Tired tired tired and sick sick sick

There are only so many mistakes you can watch someone make before you give up and go your own way. There are only so many times you can bail your friends out of sticky situations and only so many times you can deal with their garbage for them. There are special circumstances where you should be granted a “get out of helping a douche for free” card. There are moments when you need to look back on the situation as an outsider and say to yourself that you are worth more than to be the prince charming for someone else all the time. I was that person who always helped every living soul that needed help until I was also the person having panic attacks because my own life was falling apart and no one was helping me fix my problems. At the end of the day if you surround yourself with people that constantly expect you to solve their shitty lives then you are going to have friends who cant help you with your life because they cant even fix their own. You are what you eat people, if you choose to consume the bull that you are fed then expect that bull to follow through in every other inch of your life.

I say this quite often but obviously I don’t feel like it is said often enough: You need to take control of your own life. If you are constantly flinging responsibility around then you are going to forget who you are and what you are capable of. We need a world full of people that take responsibility for themselves. We need to live in a world where we do not need to look out for every one else’s actions but only our own. If you don’t have one needy friend then I have some bad news, the needy friend is you. There is one in every group just like there is one in every family. You need to let this person land on their own two feet, if they don’t land correctly they will stand up and learn that next time they should lift their arms before impact or bend their knees a little more. Life is all about learning, we start off as blank canvasses and slowly we add the lines and colour. If someone is constantly using your brushes and your paints, you are going to end up with nothing for your own canvas and they are going to end up being the person you were meant to become with all of the colours you were meant to have. It is about time we all started putting ourselves before everyone else just a little bit at a time. I am not saying that we should be completely selfish because this is not what being human is all about but don’t go to the extreme where you are so involved in fixing someone else that there is no energy or time left to fix yourself.

Maybe I am a bit of a hypocrite because there was a point in my life where everything was falling apart and all I needed was a helping hand that I never got from anyone else. I am not going to lie, this made me feel a little bit resentful of the people I chose to surround myself with but at the end of the day: digging myself out of that hole was more rewarding than if I had had a crutch helping me through everything. I think that we are given obstacles for a reason and if you choose to let the obstacles build up instead of taking them head on and fixing them then you cant expect anyone else to take on your problems either. We all need a helping hand every now and then but when I give you my hand, I don’t mean that you have rights to take my entire arm. Are we all adults now? Can we all take our life into our own hands and be our own salvation? We all have cause to make our lives better so why do we not start doing it for ourselves? Let us all be highly effective people and change our own lives for the better so that no one else has to drop their own issues and save us from drowning in our own crud.

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Do you like the person you’ve become?

I never understood how people could have a fight and instantaneously they hate each other. I have seen best friends torn apart over one little argument. Did you not realize that you didn’t agree on certain things when you became friends? How do you stay friends with someone for years and over one petty fight fuelled by jealousy and greed you decide that person is not worth being in your life anymore?

I have taken countless amounts of abuse from some people and I stick around because I think that I can’t possibly give up that easily, can I? I wonder how it is decided when a friendship ends? How is this designated as the end? I have two friends who had been friends for about 7 years, met in high school and never looked back, now they don’t talk and they refuse to suck up their pride and try to talk. It saddens me because I feel that the reason they fought was a silly reason to fight but females are silly and that is what we do. We yell when talking is enough. We hurt someone when accepting their confession of guilt is enough. We cry when walking away is enough.

The human race are a bunch of drama queens that extend their hands of friendship to every soul that they meet but withdraw their hand just as quickly when the going gets tough. Here is thought, why don’t you decide that this is a lifetime commitment when you make the connection with this person? Remain calm and quiet. Stick your feelers out there and decide whether this person is someone you can trust, it is not that hard. Here is another thought, when you have your first fight, don’t walk away. People do not get divorced over one fight; it is not that easy to let go of someone unless they never meant a thing to you in the first place. Why cant you just commit to making it work? I mean you don’t need to be their “everything”, you don’t need to be the be all and end all to this person, but if you cannot be nice, the least you could do is to not be ugly. If you cannot help their life in any way and you cannot enrich their being then by all means do not try. You also need to commit to not making anything worse, to not damaging them in any way and to not offering them empty promises.

