Birthdays

So many people today stop celebrating birthdays because it means that they are getting old.  I have never been one to care about my age, getting old is a fact of life..it's mandatory.  However a little over 2 years ago I was given pretty devastating news, I had cancer.  Not only did I have cancer, but it was in Stage 4, and involving 75% of my bone marrow.  To be honest, I was pretty scared.  But after hearing the success rate of the chemo, I felt a little better.  After just 2 chemo treatments, the lymph nodes that were so enlarged that they poked out through my skin, were shrinking.  I kept a journal while going through all of this and am hoping to compile the entries, plus a lot more into a book.

I learned a LOT about myself while going through all of this.  I learned that I was a whole LOT stronger than I ever thought that I could be.  Yes, there were times that I just wanted to sleep and never wake up, but what was the point in going through all of that if I did just that.  So I fought.

Celebrate birthdays...LIVE Life...stop to smell the roses (Unless, of course, you are allergic) but enjoy EACH AND EVERY DAY that you wake up and are still breathing.

We all have little sayings about life and living...but seriously...how many of you ACTUALLY do these things?  I live every day as if it were my last day on earth.  Don't take things in life too seriously...laugh at the stupid things.  But the biggest thing is...BE THANKFUL that you are healthy!  Sickness whether physical or mental is draining...I know this to be true.  But when you are told that you are literally knocking on death's door, you realize what is the most important to you.  For me that is my family and my friends.  I have an amazing set of friends, they stood by me going through chemo, they encouraged me when I was down.  And for the ones who I have met after being in remission, you all accepted me for who I am and NOT who people think that I probably should be.  I have actually been chastised because I laugh at things that probably shouldn't be funny.

I joke about the voices in my head...they aren't really there, I just find that to be hysterical.  I am not making fun of people who suffer from schizophrenia, that is NOT my intent.  But seriously, we all have that one little voice, called our conscience, that guides us through life.  I just find the humor in things, or at least I try.  

The biggest hurdle that I overcame was negativity.  Ya know, it's easy to be negative when one day you get into the shower and half of your hair is in the drain before you get out.  But I went to the best friend that I had, Ramona, and she turned me away from the mirror and shaved my head and ignored the tears in my eyes and treated me like a human being, not a sick person.  I love her dearly for that.  She has since cut my hair for me and yep, she is the reason it always looks good!!  (I will tell you where she works so you can go visit her and have her make you look great too.  Just remember, she can only work with what you have...she isn't a miracle worker...well maybe she is...she remembers where all 5 of my cowlicks are!  LOL  I love you Ramona!!!)

Like I say," Life, Laugh and Love!  Live every day as if it were your last!  Laugh at the stupid stuff!  And Love hard!  Love is a great healer as well"

Thanks for your time, your love, and your friendship!

Love to all,

~RaveynAngel~

Scars

Scars

Scars...everyone has at least one visible scar.  But what about the scars that you can’t see: the scars on your heart and your very soul?  Visible scars sometimes fade away with time, the others, they only fade when you are truly able to let go of the reasons they are there in the first place.

Everyone deals with these scars differently, regardless of their visibility.  There are creams out there to make the visible ones go away, but what if there is a positive reason for a scar?  I have a couple of visible scars that I will forever show off, like Merit Badges, the reason for this is because they are there for no other reason but to remind me of my battle for life.  Before I went  through chemo over a year ago (I know!  It so doesn’t seem like it has been that long!) I had a biopsy, this was how we found out what type of cancer I had, that left a 2 inch scar under my right arm.  Then they implanted my power port.  That left another 2 inch scar, this one right below my left collar bone and right above my heart.  When they were finally able to remove the port, they re-opened that scar so that I wouldn’t have another one.

The invisible scars are those left by trauma to our hearts and souls.  Some feel like they will always be there and never go away.  But they do, you just have to figure out how to help them heal and fade away.  My generation and even the generations before were brought up on the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.”  I am hear to tell you that that particular saying is so very wrong.  Bruises fade, bones heal, but hurtful words take a lifetime to get over, well, maybe not a lifetime, but a while.  It’s been a 10 years since I got out of a very abusive relationship, it wasn’t physical, just mental and verbal, and I am still healing those scars, but I am finding ways, every day to heal them and make that pain disappear.

I love to do the surveys on MySpace and every once in a while there will be a question about forgiveness, my standard answer is usually, “Forgiving is the easy part, forgetting is a whole other story.”  However, over the past year, I have learned that once you let go of past hurts, these scars do heal and they go away and this leaves you in a much happier place.  I still have scars that seem will never fade and once in a while, it feels as if they have re-opened and the hurt is there all over again.  These are the times that I feel completely alone, and don’t feel like I have control over my life.  But then I try to push the hurt to the back of my mind and they begin healing again.  Once I no longer think about that pain, and what caused it, that scar heals even more.  As we go through life, there will always be events that add more scars to our hearts and our souls, it is just up to us to help them heal. 

I have been very fortunate in that I have a very large support system.  My friends here on MySpace who “carried” me through my treatments, as well as my family, and friends who aren’t cyber-space friends.  Some of you I will never have the privilege of meeting in person and that in itself causes a small scar on my heart because that part of me would love to thank you face to face for your friendship and your support.

When it seems that you won’t ever be able to make a scar go away, stop and think about what is causing this scar to re-open and hurt all over again.  Put things into perspective, then begin whatever healing process works for you.  I had to learn to just breathe.  When things get to be too much, I stop and just breathe, I focus on the whole aspect of breathing and nothing else because without breathing, what are we?  We are nothing but a corpse.  It may not work for everyone, but it is like the old saying, “Take time to stop and smell the roses”.  Take time for yourself, it is important in the grand scheme of things.  We all need it in one way or another.

