Bonnie’s Beach 🏖

My Life. My Experiences. My Love. My Words.

The Little Things…

They always make the biggest difference. All those little things. I can talk about all the bad ones, but that’s too easy at this point. It’s the small, sweet, kind things that have the biggest impact. You know, the kind words from friends who know you’re going through a rough patch. The random phone call to let you know someone is thinking about you, just because. Getting the last bite of someone’s dessert, because they know it’s your favorite. The smiles from complete strangers that can brighten your dull day. The wise words of people who have been there and done that. Someone putting your grill together for you while you’re at work and then breaks it in by grilling some steaks for dinner. Someone taking you out for spur of the moment ice cream. All those little things.

When life gets you down, or you’re just sort of blah. It’s like no matter how much shit the universe throws your way, it also seems to know when you need a slight break. When you’re trying your hardest to brighten other’s days, and you could use some brightening of the spirit yourself, it just happens. A funny joke. A funny story. Maybe something you do that makes you laugh at yourself for a second and hope no one else saw it happen. Even just witnessing others do kind things for their friends. All things that make me smile and feel that the world is better because of all of them. Even my own, little world. It needs those kind reassurances that there is happiness and joy and love, especially when it doesn’t feel like it.

There’s always some weirdness in my life, and sometimes it throws me off course. I get off schedule. I get flaky. I hide away in a book with not much to say to anyone. I avoid others. Even the ones I need to have around me. And I know better. I know I should be surrounded by friends and loved ones when I get this way, but for some reason it’s just easier to hide away. Not that I am truly hiding. I guess I am just better at being alone with my thoughts at times. Or maybe I’m better at hermit-ing. I don’t know. I just get blah and disappear.

So thank you to everyone who is patient with me during these periods of hiding. Your kind gestures help pull me out of my funk. You help me heal. And although it may seem like forever, it helps me see the light again and get back to being myself in due time. Those small, sweet bits of light make more difference than you’d ever realize.

So this will be short and sweet and a sort of thank you note. A nod to those who help me find my smile and my self again. To those who know me well enough to know I go through funks when life can drag me down. Don’t ever stop. For my sake, please keep them coming. I love you all. You make my life brighter in the darkest of times.

Keep smiling. It’ll help someone’s day, somewhere, when their life is blah.

-Oceangrrrl 💙

My sweet, little hairball of happiness and joy. She’s my little Sausage buddy. 😍

A place where I found a nice chunk of joy, and where I wish I still was.

Water. A place of peace. The little things…

1 Comment »

Isn’t It Funny…

…where life takes you? It’s always a journey you never expected. You’re supposed to learn from your experiences and grow and become better, right? When sometimes it just becomes this overwhelming mass of crap that hits you all at once. Someone can ask just the right question, and it stays in the back of your mind to ponder a day later. Then that breeds more questions. Then you start thinking about why you did certain things. Then you wonder what you did with your life. Seriously! What the hell have I been doing with myself? Twenty years! It took me TWENTY YEARS to get a TWO YEAR degree!!! HA!!! Pathetic!

I bring this up, because I was asked if there was a degree that I wanted, that if I could have any four year degree, what would it be. I could only come up with something stupid and boring and pointless. An art degree? So I could actually learn how to paint? For what?!

So that got me thinking. What am I doing? I love making people happy. I love seeing people smile. I enjoy listening to others offload, lighten the weight on their shoulders. I like to mediate. I like to bring peace to people’s hearts. So where do I begin? Would another piece of paper declare to others that I officially know how to make people smile?

But this is what I seem to be exceptionally good at: asking questions of myself. I never seem to be able to answer them, just open more windows. Nothing like opening doors for myself. Just windows. An opening big enough for me to peer through but not walk through.

So I’m left with another question to myself. What do I do now?

And I don’t need anyone’s thoughts on this. I just needed to get it off my chest and out of my head, because I know I’m not the only one who would read this and understand it completely. This blog was once a way to communicate to a very small group of people about the time I lived in my car. It has evolved over the past few years into a journal of sorts. It’s a way for me to get some of these thought clusters out of my damn head. Thank you for allowing me to put them into yours!

-Bonnie

3 Comments »

Crazy!!!

