LOST: My Temper

Last seen around 10:30 last night. Though it had been threatening to blow all week, an insignificant event got blown out of proportion, causing it to run far away. If you find it-- please send it home to me, or contact me immediately, so I can come collect myself. Thanks.

What I'm Reading Today:

My super cool pastor gave me this book to read. He told me to read the section on 'LOVE'. Here is something I liked from it:

"It was mentioned in the introduction... ...that the definition of love implies effort. When we extend ourselves, when we take an extra step or walk an extra mile, we do so in opposition to the inertia of laziness or the resistance of fear. Extention of ourselves or moving out against the inertia of laziness we call work. Moving out in the face of fear we call courage. Love, then, is a form of work, or a form or courage. Specifically, it is work or courage directed toward the nurture of our own or another's spiritual growth. We may work or exert courage in directions other than toward spiritual growth, and for this reason, all work and all courage is not love. But since it requires the extention of ourselves, love is always either work or courage. If an act is not one of work or courage then it is not an act of love. There are no exceptions." --- The Road Less Traveled, A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth by M. Scott Peck, M.D.

What's safe?

If you know me at all-- you are probably aware of the fact that I am a dreamer. I'm not talking about plans and aspirations for my future kind of dreamer... but like I have dreams-- often several-- every time I fall asleep. They are often very vivid and I generally can recall them with startling accuracy once I am awake. I hear this is fairly uncommon. Anyway...
Recently I have been waking up from vivid dreams of some of my more tumultuous past relationships. (Isn't that a nice way of putting it?) I have, over the past year-year and a half cut ties with several unhealthy, abusive, and manipulative relationships... (and I can't remember a better time in my life than right now!) But for whatever reason, when I have dreams about these situations from my past-- they are always 'good' dreams. I wake up and I feel confused and even a little guilty because it wasn't a bad dream. I felt happy and safe despite the hurtful things I know happened to me or around me in the dream.
On the other hand, I am currently in a wonderful relationship with a super cool guy (not perfect, mind you, but still really good) and I feel like relationships with parents, family and friends are better than ever. HOWEVER, whenever I have dreams about these relationships-- they tend to be 'bad' dreams. Someone is hurting me or being hurt by me... never the good wonderful happy dreams one might imagine I would be having at a fairly emotionally healthy point in my existence.
So here is what I want to know:
WHY do I perceive the hurtful, unhealthy, damaging relationships from my past to be good and safe-- while the positive, healthy, loving relationships I am in now I perceive as risky, challenging, and uncertain??? Or maybe I just answered my own question.
I guess it's easy to be a victim, and to let a damaged relationship continue to unravel-- there is no effort, and therefore, no risk. So it feels good, and safe-- even though it is very much the opposite. Which means the opposite is true: loving, healthy relationships require effort, change, and the risk that you will be hurt. Even still, the second category is a much 'safer' place to be, regardless of the risk involved. Right?
The problem for me is logic understands what my emotional is still trying to figure out... and I am just having a heck of a time working through this. I am going to be honest-- it is so tempting to run from Love, becuase it just doesn't feel 'safe'. Will it ever? Will I ever loose that urge to run as far and fast as I can in the opposite direction???

Just one more reason...

So I am taking a break from some online shopping to blog for a bit. I know what your thinking-- Internet shopping, how wonderful! Right? But no. This is not the fun kind. this is the evil kind... shopping from a registry.
I kid you not, I have purchased no less than four wedding and baby gifts in just the last month alone. I don't really know what is going on-- but people gotta stop getting married and popping out the kids, because as it turns out, being friends with these kind of people is an expensive habit.
I don't think my sanity can handle the registries anyhow... oh, the registries. I don't know if I missed the gift registries portion of "Grown up friendships 101" but I am lost when it comes to those things. They are written in an indecipherable code i can't understand... and so I walk through the store shuffling 14 pages of the specific diapers or table linens the couple desires while other shoppers look on with sympathy and amusement at the unmarried, childless, 23 yr old bravely fumbling through the foreign territory of... the baby section. (It even smells like babies there... I can't take it for too long.)
And really shopping online isn't much better, because you can never beat those enthusiastic shoppers who understand the code language of registries and snatch up every gift in your price range... and so then you are piecing together awkward gifts... (Okay, I'll get them... a spatula, these shower curtain hooks... and... When Harry met Sally? Really? People register for DVD's???)
Really the whole process is enough to drive someone nuts. The only solace I have is that I too will someday put others through this same torture. In fact, I am very much looking forward to getting married and having babies so i can obligate friends and family and people who don't really know or like me all that well to buy me stuff. Rest assured I will fill my registry with confusingly similar and awkward items so you can curse me the whole time. Haha. Vindication!Yeah, that's a pretty good reason to get married. Not the only reason. But it's today's reason.