Moving Ahead Again

I will be moving this blog to my new blog. It is called "Searching for My Friend", which I think is a more appropriate title. The title for this blog was an unfortunate choice. I don't want people to think that all I am writing about is suicide. If you have already subscribed to this blog, I hope you will come over the check out searchingformyfriend.blogspot.com.

The continuing story will be about the main focus in my life. I read in the Bible once that Abram was called a "friend of God". In other verses this is also mentioned. I found the idea intriguing and I began to ponder what that would mean. 

How do you become a friend with God? 

Hanging out. Walking. Talking. Sharing. 

So that has been my journey. Trying to find my friend, spend some quality time with Him and get to know Him. He has been a much better friend than I have. I have misunderstood things occasionally and become angry and hurt. He is forever faithful. Always waiting for me to finally get tired of the confusion and pain I feel and turn back to Him. It hasn't always been easy, but it has been worthwhile and educational.

I hope you will follow me through this journey. It has been quite a trip and the journey isn't over yet. I can hardly wait to see what is up ahead, around the next corner. I'm still a little afraid at times, but I keep moving forward. I know that whatever has happened, good or bad, in my life has been turned into something amazing.

Stay positive, stay well and stay blessed.

Pamela Sawyer

Change is Always Guaranteed

Change is a central feature of life and it is always guaranteed. Things will always change. It can be exhilarating, frightening, exhausting, or relieving.

From the moment we are born, we begin to change. Everything around us is in a constant state of changing. We don’t notice these changes because most of them are gradual.

It is the sudden changes, the abrupt changes that can throw us off course, upset us, make us happy, and make us want to fight and scream or laugh and cry.

Some people say that they don’t like change. There are some changes that I don’t like either, but I have found that instead of fighting change, if we flow with it, life can be so much simpler. The tension we feel while we are going through change is what upsets us. If we accept the change, and relax and go with it, the tension goes away and we can find peace. Easier said than done, I know, but it does help.

I have gone through a lot of changes in my life. Some have been good and some have been painful. But every change that has come into my life has made me a stronger and more compassionate person. I find it easier to understand and care for others because of some of the tough changes I have dealt with.

I can hear people saying, “Yeah, you can say that. You have no idea what I’m going through!” That is true. I have no idea what you are going through. But there are others going through what you are going through. And there are others who are going through far worse than what you are going through. We are never alone. Everyone suffers in their lives. It is our ideas that we suffer alone and no one can understand that causes us the most pain sometimes.

The hardest lessons in our lives have the power to destroy us or strengthen us. The choice is ours. We can either let them beat us, or stand up and never give up. Always move onward and upward. Every day there are new challenges for us and new opportunities for us to learn and be better people.

The most amazing change in my life was when I started seeing the world differently. Most of my life it seemed that all I could see was the pain and the ugliness in the world. Slowly, gently, that changed while I was living in New York and spending a lot of time wandering around the city alone, taking pictures, watching people and talking to strangers.

When I first arrived in New York, I was disappointed. At that time, New York looked dirty and ugly to me. People were rude. There were homeless people everywhere. There was trash piled up on the sidewalk that smelled so bad. The subways smelled nasty because too many people were using them as a toilet. I couldn’t believe that this was the place of my dreams.

Wandering the streets of New York, taking pictures and talking to people changed the way I saw things. I started seeing beauty in little things around me. I saw beauty in the faces of many of the homeless people that I saw every day and I made a few friends with some of them also. When we go inside of ourselves and look at the world through the eyes of God, we change and the way we see the world also changes. It is a matter of choice. We choose how we look at things.

One day I experienced this seeing in an amazing way. I had decided to attend an evening service at a church I was attending at that time. I was planning to go to the bank and pick up some cash, have dinner at my favorite diner near Central Park and then head over to the church.

I made my trip to the bank and headed over to the diner. When I arrived at the diner, I was disappointed that a woman was sitting in my usual place at the counter, but I chose another seat close to her.

I ordered my food and started a conversation with the lady. We talked about a lot of things. Life, politics, religion, cats. It was a comfortable conversation. Then things changed. Our conversation changed and my vision changed. She started talking about the homeless and how hard it was to find work after the age of 50. As she spoke, I noticed the dirt on her hands. I noticed that her hair and clothes were also dirty. And I noticed that she had two cats in carriers that she was carrying around with her. I hadn’t seen any of these things while we were talking in the beginning of our conversation.

I had finished my dinner and I was getting ready to pay my bill. When I opened my wallet, I saw the money that I had just withdrawn from the bank. Something told me to give it to her, and I did. Her smile and the look of shock were priceless. She told me that I was one of the nicest people she had ever met. I told her it wasn’t me, God was watching over her.

