Tag Archives: disappointment

I have been waiting all week …

for this day to come.

The day that tickets to The Eagles concert, which is coming near my hometown, would go on sale.  I have (most impatiently, mind you) waited for the moment when I could go online and then, with great jubilation and celebration, say that I have Eagles tickets.

When I first found out, earlier this week, that they were going to be performing nearby, I immediately started researching; I studied over the seating chart of the venue, mapped directions and even considered staying overnight just to be adventurous.

I had, after careful planning, decided exactly where I wanted to sit in order to be able to see them up close and personal.

I even went as far as to rationalize the justification to dip into my carefully squirreled away new-camera-lens fund in order to be a part of something  that I found to be so incredible that it literally took my breath away.

I had my seat picked out and was ready to go forward with what would be a crowning moment in my life.

I haven’t slept much all week due mostly to the anticipation of today.  I was ready.  I was prepared.  I was going to do it.

I was going to see The Eagles, performing live and I could barely keep any other thought in my head.

Then reality slapped me in the face.

When the magic time came and the tickets officially went on sale, the sticker shock nearly sent me into a coma.

The ticket prices I had researched earlier in the week, which were high, but, as I said, I had rationalized the justification,  had risen over a hundred dollars.

WTH??

I found that I could get a ticket in the nosebleed section for a right arm and four of my total of six pints of blood.

If I were to be invited to dine with them and then become their personal photographer, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye … but let’s be real here.  I would be paying to watch them on video (because they would be too far away to see in person) and I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I’m not about to shell out a bundle of money, sacrificing a new lens for my camera, to see a video of something I can watch for free from home.

I didn’t want to be there, in the netherworld, the bowels, the forgotten area of the arena.  I knew where I wanted to be and if I couldn’t be where I wanted to be, then I wasn’t interested in paying an exorbitant price.

It is times like this that being independently wealthy would come in extremely handy.

I took a moment and thought of the price of the ticket and how much it would now take from my new-camera-lens fund.  The decision took about as long as the thought did.

I won’t be seeing The Eagles in concert because I want, more than to see Don Henley, to have a new lens for my camera.

And I can’t, at these ridiculous ticket prices, have both.

So, I will pass, with a huge pang of regret, on seeing The Eagles on, which is rumored, to be their last tour.

Sorry, Don, but the camera lens takes priority.

I have all the albums (vinyl, of course), many of the eight-tracks (if you don’t know what that is, don’t ask because I’m already in a foul mood), all of the cassettes, because that was the latest trend, most of the CD’s because I simply had to have them and every song that is currently available for download on Spotify.

I will most likely, knowing how I am, once the day approaches, regret my decision to fore-go the price of admission to an iconic concert by what is likely my all-time favorite music group, but when I have the new wide-angle lens for my camera, Don will be little more than a blip on my high definition sensor.

Priorities, and all that jazz.

Beemer, a sweet Great Pyrenees, shows his Hollywood

Taking it easy, literally …

Hotel California ... ok, really just the view from my front porch, but still ...

Hotel California … ok, really just the view from my front porch, but still …

Posts about Mother’s Day …

and how much we love and appreciate our mothers will likely be abundant.  My mother knows already how much I love and cherish her as I tell her every day.  My daughter tells me regularly that she loves me and shows it in a thousand beautiful little ways.

This post is, in a round-about way about Mother’s Day, and yet along a different vein altogether.

While for many, even those who have lost their mothers to death, Mother’s Day weekend is a time of tearful celebration.  It is a time to reflect on family, on love, on life itself.

But the celebratory spirit doesn’t reach everyone.

My heart is heavy tonight for those that I both know personally and those I simply know of, who have been unable to conceive a child.  A child that would be cherished above all else.  A child to complete the circle of life as far as they are concerned.

Imagine a day where children are celebrating their mothers,  mothers are celebrating their children and yet, for so many, there is no child to celebrate.

No hand print cards.

No artwork on the refrigerator.

No smells of talcum powder and baby shampoo.

Only an emptiness that threatens to consume them; mind, body and spirit.  A brokenness that soon leads to feelings of failure and inadequacy that fill each waking hour of every single day.   Knowing that they would give the last drop of blood in their body for a single moment of holding that tiny life, born of themselves, in their arms.

Imagine the anger and frustration, the anxiety, depression and psychological pain that comes from the anticipation followed by disappointment, month after year after decade until there is nothing left but a hopelessness that destroys everything good and pure in their lives.

It would, I imagine, be all-consuming and destructive on many levels.

Mother’s day, for them, must be like pouring salt in a wound, shattering an already broken heart.

Yes, my heart goes out to them and I am, even as I write this, crying openly for the hopes and fears that they harbor inside themselves.

I wish I could encourage them, hold them against my breast and tell them that everything will be ok.  But in their minds and hearts, everything is not ok.

So I will do the only thing I know to do … I will pray for peace, for hope, for the fulfillment of their dreams and the for the courage  to face whatever tomorrow may bring.  I believe, with everything in me, in the love of a faithful Heavenly Father and while I don’t always understand His ways, I trust him.

I know that such prayers are answered, for I have seen it with my own eyes, felt it with my own heart and rejoiced in the glory of it with my own spirit.

