What It Seems

Take a deep breath. I consider myself to be a non-fiction writer. This is just how I think. And I am tired of being underestimated.

I have been watching movies and documentaries lately that are more emotional, and more reality based than usual. I will be completely honest I was so excited to get the microwave. I remember looking up an electrical program and just what they learn about because I thought it was pretty neat. I have sometimes looked up electrical things like plugs and conduits. Inquisitive at best. It’s not a factory installed plug that’s on the microwave. I looked at Walmart for a new microwave. $50 dollars. Not too expensive. But not what I want to spend. Mini crock with auto shutoff it is. If I was not in the disposition I am in; homeless living out of a hotel (and living in my apartment) then I would have just gotten rid of a microwave that had that issue. I have always lived on my own for the last 20 years. And I have been driving for 23. It would just make more sense to me and my current eating habits to consider letting the microwave sit there and buy what appliances I need to function mentally and environmentally until I get another place. I need to eat more salad. I MISS BEING VEGAN. So, in a sense it really doesn’t anger me that someone would consider me to be irritated at that microwave, but I like things a certain way. I will take care of it myself because there’s obtusely an issue with so many things right now with that picture in my mind. It sounds really facetious to sit here and use that appliance. I am grateful for the place of shelter. I remember being a kid and reading my uncles book laying around the house as a kid. He was going to do some things in my grandmother’s house like fix the deck and other stuff. A lot of projects around the house. Tea kettle that’s electric was necessary. Need to get back into the Chai and Detox vibe. I miss being Vegan all the time.

I guess life has found me with strength and the ability to want to focus on whether I have it in me to continue with nursing ambitions. Physically? Emotionally? Sometimes it takes longer for me to get a start on something new recently because these are not circumstances that I feel make sense enough for me to make decisions that satisfy only me. It really isn’t a time to be selfish. That’s the most I can say.

Far too stressed with my PTSD. Which reminds me to give you a few documentaries I am loving about PTSD. Here are a couple of documentaries I loved: Light in the darkness: Living well after trauma, What lies inside: Healing in the faces of trauma. I love to work. I like to stay busy at home and at work. Being creative as much as possible. I grew with the intellect that work was always something that you can increase stability in. For me, it wound up being the one thing I could not find stability in. Or peace. Or trust.

Peace… I cannot take a mental break when I am visibly having a panic attack and breaking down? I work on the floor overnight alone. No person comes from the floor downstairs and willingly helps. You have to pretty much beg. Which I am not doing. I will just take care of it myself, so I don’t have to hear the bs. But when we work together, I will have negative zero conversation because I need to be laser focused in case you want to be lackadaisical.

Trust... I cannot trust the people I work with. I cannot trust that they will tell the truth. You stand in front of me and lie to me. And all I want to do is work and pay my financial debts in life.

I do not want to be you.

I have sometimes been caught in a rut and started being angry at myself for not having more precise direction with a degree path earlier in life. I take a lot of how people are cared for to heart. And I wish I was less people-pleasing and so sympathetic to the demands of the group homes, and nursing homes. Work and home was the pattern. With work being less sympathetic to home and my personal strife. Possibly taking more time to seek other opportunities such as Graphic Design. I have done some amazing things and some serious things with Graphic Design and wanted to give back to the art community in a different way. What’s serious is remorse. Something I have done since middle school. Engineering/Design. And most times that one field I was so passionate about that I could feel it was nursing. Getting an RN. But I truly loved taking in every minute of life and figuring out my emotions more as a person. A mother. A coworker. A human. That way I can be more self-aware and be a better mother, coworker, human and more. There have been a multitude of reasons why I have wanted to pursue and reasons I have wanted to hold back. Fear sets us back sometimes. I loved music at one point too. Would write many poems and songs. It is within our own hearts, the capabilities at times to heal and be more. Let alone better. Some things that really get you thinking. And when I get thinking and I am watching a movie alone; I have a lot of commentary. I can get loud. And I have an opinion on everything. What Kamala Harris had said stuck with me “They punish the truth tellers.” If I was a Director of Nursing that would not be my M.O. I want you to understand the facets of telling the truth. Understand the pain of what telling the truth can cause as well as the pain it can free.

Often people lie about their own capabilities to tell the truth. I do believe that we should think deeper into why a much earlier beginning in psychology would be more helpful in our everyday lives. I know I remember talking to an ex-boyfriend about being hit by another ex-boyfriend once. He was talking to a friend on the phone and said this:

“I hate that bitch. I would just go around to as many people as I could and tell them to lie as much as they can about her just to ruin her reputation. Fuck her.” That stuck with me. Do I take this for what it is? Or what it seems to be. It doesn’t seem like love. It seems like hate. Just because your boyfriend buys you flowers to apologize for physically hurting you doesn’t mean he’s sorry. Read this book. “Why Does He Do That” by Lundy Bancroft. I have read that book and it substantiates what you can avoid. I was writing a book Duality in the Rescue Mission in 2023. It’s about me being told about my birth. And my twin being deceased. My strength and grief from that. How I always had a desire to change the world for the better. Give love as much as I can.

