I think I may be slightly lactose intolerant....

In all seriousness, and a jump off of Keith's blog, prayer I think has gotten me through a lot in life, more than I or anyone else would have ever thought from any impression they have of me and my thoughts on the subject. I am no church go-er and even though I studied with two Morman missionaries during last summer to support a friend, I came to a point where I could possibly acknowledge some higher power but never could believe or succumb my life to living FOR them, and this is precisely what has kept me from going to church. I could never live for the sole purpose of bettering an afterlife that no one realyl knows exists... I could never live me life down here on earth, in my own consciousness just to follow some rules that some people at some time decided to include in the Bible, because they were issues during their time that people morally had trouble with... I feel that my life should be guided by my morals that I can come up with all on my own without reading yet another book. (although I do love reading). No, with all this seemingly anti-religion baggage, I do pray... actually I haven't prayed in a while but I feel like maybe would be the time to, maybe be the time I need to again, just once.... just for the same people I have always prayed for.

Growing up in any family is never easy and everyone faces different obstacles that they feel are THE worst. For my family, that has been money, luck and energy. I guess I got it from my mom's beliefs, but I do believe in Kharma and often wonder, what had I done, or my parents or brother done in their life to deserve the shit my family has had to deal with all my life, before and will continue to probably till the end. Living in my family I have learned a few very valuable lessons. One being, if there is a hard road and an easy road, pick the hard road because if you pick the easy road, you will pay dearly for it later. Another lesson was, when picking your battles with your children, choose wisely because you must win. The third is the lesson I began to practice myself at the age of 5 when I first understood the concept of money and buying things and that is, to cut corners wherever possible. The flip side of the coin however, as I have grown older and come to realize, is that you can take any of these to extremes and in severrly bad times, my mom has a tendency... ok no habit, of taking things to extremes. For example, in order to cut corners she will not turn on the heat during the winter higher than 60 and in the summer refuses to turn on the AC lower than 87. Now my mother does not like neither the cold nor the heat to much extent, yet she always demands that she likes the house temperature as it is... what I see now, is that she doesn't like the temperature or the comfort of the house, she just likes the peace of mind that she might be saving some money in order to pay the bills so that we actually continue to HAVE a house.

My father and mother always butt heads when it comes to where to cut funds in order to keep the order of the family running. There are priorities you see, and for both my parents, my brother and myself, the priorities are somewhat debatable. For my mom bills need to be paid, at whatever expense it is to one's health, comfort or ability to function properly because of lack of anything but yogart and oatmeal to eat. (needless to say I have depended on yogart for my sustenence since i came home this summer and have developed a tolerance for eating instant oatmeal without gagging). My father's priorities are that of one's sanity, such as my mom's horse, China which is my mother's pride and joy, something of her own and something that she can escape to when things get rough. My father often puts aside his own happiness to provide the happiness to his children such as giving up his time to spend with us so we can spend it with our friends. My brother's priorities are as follows: computer, good food and movies. Simple, he is one of the most immaterialistic people I know, and Keith would probably follow a close second. Whenever he has moved from apartment to house to apartment in his struggle to live on his own he always leaves behind most if not all of his belongings. There are two possible reasons for this. One being that he is so ashamed of the mess he has made and is too afraid to go back and face the landlord in order to get it all back, or two, he just doesn't care about objects. He much more cares about people, their feelings, and well being. I on the other hand often question what it is that I value most in my list of priorities in regards to my family. I think I fall in the middle between my parents, and maybe that is the natural path for me to follow. I understand my mother's concerns about the money and I too would cut corners as she does, but there is an extreme I would try to avoid. The house can only get so hot before it gets hard to breath and anything but sleeping is impossible. On the other hand, she is being practical, always preparing for the worst because that is how she has had to handle her entire life, and even at that, our family has still been swung many a blows while fully prepared for what we could imagine would be the worse. My dad on the other hand I sympathize with, because it is true that without my dancing I had for so many years, and without my mother's horse, she, like I find myself often now, will be lost without it. It was my choice to give up dancing when we moved to PA however had it ever been ripped away from my earlier like it was threatened to be many a time, I could only imagine the anguish, mental and emotional trauma it would have caused me to suffer, because more than I realized it at the time but fully understand now, I depended on dancing as my form of expression. I dealt with all of the things that went on at home, at school, in my head and in my dreams, through dance. That may have been why I started choreographing so early.

