Since then, some have claimed that the dead stare to be a reaction of concern for my well-being while others who are actually in favor of my adventure have suggested that the dead stare is mere jealousy. I suppose I should be flattered either way, but I just can’t seem to get myself there. Personally, I think that people simply don’t understand me. Should I have shared my entire situation with those who were providing the dead stare? For example, would it help them to know that I have zero debt, money in my savings account and am overall really very happy; or how about the fact that my partner and I have been talking about doing something like this for years now?  Not to mention that I have no mortgage, no children and am not responsible for anyone’s well-being but my own. But is all of this really anyone’s business? If they feel it is, then why hasn’t anyone just come out and asked?

If anyone is in fact jealous, shouldn’t they become introspective and ask themselves why and what it is that they are possibly missing out on and perhaps searching for in their own situation? I can honestly say that there are people doing this type of thing more often than most people where I come from think. My partner and I have been coming to Costa Rica for years. It started out as us really enjoying it as a vacation spot and we ended up purchasing a small place a couple of years ago. In that time I have met more interesting people who have either done what we are doing; come here during the cold winters of the U.S. and live back in North America when the Spring and Summer have returned; or have uprooted themselves altogether and decided to make a go of living here permanently. There are people coming to Costa Rica all the time who are from all different backgrounds, situations and nationalities just because they love it here.

Only the other day I met a wonderful woman from the Mid-West in the United States. In 1972 as a new graduate of college, she set out on establishing herself in her chosen career.  She was bright and smart and people liked her. Within a short amount of time, she was traveling every other week and beginning to make a name for herself. Within two years she found herself settled into her career at exactly the place she had been planning for while she was going to school with the exception of one thing: she wasn’t enjoying what she was doing. At the age of 24 years old she was making more money in her field than most of her peers were making in theirs. She was pretty quickly seeing most of the United States and had even been sent to Europe a couple of times.

Most people viewed her as really successful and thought of her as ungrateful when she spoke of her dissatisfaction. She couldn’t put a finger on what exactly was dissatisfying about her life, but when she read something in the newspaper about the Peace Corp she signed up immediately. Her first assignment was to teach English in Costa Rica and she has been here ever since. She stayed with the Peace Corp for a couple of years and then eventually she changed her career, married a Costa Rican man and had children with him. She loves the people and the culture here. She is extremely happy with the way the Costa Rican culture influenced her children while she was raising them and she has become completely bi-lingual and is very well adjusted. She seems to be quite familiar with the dead stare even to this day. She says that some people, family and peers alike, have still not accepted her decision to live in Costa Rica.

She has been here for almost FORTY years and she still gets the dead stare! She fully admits that had she moved back to the United States she would likely be a far wealthier woman, but I have to disagree. She has none of the angst of the business pace of the United States and she certainly doesn’t look like she’s been here for forty years.  She’s aged well and seems to be totally at peace with herself, her decision, her family and her life despite the dead stare. Perhaps she would have had more ‘Colones’ (Costa Rican currency) in the bank, but one cannot measure one’s wealth by Colones alone.

My mother had a very dear friend who had what became between me and my mother, a very famous expression: “Honey, sometimes people just want to see you drunk and in the gutter”. Shocking coming from someone who was always so positive, up-beat and well put together. I think that perhaps she had experienced a very low point in her life and realized that there were actually people who were relieved it wasn’t them when they looked at her. I think that on the receiving end of that it felt like they were relishing in her failure. Fortunately, this motivated her and she became one of the most admirable matriarchs aside from my own mother whom I have ever known. Her theory was that people who want to see you drunk and in the gutter either a.) Don’t understand you or b.) Are jealous of you. She solved the mystery of the dead stare long before it came into existence for me! She would say “If people don’t understand you, they can say ‘see that – now it all makes sense; this person is just a drunk!’; if they are jealous of you, then they can say that they are no longer jealous because after all, you are ‘just a drunk’ – and to put some emphasis on it they say you are also ‘in the gutter”.

