Love me some metal on certain days. I can only handle metal to a certain degree though and it needs to have a melody. I am not one for the screaming type metal.
There’s always too much to choose from but I always tend to end up going back to what I grew up with, which is Disturbed, Godsmack, Metallica, Black Sabbath and many more.
I won’t post too many here but just wanted to share the ones that are always on my playlist.
Down With The Sickness – Disturbed
Bad Company – Five Finger Death Punch cover version
Yeah I get lost from time to time So what Sometimes being lost is a good thing
For the majority of my life
Being lost has been all I’ve known
Wandering through the Universe
Looking for something Anything
To illuminate the way before me
Bringing me closer to whatever it is
I am ultimately searching for
The fantasies in my head
Push me forward
Clarifying what my heart desires most
And even though I don’t have enough courage just yet
I feel it coming closer and closer
Moulding my life into a dream
That I can live
I can do it
I will do it
No longer needing anybody to do for me
What I can do for myself
I was cruising Youtube late last night and today as well, and came across some real good acoustic covers which I wanted to share here.
There’s just something about stripping a popular song (or any song for that matter) down to the basics. Which is what makes acoustic one of my favorite types of music to listen to, regardless of the original genre of the song. These artists are all so talented.
So go ahead, watch some or all of these and enjoy!
Fast Car- Tracy Chapman (Kina Grannis & Boyce Avenue)
In Your Eyes (from the motion picture Say Anything with John Cusack – Peter Gabriel (Corey Heuvel Acoustic Cover)
I know we haven’t spoken in a while but you still cross my mind most days.
Sometimes when I haven’t thought of you for a longer period, you start popping up in my dreams, almost as if to stay ‘Hey, don’t you forget me now! I am still around.’ Those always tend to make me smile when I wake up and set the pace for a great day.
Lately you’ve been visiting my dream space nights in a row. Now I don’t know if this all comes from my own imagination or if maybe we are really connecting in some way. Could be just wishful thinking on my part though.
All I know is that, you come to me in my dream and you point things out to me. Give me advice and make me feel loved. You’re there for me even if we might not speak in reality. It’s comforting to me.
I try not to focus too much on our lost friendship anymore and I’ve been doing alright with it. Trying to live life to the fullest and trying to make the right decisions. It’s not always easy but I figure maybe that’s the point of life.
To learn and keep going when it gets tough. And no matter what happens, to keep laughing. Eventually something great could happen.
When you disappeared from my life, I lost it quite severely. That’s me being honest. And I thought I’d never be able to recover but I guess I am stronger than I thought. I’ve been able to build myself back up and have changed so much on the inside. Wait, maybe ‘changed’ isn’t a good word. I’d prefer to say I’ve grown. I no longer regret what happened; eventually everything has to happen for a reason. It’s all in the past and I’ve forgiven myself for having been an ass.
It doesn’t mean I don’t miss you. I just miss you differently. It no longer consumes my world. Which really wasn’t healthy.
I guess you could almost say that I’ve ‘detoxed’. Life makes me laugh at the moment. It keeps throwing me curveballs and I am trying my best to keep hitting them out of the ballpark.
I’ve come to a point where I am just doing what makes my heart sing, regardless of the decisions that need to be made.
And those are the decisions I end up dreaming about before I make them; which are the dreams where you show up and sometimes gently nudge me, sometimes hit me over the head hard to stop doubting and go for it already.
So you see; I guess you’ll never truly be apart from me. Just like I will always be there for you. It has nothing to do with our history, the present or the future.
You just belong in my life one way or the other. So if all I can have is dreams, then that’s okay with me.
I have started a little ritual, which is to go for an after midnight-walk through for as long as my feet can take me.
See, lately I have been quite restless and ready to pull the hairs out of my head. One night I just got up and went. Now why after midnight?
For some reason I feel myself more after dark. Under the blanket of the night, I can be outside for the longest times.
Also going for some fresh air, kickstarts my creativity and allows me to write and also clear my mind if something is been bothering me.