Be a human being and realize that there are billions of us on this planet all fighting for the same thing. To be happy. If you aren’t happy then continue on your journey to be happy. If you are happy then find someone who isn’t and help him or her. If we were meant to be selfish then God would have put one person on this planet and only one. If we were meant to wreck all that we have then God would have left us with nothing. If we were meant to feel hate so easily then God would never have given us the ability to love. Yes, loving is hard, but hate ruins your soul and makes you just as tired. Loving someone is sometimes easier because it can be done from a distance, hate may start from a distance but it almost always ends up consuming you.

So step one, figure out if this new friendship is going to work for you. If not then move on quickly and quietly. If it does work for you then never let it go over something silly. If it doesn’t work for you then decide then and there that you will never cast a bad stone near them. You will just let them alone to be a human, like you, and find happiness somewhere else. If they are mean to you then accept the hurt and move on. Don’t assume that they need some hurt hurled back at them. You are going to inevitably ask yourself in twenty years, “Do you like the person you’ve become?” Do you really want that answer to be no?

When did everyone decide that settling was better?

It is like in the past five years of my life, humans have decided that being comfortable is better than being happy. I know of people who stay in a relationship because they don’t want to know what life is like for people who are alone. I don’t get it. I would rather be alone, a little bit sad and knowing that my life was going to be better. I would rather feel sorry for myself for a little while than be miserable in a relationship that is not working.

I understand that it is tough. I understand that you feel like you are going to enter the big wide world and not know where you fit or who will ever love you again. I understand that it is scary as all hell facing the fact that if it all ends that you will be alone but the truth is that we are never alone. You have a family, you have friends, you sometimes have the voices in your head and you have a million other strangers to meet in your lifetime. The world is getting fuller every single day. My friend read a statistic out loud the other day that 80% of the world has already met the person that they are going to marry by the time they are 16 years old. Well if this may be a bunch of bull but if this is the case, then 80% of us have no cause to worry and the other 20% need to be patient, it cant be long now right?

If all of your friends have boyfriends and you are scared to be alone then I have an important announcement for you: Your friends do not care if you are single or not. They only care that you stick around and sometimes go on outings with them. No one is going to consider you a leper because you have lost your ball and chain. If you are happy then they should be happy for you too. It will be gross being surrounded by love while you are throwing your “pity me” parties but at the end of the day we don’t all get to go through the same stages of life together. When you eventually find the love of your life, they may be married and trying to rekindle that old flame, they may even be alone where you once were and need the loving support of their friend who went through the same thing.

If you are scared because of financial implications, this is not a tough one, start making arrangements! Start finding that cheaper condo, start taking the bus or the train to save on fuel; you can buy fewer shoes so that you can afford your own furniture. You always have a way out, even if that way out is a less glamorous out than the life you are used to, it is still a way out so seize it! Some people have parents who will bail them out, some people have siblings who will bail them out and some people even have friends who will bail them out. If you are not a completely despicable person, there will always be someone willing to help you. If you happen to be a completely despicable person and no one will help you, there is this beautiful thing that comes with being an adult, it is called responsibility. You are responsible for your own life and you can take control and bail yourself out.

If you are staying in a relationship because you think that your partner cannot live without you; that is just insulting. Let them be alone, they might just surprise you. I know how hard it is to accept that maybe they will move on without you but this is the nature of the world. It moves on. It keeps spinning. We don’t all drop dead when a relationship ends.

