It Takes All Kinds

I think sometimes It’s amazing the way the human mind works… how very differently it’s wired in all of us. If it wasn’t, we would all share the same moral values, the same taste in food, music, and the same taste in people. We all look different, unless you have a twin, and even then, there’s always SOMETHING that people close enough to you could recognize right off the bat as a difference. - so how does that work? If we were all wired the same we’d all somehow have to look the same too.

How do some people get so frustrated because others don’t believe or think the same way they do? Instead of trying to stop and see the other person’s side of it, people just jump to their conclusions and stick to them. If it is something we don’t agree with, why are we so quick to throw out slurs to make the other person appear “bad” when we ourselves are not without imperfections?

I am not perfect. I am only human. I will make mistakes with my kids, I’ll make mistakes in my relationships, at my future career, and with my family and friends. I will try my best to recognize those mistakes, apologize if needed, learn from them, and move on. Is it wrong that I expect the same from others around me? Yes. Because we are not all built the same. It takes all kinds of people to make this world work. If we didn’t have people who thought differently we’d still be figuring out how to light fire…

It takes brilliant minds, ignorant minds and everything in between to make up the human race. Beautiful people, not so beautiful people, rich, poor… and the list goes on. But we all have one thing in common. The hearts, minds and blood that are in our bodies, it’s all made up of the same things. Our bones will break if hit hard enough, we’ll bleed if we’re cut. We know what it feels like to love.. In one way shape of form or another, and although some of us deny it we know what it feels like to hate.

I guess the point to this post is this, let thee who is without sin cast the first stone. Judge not, lest ye be judged. And so on and so forth. I sometimes claim to be open minded, and for the most part I am… I don’t mean I “agree” with a lot of people’s choices, but I’m usually pretty good at seeing their sides of the coin as well as my own. But, on some parts, I am completely closed off. I don’t get FULL on racism.. I understand being … uncomfortable with something or someone that’s different than you are, but the hate and ugliness I do not understand. I don’t get or understand a woman throwing a newborn child, dead OR alive in the trashcan. - I could say I might understand if she’s scared, but those aren’t the women I am talking about, I’m talking about the ones who do it without a second thought... That’s another thing I don’t understand.

But, I guess it's like I said, it takes all kinds. -

My love.

You know, I have been trying to refrain from talking about things that are too personal, things that are going on in my life right now. This morning is the morning I open up a little bit more.

I have been in this relationship with this really great guy, for about three and a half years... we've known each other for four. We have had a really hard year this last year, financially, emotionally, physically, mentally... we've done a good job at taking it out on each other. I think it's done two things, one... made me more aware of my own strength as a woman, and two... made me appreciate the little things.

We have been getting along a lot better, we have bumps in the road as with every relationship... but things are ironing themselves out. I pray and hope everyday we work things out and make this last because I love him with everything I have. I've made mistakes in my past that allowed me to let stuff slip through my fingers... I am trying my damnedest not to make that same mistake.

My man is a hard worker. Everything he does, he does with all he has... whether it's loving, fighting, working, being a dad, a son, a friend... There's one thing I've noticed. He's always there for people when they need him, even when they dont deserve it.

We have two beautiful, sweet sons together, and I'll always love him for giving me the gift of being a mother twice over. I know I've been mad at him for a long time... maybe because I felt like a failure myself. We were struggling and I felt like all I could do was watch us drown.

I have made the conscience decision from this point on to love him no matter what comes. I'll stand beside him, behind him and in front of him at any given point--- even when he doesnt do the same for me. We can't both be the "all or nothing" person in the relationship.. someone has to give a little bit... and since I think he gave a lot in the begining.... its not too much to ask for me to give a little bit myself.

We may fight and disagree about things.... but i'll be loving him while we do... and when we're done I'll make sure to let him know just how much I do love him.

I love you Sonny Ray Mays.

What's in a Name?