That!  Right there!  Explains life!  Does it not?  Is life just not absolutely crazy?!  I mean, it can be crazy good or crazy bad or just absolutely, batshit insane.  It’s all the same anyway.  We even start off in a crazy way.  We came out of our moms, and look at what we are now.  No way we can ever go back.  It’s far, far too late for that.  

Then we learn how to walk and talk and hold a cup without spilling it (only because they’re spill proof, which we need more of in the adult stage) and feed ourselves with a stick with even smaller sticks at the end of it (or seriously two sticks), and we just keep learning all these crazy things.  For example, there were dinosaurs.  There were large, reptilian creatures, that would eat us, and thankfully they died, because nowadays, I wouldn’t even want to go up against a Komodo dragon.  Saliva that will slowly bring your body functions to a halt so it can start eating you?  Oh hell no!  Craziness!!!!  

After we learn about dinosaurs and how to add and subtract and successfully complete long division (math=crazy, logical language), there’s calculus and gravitational pulls and chemical explosions and antimatter.  OK. That shit right there is crazy enough.  Black holes=crazy.  Women=crazy.  Men=oh yeah!  They’re crazy too!  We are all crazy to some extent of the word.  This is something I tell guy friends when they have lady issues: every woman is crazy, but not every woman is nice.  It works the same way with men.  We are all wired differently.  Hormones make us crazy.  Household chores make us crazy.  Getting up every single day to do the same damn thing makes us crazy.  Changing plans makes us crazy.  Other people make us crazy!!!!!!!  

So how do we dig our way out of the craziness???  Do I have the answer?  Probably not, and no.  This isn’t an infomercial or ploy to get you to click somewhere to buy some magical pill.  If there was a magical pill to make life all unicorns, rainbows and glitter, you bet your ass I’d be buying it.  And who wouldn’t?  Who wouldn’t want a life like that?  Ah. Now that is the ultimate question.  There are a lot of people who wouldn’t want a magic pill of fabulous living.  And to be honest, I really wouldn’t want it either, but it sounds pretty damn fantastical.  And besides, I can go get a beer on an empty stomach for a quick bout of euphoria.  As long as I don’t eat or drink too many more of those tasty beverages, I can stay in that state for a nice while.  😉

You want to know who these people are?  The ones who would rather feel all the crap life can throw at you instead of only feeling the good?  I swear, they’re not unicorns.   In fact you might be one of them. Yes!  You!  Maybe you know how awesome you are.  Maybe you haven’t been through anything hard enough to make you rethink those magic pills. Perhaps you have been through all those struggles, and they helped you realize that without them, you couldn’t fully appreciate the good that life has to offer.  That’s the kicker.  That’s life’s ultimate mind fuck right there!  You can’t fully appreciate or understand all the good things until you have experienced and learned from the bad.  

Here’s my theory.  You ready?  I think life is all about balance.  Tes.  I have mentioned this in a previous post. There is good and evil all over the world.  Now, nature wouldn’t classify it.  Nature is indifferent and doesn’t give a shit about good or bad.  Do you understand that?  Indifference.  This planet can kill us in an instant, and yet we still believe we have the power to stop whatever it throws our way.  In the balance of nature, you survive and keep going.  If something bad happens, well, guess you just got too close to that gator’s mouth or that volcano just felt like exploding in the middle night with an ash cloud that suffocated everything within a mile of it. Hey!  It’s life!  But back to my point, we humans think we are all sorts of better than Mother Nature.  We have defined the harsh side of nature as bad or evil, and the surviving part we call good.  It’s balance.  Global warming?  We may kill off half the animals of the world, but nature will adapt and evolve. Crazy, right?  I ask that, because most likely we’d be dead.  

That is exactly what we need to do in life though. Adapt and evolve.  Physically and mentally we can do this.  We are stronger than we give ourselves credit for (NOT stronger than Mother Nature).  We don’t need a magic pill to make us believe everything will be ok.  Everything WILL be ok.  We can change ourselves physically in nearly every way we can imagine.  Sadly we cannot have genetically altered dolphin tails created for us so we can become mermaids.  This does sadden me a bit.  We can change ourselves mentally as well!  Crazy!!!!!!!