I am the expert when it comes to staying in a relationship long past its due date and I can tell you right now: it never ended with me on top of the world. I stayed and got cheated on. I stayed and got heartbroken; even though I was so relieved it was finally over. I stayed even though I knew it was done, and then I got blindsided by him not wanting to stay anymore. If there is even an inkling of a feeling that it is not working in your favour anymore, then get the hell out. The only good thing that ever comes from something getting worse first before it got better is probably alcohol, antibiotics and cheese. Nothing else, ever! One day you are going to look back on your five year long relationship and say to yourself, “At two years I already knew this was a waste of my time, so why did I waste even more of my life?” and then you know what will happen? Your proverbial inner being will hang its head in shame and move on. Just like it would have three years before it will move on.

Yes being rejected is sad. Knowing that you failed at something is shameful. Being the lonely one again is an awful thought. But be brave! The best thing about a breakup is that it does not kill you, it teaches you what you never want to experience again. It teaches you what you will never do to another human being again. It teaches you how to hang onto certain things and let the less important things go. You are holding onto a bar that is being pulled away from you, the eventuality is that you are going to lose your grip and go flying. Retain your dignity, plant your feet firmly on the ground and let go. Just let go.

Single vs. Relationship

I have always been the girl in the relationship. There was a brief period when I was 20 years old when I did not have a boyfriend. When I say brief I mean that it was brief in relation to the 3-year relationship I had just ended. When I was twenty years old I took a break from relationships by being single for an entire year before I decided I was ready to give it a go again. In this time I saw my best friends, I partied with my single friends and I went to civilised dinners with my partnered friends. It is important to note that when I was single my two best friends were in very committed relationships. This being the case the times that I did see them, we would always include the boyfriend in on our plans.

This gives you some background information into why I am about to gripe in this post. I cannot stand the fact that none of my friends feel comfortable enough to go out with couples when they are single. No one cares that you are single. No one cares that you are alone. Half of us are jealous that you are a free spirit and do not have to factor anyone into your plans. When I was single I never looked at my friends and thought, “ah I want to be you”. I was just concentrating on being me and more importantly I was figuring out who “me” was exactly. I knew that the only way I was going to figure that out was to see as many people and do as many things as possible. No one is going to throw you a pity party because you are single, you should be loving the life that you are given.

In the time that I was single I figured out exactly how I did not want to be in my next relationship and exactly why my previous relationship had failed. In this time I learnt that I liked drinking whiskey and that I rather enjoyed playing 30 seconds in a big group of people. In this time I lived, laughed and loved more people than I ever would have if I were holed up in an apartment with my boyfriend. I did not avoid the people who were happily coupled up, I did not feel awkward spending a night with just one couple. Yes I was a third wheel but man how I loved spending time with my friends and that was the only thing that mattered to me.

I don’t understand why there are sides. Singles vs. Those in a relationship. We are all humans, we all enjoy the same things, and just because that boy and girl kiss occasionally it shouldn’t change how you feel about them as people. If it is that easy for you to write someone off because they have a boyfriend and you don’t, then they were never your friends in the first place. If you feel so uncomfortable around couples that it drives you to avoid them, then you are uncomfortable with yourself and not with the couple. Stop blaming your circumstances on the people who surround you and start taking ownership for your own actions. Try having a game night with only couples; they are only humans at the end of the day. It is really not that scary stepping out of your comfort zone and no one is ever going to make you feel uncomfortable, if they do, then they are not your friends.

I don’t want to feel like I cannot see my friend at my house because she is afraid that my boyfriend and I will make out in front of her. I am not twelve, I do not need to kiss my boyfriend all of the time and I am sure I can wait until you are safely driving yourself home. I would hate to think that if the roles were reversed, everything you think I would do now, is maybe what you would do to me. It all boils down to how afraid you are of being alone. How comfortable are you in your own skin? If you love yourself, you won’t mind that other people are in love with each other in front of you. I am not saying that I am condoning public displays of affection but just hanging out with a couple will not give you cooties.

Please ladies, I am sure that boys do not have the same issues, and this is because they think logically and not emotionally. Lets all just focus on our own being and not on everybody else’s.