There’s something about the deserted streets and the quiet, although I can’t leave the house without my music :).
Funnily enough I can’t seem to adjust this ritual for a walk in the daytime. There is always too many people and traffic for me to be able to have a relaxing walk. It’s almost as if I am a vampire.. 😉
It’s at times like these though that I can quite end up missing my dogs, who would always join me for a midnight adventure. There’s nothing quite like a trusty sidekick who also functions as a protector at the same time. My goal is to ultimately have another dog or two again but only when I have completely settled down and am able to give them the care that they need.
Earlier tonight I was watching a youtube-video by Tony Robbins, who is a phenomenal motivational speaker (possibly the best public speaker out there) and self-help coach from America. I’ve watched quite a few motivational speakers over the years but I’ve never quite come across a speaker quite as impactful and charismatic as him.
It’s partly because of him that I want to finally take full 100% control of my own life and set my own standards for myself higher. My standards for everything that I do now, are way too low which makes it easy to never be disappointed as the stakes are never too high.
Tonight I was feeling particularly restless and by chance I happened to watch one of his videos. 30 minutes later I was rearing to go! Tony has an uncanny ability to speak to you directly, and mirror to you what you already know but have been procrastinating for whatever reason you may have.
After all, who else is going to make you happy if not yourself?
So long I have been sort of been waiting around for change and progress to come. With the endresult always having to settle for something that I never really wanted in the first place. This goes for most of the aspects in my life and I am just plain tired of it.
Tired of rejection because I never valued myself high enough to begin with. I want to find out what I am truly worth and break the damn glass-ceiling that I created for myself. Pretty sure I am able to create the type of life I truly want if I envision it hard enough and set the goals to get there.
I know I know, I have been saying it for a while now that I want change and that I am going to create it myself. Somehow I never quite was brave enough to take the most important frst step. However, there’s something about 2014 that just feels different. Maybe a year of change? Could also be wishful thinking though.
Babysteps is what I am starting out with though,; I am changing up most of my rituals (clearing out the bad ones) and just adding good ones.
Apparently the ritual of me going for a walk nearly every night seems to have been helping already. I dropped quite a lot of weight within the last 2 weeks and I am starting to feel more like myself again, whereas before I just felt like a fat sack of shit :/. So this is good for the self-esteem part I’d say.
Soon I am going to be a sexy son of a b*tch. Hehe.
I’ve loved a lot in my life I daresay. Experienced a lot of different types of loves too.
It started when I was still inside my mothers womb, now that I think about it, that was the very first time I experienced ‘unconditional’ love in this lifetime. If anybody loves me without conditions, it must be my mother. I don’t think my mother could ever be capable of ejecting me out of her life for whatever reason. I am so lucky for that as not all children have that unconditional maternal or paternal love. So I would call this the maternal unconditional love. That’s not to say that my dad doesn’t love me incredibly much because he does but I didn’t grow in my dad’s body for 9 months and so it could never be the same type of connection that I have with my mom. As a child I was extremely affectionate with everyone and was always cuddling up on my mom’s/dad’s lap. Apparently I seem to have lost that uninhibited affection in my older years, which is really quite sad but necessary for survival in this world lol.
As I grew up, I had lots of infatuations towards girls. As I was always quite an intense person, I would imagine whole scenarios in which I would run into that person and they would magically see how cool I was, then proceed to be my girlfriend. This tended to cause a lot of hilarious situations where I’d end up making a fool of myself. These were a lot of fun but also caused me a lot of hurt. I was a girl to start with in this life so my ‘crushes’ always had to be secret with the result of me just sitting in my room, singing love songs to my crush and writing love letters. I am sure I am not alone in that regard. They never found out and I would agonize over it. But the pain and infatuation eventually always faded away and I would find another girl to make the object of my affection. My first serious puppy love lasted a very long time until that girl moved away and I never saw her anymore.
Then there was no real significant person in my life that I was into; there were the occasional ‘online’ relationships but it was all long-distance and I pretended to be someone I wasn’t (a boy).
