All Apologies

So, I say "I'm sorry" alot. I mean, pretty much at least 100 times a day. You fall over, I'm no where near you or perhaps even in another room, and I'll apologize. If you tell me that you're husband is cheating on you or that you're allergic to milk, I'll apologize.If I turn the corner and you're coming at me in the same direction and we collide or not, I apologize.
You get the point.
I've found that this fact about me brings upon many an emotion from people. They either get confused and say: "it's not your fault", they get angry and say "why are you always apologizing?" and then they punch me in the face and run around the building screaming/demonically laughing "I punched Mary!! I punched Mary in. the FACE!"....(OK. This has never really happened but I see the look in their eye. I know what they're thinking.) , Or, my personal favorite, they think they're a comedian "why are you such a sorry person?"
Har.Dee.Har.
Hilarious.
One time I got psychoanalyzed and my immediate reaction was to make something up so I replied "Sometimes it's just easier to take the blame than to blame someone else." And she looked at me with her therapy eyes and I knew she wanted to have me lie down on her couch so badly and dig deeper into the whelms of why I'm so complicated.
I'm really not that complicated.
I'm like Natalie Portman's character in the movie 'Garden State', Sometimes I just say things that aren't even remotely true. It's a nervous tick I have when all of the attention is on me and I'm not sure why I do it. Words just spill out of my mouth and I keep talking until the attention is finally turned onto someone else. I imagine it's pretty humorous to the person(s) with me who know I'm lying/not completely telling the truth. For example, the last yard sale we had, a lady came up to me with a book that was apparently on Oprah's Reader's Choice list (or whatever it's called) and she asked me if I had read it just because Oprah had recommended it? I enthusiastically replied "Yes! I do love Oprah!", and commenced avoiding to make eye contact with my brother because I knew he heard me and I knew he knew I was lying. I don't know why I had the sudden urge to seek approval from this stranger, but I did just the same and she didn't even buy the damn book.
Karma. It's a bitch.
I seemed to have gotten off track.
Back to the over-apologize-ing. (Yep. I just made up a new word). It's not that I ever think these circumstances, issues, whatever are truly my fault. Sometimes I just don't know what else to say. And I truly am sorry. I don't want to see people I care about, anyone really, in pain. When approached with the question "Why are you apologizing"?, I find myself getting defensive and feel the need to explain myself to said person. (I'm actually kind of doing this very thing via writing this blog...) It's silly really. It's not that I have anything to prove. I just don't understand why it seems to bother people so much. One of my former bosses literally seemed to get annoyed every time that I said I was sorry for something. I found myself  swallowing my words around her whenever I felt the need to say it so that she wouldn't attack me over merely being polite.
Maybe it's my southern heritage. I should perhaps research this and see what I find. I have noticed, just via being an observer of people,  since I've moved back to the mountains, the endearment of apologizing for everything seems more common coming from us mountain folk than from the bigger city folk. Hmm. Now I have a new explanation for the next time someone asks me.
But seriously. I'm not quite sure what the big deal is. Maybe they think that I don't mean it? Or that when something is truly my fault and I say it, it's less meaningful? I don't know. I'm not really sure why I let it get to me, but I do just the same.
I have found recently that I do get annoyed with myself when I find I'm  apologizing for the way I feel about any given situation. I tend to cry no matter how I'm feeling whether it's happy, sad, angry, upset, confused, painful. Once the waterworks begin, there's really no stopping it. This, I have found, makes some people uncomfortable.Then I feel the need to apologize for crying. It's a vicious cycle with no worthy explanation. I guess my point is this: does it truly affect a person's well being if I feel the need to say "I'm sorry"? Does it affect my well being?
The answer to both questions is "no".
So just move on and accept my sincere apologies.
Thank you and have a nice day. 

"I wish I was like you easily amused
Find my nest of salt, everything is my fault
I'll take all the blame, ill concede from shame
Sunburn, freezerburn, choking on the ashes of her enemy"
Nirvana- All Apologies

P.S. Of course I had to use a quote from Nirvana's song "All Apologies", but the question is, did I choose this specific quote to be ironic or because I have a sick sense of humor? 

I apologize for any pondering this particular post may ensue upon you....