Love also helps to heal, whether it is the love of a significant other, a best friend, or the love of your family.  Love is the most powerful emotion that we, as humans, get to experience and I feel sorry for those who will never know the meaning of true love. 

Laughter, yet another thing to help the healing process.  I had to learn to laugh again.  I had let laughter leave my life and when I did laugh, it always seemed to me as if it were forced.  But now, I laugh freely and with all the gusto of life itself.

Love hard and completely, Laugh as if no one were listening, and Live...live life to its fullest because we never know when we will draw that final breath.  And breathe, breathe in the smells of the world good, bad or otherwise. 

Love to all,

~Raveyn

Technology "Rant"

Technology

Technology…it is what connects me with my readers, it connects me with my son, in New Mexico, my daughter in Louisiana, my daughter and son in law in Springfield, and my mom in Kansas as well as the rest of my family and friends who are all over the United States.  It makes my job so much easier, unless, of course, there are technical issues.  It is an amazing element in our lives.  We watch TV in HD; we can take a picture on a camera or cell phone and have it posted somewhere on the internet in mere moments.  We have access to movies, food, gifts, flowers, anything you could ever want or need right at your fingertips.

Yet, for all the good it does, and believe me, I love all that it does; technology is part of the reason for the fall of our society.  Okay, maybe that is a little melodramatic, but because of technology we have become lazy, fat and basically are reverting back to nothing but mindless blobs sitting on our couches.  Don’t get me wrong, I love having the internet, my cell phone, and my computer, but when you consider everything that you can do from the comfort of your couch, it almost boggles the mind.  You can order a pizza on your laptop, and watch it progress from an order, to the finished product being delivered and who is delivering it.  You can order a movie from your phone, laptop or desktop and have the instant gratification of watching it before you can even say the title out loud.  I was formulating this blog in my mind the other day when one of my co-workers made the following statement, “With this box, I don’t even have to get my fat ass off of my couch to get a movie, I can order it and watch it with a few clicks of my remote.”  This just added fuel to my already burning idea.

Because of technology, companies are being downsized.  There seems to be no more need for actual customer service.  If you call a company for any kind of assistance, 9 times out of 10, you will have to “push 1 for English” then proceed by punching in more numbers until you get the right selection, then you get to leave a voice mail on a machine and just hope that maybe a real person will eventually hear it.  While technology advances, we, as a society are accepting of the fact that it is putting people out of work.  CEO’s can pocket more money by replacing workers with machines, and unemployment goes up.  However, the unemployed can now go to the unemployment office, file his or her unemployment on a computer, look for work, on the computer, apply for a job, all without standing up, using the phone, or filling out an application the old fashioned way.  We have online job search companies.  Quite a few companies only accept online applications, what happened to being able to look at a potential applicant and getting a first impression that way?  Now days they look at your MySpace, or your Facebook profiles.  How is that relevant?  My Facebook profile is so completely opposite of my MySpace profile that if I were to apply somewhere that they rely on those profiles to make a judgment call, they would be thoroughly confused.  They are as opposite as black and white, good and evil, you get my drift.

When I was a kid, the majority of my time was spent outside, on my bike, climbing trees, hiking, using my imagination. (Oh, and I did just fine riding all over the countryside without a helmet!  We played kickball and didn’t have to worry about someone’s mom complaining that it was too dangerous…oops, that is a whole other rant altogether…sorry, back to the subject.)  A lot of the kids of this generation don’t know how to use their imaginations.  The ones who do are designing video games.  I have a nephew, who, by the way, I am very proud of, that I honestly worried that he would never do anything other than work at Sonic and play games on his PSP.  One day, he got a wild hair up his butt and enlisted in the Army.  Well, all of those years playing video games actually paid off.  He is now flying drones.  Like I said, I am very proud of him.  And Dom, if you happen to read this, believe me when I say this, “You did good!!!”

My first semester back in college was a real eye opener for me.  I bought a flash drive to keep things on.  I didn’t realize how handy that little bit of technology would be.  At one point, I had two classes that I had to do research in for papers that I was writing.  If I would have done it the old fashioned way, I would have had boxes of printed out pages.  I had over 600 pages of research for one paper, and a little over 350 for the other.  Lucky me, I had all of it on my flash drive.  All that information on a piece of “plastic” that was just a little bigger than the keys on my key ring.  I now have 4 of them and wouldn’t give them up for anything.  I can store pictures, this blog, music, and anything else on it that I want.  (Except for movies, none of the ones that I have are big enough. Lol)

I don’t want anyone to think that I hate technology, I just detest the results that it is having on our society, the laziness, the apathy to the fact that we are getting fat, lazy and apathetic.  We all need to power down, cut loose, and get off our asses every once in a while and actually remember what it is like to actually LIVE and not just read about living on the internet.  Even though I rarely go a day without checking my MySpace, Yahoo, or Facebook sites, I know that I can.  I’ve gone as much as 2 days without being on a computer, I’ve read, gotten outside and enjoyed the snow, and just reminded myself of simpler days before I tethered myself to my cell phone, computer and HD TV.

Again, technology is a wonderful thing, something I wouldn’t trade for the world, but there are times that I wish that I could get away from it…even for just a little while.

Thanks for reading and as always:

Love to all,

Raveyn