Giving and Giving Back.

This is short and sweet because the concept is basic. Anyone who is a giver will relate to this—which is to say this is a warning to the givers, not an invitation to the takers. (God knows I don’t want to learn this lesson yet again.)

I’ve seen myself do it a few times now… and the why is simply because I’m nice and it’s easy to love people. Takers may not start out as takers, they could start out as givers, but a situation can create a taker. When someone becomes a taker it can be simply because they met a giver. At that point they start seeing how much better they feel when they are around the giver. THAT is taking. Which isn’t automatically a bad thing… really. What it means is they need to GIVE BACK to that person. If that doesn’t happen, the person taking gets used to taking and this becomes the norm, becoming what BOTH the giver and taker get used to. This will continue as long as the giver has something to give.

Eventually (as is inevitable) the giver runs out of anything to give and it’s at THAT point where the taker taking from the empty giver starts to harm the giver. The giver up to this point hasn’t necessarily felt the removal, but when there is nothing left to remove; it is then that the pain starts.

The thing is—it takes so long to reach this point that both parties are oblivious to just how close to empty the giver is. And when suddenly the giver can’t give anymore the taker is completely surprised. The giver had some clues, but the nature of giving is that the giver has them denying they have no more, so they try to give anyway.

Then quite suddenly it ALL hurts. It’s like scraping the barrel when the barrel is your heart. The giver then hurts too much and has to face reality that the taker only ½ did this. The giver was handing it over every time it was expected or asked for!

So what then? What happens when the heart of the giver is being scraped, or has been scraped to the point of totally empty? Pain, that’s what. The emotional pain of reaching a point where you can’t give any more is far more uncomfortable for the giver than the taker. The taker is annoyed, confused, and needing their “fix”. Whatever form that takes. The giver however is left incredibly upset.

I hate learning things the hard way, and I most definitely hate having to learn a lesson more than once. I feel like I’ve done that, and now I’m making myself more aware of when I’m giving, and when I’m given TO. Which is a whole ‘nother conversation because people hate receiving. Especially givers. So I should do another post on Receiving.

One of the things I’ve realized about giving is that it makes you love a person even more. This is amazing and awful at the same time, but for totally different reasons. It’s amazing to find that giving makes more love which makes your heart feel bigger; as though you have more to give. It’s awful when the giving empties you, and you have to face the inability to give anymore to that person you already feel so much love for. The ONLY solution I can see, if this even is a solution, is to make sure that the one you are giving to gives back!! Preferably in equal amounts!

Laughter is the best medicine.

Medicine is what you take when you aren’t well. If you laugh when you aren’t well and it makes you better, what happens if you laugh when you are great?

Laughter is not just the best medicine, Laughter is everything!

Especially that kind of laughter when your eyes are watering, you run out of breath, and the ability to talk becomes the one thing you want to do, and completely can’t. It’s usually at this point that you think of ONE MORE thing to say, that would make the funny thing even funnier, but your laughter gets in the way of your funny, and you nearly lose the ability to breathe let alone speak.

Sometimes when I’m laughing this hard the sound of my laugh totally changes and goes deep like a man’s laugh. Then THAT makes me laugh… Having any reason to laugh harder or even for a new reason carries the laughter into 20 minutes more. Then my face hurts, my stomach hurts, and it might just be the pain that has me finally giving in to something that resembles only giggles.

One of my favorite people in the world is someone I laugh with most. Ya, she’s one of those people. We regularly end our laughing with that trying to breathe-again-voice, saying “ahh… I love you.” She and I have been talking about laughing lately, and saying “I love laughing” so often that it’s on our radar.

We were talking about hanging out with friends, those we get together with, and how we define fun versus a good time. You can have a good time most of the time, but when you end up with lots of laughter, you end up saying something like “That was so fun!”. Which makes sense because fun is part of funny. When something is funny you laugh, when you laugh you have a good time, the funnier the good time the more you call it fun.

It’s interesting to look at the people we have a good time with vs the people we have fun with. Do this with me… Think of your funnest times lately… are those the ones where you were laughing? Are the people you are/were with the ones that laugh the most? Think of the people who make you laugh. Think of the people who don’t make you laugh. Are you spending the most time with the people who encourage laughter?

If you aren’t, I’m surprised. If you aren’t does this thought of fun and laughter make you want to spend time with those people? Maybe I’m a different breed, and not everybody likes laughing as much as I do. But that also makes me think about the fact I want to spend time with the people I relate to, it tells me who to prioritize, it reminds me I have a choice in who I give my energy to. I regularly find my mind going to my beautiful laughing friend when I find myself wanting “fun”. She is one of those people, and so am I. 

Dear John,

(One of those letters we all seem to write at some point.)

In the back of my mind I’ve been assembling the sound track to the movie of you and me.
I know you have long since moved on, so to even read that sentence might have you wondering why I’m still thinking or dwelling on you.

[Words-Skylar Grey]

I added another song to this soundtrack:

[Always going to be you-Kenny Chesney]

Literally, in the years since we were constantly communicating, I have been looking for your replacement. For a long time I wished to have your heart want me, and want to be loved by me. I referred to you as “painful” on a regular basis because of your waxing and waning for me. Disappearing when I said something too loving, and then returning to pull me in again.

[Gravity-Sara Bareilles]

Then, you stopped being painful once we had tickets to Mexico. I had the greatest two weeks of my life, and yet, I still found myself continually hoping you would see how wonderful it would feel for you to accept my love.

[Moon & Moon-Bat For Lashes]

You have always been so confusing to me, because you have always been so easy for me to love. Maybe you remember me saying the first time I heard your voice: I felt like it already lived inside me. I have tortured myself trying to understand how you could feel “part of me” from the beginning. I still marvel that we could seem to be such compatible people, but you didn’t feel it too.

