Have been waking up for a week now with terrible body aches and feeling of getting too much sleep. Am grouchy, low energy, really hard to get motivated about anything much. Anxiety level is definitely elevated too.

I have been off of the antidepressant now for about a month, maybe a little bit more.

I can really feel that I need to exercise, but it' s sooo difficult to do!

Oh God, please give me the energy and will to do what I know my body needs. Help me to see and truly experience the simple pleasures and delight in the everyday. Amen.

SIMPLE GIFTS

'Tis the gift to be simple,'Tis the gift to be free,'

Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

It will be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

to bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed

To turn, turn, will be our delight,

'Til by turning, turning, we come round right.

Simple Gifts was written by Shaker Elder Joseph Brackett, Jr. in 1848. It was first published in The Gift to be Simple: Shaker Rituals and Songs.

Simple Gifts was a work song sung by the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing (more commonly called the Shakers), whose last community in America (Hancock Village) died in 1960. It is now a museum.

Dysfunctional family unit

I am having a hard time dealing with my parents. They are bizarre.

They have a history of being really unsupportive of any decisions I make in my life that don’t fit in with who they are. I mean, pathologically unsupportive, to the point that my mother especially can be emotionally abusive and damaging.

Well, right now is one of those times.

The last time they communicated with me was a couple of weeks ago; we Yahoo-ed on messenger, and I asked my mother why she and my father are not spending Christmas with the extended family in Indiana. (the last Christmas I spent in the states, December 2003, I begged them to come spend it with me in Florida, knowing it was my last one in the states for a very long time. I didn't have the money to come to Indiana, and hubby didn't have enough time off work to make it up there. My mother stated at that time that she and my dad were going to "...spend every single Christmas with Grama until she died", that being with her was most important. So, they didin’t come to be with me).

Now every Christmas since I left they have left Indiana, where my Grandmother is still very much alive and well, to spend Christmas in Florida, where I used to live, with their retired friends, not with “the family,” that mother so adamantly stated was more important (than me) 2 years ago.

So, when I asked her why she’s going to florida and not staying with Grama, in Indiana, she said “Well, there’s not anything there for us, we have no children, no reason to be there”. !!!!!!

“No children”….?????? What the hell am I? What kind of mother says she has no children when she is talking to her grown daughter?

A pathological, evil mother, that’s who.

So, sent them a Christmas gift anyhoo in spite of her evil-ness. Haven’t heard anything from them, yay or nay. Sent them this “1,000 golf courses you should play before you die” coffee table book, a golf ball engraver, along with with a book called “Daughters of a different path”, a book about western women who have converted to Islam.

I know they are probably having a difficult time processing the fact that I am muslim, so I sent this book to try and help them process it.

I am really enraged that they are simply not responding. If they are angry or upset or something because I sent this book, why can’t they just tell me that? If not, then why can’t they just send a simple thank you?

What is so difficult about just communicating?

Instead they do nothing, then later at another date I know my mother will say some terribly passive-aggressive, awful comment.

She wants to piss me off and have some hudge confrontation/argument.

Well, I won’t give her the satisfaction!

It really bothers me that apparently they haven’t gotten their internet connection going at their place in Florida. Either they haven’t connected it or they have and they aren’t going to let me know that they have. That is some lame excuse.

I live on the other side of the world and they intentionally don’t hook up their internet, their only way to reasonably communicate with me. What does she want, for me to call in a panic, worried about her because I haven’t heard from her? That’s messed up shit.

Man, I am their only child and they treat me like this? What have I done to deserve them acting like this towards me?

Nothing. I don’t deserve it, and nothing I did or do could possibly cause them to act this way. Nobody deserves to be treated this way by their parents.

It’s shitty, but it’s reality. I can’t control their behavior. They are acting like dysfunctional teenagers. She is acting like a dysfunctional teenager.

She is in control of the computer, not my dad. For all I know she could be lying to my dad and pretending that she’s communicated with me. Ah, but it's a sin for me to commit suspiscion.