Why do I believe everything will be OK?  Even when I have hit rock bottom time and time again?  Believe me, I’ve been down there with the catfish on multiple occasions, and maybe that’s why I don’t eat them.  Hmmmmm.   Anyway, I have learned through enough life experiences that life is the ultimate teacher.  Divorce, death, being broke, sick, starting over, lost, depressed, confused, tired, angry, and that’s just the bad stuff.  Those things all helped me realize that the good things I have experienced are quite amazing!  Marriage, love, children (even though sometimes you want to put this on the bad list), happiness, helping others, surviving with a smile, and did I mention love?   Love is one of the most powerful weapons in your daily living arsenal.  It should be used every day!   Learn to love the little things in life that make you smile.  Yes. I understand this can be very difficult in some situations, like Christmas shopping at the mall, spoiled brats in line at the check out, drivers that can’t seem to stay in their designated, clearly marked lanes, losing a limb or normal body function (keep away from the Komodos). Yep.  I get it.  But.  But!  Those are the things that help keep you away from the magic pills.  The small things.  The small miracles you easily overlook while surviving. 

When life decides to be an asshole, deal with it as you must.  Cry.  Scream.  Yell.  Throw something.  Write a nasty letter. Feel the pain.  Feel the hurt.  Feel the knife in your heart or in your back.  Then, when you’re ready, reflect on it.  Why did it happen?  The real reason!  Don’t sugarcoat it.  Feel the rawness of the situation and then draw upon that to learn your lesson.  You have to learn it in order to adapt and evolve.  When you can clearly see the cause of the pain and begin to understand it, that is when a lesson is learned.  Once learned, be sure it is applied.  Once applied, you can start seeing your own rainbows.  Life can become more sparkly.   You might even see a unicorn.  Might.  Key word there.  Otherwise other people might believe you truly are crazy.  

It’s all about finding your balance.  Learning lessons from your past can make your future even better.  Appreciate those little things.  Appreciate the bad things, because they made you who you have become.  Live today with everything you got.  Live in the now.  You never know when everything and everyone around will be gone for good.  Let things be.  Stop worrying.  Enjoy this minute.  And the next minute.  And the next. Crazy, right?

-Bonnie

Of course I have to add some randomness!!!  Enjoy these little things!!


1 Comment »

Oh No! I’m Thinking Again…

And you, my dear reader, are in for a deeper look inside my brain. Not that that’s entirely a bad thing! I promise! But! If you don’t feel like reading my complete, utter randomness, please feel free to pass right on over this one. No judgment whatsoever. Of course now I have you hooked so you won’t be able to skip over this entry. Tee hee hee!!!!

So, car living and house sitting start making you think about your life a bit differently. At least for me anyway. I have started to see just how much junk there is in my life. How much junk there is around me. How much junk I just want when I know I don’t need it. It’s amazing to me how having this stuff seems to make life better when it really doesn’t. Lemme splain. Currently I am looking ahead to the next couple months when I plan to live under a roof again. I was thinking about getting an apartment, but geez. The thought of rent and bills and loud neighbors is such a turn off. Plus I don’t feel like moving furniture out of storage and all that crap. I just dread the whole moving thing again. The reason why I dread moving is due to the fact that I am probably just going to hop right back into my car again once it cools down. Seriously, the thought of how much I can save is like an addiction now. It’s just so awesome being able to save for a future rather than spend it on things like electricity. Yeah. I totally went there. For now I am looking to rent a room. If I could survive a Texas summer in my car I would do it, but I dig air conditioning. It’s pretty cool! Aaaaaaah!!!! See what I did there? Mmhmm. I went there too! 😛

That was my first set of thoughts. Now onto my second set. I started thinking about marriage. Yes. I know. I seem to be good at failing this. I see these couples who have been together their whole lives, and I just wish I knew how they found each other. Take me for instance. My first marriage was due to stupidity. There are plenty of details of why we were not meant to be, but those are between him and me. We get along great now, but it was a different story for a long time. We were very young and very stupid, and it just didn’t work. I believe our lives are better because of this. Not that it wasn’t difficult for us both, but with how things have turned out, I believe we are both much happier about our outcomes. Then there’s marriage number two. Before I go into this one, believe me when I say that marriage and divorce is not something I take lightly. Never did I ever think that either one would end. For me, the thought of being married was supposed to be an until death do us part bond for eternity. Obviously not. :-/ The second one, well, that was a love at first sight situation. No one knew what I saw in this guy. Hell! I don’t know what I saw in this guy! But I gave him all of me. My heart, my soul, everything. We fought before we were married too. Wow did we fight! He pushed me once. I went flying back thankfully landing on the bed. Those who know me also know that I am not some teeny tiny little twig of a woman. That should have been my biggest red flag right there. Did I pay attention to it? Of course not! But I did tell him if he ever did it again I would kill him. Obviously he never did it again. He had realized he almost lost me after that fight, and we kept going. We got married. We were happy. And we would still fight. So many red flags. So many mind fucks from this guy that I began losing myself.