All the songs you sent me over our many months sounded like you loved me, because they contained the word love. I let that equate to believing you cared about me and kept me hanging on. When you sent me [I’ve still got sand in my shoes-Dido] on the anniversary of my birthday, and literally on the anniversary of us spending time dancing and kissing on the beach, I saw for the millionth time, you only want to torture me with MY love for you. And that is not love. I don’t know who/what I was to you, and I have been looking for the version of you that would enjoy my love without torture ever since. I wanted to reply to that song, but didn’t because I was too upset. I’d already told you to stop sending me songs, so I didn’t send you [Say Something I’m Giving Up On You-A Great Big World] because I had already given up.

I have been torn by the thought: do I wish I had never met him? Because ignorance is bliss, and I sometimes wonder if that bliss would be nice to be living in. There are so many ways I’ve grown because of you, and since you. The hardest time in my life was after Mexico, when the John void was debilitating. I hadn’t ever experienced the wholeness feeling your presence created, you fit me so smoothly I almost didn’t realize how solid I felt with you. Then when you were gone, and so very far away, I had to figure out how to stitch myself back together, the void in me was more painful than I ever expected.

THE BENEFIT of having been in so much pain and realizing that I had to heal myself -by myself -for myself is that I am now pretty fucking amazing compared to the naive girl that spent time with you in Mexico. She hoped the whole time you would “choose me” by wanting something like a relationship, not just a vacation.

Like a dumbass, my next relationship was also with a guy whose ex-wife tortured him emotionally, so I had to continually struggle with that same issue. I know now that in my search for my new John, I will make sure nobody has ruined his ability to love himself or his ability to receive love. Because I believe there is nothing greater than MUTUAL adoration and love. You might be why I tried so hard for two years to make it work with that guy. The fact that he WANTED my love was what kept me going and hanging on.

[Unforgiven-Beck]

I did make an awesome realization because of you both though. There are 4 kinds of love that make a relationship awesome. He loves her. She loves him. She loves herself. He loves himself. If all 4 of these are each complete and present, you can have success. Without one or more, you have something too flawed to work with. If I am honest, when we were in Mexico, all we had to work with was She loves Him. One quarter is rubbish love. See, you really have taught me so much, and not because you were so smart, but because you were so painful.

One of the biggest realizations I made in these years since you, and all the confusing love songs you sent me, is that nobody has ever been so cruel to my heart. That fact should carry more weight than anything. Realizing it finally has helped me see so much clearer.

It was after that I could finally stop wishing for you because I realized your only desire was to care about me, not to be with me. I think you were just somehow addicted to sending me music that made me believe you thought highly of me, that I meant something to you. The complete LACK of LOVE should have said everything when we parted in Mexico and I was crying, but you were fine. I felt love, you felt something much smaller.

[I know you care-Ellie Goulding]

We all have to learn lessons in life, we all have to figure shit out, but what I see again and again is that nobody has ever had such an effect on my life as you.

[Record Collector-Lissie]

I am still single, I am looking again, and what I’m looking for is that amazing connection I had with you –only better. I can’t help but say it’s my New John, because there is so much about who you were that I already know fit me like a glove. The visual of this New John dynamic brings another song to my soundtrack, [Manhattan-Sara Bareilles] the line is “I’ll wish this away, dismissing the days, when I was one half of two”. You didn’t make me whole, you helped me see that I want to be one half of two. Allowing you to make me complete as just a partial 1, felt awful. Another fitting line from this song: “And I’ll tip-toe away, so you won’t have to say, you heard me leave.” I did tip-toe, but I feel like this letter is finally a necessary good bye.

I’m sure you remember I wrote a book about our two weeks in Mexico. I think it needs to be a movie. (Which is probably why I have so much of the soundtrack assembling in my mind.) The friends who read the book think I’m an amazing person. They told me you are not worth my thoughts or my time. They didn’t read anything in what I wrote about you that had them understanding how I could have possibly have fallen so head-over-heals for you. I find that so interesting! That in all my writing, they didn’t fall in love with you too, they just called you stupid, while I still wished for you.

[El Cerrito Place-Kenny Chesney]

Something that I’ve never quite wrapped my head around is your saying you didn’t “want to be in a love space” while you were physically adoring me every moment we were together. That might have been the biggest mind-fuck of it all. To act madly in love, kissing me at every opportunity whether it was waiting to cross the street, or strolling the beach in the rain. Acting like I was important, that I meant something, pretending to be my dream man, enjoying every minute of me. That “love space” was the space I was walking in, and you were right there holding my hand. It’s no wonder my heart felt so broken when I got back home.

[55^th and 3^rd--Kenny Chesney]

Then… it was only a couple months after Mexico that you got into a relationship. As you told me about her, and as you said she wanted you more in her life, I felt sorry for her. It sounded like she too had fallen for you, but you just wanted to be fucking her too and not allowing her to feel something real with you. And yet, you admitted to what sounded like a kind of relationship. I wonder if you are still torturing her. I hope for her sake you aren’t, but I bet you are still saying to yourself “No love space!”

[Joy-Ellie Goulding]

Not communicating to you now means you aren’t torturing me, but I am still thinking about what I learned about myself through all this, what I want to find in a man now, what a healthy relationship would look like, and what the red flags are.

[Hide and Seek-Imogen Heap]

Another thing I should acknowledge is that I didn’t learn from you, I learned because of you.

[Better as a Memory-Kenny Chesney]

I wish you luck, I wish me luck, and this time I’m starting with the quarter: She loves herself.

Best Wishes,

Natalie

[Once upon another time-Sara Bareilles]