter.

I am a strong, intelligent, resilient, loving,
optimistic, joyous person with more to give
then you'll ever know. Do not underestimate me.

My life is mine. And it's better than I
ever imagined. I have forged friendships
that reach out like a lighthouse in the
darkest night.

So get off my ass. Fix your own life before
you try to tell me what you
think is wrong with mine.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Autobiography

An autobiography about me in 5 short chapters:

I.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V.
I walk down another street.

The "About Me" section

Copied from the About Me section of Facebook:

Favorite Quotations:

Well done is better than well said - Benjamin Franklin

About Me:

I like to keep people guessing; I can be quite contradictory at times but never overstepping my boundaries/morals. I have sick intuition; I should have been a shrink. Preconceived notions are just that. I'm way too analytical.

I love wine (think fish bowl size glasses), hair, make up, enlightening books for the soul, God, warm weather, stilettos, CONTACT sports, and swanky lounges - not in that particular order...I laugh at the theory of evolution, piqued by fashion and in love with love. Will never settle...not this chick.

I wear my heart on my sleeve and I am never what people initially think.

Do No Harm

The haunting past:
I used to buy Steven King books and assorted novels about science fiction until noticing that my ex-husband was an honest-to-God alien. Now I buy psychology books to figure out where I came from ‘cuz surely I don’t belong on planet Earth where infidelity, betrayal, abuse, neglect, hatred, vengeance, malice, disregard, poverty, oppression, patriarchy and political fakes are considered to be ‘normal’; and honesty, generosity, fidelity, loyalty, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, religious principles, hope, faith, and integrity are considered to be abnormal flaws requiring modification because otherwise, you won’t fit into society. Well, there are days when if what it takes to fit in to our society is to whittle away at character traits it takes a lifetime to create, then let this misfit remain abnormal. But please don’t call me a narcissist because it reminds me how much work I need to do to educate my accusers about the difference between self-respect and a narcissistic pathology.

Which is why we feel like such dupes when we’re told the reason we were targeted by a narcissist is because we display the attributes our culture taught us were valuable and worthy of effort. When a person has always taken pride in being generous for example, the first reaction I had at least, was to stop being generous.

Like the typical betrayed victim, I flipped a 180 and began attacking myself for being too kind, too generous, too accepting, too forgiving which is only true if you are committed to someone who is mean, stingy, critical, unforgiving, un-accepting and did I mention self-centered? At the time, I could not see that I was rejecting my true self by denigrating every human value formerly held near and dear to my heart. My main concern was protecting myself from further harm because instinctually, I knew this was a fight for my soul’s survival. If that meant reading books that blamed me for being ‘nice’, then that’s what I did. For awhile. Until I felt safe enough in my own skin to start reclaiming character traits formed over a lifetime of moral choices. Moral meaning ‘alleviating the pain of others’ through conscious awareness of my impact and trying, oh so very hard: to do no harm.

I decided eventually that reclaiming Nice was valuable because it IS a part of who I am. A character trait modeled after very nice Aunts who woulda given anybody the shirts off their backs. Those very good-hearted relatives served as role models to lead me out of self-rejection because I wanted to be like them and not like the commercialized nasty people revered on reality TV. Those screaming, yelling, tough-mouthed bullies don’t have friends, I’m sure. They have adversaries and people they hold at arm’s lengths because if they don’t, they’ll stab each other in the back to get a higher rating from frightened people who think bullies are awesome.

I like people who are so NICE they cry when you cry and laugh when you laugh and care about the fact that your cake failed the night before. So what do nice people do when you tell them your sob story? They make you a cake and bring it over the next night and it’s kinda sloppy and it’s sunken in the middle because they know the last thing a woman needs after a failure is a perfect cake on her doorstep.

Fast forward to today's thinking:

Reclaim yourself. Be proud of the attributes you worked hard to develop. Refine your characteristics that mark the best of human nature and continually strive to see through the narcissistic accusation that anything that is “worthy and of good report” is a character flaw or a mistake. Do not reject all that is good and beautiful about yourself simply because someone tried to destroy that which they could not create for themselves.

It is not goodness that ruins relationships. It’s narcissism.

The problem with Toasters...

I have finally arrived at a point where I accept that, to my ex, to my mind raping narcissistic ex, I was just a toaster. A toaster, meaning a toaster on the kitchen counter.