It wasn’t until I was 17 that I finally had my first real girlfriend. Oh man, was I crazy about that girl! From the moment I saw her, I thought I loved her. Well, it turned out that it was definitely not love. But being with her, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking of her. All I wanted to do was be with her forever. Until..she one day just dumped me by text. That was it. I had given her cds to listen to and had loaned her money but she wasn’t answering any of my calls. When I finally was able to retrieve my cds, she was there in her bedroom with her new girlfriend mocking me. It was one of the lowest points I ever experienced in ‘Love’ at that point. I felt ridiculed and betrayed.
At 18, I met my 2nd real girlfriend, for who I ended up moving to America for. That was definitely my first love experience. We ended staying together for almost 4 years. The relationship was not the best. I had fallen out of love by the 2nd year but soldiered on bravely to see if we could work it out. After all, I cared deeply for her (emotionally invested) and her family, they in turn did too. But it didn’t last, I moved back to Europe and I broke up with her. It then turned out that she had been cheating on me for months with a close friend of ours. That person also moved into our apartment the same day I left for the airport. So I guess you could say that thus far my experiences with love had left me pretty jaded.
While living in Spain, I met S on Myspace (cheesus, who even still remembers that social media site??) and we became very close quite quickly. We eventually met in Dublin in 2006 and became an item right away. With her, I experienced real true love and she was different from all the others. She showed me real intimacy and affection, I guess that we actually learned from each other what it was like to truly be in love but also how to handle the relationship once it’s passed the honeymoon stage. I learned that love requires work. We’ve been together nearly 8 years, with some rough times thrown in the mix.
Something very curious happened in 2011/2012. I was apart from S for the first time in a very long time and I met someone who would for the first time introduce me to true unconditional love. This doesn’t diminish the love I have for S, but the love would prove to be so much more different and impactful. She didn’t reciprocate and at first it turned into unrequited love (you know pining away for someone who you can’t have). Those were excruciating times for me. And instead of the love diminishing, it keeps growing stronger. But through the pain and time, I found that my love for her was turning into pure, unconditional love where it didn’t matter if she loved me back or not. This means that I love that person for exactly who she is, with all her faults, no matter what her actions would be. This person is not in my life anymore for obvious reasons but I still think of her every day and I send her loving thoughts every waking moment. It’s very unfortunate that she doesn’t believe I love her in this way but it doesn’t matter. It will never die. She unlocked the gate to being able to finally learn to love myself.
Now as you can see..I have not had a lot of relationships. Only 3, but 2 very long ones. S and I will be together for 8 years in May. Sometimes I don’t know how she can put up with me especially being that I have someone in my heart who will never leave from it. I think it means that she loves me unconditionally in turn as she’s never given up on me at any given time. She loved me when I was female all the way through my transition to male. Let me tell you that it’s so remarkable of her to stand by me through all that. And because that love has been in turn unlocked in me, I am able to reciprocate it. There will never be a time where I won’t love S.
It’s funny really because when I was younger, I thought there was only 2 types of love. That of my parents (familial) and being in love (romantic love). However, love has turned out to be so much more complicated and elegant even that I ever could have imagined. I love loving. It makes my heart sing. When I love, it tends to be forever and with all my being. I don’t do butterfly like love, going from this one to that one. There has to be a genuine connection.
That’s why I think love is the most important thing in the world. If you look at history, it was ultimately acts of pure love that have made the greatest impact on us. The worst times in history were based on acts of pure fear. Hereunder fall the emotions such as anger, envy, greed etc. It’s been scientifically proven that love vibrates at a much higher, quicker rate than fear (http://cafeholistic.com/meditation/emanating-love), which to me makes so much sense. Negative energy can bog you down whereas positive energy brightens up your day.