I left the diner and headed to the church. I didn’t feel like I had done anything great. I was feeling bad that I couldn’t do more. When I arrived at the church, I saw a friend. I told him what had happened and he told me, “Don’t worry, you did what you could at the time. Sometimes that is all we can do.”

I have always felt a strong urge that I wanted to try and save the world. But I only have so much power and others have to take responsibility for their lives. It’s not easy for me to let go of that urge to save the world, but sometimes I think we have to surrender a little. We give what we can and we pray for all.

© Pamela Sawyer, 2012

Hope and Love

Spring time has always been one of my favorite seasons. It is also one of my favorite examples of hope.

After a long cold winter when things seem gray and unfriendly, the first buds appear on the trees and the first flowers start to push their way through the earth.

It is a season of rebirth and I think that no matter how old we are, we can all have our own seasons of rebirth. I’ve had a number of them myself and I’m waiting for the next one right now.

I wonder if even the most positive people in the world still go through their seasons of doubt when hope seems far away.  I have been going through my own doubts lately where there seemed to be very little hope left. Then something inside of me said, “Wait a minute. There is always hope. Sometimes that is all we have.” The seeds are planted. The flowers are pushing their way through my heart and a new hope is beginning to bloom in my life right now.

Hope for love is one thing we all share. Mother Teresa said, “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”

The hunger for love will drive us mad and sink us into the deepest, darkest despair. It can also push us to make bad choices in our lives. I’ve made a number of my own and I thank God that at least I’ve learned something through those choices.

My last relationship ended 11 years ago and when that happened, I decided that if I am attracted to a man in any way, there must be something wrong with him. In the very least he is a cheat and a liar. That has been my experience with most of the men that I’ve had in my life.

After that learning experience, I decided that I need to look for good examples of good men in good relationships. I chose one of my uncles. I watched him and how he treated my aunt and I decided that I would like to find a man like my uncle.

A few weeks later, he was gone. He was having problems with his memory and he decided that rather than burden his family, he would take his own life.

I was devastated. I was heartbroken for my aunt and I was heartbroken for myself because once again it seemed that I had made a bad choice about who to look up to.

There is one good thing that came out of that painful experience. I wrote one of the best poems I think I’ve ever written. It was published in an anthology and it was also published on a CD of recited verses.

In the past two years I’ve been watching a lot of Bollywood movies. I am a huge fan of Shahrukh Khan and one of his movies is definitely my favorite, “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.” The love that the character Surinder Sani has for his wife is amazing. At the end of the movie he says that the reason he loves her so much is because he sees God in her.

Some will say that it is just a fantasy. It is just a story in the movies and real life isn’t like that. I wonder why not. Why can’t we all have a match made in heaven where a person will love us and want to make us happy even when we can’t see how wonderful they really are?

One of my brothers who has always loved to give me advice even when I don’t care to hear it once told me maybe I should lower my standards a bit and then I could find a relationship and get married.

I don’t think I need to do that. I think I will hang on to my dreams. I think I will hang on to the idea that if there is a Surinder Sani out there for me, God will lead me to him. If it doesn’t happen in this lifetime, I’m willing to wait a 1,000 lifetimes to feel and experience that kind of love.

© Pamela Sawyer, 2012

To Forgive is Divine

Life is full of heartbreak. We have our hearts broken by so many people in so many ways. The way we deal with heartbreak can determine how our lives take shape.

When I was younger I learned in church that God forgave me for my sins. I learned that we are supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves and I learned that we should forgive others.

They never did go into a lot of detail when they were talking about forgiveness. I think they missed a few points along the way that would have helped me. They never did mention that we should also forgive ourselves.

Like many people I had a number of heartbreaks in my life. I think I always felt a bit wounded because I didn’t feel like the people I loved really understood me. I don’t even know if they tried to understand me.

I carried around my hurts from the past within myself. I didn’t know what else to do. Nobody had taught me how to let go of them. Writing about them helped some but they were still there.

When I was studying the Bible for the umpteenth time a few years ago I was reading about Jesus and the words “he felt compassion for the crowd” stood out. I started thinking about that compassion. I wondered who he had compassion for and the answer came to me that he felt compassion for everyone. He didn’t just feel compassion for the good people in the crowd.

Then I started thinking about my mother’s second husband. For years I felt like I was justified in not forgiving him. Then I started thinking about what had happened in his childhood that could have made him such an angry and violent person. When I had that picture in my mind, it was the first time I felt compassion for him and it was then that I found that I could forgive him.

We aren’t justified to hold grudges against anyone in our lives. We are supposed to forgive just as we are forgiven.

