#i came so uprepared

[riordanverse-madness]

So, I just remembered that the PJO TV series comes out this summer, the solangelo book comes out in may and the sixth pjo book also comes out this year.

I came in 2023 so uprepared

[obigem]

For several beats, they both just stood there frozen in shock.

For Cordelia, it was mostly confusion. The Fall Festival didn't seem at all like Matthew's scene, so what was he doing here?

For Matthew, it was a rare moment of being uprepared to see her—all dressed up.

She was wearing a dress and earrings and he could see the deep maroon hue on her lips—lipstick. Why was she so dressed up he quickly thought to himself before noticing he was still holding her hand. He quickly yanked it back

"You should watch where you're going." He said gruffly

"Sorry, I...didn't mean to." Cordie got flustered. If she hadn't been lost in thought about Jai, she never would've bumped into Matthew. "You're not hurt are you?"

"What? No, course not. I'm fine."

"Good." She let out a sigh of relief. "I guess it's a good thing I ran into you"

"What are you talking about?" Matthew got suspicious.

"Well, now I can thank you."

"Thank me?" He suspicions were growing.

"Well, yeah, for Dale. You told him to join my club so I had a more permanent member to fill out my numbers, right?"

"I did?"

"You don't have to be aloof about it. Right before school ended, Dale came and found me."

It was lucky that he did because had he been even a second later, Cordelia would've been headed to the lockers and whisked off with Jordie.

"Madame President!" He called out to her.

"Oh, hi there." Cordie was a bit startled to have a strange boy approach her like this.

"Thank goodness, I thought I might miss you since it's a half day!"

"Yeah. Umm, do we know each other?"

"Not yet, but perhaps we'll become well acquainted in debate club."

"Debate club? You're not asking to join, are you?"

"Am I too late? Oh no. I know you're quite popular, but I didn't think that all the club seats would be claimed so quickly."

"Claimed? No way! I wish. Recruiting club members has actually been pretty difficult."

"I'm not really all that popular. If I was I probably wouldn't have had such a hard time filling member seats. Or maybe I guess debate just isn't as exciting for most people."

"That's not true! Debate, I think is a rousing sport. That's why I want to join!"

"Well, if you're serious, I'd love to have you on the team. What was your name again?"

"I didn't give it yet. It's Dale Sigworth."

"Well, Dale, welcome to the club! It's lucky you joined. I needed a permanent fifth member."

"Well for that you have Matthew Landgraab to thank."

[opalmothnightingale]

Flatter Your Way Into His Heart (How To Win Boyfriends & Influence Husbands) (Please Don’t Try This At Home)

3- 3- 18  -

My title of course alludes to the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” which seemed to be much about flattering people, being interested in them...  Genuinely..  Too bad I only realized too late I’m actually just NOT all that interested in most people, and I shouldn’t fool myself...  

So I came to see that I can’t follow the books advice...  That, yes I can fool myself a little while, but it is in no one’s best interest.  I should only be friends with a select rare view...  Still I feel many do fall for flattery.  Especially genuine, sincere admiration instead of fake flattery...  Yes, oh well,...  Good for them but I’m just not that into fawning to egos anymore...  I just don’t feel it, bored by it generally.  Too introverted and weird...  Just can’t feel it at all... 

I feel like all my life growing up I was being shown how to be a flattering person, a person that ingratiates others and makes them feel special.  I wasn’t very talented at it because I was so weird and introverted...  and so I was not the gracious womanly person my mom and her clan of womenfolk pictured.  Even so I won me some boyfriends and a couple of proposals and a marriage to a man who some would say was an enviable man to have “won”, but I just loved him, and never thought of anything so superficial as what many would when comparing men and husbands, etc.  

I still now see that he has more sense and savvy for certain lifeskills and intelligence and functioning in the world that correspond to his level of “admirableness” in some ways, like success in college, blah blah.  Too bad though he had a side to his past that tarred things considerably and geared him towards a dysfunction that we both related to.  I’m not sure how good or how bad, how smart or how dumb, how sane or insane, he really is...  Because he seems to have broad strokes of both.  

I feel I was flattering to him though, because I had been taught how to be like that, without even realizing that is what I was doing,...  and,...

I was taught to appeal to the egos, arrogance, know it all personality traits, self admiring traits.... So rampant everywhere...  Ugh..  It hurts and irritates me to realize how I was taught all this...  I was taught to be the smiling, nodding, commenting, interested in all he said kind of person,...

even if I really wasn’t that interested and didn’t have much to say because I couldn’t think of much to say about it.  When I could think of something I made myself say something even when I was bored and anxious by being forced to play into all that...  