When I was a little girl, my kindergarten teacher insisted my name was Debra. Well I blew up on her. My name was Debralee… DEBRA was my mom’s name! I think I even cried… Why didn’t she understand?! Other names I went by, were Houston, my last name, Gizmo, by my cousin’s man, and when I was eleven they named me Shy Girl. When I was thirteen was the first time anyone ever shortened my first name and it kind of fit me. I was being introduced to this guy, he called me Beverly (it happens a lot) and I said, “No, Deb-ra Lee”… and he said… oh that’s a cool name… can I call you D’Lee… lol and that’s how D’Lee came about…

I often find myself meeting someone whose names don’t really fit them, and I wonder what’s in a name? How does it “fit” you? How does a handsome man with a perfect body get a name like Bob? Bob is a short fat balding mans name (I’m just saying… look at it… it’s a short fat name ha-ha). When I chose the names of my children, was I also filling in the destiny of who they will become? What will their friends call them; will those be the names they stick to when they are grown? Will Gabriel ultimately choose to be called Nicholas? Will he hate that he has three names? I don’t know what got me thinking about that… Maybe because my friend recently told me if I had another child soon it would be a boy. Another boy? What would I name another boy, I gave my sons the best names I could come up with dang it lol. So I came up with Domenic Angelo Nathaniel Mays. I like it. What do you think? I think Domenic goes well with Cody and Gabriel. I am hoping Gabriel will hate being called Gabe as much as I didn’t like being called by my mother’s name. I really don’t like Gabe lol. But he’s becoming a little Gabe. He’s growing up, and has this “I rule, you drool” persona lol. Cody reminds me of a couple Cody’s I’ve known.. A little clumsy, sheepish, smiley, and just easily puts a smile on the face of most people he knows.

Does choosing a name like George, John or Thomas make a child more likely to have a better easier life? Will it make them smarter, more career oriented? Maybe they’d become little politicians.

I guess in the end, I just keep coming back to the thought.. What is in a name?…

　

Hope.

I talk to my friends about their relationships, and they all open up to me. I try to keep my mouth shut, but the older I get, the harder it gets. If he ain't worth a damn I'm more likely to tell you nowadays. I used to sit there and listen to my girls while they'd pour their hearts out to me, but after going through my own heartaches I've come to this conclusion.

Love is nothing but a Hope in our heart. If we love someone, no matter how bad it gets, we just keep hoping it'll change. I mean, yeah, some of us get up and walk away.. but after how many battles.. how many arguments? how many "one last chances"? How many excuses do we have to make up for our significant other before we realize that we're making up the excuses, and accepting them before they even come through the door...

How can we watch the clock, knowing he's out with someone else in our hearts, and when his lies come pouring out at 4am about where he was, we sigh with relief. We know if we push to hard the cracks will show so we hug them and kiss them, and when they reject our move for more... we accept the excuses of them being tired.... sore... even though we know its lies.

How can we feel the burn of his hand across our cheeks and not want to run in the other direction? how come some of us cling harder... try harder to make them see it doesn't have to be that way... hope for the exception, pray for his love to return?

When he wraps his hand around your neck and slams you against the wall...will you walk away then? Or will you beg HIS forgiveness instead? Will you tell him how sorry you were to make him mad, hurt him... when he reaches back to hit you will you flinch?

When you know his alcoholism is not going to end... and his drug use is serious... and he will never chose ur over his addictions... will u stand beside him or walk away? Love is Hope. Hope is Love. Everything we expect out of love is merely a simple hope... i hope he never cheats on me, beats on me, leaves me for another woman, decides to put the bottle down, asks me to marry him.... i hope he stops leaving me lonely.. i hope it changes soon.... and eventually when our love is spent.... we walk away.. do we take hope with us? after being broken and undone so many ways... do we continue to hope, love.. have faith in another person?

Mothers.

