Somebody Loved

Hello Maggie,

My tears of the day are compliments of The Weepies.  I like the band, what little I know of them.  And I was exploring some of their music.  I turned on the song below, called Somebody Loved.  I froze, like deer in the headlights frozen, and I listened.  I listened about six times, and had tears running down my cheeks.

I was thinking about the work that we have been doing here.  The song is all about transformation.  That is what we are doing.  The lyrics are:  You turned me...into...somebody loved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQCWPcYD5nQ

I found a lyrics/tab on line, and plan to learn this song.  I played guitar for the first time since I broke my wrist just a week or two ago.  I think playing will help me get my strength back.

While I was listening to music, I also listened to one of my favorite albums from when I was 16.  I wonder if you would recognize it, because I played it all the time behind closed doors.  I know it permeated at least the upstairs.  But the cool thing was not so much hearing the lyrics that were so important once from a different view point and still finding them in my brain and pertinent, but it was feeling my 16 year old self. And being able to tell that self how beautiful she is, and feeling it with that self.  Will I ever be able to feel it with this self - the self I am today?  Mom has expressed the same thing - looking back and realizing she was attractive, but never believing it at the time.

A friend was here today, and while we were talking noted that I was a pretty person.  It was hard to hear.  She's a counselor, so we talked about it.  I told her that you and our other sisters are beautiful women.  And I look like you.  But you are all pretty, and I am not.  Irrational, deep seated belief.  Maybe I have to learn to laugh at myself...

With your student - perhaps what is truly pretentious is assuming that a professor would be available upon demand.  I think part of the lessons we learned at college was that we were responsible for meeting class requirements.  That was the rude awakening from high school when our teachers checked our progress every day.

I think my ex appreciated my nonconformity, because I just naturally did the things he wished he could do.  I never stood up to his parents, but my choices were always at odds with their expectations.  But there was definitely a layer of classism - a sense that our family was not as good as theirs and that I was lucky they accepted me.  There was this idea that I looked at their lifestyle choices and wanted to be like them.  But that was never true, and so it took a long time to come to a place of peace.  By the end, we were family, but I was no longer family with their son.  Just found out today that he will be coming for Thanksgiving...I am proud that we get along and can share holidays.  But...I am already tired...

Did he ever see me clearly?  Do we ever see anyone clearly, especially when we are hiding?  Did I ever see him clearly?

Still trying to treat myself as I would a baby or a sister.  Still difficult.  The assignment I "got" was to list all of the things I would do if money were no object.  So Spirit is challenging me about my poverty ideas, I think...

Back to work for me.  Next weekend, I will spend two nights with a dear friend who had a rare cancer, survived, and is now fighting a barrage of undefined physical problems.  Doctors keep diagnosing, but aren't sure what it going on...I am looking forward to the time with her and her husband.  They are two of my favorite people in the world, and I miss them ever since they moved away from this area.

Good night, Happy Eclipse-Day, Sending lots of love -

Clare