Birthday

My oldest daughter turns 13 tomorrow. I thought I would compile a wish list for her. These are things I hope she accomplihes in her life as well as things I hopes she avoids. 13 is only the beginning of some very tough years. She is very smart and very pretty. She is artistic and moody and likes rock music. I hope that the next few years are fun for her. I hope she makes it through her teenage years with as little pain as possible.

1)Graduate - This should be a given for her but I felt the need to put it out there.
2)Go to college - I am big on education and life long learning.
3)Live on your own - Find out who you are and what you believe.
4)Support yourself - Realizing that you can survive alone is a powerful thing
5)Find a friend - Have one person in life that knows you like no other.
6)Experience passion - Mental, physical, and emotional. Find what excites you and makes you feel alive.
7)Challenge yourself - Never settle and say "its good enough." Push your limit.
8)Be yourself - Dont let others decide who you are. Remember your beliefs.
9)Be strong - Physically, mentally and emotionally. You will be tested
10)Avoid drugs - Life is just hard and this just makes it harder
11)Love - Experience love in all forms. Be open to the oppurtunity to love
12)Validate those in your life - Remember to thank those who love and support you
13)Question authority - Power is not always righteous
14)Walk away - Know when something just wont work, is over or is bad for you.
15)Value yourself - Know that you are wonderful because you are.
16)Read - See the world through others. Relax and enjoy yourself.
17)Do something just for you - This will help keep you happy.

I am sure there are many more I can add. If you have a good one, add it.

To be less poetic I hope she does not marry until she knows herself. I am in my 30's and I think I finally know who I am and I think I just got to this point. I hope she finds the man that she loves completly and who loves her just as much. If she never finds this love, then I hope she never settles for less. I hope she never lets anyone beat or degrade her. I hope she has many experiences in life so she will know what makes her happy. I hope she travels and experiences other cultures and places. I hope no one in her high school class dies. This pain is great. I hope she finds one person who no matter what happens in life will be there for her. I hope she loves that person and realizes when she takes that person forgranted. I hope she knows how much her mother loves her and that no matter what, I am here.

Angry

Recently I have seen a new side to myself. I am not 100% happy about this side. Last weekend I was, angry. Everyone right now is saying, "so what you were angry." Why make a big deal about being angry. Everyone gets angry. To be honest that really is not true for me. I am not an angry person. I don’t fly off the handle and become irate. I have angry friends. Look at the Piper and Veteran. These are angry men. I am more of a live and let live type of person. Very little affects me. In fact, there has only been one person in my entire life who has every angered me so much that I yelled obscenities at him.
For a while I thought something was wrong with me because I don’t get angry. People around me seemed angry over things I would talk about that really did not upset me, to the same degree they upset everyone else. I began to think that I did not care and that I was just going through the motions of living without feeling anything. This was not the case. In fact I found I really enjoy some things lately that I have tried. I began to realize that I am a pretty even tempered type of person and I am just very tolerant.
Well all that changed last weekend. For the first time in my life I threw something in anger. I picked up a cell phone, not mine, and I threw it down my hall. It hit the far wall and I picked it up and put it back on the bureau. I am not sure why after 30 something years in my life I got angry enough to throw something. I don’t know why and I don’t like it either. I go to the gym daily and I run and swim for an hour. I found that this helps me get rid of stress in my life. This is how I express myself. I don’t throw things in anger.
This has really bothered me. I am not obsessing and I will let it go. I am sure it wont happen again because of the fact that it bothered me. I just have to wonder why.

Friendship

I have never been a good judge of character. This fact is reinforced in me each time I review the list of men I dated in my life. The list is not long but it is also not a who's who among the worlds greatest minds. I am very lucky for the good friends who I do have that can spot trouble a mile away. They are usually the ones who send up warning flares that this new person I am trying to befriend, is not the person I think they are. Some of my friends have even gone to extreme measures, like freezing me at a beach for hours, drilling into my head reasons why my new friend is not all that great. Iris Murdoch, a novelist, said, "There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship."

As I left work on Friday I thought of this saying and how much I missed those in my life who supply that kind of comfort. There are few people in life that we meet, that stay in your life. You meet people who are fun, for the moment. You meet those who help you realize a dream or a help you complete a task. You meet those who make you better than you were before you met them. You meet those who you think are great, only to realize that you have been mistaken. It is a rare moment when you find someone who "fits" with you. Yet this is the type of relationship that is taken for granted most often.

My main "problem" is that I believe that people's intentions are pure. I believe someone when they say that they want to get to know me. I believe the person who says that they like talking to me because I like current events, sports and politics. I don’t see the agenda they hold, when so many other people around me see it clearly. I invest myself and I open up, only to realize in the end that my friends around me were right all along.

Thanks to all of you for shouting loud enough so I could hear. Thanks to those who just said, "don’t do it."