I am part of a website, I'll leave the name of it off this post. Its a website surrouding mothers and their everyday lives. They have every walk of life you can think of on there. The website has been helpful, entertaining and generally all around great to have since I've become a mother. I noticed something on that website and it got me thinking:

we're all parents.. i mean i think for the most part we're all on here with a purpose..

to figure out in one way or another how to be better moms...

to vent on here so we dont vent on our families as much. if that means Susie Q learns that she was supposed to keep her kid in a RR seat til age 1, awesome! .. if it means Jackie O. learns that she's not the only one in the world who wants to pull her hair out on a daily basia even better!

Some of us come on here to teach other parents something.. whether it's a woman of six telling a new mom "hunny it's colic, just put him on the dryer" or a younger mom telling an older mom "well it's not exactly a fashion fauxpas (sp?) hehe to wear stripes and plaid together anymore." lmao.. something as simple as that..

I get that we're not all going to agree on everything... I even get the entertainment of the drama of seeing forty women fight over who's right and wrong about a subject. What I dont get, all bs aside..

is how any one of us could think we are perfect? I dont care if your kid went to harvard, stayed celebate til they were 24 and married, your child might be holding secrets from you because they never felt like destroying your perfect little image of them.

I make a lot of mistakes, I have two sons, but they are toddlers, so I am a relatively new mom. What I learn works for baby number one never works with baby number two.. they're are two completely different personalities. everything from discipline to when i introduced baby food...walking, how and when they teethed, talking and now potty training.. ---- even health wise.. Tylenol worked to get ds1s fever down, ibuprofen works better for ds2 (examples). So I have to be two different kinds of parent to my sons... so i dont get how anyone of you can think that YOUR way is so right for EVERY other kid on here.... when one way is clearly not even the case in my one household? :-/

It's Been Nine Years. Dedicated To Mercedes Talamante

It’s going on nine years…

It’s going on nine years now and the pain, it doesn’t fade…

I try to pretend like I’ve moved on but it still cuts me like a blade…

I still hear the cries of your family as they called out your name…

I still see myself in the corner trying so hard to keep it contained…

I still get a knot every time I remember the day I was told…

That you were gone and I’d never have you again to hold…

I avoid the city in which we grew up and became such good friends…

I pretend I’m angry at you, when all I want is for this to end…

The dreams still come, but your face is hidden in the shadows now…

You and I are always running from the darkness… But it always catches you somehow…

I feel so lost inside because I always knew…

That no matter what happened I could always depend on you…

So much has changed… nine years is a long time…

But I still wish today that you were by my side…

There’s so much I would confide in you, and you alone…

So much of my heart has turned into cold, isolated stone…

No one knows me like you did, Mercedes, no one ever will…

I’ll never forget that moment I’d heard that you were killed…

　

It’s going on nine years now, and I just wanted you to know…

You’ve never left my heart, even though I don’t let it show…

You’re always on my mind; I can’t let you go, even though I’ve tried…

I walked away from everything, and pushed it deep down inside…

Because for me, I guess it was easier to pretend…

That you were mad at me, than to think your life had come to an end…

Debralee Houston

July 16, 2010

My Cody.

My son loves to walk around with things on his head… buckets, boxes, backpacks large t-shirts. He loves to stumble around and thinks it’s hilarious when he falls down. He loves getting into everything and anything he can get his hands on… as long as it’s something he’s not supposed to be touching he’s just too happy. He’s fifteen months old. He has these huge beautiful eyes that show his emotions clearly.. The kind of eyes that will tell on him when he’s grown up enough to tell fibs. He has long eyelashes that’d make any woman envious.. Including his own mama haha. He loves to talk on the phone.. Especially when no one’s there. He can just babble away forever.

When a song with a good beat to it comes on he starts to wiggle his body and his head all at the same time in an attempt to dance and most often times he falls down because he’s so unbalanced. He loves veggies more than his big brother, tomatoes seem to be a big hit with him.

He’s a sweetheart. He loves kissing and hugging his big brother.. I don’t think anyone brings a bigger smile to his face than Gabriel… although Cody is almost always smiling. Even when he was sick as an infant he always had a smile on his face. He truly is an inspiration. When Nurses were holding him down and messing up his little veins because they didn’t know how to put a needle into a 4 month old, he’d be screaming his butt off.. And as soon as he calmed down just a little…. He would smile at me through his tears.. That was the most heartbreaking thing for me. To see he still had a smile on his face, despite those stupid nurses and those stupid doctors.