1John 14-15 ~ 14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 15 And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.

Hope is a good thing … and no good thing every dies.

blackandwhite_rainbow

Sleepless nights …

were made for blogging.  There is just something about being wide awake in the middle of the night that makes me want to write; makes me want to share things that mayhaps I wouldn’t share on a normal day.  I imagine many bloggers have an agenda that they follow religiously.  I have no agenda.  The filter between my brain and mouth fails with distressing regularity and ergo, the often off the wall, “what in the world was she thinking” blog posts become reality.  This night is no different from my life on a daily basis, a life that is filled with inconsistencies, confusions and ethereally beautiful moments.  Therein lies the problem; the differences are  not easily discerned until it is too late to turn back..

I have so many thoughts going through my mind right now that focusing on simply one is nearly impossible.  I am trying ardently to deal with, what I truly believe to be the answer to a prayer that I have been praying about.  The answer was not what I wanted to hear and not the outcome I had hoped for.  Nonetheless, I did ask for an answer and was given one.  So there you have it.  Question asked, answer given.  Whether or not I am pleased with the answer is irrelevant because it is not my will I am working to achieve, but my Father God’s.  He sees the big picture, the whole thing, all of the edges and I am left in the moment I am in at the  particular moment I am in.

That’s the thing about praying.  I ask for guidance and answers and, while I should be leaping with joy when I receive an answer from God, I find that sometimes, despite my best efforts, I question Him.  In this particular instance, I realize that I have been through a very similar scenario four times at this point and all four times, the outcome has been the same.  I am disturbed by this.  Not by God’s infinite wisdom, but that I am so predictable that I would take the same path, though with different beginnings, that lead to the exact same outcome.  One that offers no closure, but simply an abrupt end to what was thought to be a wonderful thing.

Life is confusing at times.  Though it has moments that are so beautiful, it hurts my  heart to look at them, I find that, for the most part, I am looking for answers to questions that have no answers.  It seems that the questions, more often than not, are riddles and I have never been good at riddles.  I threaten, in my  mind, to simply write people off and never try to correspond with them again, and then my conscious click in. There are times when I wish I didn’t have a conscience and could think and do whatever I wanted to whomever I wanted to do it to and not have a moment of guilt over it.  But were I to go there, then Satan would be as happy as a witch in a broom factory.

Throughout my life, I can think of four distinct relationships that have ended without closure.  Without reason or explanation.   Four distinct experiences that have, for reasons unknown, ended the same way.  I am certain that there is a lesson to be learned here, but obviously, I have not yet learned it.  I trust too much, share too much, give too much and then wonder why I am left standing, empty handed and alone, at the end of the day.  One would think that after so many experiences that end the same, there would be a red flag; a warning sign or some other type of blinking light that says “you don’t want to go there again”.  But there isn’t.

I am too trusting, too gullible, to easily manipulated.  I know this, but it doesn’t seem to help me learn from past experiences.  It is difficult, though, when each experience starts differently.  It is impossible to know, at the beginning, how it will end.  It doesn’t make being too trusting, too gullible and too easily manipulated any easier to swallow at the end of the day.  It leads to disappointment, as much in the deceiver as  in myself and adds layers to the wall that has to be rebuilt in order to preserve my sanity.

Friends come and go.  Some are much better at deceiving than others and, as I said earlier, being a gullible sort, I fall for the “we have so much in common”, “we are cut from the same cloth”, “I feel like I’ve known you forever” line.   I think that, in the future, I will be oblivious to this line of thinking.  I don’t like being used and am saddened that I have, once again, been simply a sounding board and ego booster that, once the course has been run, am nothing more than a  blast of wind on a summer day.

I wish I had the answers.  I wish I had the knowledge that is not revealed to me.  I live my life walking on faith and sometimes, the faith is misguided.  That is no-one’s fault but my own.  I am gullible and I do have a seeking heart.  That makes me an easy mark for those who’s only agenda is lifting themselves to a higher level.  I don’t hold it against them as they are doing what they do.  I hold it against myself for enabling them and allowing my thoughts and feelings to feed the fire and come to the realization that they thrive on this enabling and then forget me completely.

It is an humbling experience to learn that, even though I should know better, I still fall into the same traps of wanting to be a part of something important, something beautiful, something exceptional only to realize that I was only a stepping stone.

I want to be angry, but that is not in my nature.  I will cry and I will berate myself for being a fool, but know that, most likely, I will repeat the same cycle over and over again.  The complexity of my heart and mind is, in reality, simply too much for most people to comprehend and so they just pretend that I never existed.

I don’t mind it, overmuch, but with each transparency, I learn that I will likely never learn.  Such is the nature of my life.  But I’m ok with that.  I figure if I walk through a door with my eyes wide open then any surprises that come up are on me for, when I walked thorough the door, I did it willingly.  In my mind, I go to places unknown, with no stresses  or pain; no insecurities or moments of foolishness, but only the beauty of God’s Amazing Grace.  I am blessed even when I feel  more like I’m being punished.  No one can ever punish me as much as I punish myself and as long as I take it, it will continue.  Praying for the strength to break the cycle, even when it hurts.  I am me.  I am Gina.  I am not a doormat.  I will work each day to remind myself of these basic facts.

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