I know that there are many that will think they are justified in hating and being angry at someone who has hurt them, but we are never justified in hating or holding on to anger. “To Err is Human…To Forgive Divine.”

It isn’t easy forgiving those that we think have hurt us so bad there is no way we can forgive. There are times when I still make a list of people I’m forgiving and I always include the ones who have hurt me the most.

There are times when I also include God on that list. Some people get indignant when I say that but I would like to ask who of us hasn’t held something against God at one time or another. I know he doesn’t need my forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t for the other person. Forgiveness is for us. When we forgive and let go of the pain, anger and sorrow that we carry around with us, that is when we find real freedom. It is like a huge weight being lifted off of your shoulders and your heart and that is when the healing begins.

(To be continued...)

© Pamela Sawyer, 2012

Exploring the Concrete Jungle

Mr. Wonderful was history and I moved to Queens. Those were two great things in the continuing story of my life.

I had commuted to Manhattan for over a year on the Long Island Railroad and it was wonderful to be able to get into Manhattan in under an hour riding the subway. The trip from Long Island took me two hours.

I spent the first few months facing some of my fears. Some of the fears were ones I created for myself and others were fears that were given to me by a well-meaning friend from Long Island. She told me, “never ride the subway” and “never be in Manhattan after dark.”

I could understand how riding the subway could be a scary thing, but I always wondered why I shouldn’t be in Manhattan after dark. Is that when all the werewolves and vampires come out?

I suppose I could have avoided riding the subway by taking the bus, but I think that would have been a pain. I dealt with some of my fear of the subway by running up the stairs when I arrived to my destination. I figured it was harder to hit a moving target and if there were any would be muggers, I wanted them to work for it if they were planning on mugging me.

Working in Manhattan, I met one of the best friends that I’ve ever had in my entire life. She was the first person that I had met in New York that I felt accepted me without judgment. Hanging out with her also helped me to explore parts of Manhattan that I had never been too. She lived in the East Village and we spent a lot of time down there together. It is still one of my favorite places. It seems far away from the madness that is around the places in Manhattan that tourists flock to like Times Square and the area where Macys is.

I hung out with my friend, but I also spent a lot of time walking around Manhattan on my own. I loved to walk and take pictures. I would stop at various places along the way and write down my thoughts in my journal. I wrote most of the poems that I had published while sitting in one place or another in Manhattan.

How did I find God in the streets of Manhattan? I found him in the love I felt for my friend. I found him in my solitude. I found him by observing nature and loving the trees and the flowers every spring when they come back to life after a long cold winter. I found him in the face of a homeless man named Larry.

The newspaper that I was working for moved their offices to Los Angeles and I wasn’t invited to go along. It broke my heart when I lost that job. It was my favorite job in my entire career. But life moves on whether we like it or not. So, it is easier to just go with the flow of things and trust that God is leading us to something better.

I was working for a friend of mine in a shop on Canal Street that sold electrical equipment of all sorts. I loved the job because it was something that a woman doesn’t usually do. I don’t think that my friend thought that I would do as well as I did. That also made me happy. It always makes me happy when I prove someone wrong when they have already made a judgment about what I can or can’t accomplish.

I was in love with walking around Manhattan. I used to walk up Broadway following the path of the subway line that I rode all the time. Sometimes I would walk up one station stop and other times I would walk further. The furthest I ever walked was up to 59th Street and Lexington Avenue.

One thing that always made me sad was when I used to see homeless people. I tried to give to everyone that asked because that is one thing that Jesus said and I was trying to put what he said into practice. My mother once asked me, "What if they go and spend the money on drugs or alcohol." I told her that it was between them and God. I was doing what I thought was right.

One night after I left work and I was heading toward the subway, I saw a man with a hat standing in the traffic on Broadway, trying to get people to give him money. I walked over to where he was and I gave him a little money. He thanked me and asked God to bless me and I headed home.

I started seeing the same man on Broadway and on the train that I rode. I found out that his name was Larry. When I walked up Broadway, sometimes he would walk with me and he would tell me about his life before he was homeless. I would listen and give him whatever I could at the time so that he could get something to eat and find a place to sleep for the night.

We continued this way for months. It seemed I always saw him and we would always talk before he would move on to continue trying to get enough to take care of his needs for the day.

I left my job on Canal Street and went to work freelancing for a company near Grand Central Station. I didn’t see my friend Larry for about a year and a half because I wasn’t going downtown as much.

Then I found a job down near the World Trade Center and I was going downtown every day. I found Larry again and he was about the same and our relationship started over again. Whenever I saw him, I always talked to him and gave him whatever I could that day. Then I stopped seeing him. I thought about him, and I prayed for him whenever he came to my mind.

