Questions

Finally here is my post about questions!

Questions are a part of our lives. When you meet someone for the first time you ask them their name and general questions to determine the type of person they are. When you meet someone that you know, generally you greet them and then proceed to ask how they are. Jordy in his first year of school was actively encouraged to ask as many questions as he wanted to stimulate "his imagination" and "the learning mind". The philosophy was “A good learner will ask many questions”.

As part of my job as a Senior Business Systems Analysts I need to ask all sorts of questions, in order to help my clients understand their requirements and to help my developers understand the constraints of the system design. There is an art to asking questions and knowing what the "right" questions to ask. I know that I could walk into any Business that needs help and by asking questions I will be able to determine in a short amount time what their requirements are. This is why I love my job and why I am brilliant at what I do. (I recently received this feedback from a senior executive of my client “Maria is brilliant” so no more doubts Mari!).

When I went to visit Lj, we catching up and because it had been a while I started asking questions and jumping around topics, I was trying to find out as much as possible to quickly get up to speed. Her husband (Andrew) was also there and contributed to the conversation, Andrew says "Maria, you are asking too many questions and getting ahead of yourself" My response to that was "Andrew you know right that you are talking to a BSA. You say one thing and automatically I have multiple questions jumping around in my head". It was all said in jest but it got me thinking.

Another close Indian friend of mine Mayank is getting used to my questions. We caught up a few months ago and I was asking general questions. I said "I know too many questions". His reply was "In 2 minutes you have asked 10 already". Ambar has accused me of constantly questioning him, his motives and asking him to justify his actions. It seems as though to Ambar I was asking him the same question over and over. Perhaps he is right, perhaps I am too curious and my questions come across as accusations. I don't know. (Now I am questioning myself!)

So when does questions turn into interrogation?

I don't ask to annoy people, I ask to understand and I ask because I care. My intentions are never sinister, they are from a place deep within to learn and of curiosity. They are innocent even.

I also wonder if subconsciously I ask questions, (OK I’ll admit a lot of questions) to deflect the attention from me. In all my past friendships I never showed anyone my true self. I was always able to successfully deflect any attention from me to them. Yet on the other hand I also craved some attention and wanted people to ask about me. I don't openly share my deep thoughts and feelings. I don't share my hopes and fears. I don't give that information away freely. I'm never asked either, but I want to be.  Complicated I know!

Ambar has told me over and over to just share and don’t wait to be asked and my response has always been, "why don't you ask". Ahh there it is the accusation that he was talking about! My reasoning was if he cared he would ask. I care and therefore I ask. It is not easy for me to just come out and share, I have the fear that what I want to share is not important enough or not interesting enough for people to care about.  My thinking is, if I was important and if they did care, they would ask. Perhaps here I am wrong again. Also I felt that Ambar was being lazy to ask, simply because he doesn’t like to think, he expects me to share unconditionally without being prompted and yet I am waiting for him to show an interest and ask.

There have been times where I really wanted to share, but didn’t really know how to and was waiting for him to show an interest and ask about me, my life and about the kids.  Yet when the questions didn’t come I would get upset and feel as though I was no longer important enough to care and ask.  In the beginning of our friendship he would ask all sorts of things as we were navigating through the “newness” of this friendship.

Well this was not the intention of this post.  I will be honest I wanted to prove to Ambar that I was right the questions were correct and I was in the right.  I think now that perhaps I need to spend more time in reflection. This is exactly why I love to blog, as I start out thinking about a post and just let it all out on paper (or the web) and BAM! There is a realisation a truth is found! How cool is that!

Whilst it is true that I ask because I care, I have realised that I also ask questions to deflect all attention from me. Do I use my questions to hide? Yes I think I do.

Why do I want to hide?  Perhaps it is because I am scared of being rejected, that if I do just share to the world it will not be interesting enough or important enough.  Perhaps I don’t want to let people in.  Or perhaps I just don’t know!

Even though I don’t feel very good about myself, because I have realised that I have been treating my friends wrongly and yes I have failed! As I have realised that I do indeed hide behind my questions, I can now work at trying to change this and reduce the fear and uncertainty and learn to share. 

How do I start sharing, when I don’t know how?

Perhaps I just need to start simple and when I want to share I just don’t wait for people to ask, I just give the information freely.  I don’t know!!