You are angry? I am sorry I did not notice with the sparks of spit flying out of your mouth

I work in a restaurant in my spare time away from my proper day job and it always amazes me when I think about the type of people I come across. I have always been a waitress from the age of 16. I really do believe that it is the perfect environment to give someone skin as thick as a rhino’s. The restaurant I work in is fine dining and I wish I could say that it is more glamorous than any other restaurant but most of the time you get the same calibre of people as an ordinary family restaurant. You still get people booking for four adults and arriving with two children instead, you get people who get too drunk and cause scenes and you get people who have no idea how to behave in a public setting. I can tolerate all three of these types but there is one type that I cannot stand. We get a lot of this type. It is the person who complains about his steak and then rips the entire restaurant to shreds because his medium rare was not rare enough for his tastes.

This is why I have a problem with this person. They have no idea how it feels to be on the receiving end of that abuse. You want to say that my manager should not have the job he does and you want to say that my colleague is not a waitron he is a salesman then fine but the minute you start turning to other tables and asking them if they are having as bad a time as you are, that is when I would personally like to shove my foot in your smug mouth.

I do not know where and when humans started getting the idea that we are all entitled to make other beings feel less important than we are. I do not know when the activity of the day became a game of “bash the little person. “ Yes I am poorer than you, yes I am younger than you and yes I am working for you for the evening but the minute you make me feel like I do not matter when I have lovingly taken your order, when the chef has lovingly cooked it and when I have again lovingly brought it out to you, show me a little bit of love and do not mock the way I have put your plate down for you or that plate is sure to be in your lap next time. I do not come into work to be an idiot and by all means if you think that I am being an idiot then make it known, but in a mature and orderly manner, do not make me regret that I have a minute of patience left for people like you.

This does not just happen in restaurants. It happens in every day life. I get people who have so much rage in them and practice it when they are driving on the road. I have seen people yell at vagrants for asking for money. I have been called a “Jew” because I had no money to give. How did the world get to the point that ugliness is better than chivalry? Is it really easier to proverbially spit in someone’s face rather than smile and walk away with dignity and just never depend on that person again? Does it make you feel better to smack someone down instead of explaining why you are as upset as you are? I don’t deserve to be yelled at because your boss-hole yelled at you this morning, and I am sure you didn’t need to be yelled at by your boss-hole because his wife yelled at him on his way to work. Bad moods are so infectious, I can catch one in an instant, all I need is a spark to light the flame.

We all need to practice a little inch of tolerance and maybe then humans would be a great deal happier with their remaining days on Earth.

Its all about the cheese

I feel like I need to share a little pearl of wisdom that was passed on to me by my very generous uncle. I never see my uncle and we hardly talk and this is why it came as such a shock to me that when I recently took a trip up to Johannesburg to see my extended family, he could tell immediately that I was not happy with the way my life was going. He handed me a book and said, “Courtneigh, it will take you twenty minutes to read, and it will change your life.” I am not the type to pass up a good book so I was game before he said anything. I saw those dog eared pages flapping towards me and already my interest was piqued so to be told that the story would change my life made me all the more interested to get started.

The story is called, “Who moved my Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson. As my uncle told me, it changed my life. I am a firm believer that your mind-set is the key to how your life turns out and this book reaffirmed that fact for me. The book teaches you to always plan ahead. If you think that you are on the verge of getting bored of your job, then look for other opportunities. Our life is short, and it is getting shorter every day, we cannot afford to stay complacent because we are comfortable. I know people who are bored as sin with their friends, people who hate their jobs and people who cannot stand the place they live. I have news for you all: the world gets tinier every single day. You can move to another country, you can look for another job and you can find new friends, if your life is really not where you want it to be.

