Saturday, November 26, 2011

Dear Journal: 11-26-11

Dear Journal:


If I wrote on here how happy I am about life today I would be completely lying.  I'm not very happy at all, last night my mom went back home and I feel so lost.  God I miss her already, I can't wait until one day I finally figure it all out, except I don't know what I'm supposed to figure out.


Journal, a few years ago someone betrayed my trust so severely, that after that my fear factor is so high, I am starting to notice that this is a bigger problem then I thought.  But how do you begin to trust again? when it is so scary.  I am always honest to everyone that tries to come into my life.  I always tell them exactly what I'm trying to do with my life, where I see it going, what I'm looking for and yet people still think that they can just come into my life and in a short amount of time, gain all of my trust they feel that I'm supposed to just open up and let them in.  That just doesn't work for me, I am not capable of doing such a thing.


I trusted someone so completely once and he turned out to be a fraud a liar and a fake.  How am I supposed to just meet people now and give them the benefit of the doubt when it's so scary? yet this is something that is really really affecting my relationships and I am fully aware that I need to really work on it.  No, I don't need to work on it for people, I need to work on it for me, because i'm not being fair to myself, everyone is not the same and everyone is not out to get me.


So yesterday I stop by the street vendor to get a new cover for my IPhone and I ask him to show me which of the covers are hard cover because I constantly drop my phone.  Anyway, he shows me one that has a leopard print back and I look up at him and say, OH NO.... JAZZY DOESN'T DO LEOPARD! I continued by saying, I am a cougar though but that doesn't mean I have to wear leopard prints.  The vendor tried to keep a straight face but couldn't help but to grin and I just started laughing and made him comfortable enough that he knew I was joking, (not about the leopard print though, JAZZY REALLY DOES NOT DO LEOPARD!) He proceeds to show me other phone covers then I look at him and say, well maybe I should go wild and crazy and get the one with the bling! so now we are both laughing and I proceed to tell him, that I do date younger men so I should dress accordingly and we  laugh even harder.

 
The vendor was a 52 year old african american man with dreadlocks.  When he told me his age, I was like, ARE YOU SERIOUS! you look no older then 40 and he told me how he could see why I would attract younger men because I was very young looking myself and we start talking about how I'm on my way to go get a hair cut and we just get into this deep conversation about life and all of a sudden he is showing me a picture of his girlfriend and her short hair cut and then asks me for my opinion on the following..... 


He says Jazz... yes he did say Jazz because by this time we had been talking for like 15 minutes and I had showed him my pictures with my really really short hair and he had told me about when he lived in Japan and I had told him that I've been married 2x and we were just talking about so many things and so he says Jazz, you seem like an intelligent mature woman and I want your opinion.... I am thinking about proposing to my lady friend, but I'm not sure if she is going to say yes, because she has been through so much in the past, I'm afraid she won't want to because of her past experiences, but I love her so much and I know that I want to spend the rest of my life with her.


I looked at him in awe!! and I said, you know what the problem is, the problem is that as we get older and have all this past baggage, we often allow all that baggage to stay with us and don't allow ourselves the opportunity for a fresh start and no matter how hard we try to leave the past, we are constantly stuck there.  And as the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized that I had hurt someone the night before with my words, I told him I didn't trust him, yet I didn't really know him long enough not to trust him I haven't given him the chance to prove that he isn't lying, I was judging him based on my past experiences.  I just automatically always assume that everyone is out to get me and lie to me the way someone else did.  There it was, right in front of me, the sign, the signs that are everywhere but we are too blind to recognize them.  On a street corner of Broadway in NYC a complete stranger was teaching me a lesson, he was about to propose to a woman that was scared to give her all, because of her past experiences WOW! 


I told him that I had attended the School of Practical Philosophy and how there, I had learned that as we get older we just keep allowing the luggage to get heavier and heavier and that we forget that once upon a time, it wasn't that way.  How can I judge every single person that tries to come into my life, based on someone else's mistakes that he made that hurt me deeply? how is that fair to another person or myself? And then I thought about what I learned in my Psychology class last Wednesday, that we learn by different conditions and if one of the conditions is a hurtful event, then that is the thing we are most likely to fear and stay away from.  We walk around always been afraid due to past experiences and sometimes push away wonderful opportunities because of this.  Here this complete and total stranger is telling me he wants to propose to the woman that he loves, but he thinks she will say no because she's "been through so much" it made me feel so sad, because I bet that she has no idea how much this man truly loves her, she doubts him yet he is completely sure that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her.


I looked at him and I said, go and do it! tell her that you love her and want her by your side for the rest of your life, I bet she will say yes! and he looked at me and I could see the sincerity in his eyes when he said, really Jazz, you think so? and I was like I'm sure! and we gave each other a big hug and I wished him well and I told him that I was going to be back to see what happened.  That was so awesome! I left there feeling happy and hopeful and I kept thinking, God I need to learn to trust again.


I wish I could take my own advice, I really do.  I am going to try really hard to be more trusting again, I was so trusting once upon a time and I liked myself better then.  I am going to make an effort to really just let go of the fear that I always have when I start talking to someone new.  I am going to allow everyone the benefit of the doubt and hope that they are not out to get me, because if they are out to get me, they probably just want to get me... Like have me and make me happy or make me happier in my already happy life.  I am pretty happy for the most part, even if some nights I cry myself to sleep if I do so, it's because of a situation, not because I'm unhappy.  I can honestly say that I am happy with the way my life is looking, I feel good about life in general and I just need to allow myself and others, the opportunity to be innocent until proven guilty....






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