Cody Ray Has Been Such a Joy in my life… I don’t think I could ever be more happy a mother than with the two little rascals I’ve been blessed with.

S.A.D. - Do you know someone who lives with this?

Social Anxiety Disorder

I have lived with this my entire life to the eighteenth degree. My life and lives of those around me have been affected by it. My mom was always having to make excuses for me being “rude”…. when the truth is I had mini panic attacks when I met someone new. Sometimes it just embarrassed her, other times it straight out pissed her off. She’s learned that when it comes to me, it’s best to not force the issue.

My friends, the only two friends I had my entire adolescence were family friends, daughters of friends my mom had since before I as born. And even they were not entirely unaffected by my disorder. Mercedes was a great friend, she would come all the way to my house on the city bus just to go with me somewhere if I needed to go, because she knew I was scared, and she never really questioned why… I miss her a lot.

When I moved out for the first time I was 19 or 20 years old. I would literally go without rather than walk the three blocks to the grocery store by myself. I doubt that even if at that time I’d had a vehicle that I would have went by myself. My live in boyfriend at the time became so fed up with my fears of doing anything on my own and driving that he eventually broke up with me. - I’m sure that wasn’t the ONLY reason, but in the end he did say he wanted someone more independent than I.

He and a lot of his family members could never understand why it was so hard for me to be open and openly friendly to everyone. Even though my job required me to deal with people on the phone and in person all day everyday, as soon as I got home I was a wreck when it came to dealing with people. I was fed up with it as much as he was. I wanted friends of my own, I wanted a life of my own...

When I was twenty three, I got this gusto I’d never quite had before, I moved to Texas all by myself. I got my own apartment, my first car, transferred my job. Everything was entirely and completely up to me. That was the first time I truly felt like Id had wings.

Then I met someone new and after a year of dating off and on, we moved in together. I was seven months pregnant with my first son. At first I carried those wings over into my new relationship. But we were both so happy that we loved doing things together. Eventually I became used to it, and without realizing it the Anxiety had settled in slowly, like a delayed poison. And Now here I set, and it seems that all that hard work I’d built up in my early twenties trying to be an independent woman has gone out the window. I know how to drive but the very thought sends me into a panic. I honestly would RATHER go to the store by myself in theory it’d be a lot easier for me… but the thought honestly makes me a little more than nauseated.

I don’t know how to deal with it, and I fear it is now affecting the relationship I have with this man who I adore. I think I place a lot on his shoulders at times. and for those of you with a disorder or who care for people with one, you know it’s hard to explain to them why you feel the way you do…. There really is no explanation for it.

It just is.

The Stress.

I get lost in the stress of everyday life sometimes. So much so that I just wanna walk away from everything. I get angry and stay that way for awhile... Despite my want and love of being a possetive person. I just wonder if anyone else feels that way. You just want to be someone people like to be around, but everyday life just brings a dark cloud over you and people rather stay away....

If so, then how do you work through it? I've become so overwhelmed with things that I can't seem to crawl out of my dark hole before someone or something else comes up that knocks me back down into it. ( I am also one of those people who realize we can't blame other's for our attitude.. but understand that everyone in yout life effects everything about you, whether they bring you up or down... its not always up to you how they effect you, and it's not always a "choice" to get rid of them if they are the type to bring you down). I used to write and that'd help me escape, but now with two small children, the writings are few and far between and always interupted swiftly.

Friends.

When we were young we chose our friends with simple discretion's... like "ooh i like her shoes!"
or "everyone else likes her!" Of course everything was simpler back then wasn't it? When we're grown and we have children, we become a little more cautious of who we put in our lives because it ultimately effects our children's lives... even if we don't always make the right or best decisions... we try. A lot of the friends we had as children are no longer in our lives, and the few that stick around are extremely special to our hearts.