I am not alone in this love I have for Love. The whole world does revolve around it, all the love songs, movies, books and more. People cannot get enough and are all looking for their ‘soul mate’ or ‘the One’. We stumble through life trying to find it, and along the way we learn different types of love, different types of relationships until we finally one day ‘get’ it. That we cannot love anybody else before we love ourselves unconditionally. In the end, romantic love is desirable yes, but it’s not why we are here I believe. Romantic love can be so limiting; if you do this for me, I will love you but if you say or do something I don’t like, we are surely over. That just can’t be right!
If we all would just love a little more without any conditions, I think the world could be such a beautiful place. But then again, I am just a dreamer..but I am sure that I am not the only one 😉 (see what I did there? Lol).
Both men and women can suffer from a fear of intimacy and sex; and is not so uncommon as you might think. However, different people suffer from this over different reasons.
Love by any definition of the word (kindness, affection, respect, sensitive attunement, and shared companionship) is not only hard to come by, but strange as it may seem, it is even more difficult to accept and tolerate. Most of us say that we want to find a loving partner but what we wish for in fantasy is not necessarily what we would tolerate or accept in real life. The experience of real love often threatens our self-defenses and triggers our anxiety as we become vulnerable and open ourselves up to another person. This can lead to a fear of intimacy. Falling in love not only brings excitement and fulfillment; it also creates anxiety and fears of rejection and potential loss. For this reason many people choose to pull away from loving relationships.
Early in life, when we experienced rejection and emotional pain, we began to rely heavily on fantasizing about relationships as a coping mechanism. Overtime, we came to prefer to rely on these fantasy relationships over actual personal interactions and positive acknowledgment. After being hurt in our earliest relationships, we fear being hurt again and are reluctant (read: scared) to take another chance on being loved.
The negative feelings we developed toward ourselves in our early years, became an accepted part of who we think that we are. So, when someone is loving and reacts positively toward us, we experience a conflict within ourselves between their view of us and our core identity. We then respond with suspicion and distrust because our fear of intimacy has been triggered.
Existential issues can also negatively impact our capacity to accept love and enjoy loving relationships. When we feel loved and admired, we start to place greater value on ourselves, and in appreciating and valuing our lives more, we consequently face more pain related to the inevitability of death. We fear both the loss of our loved one and of ourselves, and in the process often unconsciously pull back from a love relationship.
Even though the fear of intimacy is a largely unconscious process, we can observe that effect on our behavior. We see it when we push away our partner and are resistant to their affection or positive acknowledgement. At that point, when we withhold the positive qualities our partner finds most desirable, we are making ourselves less lovable. Our distancing behaviors act to lower our anxiety, preserve our negative self-image and ultimately maintain our psychological balance.
We can recognize the behaviors that are driven by our fear of intimacy and challenge these defensive reactions that prevent love. We can remain vulnerable in our love relationship by resisting to retreat into a fantasy of love or engaging in distancing and withholding behaviors. We can maintain our integrity, learn to “sweat through” the anxiety of being close without pulling away, and gradually increase our tolerance for being loved. By taking the actions necessary to challenge our fear of intimacy, we can expand our capacity for both giving and accepting love.
Of course, this is just one way of addressing the fear. What about people who have just had bad experiences because their partner was either too big, too clumsy (read:inexperienced) or too rough? This can instill a form of trauma in a young woman’s mind and prevent her from being able to enjoy sex the way she should. My advice would be to not be so harsh on yourself, and to not settle for a partner who is not willing to take his time and be patient with you. I know it can be intensely frustrating not to be able to get over that obstacle in your head but it’s not impossible to. Communication between partners is key; if it hurts, don’t keep on. Find different ways until you become more confident. In this day and age it’s kind of crazy to think that the ‘real’ act of sex is still considered to be penile penetration, when there is so many more different ways to make love. Once those areas have been explored, who knows, it might just be a lot easier to relax and move onto the more ‘basic’ way of sex. After all, sex is meant to be pleasurable and a major way to connect to another person.
I felt like I needed to put more context around my previous post ‘Abuse’ and talk more about my own experience so I could put a face to the issue. And help others break through their own barriers by opening up.
Finally Collected At Lost & Found 