We ended up moving to Kauai, because that is where we got married, and we decided to just do it. If we didn’t move then, we would never do it. We would have fallen victim to comfort and habit and age. So we took the leap. Within three months he mentioned divorce to me, because I wasn’t as happy as he wanted me to be. Yeah. I know. So of course I promised to be happier. He was just ready to leave me and my daughter there. He had already planned it all out. Needless to say I walked on eggshells the rest of our marriage. Mentally everything was my fault. Our passion went down the drain, because I couldn’t let him see that I wasn’t always ecstatic around him. If I ever cried because we fought, he would tell me I was guilt tripping him. Always guilt tripping. I allowed this man to wash away who I truly was. I had to hide my soul from this man. When I went through my cancer scare (yeah, most of you don’t know about that, I carried that burden mostly alone) he allowed me to deal with it in my own. He never supported me. He never tried to help me by making me feel better or telling me everything would be ok. If I let it get to me and I cried? Guess what I was doing. If you guessed guilt tripping you get a gold star!!!

He got into an accident on Kauai one night. He was hit by a car which basically shatter his hip. The ball joint was just fucked. He almost divorced me again, because of the way I acted at the hospital. I wasn’t dramatic enough. Seriously! I had to talk to the police officer who had been on the scene, as well as the doctors. Here’s the kicker. He said that if his mother were there, she would be frantic and crying and yelling, and obviously I didn’t care about him, because I wasn’t a complete emotional disaster. I am so not kidding! So that was divorce announcement number two. We ended up moving to Oahu for a year after that, because he wanted to be near a city. We hardly ever went to the city. He hardly ever went anywhere unless I could drag him out. I was always at the beach if I could be. I was hiking or hanging out on the north shore or snorkeling or doing something. I loved living in Hawaii. I felt at home there. So he wanted to move back to Texas. I could stay in Hawaii and we could get divorced (yep, number three), or we could move back together. I did what any good wife would do. I left paradise to move back to Texas with that asshole. Not that it was entirely terrible or anything! My family lives in Texas. I have friends in Texas. I spent half my life in Texas. So why the hell not, right?

Back in Texas. Life is not so great. Both of us going through our daily grinds. Neither of us putting in the effort anymore. Oh I would try! I would do these things I called love days. Basically, I would get him a card or sometimes I would get him something silly or something he wanted or cook a nice dinner. You know just a random day where I would try to be sweet. In the beginning he did them as well. He didn’t do them anymore. It was just me. We never fought anymore. I just took the blame for anything that went wrong to avoid any yelling. I started working. A lot. I put in so many hours that he began thinking I was cheating on him. And you know what. In a way it might have been. I dreaded being near him. I didn’t want to go home anymore. I started smoking again after having quit for years. I would get home and dinner was a couple beers. After checking my phone and reading through my emails with no evidence of any actual cheating going on, we fell apart even more. The fact that he even suspected me of doing anything was enough to break my heart and lose my trust in him. One day out on the lake with some friends, was out last “fun” day together. On the drive back home that night, he asked for a divorce for the fourth time. He had finally convinced me, and I agreed. The next morning he asked if we could go over who got to keep what. So, like robots, we split things up. It was settled. It was over. We weren’t happy anymore. I was an emotional disaster at this point. I had lost a ton of weight. I would break down and cry for just a quick thought of my ended marriage. It was so bad that the president of the company I worked for at the time talked to my boss about my stability at work. I took on extra duties to keep my mind occupied, but I was just a stressed out mess of a woman. It was supposed to be forever. He was supposed to love me as much as I loved him. He was supposed to be there for me during my dark times. Lord knows I was always there for his. Supporting him when he didn’t work. Helping him after his accident. Being there when he needed me. Why couldn’t I have gotten that in return? What was so wrong with me, that he had me believing I wasn’t worth that effort? What was the exact point he finally convinced me that everything was my fault and nothing I did would ever be right or good enough or perfect or what he really wanted? What was wrong with me? I allowed this man to get inside my head so much that I lost who I truly was.