*mom;s kicking me offline*

Sometimes I find myself in such a need to express myself somehow that I don't even realize I've started dancing around the living room to whatever music tends to be on the main radio in our house which is constantly tuned to NPR. Moving my body and having control over what it did, challenging it, and overcoming the challenge was what all my life was about up until junior year in high school. I take pride in all that I was able to accomplish, regardless that I didn't have the body for ballet, modern dance allowed so much more freedom of expression and exploration of the impossible. *sigh* It's just so hard sometimes...

Anyway, back to prayer... there are a few distinct times in my life that I remember praying, simply because I had nothing else I could do that would keep myself from losing all sense of control. Many of these few times were nights when I woudl pray for my brother. I would pray that someone, or something could watch over him and protect him and guide him in a way that none of us here could. I would pray that he would find happiness and value in himself. I would pray for his health and that he would someday understand the depth of our love toward him. I prayed that he would stop making so many mistakes and I even selfishly prayed one night that his pain be taken away in any way possible. My brother has always been so defensive of me and protective, without me even noticing. But I remember a few times when my dad would point it out, like when we were staining our deck and stain dripped in my eye, well NIck about had a hernia. THen there was another time a 2 by 4 plank of wood came crashing down on my back, it didn;t even hurt just scared me and my brother yelled for an hour at my dad for letting it fall. I think one of the first real gifts he ever got me was a hard back copy of the Magician's Nephew the night I had debuted my performance as Aslan in the ballet production The Magicians Newphew, at the age of oh... 15 or so when an 18 year old senior was supposed to do it, but she had family problems so in 6 weeks I learned over almost 2 hours worth of choreography plus taught an understudy my roles I had prior to the switch. It was fitting that he gave me such a gift, because he had always been so fond of reading and writing and was very gifted at it too. He had been a published poet since the age of 14 or something like that. That is perhaps the only good, as good as it was, that came out of his struggle with such severe depression those years.

One thing my mother said to me one day has always stuck in my mind especially in times like these I think of them again.... she said, "All my troubles have revolved around the men in my life" I don't believe that all of her troubles have, but many of the big honkers certainly have. Her father, her husband, and her son, a wonderful triad of problems that as motherly as she is, finds the desire to fix them. Perhaps we do find people to add into our lives because we want to fix them, or perhaps they find us in order to be fixed. I sure have attracted many people over the years who need help, some more than others and I'd like to think that I helped save some of them... even a little. I'm sure I've hurt others, but only for the price to do the right thing, but it still kills me sometime to think what might've been, and then I realize, you can only please so many people, and you better not die trying to please too many. I think that is a way I have become my own over the past three or so years. Instead of living for other's sake, I'm living for my own. I no longer need to save everyone, but just be there for the ride and live by example that this world is still worth giving a shot. I don't need to make everyone happy, and in a way i think sometimes I am selfish, but in others, if I were my parents I would hope I can provide the same sselfless support to my kids someday.

You have to work to make a relationship, one of any kind, to stay alive. The thing with family is though, we expect that we dont have to, that it's a give-in and I too sometimes think of it that way. However, I think that like any other relation you try to form with someone, your family needs effort just as much if not more. My parents know that I love them which is why they let me go out with my friends or go to Maryland whenever I want to or have planned to, even if I haven't seen them all month. I thought for a moment, should this be how it is with a romantic relationship? Should Keith and I just assume we love each other even if we don't talk or call or see each other on a regular basis? Should it be a give-in? It should, shouldn't it? But it isn't and for some reason, with romantic relationships we are always working at it, even if we know in our hearts that this person will be the one you'll spend the rest of your life with. With family there goes the assumption that you can never stop loving your family. I know maybe you shouldn't, but it is very possible that you might. Take my dad for example, he has not spoken to either of his brothers in almost 30 years. Does he love them? I don't know. Does he care about their lives or what they do with themselves and if they are being good people? I think that the difference in what a good person is, made the break between my father and his siblings, but still, the answer is no. He does not. Does that make him a bad family member? No, at least he's being honest. You can't make yourself love anyone just because they are family. I guess we just expect that you make certain exceptions because "that;s all you got, they are your blood". In my case, they aren't and neither are they for my brother, but that doesn't matter. What all you've got is who you let into your life as people you make yourself hang onto. Life is so much more full of choices these days and so unconventional that often traditional ideals are held too closely and just make matters worse. Sure we shouldn't dispense of our family the same as we would a friend, but whose to say that you shouldn't consider the dispense of a boyfriend as if he were family or that you could never cut all ties from family and not care what happens to them ever again in your life as you could an ex-boyfriend? I'm not sure that made sense... Oh well.