You are the only person who can make your life better. No one else has the capacity to or the interest to make your life better, unless the name of this person is The National lottery, in which case you have a close to non existent chance of that happening. This story is of four characters that are on the constant search for cheese. The cheese is a metaphor for happiness, love and money. The one pair of characters are mice and the other pair are tiny men. Sniff and Scurry (the mice) run on pure instinct. When they find cheese, they do not settle down and accept that their life is made but they keep their running shoes tied around their neck and hope they never will need to use the shoes. Hem and Haw have more emotions that drag them down and lead them to get comfortable and slack in their pursuit of cheese. They find one load of cheese and build their house near this cheese and leave later and later every morning to get to the cheese. Eventually the cheese runs out. Take a guess which pair are more adaptive to the situation? Sniff and Scurry put their running shoes and get the hell out of there; they need to find more cheese.

This story continues to follow Hem’s journey into thinking more like the mice and wanting to move on and find a better lot of cheese for himself. He eventually leaves stubborn Haw behind and finds himself in a massive cheese plant that is ten times better than the cheese he had before. This is all a metaphor on how most of the time change can only lead to good things. Personal growth is always something that is needed in life and we should not put it off because we don’t have the energy to find that little slice of happiness for ourselves.

This story lead me to start this blog, because I feel like I have so many thoughts in my head and not releasing them is an injustice to myself. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is an injustice to others but if someone gets an inch of entertainment from my musings then I am happy with that.

I have decided that any actions I need made in my life have got to come actively from me. There is no white knight that is going to swoop in and make me a princess. There is no “Competition of Life” that is going to name me as its next winner. I have to make myself a winner, I have to make myself happy and I have to make myself into the person I would want to know in this big unhappy and unjust world.

If you are in a rut and feel that you need a change I really would suggest that you track the book down. I am taking steps to be the change. When will you?

Just a simple letter

Dear Jude,

I met Mark before you. He was my friend for a very long time and I held him highly in my heart. I only ever wanted him to be happy because he was a good guy. He went on for a year that he wanted a girlfriend and nothing ever came from it. When he met you, I knew this was the beginning of happiness for him but I was scared of losing my friend to someone I did not know and therefore did not like. I still remember the first time I met you, he brought you to a pizza night at the Red Herring. I was possibly more nervous than you were, this day marked the day I might have to tell my friend that he has terrible taste in women. Luckily for everyone this didn’t happen. He was running late as usual but you quietly sat and waited for him to arrive. As soon as he did it was like both of you came alive. I have never liked a new girlfriend straight off the bat like I liked you. I knew you would fit in just fine and there would be no misgivings after that.

You made him happy for so long Jude, even though there were days at a time that he would dull you down completely. There were days when he infuriated you so much but you stayed. He has always been a good guy, a good friend but even I could see that what he was doing to you was not good. It made me hate him a little. Some days it even made me hate him a lot. I found myself fighting and fighting and I knew not for what but I think deep in my mind it was all for you. Someone had to fight for you, I think most days you were just too tired to fight for yourself.

When you ended it. I was heartbroken for you both. I knew that it was better for you but that didn’t make it any easier knowing I would see you less now. It didn’t make it less heart-breaking seeing the tearing apart of a union I thought would last forever. You had become more of a friend to me than he ever was. You had been there for tea dates and girls nights. You had always shown up with a smile. Even when it felt like your heart was being torn apart. When I needed a friend, you were there with your baking goods at the ready.

It has been a while now but when we speak about him I can still see the hurt in your eyes. I can almost feel the burn in my throat and the sinker in my heart when I am around you. I know you are still hurting. And I would give anything to take away that pain. I would give anything to take away the sad memories and replace them with only good ones. I wish you could see Jude, that you are amazing. You open your heart to everything with a pulse and you only stop loving them when they prove they are not worth your love. I wish that I could say Mark is worth your love. He isn’t. You are so much brighter than this world should allow for. There is too much good in you to be upset about one idiot. He has proved time and time again that he never deserved you in the first place. You are too kind to let him go. A girl should never cry over a man unless he is dead.