When those bad people are in your family, or a dear friend you've had since before you can remember, it's harder to walk away from them. Sometimes, even though you know they're bad for your emotional and sometimes physical health, you let them in because you can't help but to care about the person. How do you turn your best friend since eighth grade away, when she needs your help?

It's hard sometimes, but sometimes you have to do whats best for your family... your children, and if it comes down to that, then I can see putting those people out of your life without a second thought. --- it would be a lot harder if it were actual family, there might be quite a few second thoughts on that one, but if it needed to be done, then I could still completely understand someone doing it.

Here's another twist and turn on that thought. What if your significant other had a problem with your friend. would you stop talking to them? would you cut that person out of your life to save your relationship? Or would you simply tell your loving better/worse half that they are in ur life whether they like or not, deal with it?

Friends, good ones, are really hard to come by. There always seems to be a catch. My personal experience has been them pretty much saying "Be there for me, but don't expect me to be there for you, and when I do happen to grace your issues with my opinions, I'll make sure not to take your feelings into consideration" lol okay that was a long quote... but not too over exaggerated. I can honestly say I do have a couple of good friends. Best friends? no. Other than my sisters, and fortunately for me I do have two pretty different but great sisters.

I have always been the last one to walk away. I, for some reason, always find myself trying to rectify the situation. Beating a dead horse so to speak, because I just can't see walking away from someone I have cared for. I don't think it's the right thing to do, even when my logical mind is saying it is, my emotional mind is screaming otherwise.

My Boys

The minute I can no longer rock them in my arms, or hold both of them at once, or tickle them while they roll on my freshly made bed, is going to be one of the biggest heart breaks I may suffer. They’re both growing up so fast. The years, which seemed to be going too quickly before, have hit warp speed. I know now that the world is no longer in the palm of my hand, for when I gave birth to my sons, I handed it to them and I hope they’re wise enough to know what to do with it. It’s a scary place sometimes…

The day they grow to form their own opinions on how their lives SHOULD run, will be heart breaking as well, for it will be another sign of them becoming young men. I know they’re only toddlers. I look at my nephews, who just yesterday were two boys toddling after one another reeking havoc on the house… Now they are 16 and 17, nearly at adulthood… reeking havoc on the world lol.. I know first hand how quickly the clock moves… and since these are children of my own, instead of my sisters‘, I know the clock will move a billion times as fast.

I take so many pictures I’ll have to buy a computer soley for the purpose of holding pix. I want so badly for my sons to remain small innocent children, but everyday more and more they are showing me that will not happen. There’s been nothing in my life, and I have been through a lot, so teaching as being a mommy to my two wonderfully awesome babies.

Debralee Houston.

Thinking about it....

I am a huge over thinker. That is something that will most likely never change about me. If I bump heads with someone, I am always and forever rethinking how I could have approached it better. Which, is kinda funny because I am also a very closed mouth person. I rarely give someone my honest opinion of them, because I try my hardest not to be judgemental. I am not a perfect person, and even though there are some people out there who I either disagree with their way of living or just don't get it, I don't want to be completely closed minded about it.

When I was younger, I was a writer of "stories", and being open minded about things allowed me to be a writer, who, as an innocent twelve year old, wrote of drugs, gangs, sex, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, sexual abuse etc... Although there were plenty around me who'd dealt with those things, at the age of twelve none of those things had ever crossed my mind, other than in my writings. I asked my close friend plenty of questions, and thank God, she was always more than willing to help me, and give me criticism even when I didn't want it. HA HA. But it was always helpful. I payed close attention to people's lives and of course I watched a lot of movies... I put it all together and got five really good stories that unfortunately are lost in an ancient computer... sighs... anyway...

I haven't been an honest writer of stories since I was younger (probably around eighteen). I think that gives me too much time to be stressed and agonize over things that don't matter. Maybe I will pick up the "pen" again and give it an honest go 'round. Maybe I can do what I used to do and take out my frustrations on my charectors!

Well that is my post for the day.