This man, who I loved with all of my being, shattered my heart into a thousand pieces while twisting my mind into a pathetic excuse of one. It was so bad that I allowed myself to be in a rebound relationship that was even worse. I found the jealous guy. I was weak and insecure and stupid. I found the arrogant asshole this time around. I’m not even going to get into the details of that one. All I am going to say is that I began to wake up. I began to see things as they truly were, and I began to realize how much I missed me. Call it self awareness. I wanted to be me again, and I ended that one. All me. All on my terms. I began to build my strength only to find another loser after that. My most recent “boyfriend” who really wasn’t one. We never “did” anything either! Yeah. I know. TMI. That was pathetic. Then it became stressful. Putting pieces together I figured out the guy was a complete sociopath. It was amazing how he fit the definition perfectly, and when I ended it, he became angry. He claimed I publicly defamed him, and that he had proof. Nope. Never did that. Then he said he reported me to Facebook claiming I threatened him. Fucking serious? Never did that either. I was reported to the online FBI database for public defamation. Got to be shitting me! The best part? He claimed to have sent a letter to the Texas Supreme Court saying he had proof that I publicly defamed him and ruined his chances at future employment. HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Yeah! This time I found a new type of asshole! My sister had set me up with this guy!!! She and her husband had known him for over five years! She felt terrible!!! Needless to say she is no longer friends with him. Seriously though. What vibe am I putting out there for these losers??? What the F is wrong with me?!?? It seems I still have some soul searching to do.

What’s funny is that even after all of this crap, I just want to find someone to love and be loved in return. Why is that so much to ask? I am learning to love myself more and more each day, but I still feel the need to be with someone. You know, to share stupid things with and laugh about a movie we watched or cook dinner together or rub each other’s feet while watching some ridiculous show on tv or go hiking together or camping or traveling or hell, grocery shopping! What does it take to find this person?

I guess what I need to stop doing is thinking about all of this. I need to focus on being me. I need to live in the now. I need to enjoy life and fall in love with all its wonder and beauty. Maybe I just needed to write down the past and get it out of my system. Maybe sharing my experiences can help others. I know there are people who will read this and judge me or think they know me. Truth is we don’t know anything about anyone else. No matter what we will never truly understand what someone has been through or what they may be going through. What I have written this evening is only a snippet of my life. It is a quick glance at what has made me who I am today. I do not regret any of the things I have done. Two divorces? Yeah. That looks terrible. It is something others use to judge me, but that’s not all of who I am. I am loving and kind, and I love to make people laugh. I love to encourage others and make people feel good about themselves. I enjoy making others happy. I am considerate and respectful. I treat other people’s things as if they were my own. The few people in my circle know I will always be there for them any way I can. All they have to do is ask, and I will run to them. But I am not all love and bubbles and rainbows and glitter. I don’t like most people. I’m talking strangers. I don’t mind being in large crowds if I have a friend with me, but I am NOT going to a mall by myself. I have been to a concert by myself, and that was weird enough. I’ll eat alone at places, but that’s not too bad. I have yet to do the alone movie thing. Still have to do that one! I have done the alone traveling thing. That’s rough! Fun but rough! I have lived alone plenty. I have done enough on my own to know who I am. I’m sure there are more things I need to do sans company, but that doesn’t mean I want to be alone. Life is so much better when it’s shared with others! So much more beautiful when shared with those you care about!

So there you have it. That is where my head has been tonight. A bit depressing and long and blah blah blah. If you made it this far then kudos to you! You brave soul who dared to venture into the unknown of my past. Things I have not shared with but maybe two people. All I know is that my heart is open. After all the pain and all the sorrow I still have hope. I will not allow myself to become so hardened that I refuse to allow myself to be happy. Life is far too short to hold myself back and keep my heart behind walls. I have hope. Lots and lots of hope. 🙂

Good night and sweet dreams. :*

-Bonnie

IMG_6578

15 Comments »