I don’t think you know, Jude, how important you are to this world. The world needs bright stars like you to keep it alive. You may think we are just friends Jude, but I swear some days, you saved me from sinking in an ocean of my own self pity. You are supportive, compassionate and full of life. If the world didn’t have people like you, it would fizzle out into darkness. You need to give yourself more credit. Some people cannot see the light in others even if it is dancing naked in front of their nose. He chose to ignore your light, he chose to stamp on it and turn away his eyes. This does not mean that the next boy will be the same. The next boy might match your light. I really hope he does. You are delightful and sweet. You leave an impact wherever you put your feet. So show those footprints dancing a little. Show those footprints doing a jig. You got rid of the dead weight that was stopping you from taking on the world.

You can be anything you want now. There will be no one that you have to think about first. There will be no one to hold you back Jude. We will salute you from the sideline and quietly say to ourselves, “I knew this day would come.” So start walking forward Jude, start dancing that little jig first if taking the step forward is too scary but just know that your future is so bright and I can already start to see the rays on your cheeks.

Love always,

Courtafairy

Better

People ceased to be human as soon as the Industrial revolution started. We adopted the mentality that being part of an assembly line was the only way to be productive. We started driving automobiles instead of using our feet and smelling the fresh air. We stopped thinking for ourselves and we chose to focus on simple processes handed down to us by the “big boss”. Bolt after bolt after bolt, we screw it in, we reach for the next one and on it goes. The fresh air was slowly tainted with the gasses of factories and we let it happen because fighting it was just too big a battle to take upon ourselves. We adopted the business mentality that everything needs to be bigger, faster and easier to manage. No more working in the farm to earn your keep, go out into that big wide world and find a gap in the market. Win the masses over with your revolutionary new gadget that will keep everyone in the now instead of the dreary past of actual hard work.

Electricity was the scariest thing to happen to all of us. If you stop to think about it now, what would we do without electricity? No television for entertainment, no oven or microwave to cook our processed food, no trains for a cheaper form of transport and no appliances to maintain our modern households. There would be no Internet, no globalisation and no light when it is so incredibly dark that all you could possibly want is an iota of vision. We would be lost without electricity. We might even be dark savages, more savage than we are now. I sometimes wonder if we all just have a predisposition to be savage no matter what advancements we make as a human race. Human beings have got darker as the night sky has got lighter. Lit up by the street lamps and the night owls working hard past their due time. We have to work harder for a good value of life but miss out on that value because we are too busy working. If we had never experience electricity or the digital age then there would really be no wondering but what if one day it all just disappears? We would be absolutely lost!

Picnic spots are replaced by shopping malls. Roads replace parks. Cars have replaced bicycles and horses. There is no common decency, only what rulebooks and street signs tell us is right. Our rules on dressing ourselves come from glossy magazines and television programmes. Our way of life is dictated by what is cool and what is not. We follow our chosen group around like sheep and have no will to think any different. I used to think that I would go to University and change the world, I went to University but the world changed me. I faded into the background like a wallflower because trying to stand out in a sea of people was just way too demanding on my psyche.

I often wonder what my life would be like had I chosen to lead a simpler life. What would I have chosen to be and what type of person would I be? Would I be content or would I yearn for the fast paced life of the city girl I am now? I look at the Buddhists and I think to myself, “Can I go there? Can I be like them?” I would choose to take a vow of silence. What peace it must be to never have to speak. What sweet relief it must be to never have to utter a word. To never have to think of things to say just because others feel awkward being silent. The people in this world who live the simpler lives: they are the real geniuses. They are content to wear a colourless robe and live with their own thoughts. They are the real heroes of the world. The ones who choose to live in peace without taking any fuels from this one and only home we have. What a world this would be if we gave it all up and went back to our roots, the people we would idolise would be of a completely different calibre. There would be no more living life bolt by bolt and task by task. We would just be. We would maybe even be better.