The night before my partner and I left the United States to try out living (and working by the way) our first full winter in Costa Rica, I received a phone call from my brother (alpha male; considers himself head of the family; etc. etc.).  I hadn’t had a true conversation with him in probably over a year.  He began listing all of his concerns about me leaving and choosing to go on this adventure. The range of his concerns went from the fact that my partner (also alpha male) and I aren’t married (although we’ve been together for over seven years) to what I might be giving up just to be able to do this. He had actually chosen to end the dead stare and end the silence between us the night before my flight! The ironic thing was that for once I had no response. There was no desire on my part to explain any of my actions or provide a resolution to any of his concerns. I suppose I had had enough of the dead stare and now I was receiving it again and could hear it in his tone over the phone. “Are you there?” he asked. “I’m talking and talking and you aren’t saying anything” he continued. “I’ve heard every word you’ve said” I responded. “I don’t know Robert.” I said further “All I can say is that honey, at least I’m not drunk and in the gutter!” and then I promptly hung up the phone.

As the first week passed, in fact even as the first few days went by, I could feel the bits and pieces of the negative conversation leave me a little at a time. Every dead stare I received before leaving the U.S. felt like a thing of the past no longer important and from a long time ago. In the two hours a day that I write while sitting in the outdoors I must see at least fifty butterflies of all different shapes, sizes and colors. I hear and see more species of birds in one afternoon than I have in my entire lifetime.  My partner and I are greeted by the friendly Costa Rican people whenever we are going for a walk or shopping for groceries. We are treated like we are one of the locals even though at one glance anyone can tell that we are not. Everything we eat is freshly picked, caught or slaughtered practically the same day that we buy it. We have our pick of beaches where each time it looks like we are on a deserted island no matter if it is mid-week or the weekend. We wake up with the sunrise and at the bellowing of the rooster across the road. At sunset we wave to the two cowboys in the neighborhood as they trot off past our house back home on their horses. If this is what it is like to be drunk and in the gutter, I don’t think I will ever leave.

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Sometimes when we are going through a crisis, we can’t see beyond it. Being born a happy person really just doesn’t cut it sometimes. Death, divorce, family tragedy, addiction; all of these things can make one feel like nothing can be worse, no one has it worse and one can often not be told otherwise. These things make us feel like happiness is far out of reach and we often no longer participate in activities that normally enhance our happiness. It would be good if we could all think and feel the tragedies of the world any time we started feeling bad about ourselves so that we could gain some perspective and use our thoughts in a more productive way. Wouldn’t it be great if when we found ourselves spending more than a certain amount of time feeling sorry for ourselves all of a sudden, a clip of a documentary on the Holocaust popped into our brain? Or how about if we spent too much time having negative thoughts we were transported to a foreign land where people were currently fleeing for their lives because of war and destruction? Perhaps then we would be better able to take charge of our happiness with the realization that someone else is always much worse off than us.

When I found myself newly separated and living in a brand-new townhouse by myself, my sister Colleen encouraged me to “spread out”. When my ex-husband left, I assumed he was going to just take the most important things and go. He was only moving across town to his parent’s house, surely, he wouldn’t need to take everything. But on that first day when I went to the house to begin my life alone, I was glad I had Colleen with me. He was gone. The only trace of my ex-husband was in the photos of us and our family and friends lining our bookshelves. It was as if he died and I’d packed everything of his and got rid of it. My sister immediately went into my walk-in closet and made it “my” closet by distributing my clothing everywhere. She suggested I even had room to grow and should go shopping. I will never forget what she said when she realized the severity of his leaving. Pointing at me with a very stern finger she said: “Do not let him steal your joy”.

