c.s. lewis scares me a bit.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it in tact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."

C.S. Lewis

The Four Loves

yep, i'm crazy too.

i ran across a comic lately that i throughly enjoyed. a man was speaking, whom, based on the context, was a psychologist. the caption read this, 'i don't know about the rest of you all, but i got into the field of psychology because i, myself, am insane.' i literally laughed outloud. its so true though. the more i've thought about it, the more i've come to realize we're all crazy. some of us are a little more touched than others, but we're all at least a little screwed up. i wouldn't have it any other way though. our oddities make life interesting. they make it painful and hard, but they also make it wonderful and full.

why is it that we get so excited when we find out someone else has the same strange habit of putting hot cocoa mix on ice cream as we do? because we're weird. if we knew this habit was normal, we wouldn't be as pumped about the connection.

why would we voluntarily get hurt by the same person multiple times and still go back? because we're weird. we know that we're gonna get hurt, but we also know that this time, it could be wonderful. why might this time be different? because there's two weirdies involved.

i talked recently with a good friend of mine (in a storage closet of all places) about how messed up i am. i tend to put things i don't want to deal with in boxes and never open them. i'm building walls with these boxes and i'm realizing now that to ever move forward i have to get rid of these boxes and the only way to get rid of them is to go through them. i'm not overly excited about the idea of this, but oh well. the problem i have is i recognized that coping strategies i use aren't always healty and i can give great advice to others with the same problems i have, but i can't fix me. i know that how i deal with things works for me, for now, but eventually somethings gonna break. i also realize that now i'm just rambling and should probably stop because its gonna stop making sense very soon.

i guess what i'm trying to say is, we're all crazy. thank heavens, because otherwise life would be irritatingly dull.

timing.

i had an interesting conversation tonight with a close friend and in the midst of it i stated the phrase below. now i don't think i'm a genius by any means, but i am quite proud of this one so i thought i'd share.


the right person at the wrong time will be the wrong person until the right time.

creatures of habit.

second semester just started and one of the classes i'm in is a pscyhology of intimate relationships course. its any kind of relationship, whether that be friendship, romantic, etc. one of the things we discussed today was why people stay in harmful relationships. it really got me to thinking. in my experience, we tend to stick with what we know. i believe that that is one of the main reasons for staying in bad relationships. i also believe that most relationships do not start out poorly, but instead evolve into the unhealty relationship. another reason for staying may come out of this idea. because the relationship wasn't always unhealthy there is always the slight possibility that it could change back. learned helplessness also plays a huge part in this whole thing.

there was a study done in which the researchers placed dogs into cages. the floors of these cages shocked the dogs. half of the dogs had floors that were divided and if they jumped over the divider the floor on the other side did not shock them. the other half of the dogs did not have this. the second part of the study involved the dogs being in a cage with a shocking floor again, however, this time the cage door was open. what the researchers found was that the dogs who had the option to jump before ran out of the cage when the floor began to develop shocks. the dogs without the previous option did not leave the cage. they simply stood there and took it. they never experienced a floor that didn't shock them so why would the outside floor be any different that what they were currently standing on.

this idea presents itself in unhealty relationships frequently. when someone does not know any different they are less likely to change. one thing to note, when someone is in an unhealthy relationship, they are far more likely to get out of it if they see that there is other options or possibilities. for example, if a woman is in an abusive relationship, whether verbal or physical, if a man other than the one she is currently tied to, shows her attention in a positive light, such as compliments or simply respecting her space, she will recognize this as different and better and thus be more likely to get out of the unhealthy relationship she is currently in.

i am a firm believer that change happens only when we are uncomfortable. i'll be the first to say that i'm not the biggest fan of change, but i also know that change usually involves growth and i do know that growth is vital. pertaining to unhealthy relationships, sometimes a person has been in the unhealthy relationship so long that the idea of being alone again is more scary than what they are currently dealing with.

do i have all the answers? nope. in fact, i'm pretty sure i may have just created more questions, but i think that the more questions that come up the better chance we have of finding answers. we like what is familiar, but maybe being creatures of habit is what's hurting us most.

i look up to two year olds.

do you remember being two? probably not so well, but i'm sure you know few two year olds. they are wonderful. yes they have the 'terrible twos' label, but personally i'm a little envious of them. they know what they want and will do anything to get it. they make new friends daily, sometimes simply because someone else has a really cool toy. why, when we get older, do we all of a sudden need so much more? because we have more life experience and have been exposed to this 'cruel' world? i think that maybe we just make things more complicated than they need to be simply because it seems naive to do otherwise. maybe two year olds have it all figured out. i think we should all be a little more like them. you. me. let's be two.

bed.

so, now i may be the one crawling into bed.

anyone need to join?

get over it.

how do you cope with things?

lately a topic of conversation here has been how we get over things. some eat, some vent (constantly), some just wallow in the pain until its gone, some don't want to talk about it, some hover and some just refuse to accept it.

why?

i guess its part of just who we are and what has happened to us in the past. we know how we deal with things and what works for us, even if our methods seem ridiculous to anyone looking from the outside. this makes me think of a will & grace episode (yep, i'm referencing will & grace). in the episode, grace is getting over nathan. how she deals with it is by staying in bed, looking at slides and yelling at her younger self. will, karen and jack decide to intervene and grab grace and take her to the shower. they try to cold shock her out of it. then grace gets out and tells them that she wishes she was as strong as them and could get over things as fast as they did. then she gets back in bed. eventually, the other three climb in bed with her as well and in doing so, admit they aren't as strong as they'd like to be. the next segment shows them all in bed sleeping. grace wakes up, smiles and gets out of bed.

we all have our own ways of dealing with hurt and we don't know why, but we know what works for us. let it be. you know how you work.