Forgiveness is a topic I know I myself over the past few years of my life have had to deal with on a number of levels. Like my mother, the people so far whom I have had to forgive in a conscious level have all been men. While struggling to understand the illness my brother suffered from, and to deal with my own insecurities as a young girl in middle school, I often resented my brother for all the trouble he got my family, my parents and me into. Luckily my parents worked really hard to keep the effects of his mistakes, seperate from what I suffered, however a few times they couldn't. I remember writing in some elementary diary I kept under my bed how I was so mad one night because I heard my parents talking and they told me I couldn't get new clothes for the coming school year, not even a first day of school outfit and we all know howwww important those were!, because my brother had jacked up the phone bill to 2,000 dollars that month trying to melt his sorrows in phone conversations with people across the globe. As I got older though, and grew to understand his problems with a more educated understanding, I forgave him. The next momentous milestone in my life was when I had to choose whether or not to forgive someone for something at the time I didn't understand, didn't see possible and didn't think was forgiveable. I made the first step in forgiveness by letting that person back in, but never truely grasped the whole idea of what I had forgiven until many many months later, maybe even a year, because it was then that I understood some aspects of people, the humane part, that I wasn't aware of before. Again, seems like education regardless that it was in the form of life and not schooling, opened my eyes and allowed me to forgive. Third I still am working with because there are too many un answered questions. I have come to the resolution that if the third person I am to forgive is in fact mentally ill, then I can only hope that my experience brought around some major changes in this person's life to help them get the help they seemingly refused to want. If in fact that this person is just what everyone appears to think he is, then I do not think I can forgive such a person who might go out and hurt others, but I can forgive their inexcusable actions enough to release me from being hurt by them. I think a lot of what forgiveness has to do with is, gaining control back. To forgive someone is the nice way to let what they have done to you pass, so that either you two can move on together in this world, or go your seperate ways. It's like releiving a great weight off your shoulders, which really, has been dragging you down since you took on the burden.

I think often I have almost intermixed forgiveness with prayer, because I myself may not have felt strong enough to even expect forgiveness without looking to a higher power. To me that higher power is more likely to be other people in the world, who I feel might have the influence to change the course of events for those I look out for. I often ask for guidance, that someone will come along in this person's life and guide them to a better way, or that some opportunity might be blessed to someone in order to rid them of their constant suffering. I look to others, even if my head might be tilted above. I look to myself many of the times, and ask of myself to be a better daughter, sister, and friend. I expect of myself to be strong and give unconditionally to those who need it. Now I didn't say those who deserve it or those who meet some expectation I have. I have often given to those who do not deserve it, but because I know them, or think I know them well enough I know that what they give is all they have, which is why I need to give them more. I fail, most of the time actually at being this person that I pray about being, but so do most of us. Even when I try to be nice to everyone I find myself snickering into my sleeve and just shaking my heads at times. I think prayer, instead of looking to something out there to help you, you should instead ask, what can I do to help this situation? How can I make a difference? What do I need to believe in order to make a change. For me, it is strength and understanding. With those comes patience, kindess and perserverance. I get those things accomplished not by simply praying, but by believing that I have those capabilities within me now, and that I have the resources from others around me to help. I know I have patience tucked away in Keith, and strength in the core of my mother, and kindness can always be found in my father. Those are the things I pray for... the other things that most people pray for like winning the lottery or saving someone's life who is ill.... I save that for wishing on shooting stars, because who said that they too aren't sparks of light to guide our way?

oh gosh babe.
this may be one of your best pieces of writing yet hun. it really demonstrates how wise, intelligent, and compassionate you are. i love you
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