Getting what you want, Part 5: stuckness

So, you may have read my past entries on getting what you want, inspired by some of my readers who asked me how it is I’m getting what I want.

Today I wanted to write about being stuck. What it looks like, why you’re stuck, and how to get out of stuckness. (yep, I believe I’ve just made up a word).

The best way to illustrate this is with real life stories of people I know. If you pay attention to peoples’ life stories, you can learn a lot without having to go through the tough part of personal experience. If you can read the situation well, you can apply what you learn to your life. If you’re just saying to yourself that you are just really glad you are not that loser, then you definitely arent getting it. If you’re saying to yourself something like this, then you’re getting it: “Ah, M doesnt realize that her boyfriend doesn’t really love her, look at how he treated her. That’s a good lesson for me to really watch how people treat me to see how they really feel about me, and not just listen to their words.” Hopefully you’ve got some compassion and understanding for M while you’re her friend.

So we have a friend, P, who gave us quite a lot of presents for the wedding. a nice bit of cash, some video games for our new Wii, and when we gave him our xbox (he really wanted it), he felt bad that we wouldnt take money for it, so he bought us a Flip video camera.

Sadly, P is in big time debt. Student loans that went into default, and he’s in pretty deep (I had that awful experience myself). So why the heck is he giving us so much? He’s got some trouble accepting gifts. And he’s generous to a fault. he literally bankrupts himself to give to others all the time, and really, he’s got to start saving his own life.

As much as we appreciate his gifts and generosity, we feel bad about it, too. It doesnt feel generous when we know he’s doing too much for us and everyone he knows. It doesnt feel like giving if he cant give to himself, as well.

Another friend, S, I love her dearly, but the poor girl can’t imagine what she wants. She says she just wants the basics: she wanted a husband, she didnt much care who he was or how compatible he was with her, she just wanted to be married. She was working 60 hours a week then, and she’s working 60 hours a week now, at the very same jobs, and she doesnt like them, she doesnt like her husband of 4 years now, not at all. they have nothing in common, nothing to talk about, and now she’s given up on her dream to have children.

For the life of her, she can’t even say what she wants, she doesnt want anything. but then she’ll say she doesnt have enough silverware, and its all mismatched. It sounds like a hint, but it’s not ever a clear statement about what she wants.

I just got a new set of silverware with K. Why? Because our set was serviceable, but we only had 4 of everything, and somewhere along the way we lost a couple spoons, so we had only three spoons and 3 soup spoons. we never had enough spoons for cooking and preparing food. So I wanted a real set of silverware, a pretty set, something that would work well with everyday dishes as well as our new china pattern. I thought about it, figured out what would work well for us, and we got it.

There’s something powerful about saying what you want and then DECIDING YOU DESERVE TO HAVE IT.

You might be defeating yourself like my dear friend E. Instead of being honest about what she was going through, E kept trying to have this perfect facade, she was being fake, and to keep up her fakeness, she was drinking. E is an alcoholic, and now she’s in recovery. Now she’s figuring out why she drank, what she was hiding from, and why she used alcohol to hide behind.

If you’re using drugs or alcohol or food (or lack of food) to deal with your issues, you cant use your energy to create what you want in life, because you’ll just create new layers of fakeness, if anything. You’ll need to be honest with yourself first, and you’ll need to clear out the excuses and mess.

I’ve probably mentioned G, but she’s such a great example because she took the symbolic to the literal. She wanted love in her life, but there was so much junk in her home that there was literally not enough room for her to move around (though she would insist her paths worked quite well for her – we call that denial) let alone anyone else in her life.

G had a lot of pain, sadly, so much so that she barricaded herself in her home, and kept people out.

And here’s my best example: me. I’m not just looking from the outside at someone, I know the ins and outs of what was going on with me.

For years, I dreamed of going to France. I talked about France, I looked at pictures of France, I had posters in my room of France ever since i was a girl. People would give me French styled gifts.

But I didnt get to go to France.

Why?

Years ago, flights cost thousands of dollars to Europe. Quite a prohibitive price for someone without a job. and so I just dreamed, but I didnt believe I could ever get there.

I remember going out with G, in fact, on new year’s day for brunch with a couple friends. and she asked us what our dreams were. And I said, I’ve always wanted to travel to France. that was my number one dream, I didnt even have to think for a minute about what I wanted. I knew it. And G said, so why dont you go? and it stunned me. go to France? How could I possibly go? I admitted that even though I had always wanted to go, somehow I just didnt think it was possible, like it couldnt really exist, it couldnt be a place I could reach in some normal way.

G looked at me incredulously. G grew up in Italy, so Europe wasnt a far off place to her, it was home. As someone who lives on the West coast of the United States, Europe is super far away from me.

I think that conversation began something for me, I began to really rethink my beliefs and to actually be honest with myself about how some part of me was thinking I couldnt go to France even though I very much wanted to go. And part of me started to think that was a ridiculous thing to believe. people went to France every day, and so could I.

So then something tragic and traumatic happened to me, and when I was struggling with the survival aftermath, I thought it wasnt worth surviving. I had a rough day and contemplated ending it all. And you know what I thought about, beyond all the awful people who had hurt me, and how I had no reason to live?

I thought about France.

Of all things, contemplating the end, and there’s France yet again.

I dont know why France meant so much, but it meant everything to me. And maybe that’s why I decided to live, because I decided then and there I was going to go to France. I didn’t know how, I didnt know when, but I knew for damn sure I was going to France. If I was going to live, that was the deal I was making with myself.

the deal I made was this: if I am going to live, I am going to make my life worth living. And the first step is: I am going to France somehow.

That was in September.

I started looking at flight tickets, and looking for any flight deals. When I saw an early December flight deal to London, and a connecting flight to Paris, I bought it.

I worked extra shifts at the gym, and took any babysitting jobs (I didnt have a regular job