A year later I was heading over to a friend’s apartment in the East Village. There was a half-way house for men a few doors down from his apartment. I noticed a man standing up against a fence and then the man called my name. It was my friend Larry. He was staying in the half-way house and he was all cleaned up. I hadn’t recognized him until he called my name. He told me that he had stopped drinking and he was trying to turn his life around. I felt that this was another miracle in my life that God was showing me. No matter how bad things get, we can always turn things around.

A few months later I saw my friend Larry on the train again. He was living in Brooklyn somewhere but he still had to ask for money on the subway. I felt bad for him but I felt no judgment. He almost started crying when he saw me. I just smiled and starting talking to him and gave him what money I could. When I had reached my subway stop, and I was heading for the exit, he called after me and said he wanted to thank me. I asked him, “For what?”

I know what he wanted to thank me for though. I think I was one of the few people that took the time to see him as a human being and as a friend and brother. When we look at people who are down on their luck, we should never judge them. We should help them anyway that we can. I always think about my family. What if one of them was homeless? Would I just pass them by or throw money at them and keep walking? When you start looking at the world like we are all brothers and sisters, your heart changes also.

It has once again been a few years since I’ve seen my friend Larry but I still pray for him whenever he comes to my mind.

(To be continued....)


© Pamela Sawyer, 2012

A New Life (Again)

My arrival in New York wasn’t exactly what I had dreamed about and Mr. Wonderful going bowling with his ex-girlfriend the first night I was there wasn’t what I had expected but I was beginning one of the greatest adventures of my entire life and Mr. Wonderful was definitely wonderful in the beginning.

I didn’t have a lot of money when I left Texas and Mr. Wonderful let me stay with him in his apartment until I was able to find a job and a place of my own to live.

I had been in New York for about two weeks when I had both. I was hired at the first job I applied for.  The job was working for the company that did the typesetting for a big Hollywood newspaper. I was impressed and so was my family.

Before I left Texas, I wrote my resume and had it printed. Then I went around to all my former bosses and some of the customers that I had worked with in the advertising and printing business and asked them for letters of reference. So, when I walked in for my first interview, I had the resume and five letters of reference. Later, the person who interviewed me told me that they had been impressed with how prepared I was. I was amazed. How could someone in New York be impressed by me? I was just a little girl from Iowa.

After I found my job, Mr. Wonderful took me to a rental office and I found a place to live. I rented a room in a house on Long Island that was just a few miles from where Mr. Wonderful lived.

The relationship with Mr. Wonderful seemed to be going okay for a while, but then I started noticing some things that didn’t fit. He was always going out with his friends or busy all of a sudden. One night when I was staying at his apartment I could hear his landlord talking to his wife in the apartment below about how he had someone else in his apartment the night before.
 
The friendship with his ex-girlfriend had moved back to being more than just friendship and he was juggling seeing both of us. I confronted him about it and that was the first time that we broke up. The breakup didn’t last long. He seemed to like being with both of us and I had convinced myself that if I showed him how wonderful I was, he would choose to stay with me. What a laugh.

My job was going great. I loved where I worked and I loved the people. Then technology stepped in and changed things. In 1990 the newspaper we did the typesetting for decided they were going to start producing their own type using computers. I was layed off because the company couldn’t afford to keep all of their employees without the business from the newspaper.

My layoff lasted about two weeks. The managing editor of the newspaper has told me to keep in touch. I called him one day to ask him if he knew anyone who was hiring. He told me to wait a few minutes and he would call me back. He called me back and told me to come into the offices in Manhattan for an interview. This was the next step in my grand adventure. My dream of New York had always included Manhattan and living on Long Island was getting boring. I wanted to be closer to Manhattan so I could go there whenever I felt like it.

After I got the job in Manhattan, I decided that I wanted to move out of the single room that I had been living in for three years. I moved further out on Long Island and the commute into Manhattan every morning took me two hours on the train.

The new apartment that I found was in the basement of a house. I loved the apartment, I loved the area where I was living, and I loved my landlords, but they weren’t very nice to each other. They used to come home late at night, slamming doors and yelling at each other. I lived there for nine months until I had had enough of being awakened with their yelling.

I started talking to some of the people that I was working with in Manhattan about where I should live. I had no clue about where to move after living on Long Island. One guy told me that I should move to New Jersey. I insulted him by replying that New Jersey smelled bad.