I was shocked and disappointed. One thing I did over and over again from the beginning of the separation was look for clues or signs that this wasn’t really happening. While I realized that the separation was necessary after he had lived a double life for 3 years, I was also torn. How could this be happening? A friend of mine put it to me straight. She said, “Once shame on him twice shame on you.” I thought “what?!” She said it as tough as tough love is supposed to be. She held my hands, looked me straight in the eye and she even prepared me that perhaps I wouldn’t want to hear this. She then went on to say that this was who he was as a person and on some level we, as a couple, would probably struggle on many levels for the rest of our lives. She asked me if I thought that was how God intended me to live – in doubt and feeling slightly less loved than I should be for the rest of my life. She reminded me that I had paid my dues by the time I was 10 years old when my father left. She actually managed to make me feel like I deserved better.

Over the months that I became accustomed to being alone every day it was a challenge. My normal routine was to leave work, go to the gym, come home and start dinner. I exchanged this habit with leaving work, going straight home, taking a bottle of wine, a pack of cigarettes and the phone to the front porch and talk to someone until dark. My mother, my sisters and much of the time my girlfriends would entertain me on the phone for several hours until I was feeling so emotionally drained that I would drag myself to my bed. I never overdid it with the drinking and smoking during the week; I was simply too tired and knew I had to get up for work the next morning. I always managed to get up and go to work; often late, but I made it there and would get through the day always looking forward to the end of the day when I would only have a 15-minute drive until my next bottle of wine and pack of cigarettes.

One day when arriving at home and changing out of my work clothes I just couldn’t bear it. I began to sob. I walked from one room to the other crying like a starving baby. The weather was beautiful and all the windows were wide open, the curtains flowing in the breeze. I’m certain my neighbors could hear me. I didn’t care. Without realizing it, I added this activity to the end of my day; I just allowed myself a good cry. By the end of the week I was too cried out and was just looking forward to the weekend when I didn’t have to get up and go to work. This went on for at least several weeks. One day in mid-cry my phone rang which was unusual because I was the one always doing the calling once I was finished with my crying. It was my cousin Beth, so I decided to pull myself together and answer the call. What I heard on the other end was myself, someone sobbing relentlessly. It was an odd moment and I couldn’t make out if I was still crying or if what I was hearing was someone else crying. After a second, I reminded myself that I answered because it was my cousin Beth. I finally snapped to it and went into full concern mode. I asked her what the matter was and how could I help. She informed me that her sister, my other older cousin Patti, was just diagnosed with breast cancer and had to seek treatment …

The post Chapter 6: Take Charge of Your Happiness appeared first on Dream Write Design.

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”                                                                 —– Hamlet, Shakespeare

One of the most important things in living a life that makes you completely happy is being true to yourself. I don’t mean being somewhat honest or partially honest with yourself, but brutally honest, brutally true. Many times, we are untrue to ourselves so that we can fit in or appear to be “normal” in the eyes of others and by the standards of society. We lie to ourselves and say things like “well, things could be worse” or “at least I have part of the life I’ve always wanted”. The problem with worrying about fitting in or what it means to be normal is that we end up following paths which we were never meant to be on in the first place. We ask ourselves questions like “what will it take to fit in?” and when we realize the answer, we usually end up doing whatever it takes even if it is against what we really want to do. Even if it is really against who we genuinely are or want to be. This often that leads to behavior that is not in line with who we really are or what we really want out of life.

Living a life of being untrue to oneself reminds me of my father Ed and how his desire to have a life like others caused him to have a life of great suffering. He constantly lied to himself and followed a path other than where he wanted to go and the result is that he lead a completely unauthentic and dysfunctional life. Strangely enough, I would follow in his footsteps as an adult even though he left my life completely when I was very young.

Ed Monroe went to New Jersey one summer to visit his sister Connie (my namesake) after surviving a long and bitter divorce. He was from the west coast and he looked like it. He always wore jeans, perfectly starched plaid shirts and well-polished cowboy boots. In fact, even his jeans were perfectly starched. He always had a smile on his face and something funny to say. He was charming, and in many ways, very different from your average East-coast-type of guy.