"Pass" or "Fail"

I have been reflecting on my friendship with Ambar and I can’t help feel as though I have failed completely with this friendship.  I believe that I have failed big time.

I opened myself to him like I have not before with anyone outside my family. It was beautiful in the beginning, when we spent physical time together all my doubts and all my fears disappeared, they didn’t matter.  We could be speaking about anything and whatever was bothering me would just dissipate.

Our problem was that we rarely saw each other as work got in the way so most of our contact was digitally based.  Text and instant messages was our main form of contact and it was 24/7.  No matter what time of the night or day if Ambar was awake and I would text, he would reply.  But I craved more, I needed to see him be in his company, this was never important for him.

I knew that as soon as I would "see" him, all my problems, concerns would go.  They did, evertime I finally convinced him to spend sometime with me, at the end of the conversation I would feel refreshed and my concerns would go.  I even came to some significant realisations within his company, this is what he did for me. The unconditional support was what helped along my path last year.  There is no turning back time, but I just wished he listened to me when I told him "Seeing" him was very important to me.

Ambar will be the first to say that there is no need to analyse the friendship because it is still there, however this is who I am, it is why I am brilliant at my job.

I had this overwhelming feeling on the train ride this morning that when my judgement day comes and I am judged for my life, this friendship and the way it ended when he returned home would be a failure and it will be a black mark against me.  I truly believed that I was the one to heal him that was my purpose to heal him, through the love of a great friend.  I know that I have failed and I failed royally because I was not good enough in this life.

 I was recently asked if I will allow myself to have another “Ambar” in my life and I know that I was blessed the first time, I also know that I will never allow my true self to be seen.  My glory will not be witnessed again.  I felt rejected and I also feel like a failure.  I also hate myself for what I did to this friendship, I ruined it and I pushed too far. I felt that I had a "right" because it was my belief that we were meant to be friends for life. 

Perhaps with time I will feel better, all I know right now is that what happened continues to consume my mind.  It took me 15 years to get over the last time I was showing someone my glorry. I have many fears and many doubts and it is all related to Goal number 3.

Check In

It is time to check in with my goals:

1.    Financial stability

I had set out a number of short term things with my list and I can say that I have reduced the amount of Take Away we eat and I have reduced our grocery bill.

Already next week I have plans to take lunch into work on Monday.

So it is a start and I am surprised that I have actually achieved some things!!

2.    To nurture the friendships I have in order to ensure that they are life long

Again I have started to work on shifting this around for me.

I caught up with Lj last week, it was a short visit to her house but it was good and it was me that initiated the contact.

My kinesiologist suggests that I utilise my calendar on my phone to remind myself to call friends or book in time.  This is one thing that I will try to work on in this month.

3.    To remove the remaining doubts I have with regards to worthiness of friendships

The universe helped with this Goal.  Ambarish has gone home, and with him leaving it has removed the “arguments”.

“Always be true to myself”.  I am not sure if this is something that I am doing but I have culled a lot of friendships from Facebook.  A lot of people that never comment and never “like” the photos and links I share, yet they know all about what I post.  Seemed weird to me and I have decided to separate work from home.  There are only a very select few that I work with that I will keep as friends on Facebook.  But most of my work colleagues will be added to LinkedIn.

 I have “unfriended” Ambarish also, not to hurt him.  I want to understand what our friendship will be like now that he is back in India, until I believe that it will be as strong and as cherished as before then it is best that I keep things professional. At this stage I still have a lot of doubts that I am important to him, that is the hurdle I am trying to work through. It is a simple thing that I need help with from Ambar, perhaps it is simple to me but not so with him. I am working though on this doubt. 

I am not testing him; actually he has sent me a few emails.  But I don’t want to know about his life on Facebook, I want to know about his life before he posts anything, like he did before.

4.  To respect myself

Well this has not really moved and I have not done much on this front.  I have thought a lot about working from home once a week and am really determined to push this, for myself and for Jordy.

The last time I booked in me time, it was a disaster; my husband would not allow me to go into the CBD to take photos with my camera by myself.  I suggested that I go with Ambar as he had a similar camera to mine.  DISASTER struck and it was cancelled, arguments arguments and more arguments.  Daniela my kiensiologist will not be happy that yet again my “me” time fell through, I have lost count as to how many times that this has occurred.