Sometimes people would talk about the militance I have in life for my emotions. And I think that sometimes if everything is a joke to you; you can often be the type of person to want to make everything into a lie. Not everything is a joke to me. And I don’t like the way lying feels. And I think too much about things to sit and have time for the pain a lie can truly cause. Versus sitting and thinking about more and more lies to come up with to cause more pain. You are always best coming to me and asking me. Rather than expecting me to be the type of person to lie. I always think of myself as having to look at another person in the eyes, and when we speak, I like to feel trust in your eyes or else its awkward. Lying to someone and being lied to can be something that makes communication quite uncomfortable. I know for me personally, trauma led to me feeling like that.

Telling me to go cry in a corner.

Telling me that I am running away like a scared little girl.

Telling me that I am my own worst enemy.

Telling me that it’s the men I am dating.

When knowing good and damn well all the men likely sit around and said for decades that “she can’t get better that xyz.” And since you read what someone said in quotations, you can understand how that contributes to them affecting anything further in the future. So, I relinquish any involvement at all. No engagement. No energy expelled. Just stay away from me. Think about that, a man says to you (“I hate that bitch. I would just go around to as many people as I could and tell them to lie as much as they can about her just to ruin her reputation. Fuck her.”)

He will think he is the best I can get, or he will be a scumbag and stand in the way of me getting anything better. Be careful because your friends can be like that too. Girlfriends are thirsty and want what you don’t want or what you can get because they don’t want what they can get. Knowing the objective is TO HURT YOU.

I wondered about the importance of psychology sessions at work. Workbooks. On-call help. When you need it. As my overnight mind thinks, I would walk through the halls and want a therapist right next to me. But at 3 am that’s not possible. So how do we mitigate that? Make it more of a muscle to strengthen, and less of a voice to silence. Let’s say the home life is anything but positive and we need a little more than work there. It’s negative. No intimacy. No trust. No security. No romance. Just nothing. We walk into work, stay there for 8-16 hours out of the day and sometimes 5-7 days a week. Why is it that we should

a) Hold other people responsible for our “downfall in life” [if we experience one]? What that means is, if we are going through something, why can we not remove ourselves from what we are going through? If you need to walk away from an argument for a while because it’s stressing you out; I mean, be sensible. I hate people following me. Don’t follow me. I don’t like arguments with my significant others. I would just rather not have one instead of arguing. I don’t believe in that rhetoric that people have where they say to you (in a snarky tone) “You take yourself too seriously.” When you actually don’t. I know I don’t. I am already disappointed in myself for dealing with these types of men in my life and taking time rebuilding myself at the expense of their laughter has taken a toll. So, fuck them. Not literally either.

When I was at work one time I was berated by my supervisor because of my desire to take a break while we were serving trays in the nursing home. Which I have come to hate as a rule. It is rather insensitive. Sometimes it doesn’t apply to certain situations and can really land people in a psychologically damaging environment at work. It can become toxic. There of course many other examples other than that work, but this is what I was thinking in my mind:

“There are times where even God himself is calling us to take a break and he will always take precedence in my life before you when it comes to my mental health. I have to apologize but when it comes to my work ethic, quality of work and passion for doing the job; I am impeccable, pleasant and like to learn. I would also like the same respect I give you. Which is this same courtesy reciprocated and more.“

b) Think that we don’t need help. There are so many reasons we don’t ask for help. There was a single mother that was in the streets at one point in her life in the Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy Documentary Watching the documentary I was thinking to myself, I wonder how many people that were my age at this time were dealing with the drugs being introduced to the streets in the 80’s. I remember her saying how the streets and the gang life hardened her and she wished it hadn’t. What if there are things about our trauma and our past that make it so we are fearful of how we will be percieved when we ask for help? Meaning, if this woman went to someone in 1989 and asked for help and sat at DSS for 7 hours, would there be a struggle with her reputation etc? You know there would. And you know there would be talk about her children, her addiction, her life in the streets. And the one thing that people say when they are healing (which we know will help us and others heal) but sometimes we use that to our advantage when we are trying to control or get over on someone. Which is to say that you aren’t going to be shit. You aren’t going to do shit. Nobody cares. Then the negative cheerleaders surrounding you that hate you even asking for help will start to lie. For various reasons of course. And don’t get me wrong, you may have some positive cheerleaders too. What if you don’t want to deal with those rumors? What will you do to avoid them? Not go down to the Department of Social Services? Not go to rehab? Not get help? And with an open mind and open heart. I want you to think about things in the way that I did. Because I am always in my head. And was tired of my thoughts being a prison for a man that hurt me instead of it being truth. And the truth doesn’t have to be twisted to make you look like the valiant savior that you weren’t if in fact you weren’t. You hated me succeeding. Or the idea thereof.