Where I used to think that he is still thinking of me, I have come to a place where I realize he is not. Who still thinks of their old, broken toaster that they put out for the garbage man long, long ago? You don't. You just toss it out, replace it, and never think of the old one again as long as you have a current toaster "doing the job".

I no longer hurt about this or have trouble accepting this. It is not about me. It is about his disorder. It is not personal. Again, do you really think about nurturing your toaster each day, asking your toaster how it is feeling, and tending to its emotional needs?

I realize I was a toaster long before I actually spoke up and didn't want to be a toaster anymore. As soon as he had me secured, as soon as he had me "plugged in" along with all of the other "useful" electronics, appliances, and tools in his life, he quit tending to me on an emotional level. He never really "maintenanced" me on an emotional level, anyway. He only faked those feelings until I was securely "in his kitchen".

However, in reflection, I do remember him having a problem with me waking up and "smelling the coffee". He had a problem when I finally realized I did not want to be anyone's toaster, that I wanted a partnership of equals between warm-blooded human beings.

Instead of just letting the toaster sit outside and wait for the garbage man, he had to start devaluing the toaster. He had to tell me how inferior I was to the other toasters out there. He then became emotional with the toaster and started telling it how defective it was.

See, that is the problem with toasters. Instead of just putting the "defective" appliance outside and going on, he has to take a knife to the toaster first and damage it. He has to get a hammer out and start smashing it to bits.

See the irony? I am just a toaster. Put myself out and let me you move on please. No. That is when he gets really crazy. Who smashes up and gets hostile and demeaning and cold with toasters that no longer work for you?

Moral of the story? I accept I was a toaster to him. I will patiently wait outside for the garbage man to pick me up and remove me from his life, drive me off to a better place where I am me and not an appliance.

I will go without much fuss and realize that fighting back with this crazy person demeaning an appliance will never make him see I am more than a toaster. No matter what he says, no matter if he tells me that he could never live without a toaster like me, that I was the best toaster, realize that eventually I will be devalued once again and placed on the curb waiting for the garbage truck.

So instead I will go quietly on the garbage truck, laughing to myself about this idiot assclown saying cruel things to a toaster, trying to make the toaster believe how insignificant it was in the kitchen.

I will have the last laugh.

"breakdown go ahead and give it to me"....Tom Petty

What’s got me baffled is how I’m reacting to what I’ve learned. I’ve always been a problem solver. I bloomed where I was planted, made lemonade out of lemons…I really believe in that. I am an optimist, I love to laugh, have good friends and I’ve been happy. I’ve loved my alone time and the camaraderie of friends. Even when things have been bleak and there have been some very bleak times, I’ve worked my way through it.

But now, I’m rolled into a tight little ball. I am not taking care of the business of everyday life. I feel like I am barely functioning. The knowledge of this disorder is more painful than the events, or more accurately, it’s like being dealt another blow. All the things that I believed I’d put behind me are rearing their heads….like my own personal horror show. For the first time in my adult life, I don’t know where to start. Everything has been turned upside down. I am terrified and I feel like I’m drowning.

I've so often felt my adrenaline is exhausted nowadays. I'm not ashamed anymore to admit I don't have the energy nor the motivation to do the list I used to do. I'm no superwoman, but when I look back, my former husband had himself a good slave. I moved so quickly, it was like a game to see how fast I could complete tasks. All of this took place while Mr. Fantastic was doing nothing except criticizing, blaming, devaluing. It's amazing how we twist ourselves into different shapes to please them only to realize far too late that we can't please them.

"Breakdowns" often occur for a reason - things weren't working as well as we believed. So we have to look again, see what still works, and replace those things that are no longer useful. We do it externally, and we do it internally, too.

I think it's what we have to go through when we have to evaluate our entire life through the perspective of a greater truth, when reality pushes everything else aside and imposes its own perspective, is a kind of psychological death. A whole world view has died, and a new one is forming. We have to come to grips with the fact that whole realities are different than we believed.

I am sure I will get there, but it will take time. Sometimes you just have to take time off from the perfectionism, to realize it was never serving me..... in any sort of valuable way.

I think in the end, it will all be okay.

"Welcome to the place you never wanted to be."