5.    To be healthy and happy with my weight

I have started reading “Freedom from PCOS: 3 Proven Steps to Naturally Overcome Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome and Insulin Resistance” and whilst I haven’t finished it yet, the author has already lost me.  I am a full time working woman with three children, I will not be able to do the amount of exercise that she is recommending for people like me to “reverse” my PCOS.

I will persevere with the book as I am very interested in reading about the food back of the steps she has mentioned.

I did however recently acquired the Water Aerobics class schedules from two of the swimming pools near me.  I loved water aerobics before I had Jordy, I loved how I was able to work myself into a sweat and still not have the impact to my joints.  It is a gentler form of exercise but it is much better than what I am doing now; which is nothing!

I know that once I make the first step into water aerobics then I will have really started my journey to becoming happy and healthy about my weight.

OH I almost forgot and this is big.  I used to drink a large amount of Coke then dropped to two cans per day instead of two 600ml bottles.  I have now dropped to one can every two days. We don’t have any in the house and we will not be buying it.  I only had the cans at my mothers with dinner on Thursday and then today during lunch.

But what is really big is that I have started drinking more water and have a water buddy at work.  She too is attempting to drink more water and without the coke at lunch I am easily able to drink 2 litters a day.  The test is when I am at home, but I am determined to keep this up.

This is all linked, when I start taking lunch into work then I will have the money for the water aerobics class, I want to reduce the amount of spending as per my first goal. So when I take lunch in, I am working on goal 1. It means I can go to water aerobics which means I am working on goals 4 and 5.

The End?

Last week was a tough week for me. Friday the 15th of Feb 2013 will always be remembered as a day that I said goodbye to my best Friend. It was unavoidable; I always knew that one day soon Ambarish would be going back to India, with no plans of returning.

I have never had to say goodbye with the knowledge that our friendship was over. Or that this chapter was closed. Tough, devastation and pain are words that come to mind to try to describe what I was feeling, but they don't do my heart any justice. Ambar will say that the friendship will always be there but what he doesn't understand is that it will never be the same again and that is what I am grieving for.

I have said many goodbyes in my life. All my extended family live in Hungary and every time we have visited, there is always excitement before my arrival. The time I spend with my Aunties, cousins have always been cherished. When we see each other it is always time spent getting to know the person again and it feels like I just saw them a week before instead of years.

When I have left Hungary, there are always teary farewells. I have left prices of my heart all over Hungary. On arriving back in Australia there are attempts to keep in touch with regular mail and phone calls. But that soon dies off, life gets in the way. No matter how much both sided attempt to keep in touch, it seems to end the same, we lose contact.

I love my family, aunties, uncles and cousins. But I rarely hear from them. Facebook helps but it is fake. People only post what they want to "show" the world, they don't post everything that is happening. So I know what it is like to say goodbye and saying Goodbye is never easy.

So Ambar, whilst I agree the friendship may remain it will never ever be the same as it was. The same intimacy will be gone. We will both "try" to keep in touch, but we can't stop life getting in the way. You will forget me; we will simply stop telling each other everything like we did whilst you were here.

Our friendship was a one of a kind, a rarity that I am blessed to have found even for a short time. But it was with an extremely saddened heart that I watched you walk away.  The whole day I was fighting back the tears.

To make matters worse there were so many arguments occurring between Ambar and I that I never got to have the closure and memories that I wanted. All the plans we had discussed, nothing came together. We did not leave each other on good terms.

The blind faith that nothing will change kills me. It is day 5 of his departure and I have not even heard from him. It was my twins 4th Birthday on Monday and no contact. This would be normal right? Not for us, the amount of contact we had was very intense. I had grown used to telling him everything as it happened. Now I know that I won’t, as I don't want to bother him with trivial things.

It already is different; I am not saying that different is bad. In this case it is a relief. The intimacy and intensity was getting too much. The energy going into the friendship in the end was not very positive. We argued every day all day. I mean over 150+ message a day all arguments.

I will miss you Ambar and I pray that our friendships moves onto the next chapter and we each “work” at ensure that this beautiful connection we have is not lost.

My new mantra

You are worthy because you were born, you alone are enough.

This is one of the messages I received from Oprah’s last TV show and until I believe it I will be saying it to myself over and over again.

This will become my mantra…

"You are worthy because you were born, you alone are enough"
"You are worthy because you were born, you alone are enough"
"You are worthy....."