Then one of the editors told me to ask one of the secretaries and another part of my life changed. The secretary lived in Queens and she had a friend whose mother owned apartments that she rented out and she had two apartments available. I took the subway home with my friend and she introduced me to my future landlady. I fell in love with the area as soon as I saw it. The apartment that I found was about 1-1/2 blocks from the subway and there was a grocery store around the corner.

Mr. Wonderful and I had broken up just before I moved to Queens. I got tired of spending all the holidays by myself and I got tired of being with a man that thought it was okay to have two women that he was juggling and lying to all the time. I decided that it was better to be alone than to feel like I was only second best in someone’s life.

Living in New York has been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. I thank God that he has allowed me to be here. I have grown and changed for the better in every way. I used to think that I had to go climb a mountain or live in a cave to find God. I found God in the crowded streets of Manhattan. He just needed to get me alone for a while so I could pay attention to all the wonderful things that he was showing me.

(To be continued ...)

© Pamela Sawyer, 2012

On the Road Again

Two weeks after I heard the words, “You’ll never go to New York,” I was on the road again. I went around and said goodbye to all my friends and I had Thanksgiving dinner with one of my friends. I didn’t tell anyone in my family that I was leaving though. I just left.

I left San Antonio at 9:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening, November 28, 1987. It was pouring rain. At one point I had to pull over for a few minutes because it was raining so hard, I couldn’t see where I was going.

This was before Mapquest and before cell phones. I had planned our a route that would have taken me across the country to Jacksonville, Florida on I-10 and then I-95 straight up to Atlantic City, New Jersey. The man who ran the Drive Away Company that provided the car for me recommended another route. I decided to follow his directions.

I drove through Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky without any problems. I was driving main roads all the way. When I got into West Virginia that is when the problems started. It was a two lane road. It was dark and it was foggy. I was driving about 30 miles an hour with the emergency flashers turned on. Finally, a truck driver in a semi passed me. He flashed his lights at me and I knew what he was trying to tell me. I followed him out of the mountains of West Virginia. Thank God for truckers.

I stopped during my trip through West Virginia and placed a call to Mr. Wonderful. I told him that I was tired and I was going to stop for the night. He begged me to keep going because I was “so close.” According to him, I was only about 8 hours from New Jersey. He told me that he would meet me at a casino in Atlantic City.

I continued driving and because of the conditions in West Virginia, it took me about 12 hours to get to Atlantic City.

After West Virginia, driving through Pennsylvania and New Jersey was a cake walk. I didn’t have any problems other than the hallucinations that I started having after driving for 36 hours straight. There are green signs that tell you the distance to the next city or town along the interstates in the U.S. I kept seeing those signs up ahead and when I got to the point I thought they should be, there was no sign. I also thought I saw a tree jump out into the middle of the road at one point.

I arrived in Atlantic City, New Jersey sometime during the day on Saturday.  A drive that was supposed to have taken me 24 hours, took me 36 hours. I was tired and I wasn’t in a very good mood when I got there. Mr. Wonderful came out of the casino asking me what took me so long and telling me that he had called the highway patrol because he was so worried about me.

We took the car I had driven to a car wash and I cleaned it up. Then we delivered it to the people who owned it in Ventnor City, New Jersey.

After we delivered the car, we headed to New York and the land of my dreams. Oh what a dream it was. On the way back to New York, Mr. Wonderful told me that he would have to leave me alone for a few hours after we got back to his place on Long Island. He had to go bowling.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had just driven 36 hours to be with him and he was going bowling?

He had a girlfriend that I didn’t know about when we got involved. He had broken up with her but they were still on the same bowling team. He didn’t want to tell her about me because he didn’t want her to know that he had met someone while he was in Texas. When he broke up with her he had given her that famous line, “I hope we can still be friends.”

When we got close to New York City, we were passing the landfills in New Jersey. The wind was blowing just right that day. The smell was awful. My first impression as we entered into New York was that it was dirty and ugly. It was a cloudy day and nothing looked appealing to me.

My arrival to New York wasn’t all that I had imagined but there were some positive sides to it. I was in New York and after Mr. Wonderful left me in his apartment to go bowling with his ex-girlfriend, I called my family to tell them where I was. Shocking my family has always been a great source of joy for me. I accomplished that when I called them and told them that I was in New York.

I learned many things on this trip. Number 1: I will always map out my own trips unless I feel like I’m talking to someone who knows what they are talking about, like a trucker. Number 2: Many times reality isn’t the same as what we imagine, but we can make it work if we try. Number 3: God uses others to get us where he wants us many times, but that doesn’t mean that they will remain in our lives. Number 4: If you meet a guy who is from another city or state, find out if he has a girlfriend, wife, etc. before getting involved.

 (To be continued...)

© Pamela Sawyer, 2012