When Ed met my mother, she was in the middle of a divorce from her first husband. She had 3 little girls to look after and she was worried about the future. My mother and Ed spent many months dating and seeing one another but not getting really romantically involved. It was the late 60’s and it wouldn’t be right for my devout-Catholic mother to run off with another man when her divorce wasn’t finalized with her first husband. But Ed’s charms eventually won my mother over. Ed was put in a situation where he was without a place to stay when his sister and his brother-in-law were going away to meet people with whom they had plans prior to Ed’s arrival. They didn’t trust Ed to be in their house alone because he had a drinking problem and they didn’t want to risk coming home to some disaster that would cost them money. My mother offered him a place to stay and as they say … the rest is history; it certainly is my history as I am the product of their relationship.

What ensued was a very tumultuous relationship which lasted about 13 years. Ed’s drinking problem only got worse. After one particularly horrible argument my mother decided to go for help. She figured there was something wrong with her having gone through 2 marriages which failed. She was in a very dark place in her life and she was questioning everything including how good of a mother she was to her children. In going for help, my mother learned about alcoholism which was a new term in those days and was still very taboo to speak about with anyone, and especially with a “professional”. She didn’t care about any stigma or what people thought, she just wanted to get help and stop feeling so horrible about her life. She was getting brutally honest with herself. It took a bit of time, but my mother got the help she needed, she held tight to her Catholicism, and slowly she became happier and healthier despite anything going on around her.

Much to my mother’s surprise, and quite a bit of time after she initially sought help, Ed followed. He got sober; he became a Catholic; they got re-married in the church; he became very involved in the community and in the church and was the “go-to” man for things like repairs and assistance with just about anything. All of this happened without my mother asking him to do it. Looking back, I just figured that my mother was sort of leading by example. She became more peaceful and his ranting and raving no longer seemed to bother her. I figured he must have noticed and got curious. Now I think it was my mother who finally got honest with herself and was beginning to be true to herself which changed things around for the better.

Ed found a movement in the Catholic church called Cursillo. It was founded in Spain in the 40s by a group of men training other men to be leaders in the church. He attended a retreat and came back even more joyful and happy than he had grown over the last 3 years of his sobriety. He encouraged my mother to take the female version of the retreat; in fact, he begged her to go and finally my mother agreed.

On the day that my mother was to return from the weekend retreat, my father went out for a night of drinking and ended up at a family member’s house stone cold drunk. He was weeping, and he was sorry, and he seemed sincere about wishing he’d never picked up that first drink. Imagine the heartache of my mother. She had gone for help and believed that Ed was following that same path out of a desire to do the right thing and lead a better life. She had stopped caring so much about what Ed was doing and became more concerned about her own happiness and the well-being of her family. She no longer walked around like an injured, timid woman constantly occupied about Ed’s next move. To her delight he seemed to notice this change in her and decided to follow. As a family we had three beautiful years watching my father become this person who we all could only assume he wanted to be. There seemed to be a groove of life we were all finally allowing ourselves to give into which was much more peaceful than before. I think this allowed my mother to continue searching for her own truth and she was beginning to get comfortable with this new-found life and what seemed to be a genuine happiness. She was grateful, and she worried less and less about any confrontation with Ed which might disrupt this new happiness which was growing and flourishing in her home and with her children.

A day or two after Ed fell off the wagon he was gone and over the course of the next 25 years I would speak to him only twice and I wouldn’t see him until I was 35 years old; I was 10 when he left and he managed to never provide any type of child support. But Ed’s disappearance from my life was a blessing in disguise. I had already seen some extremely dysfunctional behavior when he was married to my mother. In his drunken rages he would often hit my mother. He would rant and rave and my sisters and I would go running to a quiet part of the house waiting for it all to be over. Many people thought his leaving and complete lack of any monetary support was an outrage and perhaps it was. But the benefits of not having to deal with his dysfunctional behavior far outweighed any monetary support he could have given.