Let. It. Go.....A Pep Talk To This Small Town Girl

Letting go is never easy and it's not something that I'm usually inclined to do in most circumstances. I can forgive, I just have a hard time forgetting. I'm a very sensitive soul and am most times probably more affected by things said or not said, done or not done, than I tend to let on (unless you know me pretty well and in that case, I am unable to hide anything.) I wear my heart on my sleeve and my feelings are hurt easily. I am more likely to remember one negative comment or reaction pointed towards me rather than a million positive comments. I don't think this is because I'm a negative person per say. I think I'm a very positive person who tries very hard to keep her head up and not be struck down by all of the meanness and cruelties in the world.
But it's hard.
Sometimes I feel like being in a bad mood, but if someone else around me is feeling this way, I have a tendency to let them harbor such emotion while I try to remain happy and positive to get everyone else through it. I then end up coming home, letting out all of this pent up emotion that I didn't want anyone else to see and I'm exhausted.
I'm always exhausted.
I know it's not my job to pick up every little piece of worry and sadness. I just empathize and soak it all up like a sponge. I find that I do this a lot and it is very much keeping me from enjoying life. It's hard to be around miserable people when you're a happy person. It's hard to let the happy take over because then all of these other emotions try to sneak in.
Resentment. Guilt. Anger.
Why should I allow myself to feel anything other than happiness because the people around me can't break through their own demons and rise above what's continuing to keep them down day after day? I've been there. Believe me. I know how it feels to not want to get up in the morning, to feel like you can't make it though another minute, another second. I know how it feels to be trapped and lost and lonely.
I know how it feels to give up.
It just seems incredibly unfair once you've won the fight and given up such thinking and yet, it still tries to creep back in every once in awhile. Maybe it's to keep me on my toes. But lately, I'm starting to feel the same urgency of just letting my brain and thoughts take over how I feel on a day to day basis. Somehow, the switch got flipped back to unhappy and I don't know why. I can't focus on what matters. All I seem to be focusing on lately is how everyone else is feeling. I struggle with helping and fixing, turn around, look in the mirror and I don't even recognize the girl staring back at me.
I've been very open about my issues of the past. Unfortunately, many of them still exist here in the present and I find myself getting extremely frustrated that I can't just be happy.
Why?
Why can't I just be happy?
I'm living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world with the most amazing husband who gets me and accepts me for who I am. I have 5 of the sweetest cats and the most loving, incredible dog in the world. I have the best family, in-laws included, that a girl could ever ask for. I have a handful of the most amazing friends who I know at any given moment would be there for me if I ever asked them to. We've been hosting unforgettable house concerts and meeting wonderful people along the way. I'm slowly paying down debt and getting rid of credit cards. I'm in good health.
And yet...
There's this voice constantly nagging me to do more. I feel guilty if I take a day off in front of the couch to catch up on the latest TV shows. Though it does seem like this is all I ever really do when I have a moment of free time. I have forever and a day been talking about writing a novel or a memoir and haven't truly begun to do either. I was looking through some old poetry the other day and I hated the girl being presented through the words written on the paper. Whenever I look back through those times and read through those tears, I'm reminded of how lost and lonely I really was and it scares me when I even begin to feel an incling of the same familiar pain I felt back then.
It worries me because I'm not completely convinced I ever really got rid of it. That girl is still a part of me and she lives within me, occasionally peeking her sad eyes through, perhaps to remind me of how far I've come? Perhaps to remind me, that hate it or love it, she's still a part of me.
There's just so much I want to do; so much I want to be. It feels like I've wasted so much time just worrying about not accomplishing anything when I could have at least been trying.
I feel like I've stopped trying. Every time I pick up a pen to write or the guitar to play or a paint brush to paint, I hear a voice that turns into a thousand telling me I'm not good enough. I often mask what it is I really want to say or do with humor and laugh it off like it's no big deal and it doesn't even matter. But it does matter. It matters to me.
I matter.
I get so engulfed in the feelings and attitudes of the people who surround me on a day to day basis that I sometimes forget that my feelings and attitudes matter too. I'm so busy focusing on keeping quiet and not offending anyone that I forget I have a voice. I forget I have words to speak and they get lost in the madness, hiding deep within me making me feel like I'm going to explode at any given second.
I don't want to be another tragic story that people read or don't read about 100 years from now.
I'm a lover of graveyards, the stones they keep and the words written on them. I want to be a meaningful gravestone. I want to make a difference.
I can't accomplish anything positive without letting go of what it is that keeps me down. I need to focus on what's good and take it a day at a time; live in the present and accept life as it comes to me. I have to stop getting mad at myself every time I remember that I haven't made my dream come true. 
Yet.
First things first, I have to keep trying.
There are roads in one's life when she looks at herself and she has to make a decision. She either tries and fails or doesn't try at all.
This girl chooses to try.