#uncoffeed...

Not teenage me - might as well be. I spent a minute today remembering the awesome awkwardness of being a teenage girl. While I waited in the grocery parking lot to get in my car, a mother coaxed her daughter out of their SUV's back seat. The girl was lanky, blushing, unsure of the outfit that her friends probably approved. Her mom smiled behind her and winked at me as they passed. She was really happy with her girl. I was a teenage girl, you know, between the tree-climbing moments, the bookworm moments, the crazed artistic moments when I threw and broke things I'd made with my own hands. You feel yourself growing into new bones. You know other people - mostly boys and nosy aunties - are checking your front-side for bumps, signs of some imagined ripeness you can't comprehend. Sometimes you actually do feel ripe, and it's both glorious and horrible; you wonder if you should choose. You can't choose, vacillating between that thresh-hold of newness and the te...

Humans are social animals, and we want to connect . We learn our patterns through our parents first. Then, through a series of trial and error, we collect people we like who also like us. Or we learn to like that which we attract, and we let our collection define us. We learn to follow as a default. Empaths feel what others feel literally, physically, not just have an understanding.  If I prick you, I will bleed. The word empathy is used (perhaps incorrectly) to describe recognising unmet needs in others.  Do not assume that, in fulfilling what you perceive to be someone's need, the person will reciprocate by taking care of  yours.  Easy to define intellectually; not so easy to recognise in one's self.  Sometimes what we recognise is a pattern that should be retired. If I don't meet the parameters in certain relationship models -  business, friend, family - I may take lack of acceptance as rejection, which is a model I learned: don't be a let-do...