I am sure nurses and psychology students want to use films like American Nightmare to inspire their work. There is a part of the film where she is talking about how they told her that they will film the interaction so that she doesn’t go to the police. When in fact some people play the opposite game and film anyways. Whether you go to the police or not, they have been paid and don’t care. And either way, someone wants to take you out or expose you and make you seem like a whore quite possibly. Hurt you etc.

What if the reason some of these things also were introduced were to strengthen people’s resistance to another person’s desire to bring them down because they were threatened by them? When you are threatened by someone, is it safe to say that you often try to “take them our” or “take them down”? Sometimes in itself, asking myself why.

My recommendation is to say to yourself “I have the power to say no, and raise my vibration, my mind and my soul’s vibration”

It is not impossible for someone to be threatened by another person, of course, but I am wondering what in someone’s life makes them feel the one perspective and no other perspective is valid? I had heard so many times the same response, but nobody was thinking in the way I was. If I give you something, you may the option to say no.

Because of the desire for someone greater than you to care. Sometimes people care in ways we don’t see. In ways we will never understand. It can be just as much the opposite. I often think why are we sitting back and watching some of these documentaries in such a negative light and being so upset instead of trying to see other sides? What if someone doesn’t necessarily know how to teach you to be who and what they want you to be because they might think you are like everyone else. Which in turn doesn’t give you a fair chance. I was washing my hands in the bathroom and thinking about when we were younger, how we were told that life isn’t fair. And no matter how you take that, as a child growing up; you begin to look at the world as if life isn’t fair. Keeping in mind that we are not often taught that we should not have expectations in life; we often-times do have expectations. And what if we expect that life won’t be fair for us, and we don’t have to be fair. So then, what if we think of life in the sense that life can be fair or life is fair. Because then not only would it be the opposite, but it would also be helpful in the sensitivity to us growing as people and having a deeper understanding and meaning to life and how we not only expect it to be (or in other words dream) or how we work for it to be.

And maybe it’s the big heart in me that hopes. Thinking that even if they had the heart like I do to sit back and say that I am not forcing you to be who I want you to be; I just have to be myself in order for this to be what we want it to be. I must say that one thing I do know about myself is that my ultimate partner for life needs to understand my heart is involved with how I think often times. And what if I know my trajectory in life is to follow God’s plan for me. Not yours always if it doesn’t align. But when that can change is if being with you is something that God has assigned to me. You’re mine. It is with all due respect I understand your desire to want to tell me how I should be, but what if I don’t want to be what you want me to be because I don’t trust you? Here is an example of what if there is no reason that you should be trusted because your intentions for me are ill-mannered and negative?

1. You’re going to have something to say about who I am as a person once you have already tried to change or have already changed who I am or was in the first place. Likely in a sarcastic, misogynistic and insulting form. Maybe once before I was nice, and now you feel like if you instigate arguments, you can “program” me to be mean. Which in turn can be a manipulative standpoint for you. At which point we sit there arguing back and forth about how I have changed and suddenly I need to change more to satisfy the “balance” in the control factors of our relationship OR I need to back down. Keeping informed, that people like this rarely back down and feel like they need to forfeit. Thinking about it further, what is it that makes you want to forfeit? Empathy. Sympathy. Perspective. Retroactively Thinking.
2. You’re not going to be able to handle the change. Whether it be a resistance to the change or circumstance, or you just not being happy with the change. There are ways in which the change itself can present a way in which you are given more than one way to see a person, and that in itself dissatisfies you so much that something else changes between the two of us. I am the type of person who has begun to have a hatred for being in a relationship that is surrounded by lies. Partially because of all of the circumstantial debt the person has to other people. They have built up a debt. It’s kind of like their sex life. And if you think of it as them having sex with one more person and that person has sex with 8 more people. Those 8 people then have sex with 10 people each. It eventually adds up. So does the emotional and spiritual debt and weight. And that’s not fair to expect someone to want to carry that for you.

I have loved my work in mental health, long term care, hospice, home care, youth-care, developmental disabilities care; so just understand. Not everything is what it seems.

XOXO,

El’Aundra