Over the years and as I grew older my mother told me everything she knew about my father. She remained as true to his story as she possibly could. Good, bad and indifferent information was given to me about Ed and it was clear to me that he was dealt a rough hand from the beginning of his life. His mother died when he was 18 months old and when he was 6 years old his father married a woman who didn’t want children. Ed was put into an orphanage where he was adopted by a terrible family who wanted only an extra hand on the farm and whose head of household abused him for years. Persuading his biological father to sign papers allowing him into the Navy a year or two early, he always claimed “the Navy was my mother”. Ed loved the Navy and felt at home there. It is where he learned how to starch press his clothing and take care of himself. His favorite station was in Guam where he wished he could live for the rest of his life. Except he was married to a woman who resented him being away for months at a time. Challenges with having children and then having them and not having my father around was a major challenge for Ed and his first family. He left the Navy to please his first wife and they ended up divorced anyway.

Years later when Ed met my mother and converted to Catholicism and became sober, was he really only trying to please her, attempting once again to lead a “normal” family life that he himself never had as a child? At some point did he realize that he didn’t want to be doing any of that? What would have happened if he had remained in the Navy? How would Ed’s life have been if he had been true to himself and in the way in which he wanted to live?

At some point shortly after he left, Ed ended up in a detox unit. No one knows the circumstances that got him there. He was allowed a phone call to my mother as part of his recovery. Apparently, he’d been given a large dose of therapy and one of the recommendations was to apologize to those people in his life who he had done wrong. My mother had continued on her path of truth. In the time Ed left, she ended up securing a spot in a nursing program and thanks to my father’s lack of support, was able to get funding for the tuition. Being a nurse was something she wanted to do from the time she was a little girl. My mother was advised to reject any form of support if Ed had some turn around and decided he wanted to give her money. When the call came and Ed apologized, he asked if they could start over again. But my mother explained her new-found fortunate circumstances and said she couldn’t be involved with him anymore. Once again, my father wasn’t being true to himself. He should have never made that call because he wasn’t sincere about it. He only wanted to be discharged from the detox center. When Ed heard of my mother’s situation he cursed her to high heaven. A gentlemen took the receiver from his hand and told my mother how sorry he was for disrupting her day. He truly thought that Ed was ready for this, but apparently he had a long way to go.

I contacted Ed in 2004 via telephone; on Father’s Day no less. It was the day that my soon to be ex-husband had moved out of the house to mark the beginning of our separation. My sister Colleen who stayed the first night with me for moral support asked if perhaps I should “sleep on it”; meaning that maybe I should reconnect with Ed at another, less stressful time. In that moment I had a very grand feeling that life was very short and that I couldn’t waste any time in being true to myself and the things I wanted out of life. My thought was that if he didn’t answer or if he didn’t sound like he cared or if he wasn’t sorry then at least I would have known the type of person he turned out to be. I’d spent my entire life wondering if he thought of me. Why he chose not to see me, communicate with me or help me financially. Particularly because of the way he had been treated as a child. Didn’t he want a better life for his children than the one he had? How would he know whether I was getting a better life or not if he didn’t even speak with me?

When my father picked up the phone, I said that I was looking for Ed Monroe. “This is he” Ed answered. I simply said hello and that it was his daughter Connie and I waited for a response. There was total silence on the end of the line. My sister sat at my kitchen counter with her beautiful blue eyes huge and wide open. I looked back at her and shrugged my shoulders. And then I heard a sniffle, and then sob. “You called me today?” Ed asked. “I don’t deserve this” he said further. I wished him a happy Father’s Day and asked how he was doing. That was the beginning of a 7-year relationship – mostly over the phone – that would teach me the importance of having good closure in life, not to mention the importance of being brutally honest with yourself.

The post Chapter 1: Be True to Yourself appeared first on Dream Write Design.