Living Proof

Kind of latching onto my previous post about being verbally abused and other various things, I'm sitting here thinking about ways to cope with those types of people. I truly believe that your words and especially your actions will dictate what kind of life you will have, whether it be a peaceful one, or a life filled with tons of unnecessary drama. As I season with age, I'm also learning that my own words and actions have a cause and effect. If I slap a complete stranger in the street, chances are I'm gonna get a slap back or perhaps a tenfold in return. As my own mother always said, "Turn the other cheek." But that's kinda' hard for me to do sometimes. Then my mother-in-law said something pretty wise to me a few weeks ago. She said, "Whenever you're being verbally attacked, let them hear themselves go on and on. Let them hear their own voices. Don't say a word. Just walk away." She wasn't saying to just let people walk all over ...

I'd like to think that I give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to human nature type of b.s. in life, but sometimes it's frustrating when you get hit with a brick again and again and again . I 'get' human psychology and the way most minds work: when frustrated about yourself, you may try and drag someone else's self-esteem down with you. Usually, if someone is very insecure about themselves, whether all the time, or even just once in a while, this kinda of crap happens. I'm guilty of it too, where I'm a moody bitch just because I don't feel good about myself. It happens. But when does it come to the point where your self-esteem is so low, that you actually feel better by insulting another person for whatever reason? And the passive aggressive ones are the worst because they can always backtrack their blows by saying, "Oh, you just took it the wrong way…" Did I? The worst is when someone tries to "insinuate" somethin...

Too much for the mind... Some say that when you reach your 40's, you're wiser and more spiritually in tune. Some believe you need to reach the age of 40 in order to read the Torah, otherwise the words will never be fully understood. They say it would be too much for the mind to handle. For me, I believe it's more of a spiritual sense whether you've developed it like a muscle or if you were truly blessed to reach that level of understanding. I guess for years I was more of a closet spiritual person, more of a closet Christian. Not to say that I was ashamed of my religion, but I didn't want to bump heads with anyone who believed differently than I did until I was well into my adulthood. At that point, I didn't care. I didn't care if people thought I was a "crazy Christian" or some kook who just had hallucinations of God Himself. It's funny, because I have friends that ask me a million questions about my beliefs and how to read the bible to wh...

There are evenings when my wife will spend a little extra time in the bathroom putting on these anti-aging creams and 'dewrinklers' as if she was a piece of linen. She comes back smelling like fragrant mud. I admire her persistence of always keeping herself nice and looking young. I started dating her when she was 29 years old. And may lightening strike me, I still see her as 29. I ask her why does she even bother with these rituals if her skin is naturally beautiful and young, just like her mom's. She says, "Well I have dark circles under my eyes ---see? And I have wrinkles in places I never saw before."  I stare at her face --- I see the 29 year old I fell in love with. I honestly never see any flaws on her. There was even a time when Mad 'thought' she had put on weight. I never noticed. To me, she was the same beautiful and curvy woman I fell in love with. Since then, she has lost all the weight she put on, but the fact is, I never even realized it u...

The one thing (among many things) I don’t understand, is why people try to control the person they’re with. They try to dress them a certain way, act a certain way, dictate their life as well as try to mold them into their own clone. If you met them that way, and you decided to date them, why change them? The worst thing in the world is to feel as though you can’t be yourself, dress the way you want or say what you feel to anyone you’d like. So why be with somebody who makes you feel so imprisoned? I love the fact that my wife allows me to be...’me’. She never tells me “you can’t do or say that” - she has discretion on what’s best for me, but never tries to dull my inspiration or goals. She supports me 100%. She has never tried to change my style, or tell me to wear my hair like ‘this’, or any of those types of suggestions just to please her ego. She doesn’t want control. She wants love. There’s a huge difference between control and love. When you truly love someone for who they are, y...

T here are so many stereotypical assumptions about different types of people to where I sometimes have to wonder if they’re forever labeled with this for the rest of their lives. For instance, I’ve heard so many people say, “Gay men are supposed to be hot and muscular.” And if you’re a lesbian, people would assume that you would most likely appear 'edgy', or more on the masculine side, when in fact, there are a million feminine women who are lesbians. I remember a couple of girls pointing at my wife and I while dining at a restaurant in Provincetown, MA. The one girl said to her partner, “Oh they’re probably bisexual.” Why would you even try to guess what orientation we were? “They’re too femme and probably not even gay,” I overheard one of them say. To me, it really doesn’t bother me. Let em’ think what they want, because frankly, it has nothing to do with me - it has everything to do with them. And the reason why I state that is because I have encountered another type of jud...

Lately, I’ve come across something I haven’t in a long time. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been single or dating, or perhaps I just didn’t ‘see’ it or acknowledge the desperate attempts to get me to play the game: the chase. Women are fickle, be it in friendships or in relationships. I know there are women reading this right now that say, “Oh I don’t play that game,” yada yada yada -- and you may be the 1% that doesn’t, however, I have seen this all too often enough to generalize it into a female characteristic. And let me explain... In my ~own~ experience and point of view, there are two types of these women. The first one, we’ll call her Wanda (like that?) -- she’s the type that wants to know where she fits in. In fact, she’ll even ask you, “Where do I fit in?” And of course all of this has everything to do with insecurity issues. She wants to know ‘where she stands’ and to what level of friendship is she considered. It’s not so much as a desperate need for attention or playing game...

Our thoughts sometimes can prevent us from having healthy friendships and relationships on various levels. Insecurity plays a huge role, so the more self-conscious someone is, the more they may withdraw at times. I can even relate to this because this happened to me. I didn't like myself very much. With that being said, it had a negative impact on my outside relationships. I would immediately think someone didn’t like me because of ‘this’ or ‘that’ , but in reality, my mind conjured up all of these false pretenses with no factual basis; just generated from self-deprecation. It was just a “feeling”. How could I love anybody else if I didn't even like myself? If I walked into a room full of straight people with my partner or perhaps, a room filled with family and friends, my mind would immediately rush into panic mode: “Are they staring at us because we’re gay? Am I too ugly? Are they not talking as much because they don’t like my partner? Do we look too much like lesbians?...

There’s a quote by Marilyn Monroe that I have always loved: "...if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best” , but most people blurt it out without quoting it word for word, or at least, leaving out the beginning part, which to me is the most important part of the entire quote because its honesty speaks volumes. The full quote is, “I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." I find many people, including myself, have a hard time quoting that first part, because we don’t want to be viewed as impatient, selfish and hard to handle, when in fact, if we don’t admit this to ourselves, we’ll never figure out what we’re doing wrong or at least making more room for improvement. We’ll always have people pointing it out for us, leaving us to defend ourselves, almost in a ...

Biding my time before surgery, I have an appointment with the surgeon himself this Monday. I’m obsessively looking up the ejection fraction percentage for a gallbladders, which should be in the range of 35-75%, and mine is 30%, so it’s not that bad. I’ve been advised to try holistic approaches before venturing off to have the doctors pry me open. I then thought about acupuncture, so I sifted around online and found a few people, some who were just straight out of college trying out a new profession, mostly anglo and eager to make a buck out of poking people with needles. I want traditional Chinese people doing this---not some waitress/student/wannabe acupuncturist. Then I found the perfect one: an old Chinese guru right down the block. She asked what’s bothering me and I told her I had stomach issues and explained my concern about how itchy the doctors wanted to open me up and suck this gallbladder right out of my bellybutton. She was thrilled to hear I opted for the alternative. She’...