And so I learned to stifle my weird and particular interests and it won him over.  I feel I had to bend so far into his personality, or rather, I didn’t have to but thought I was supposed to, thought it was rude not to.  Even so we did share a lot in common.  

But somehow I think over the years I forgot how to notice all he did, forgot how to care, how to pay attention or flatter him.  I lost that side of me, especially with all the abuse he gave me.  Over time I learned to be fully myself, folded deeply into my own wings, in my own cocoon, my own rose petals and patterns.  I have forgotten how to notice or remember things oftentimes...

...Grown into the stereotypical taking for granted, but maybe because there was so much pain and exhaustion and trauma tangled in the whole relationship and the history that it just felt like survival to me, to shuffle that into the back of my mind, as fairly irrelevant, not high priority.  I remember and consider some of it, but lately more of it is becoming more noticeable to me..

As I think, what if he died, what would I do?  What would I miss?  What would I need that he does and I don’t feel able to do right now, or at least not without some changes, sometimes major changes, major healing, and I don’t know how long it would take.

After all the shame, denial, stifling and scorning and silencing and dominating and micromanaging from him, the interrupting and controlling and pushy and rude,ignoring, disrespectful, belittling, name calling, verbal abuse, etc etc, stuff that he does...  After all that it can feel hard to recognize him, his good traits.  It can be hard, demeaning, almost, to me, to have to recognize, but I guess I need to try to do so...  

Just so I can think what to do if I ever have to live without him.  I am not sure how to do it...  Should I try to think of writing him letters, telling him all I admire and care about and like and am grateful for and need, that he does?  Not to give him the letters directly necessarily but just to write it, to contemplate, to make it an exercise in real appreciation.  

I don’t feel I should give him the letters because he seems to take gratitude as an invitation to exploit and manipulate sometimes, sadly enough.  At least, if it’s too over the top.  I have to keep from seeming too “weak”, too grateful, too cooperative, too open to criticism, too open to suggestions or input...  all which he seems to take as invitations to try to control and lord over, loom over me, and act superior and belittling. 

 Even to tell him of things I’m trying to improve, it seems to open him to abuse, as though he gets jealous or fearful that I’ll get too strong, too independent of him, maybe that is it? 

And if I tell him of my dreams, deeper thoughts, etc, the same, he will try to deflate me, take all the wind from my sails, as though he can’t stand me to thrive and shine brightly, some strange way... \

 If I talk of deeper insights, he gets jealous and starts to say I seem arrogant,... Maybe it makes him realize he’s not as deep or virtuous, but I really am living these virtues.  Virtues make people uncomfortable if they are living in opposition to said virtue, I suppose.  It’s for all these reasons I can feel uncomfortable complimenting his good traits, even in my own mind, but I must see it’s for my daughter’s sake...

And my own...

Because, it he died, he’s not seeming to want to help me prepare for that, very well, mentally, emotionally,...  He doesn’t seem to want to think of the aftermath he’d leave me as I’m so uprepared to be a single mom.  He doesn’t seem to want to help me prepare so I’ll have to take it all on in my own mind and thoughts and writing, and I will...

...  And hope he’ll live a long time and all this thought of death will be a false alarm in the long run, but for now I don’t know and it’s good to prepare, at any rate, at any time.  I never know what will happen, any day, a car wreck or the unexpected, and it’s always a good thing to be ready to manage such things, if possible, reasonably well at least.  

So It’s something I’ve been kind of avoiding thinking of, even though I knew how unprepared I was.  I felt unable to face it.  Life keeps making me face what I thought I could not face yet... That I desperately needed to face even though I felt I wasn’t ready to do that....  So, a doubtful thank you, life.  Sigh.  Life is so strange, is it not?  

What can you say for it? ...  It’s absurd.  Sad.  Insane.  Pathetic. 

 Tragicomic and horrifying but it depends.  I no longer mourn deaths that much, it seems...  I wonder what I’d do if my husband did die?  

...Or if I knew I was going to die.  I might shock myself with my own aloof stoic calm clarity.  I’ve been kind of giggly and playful feeling lately but it seems like a coping mechanism, and a healing attempt for me and my daughter.  

I have also been very irritable and having a somewhat short attention span for things I might ordinarily have more mindfulness for.  I did stop taking some herbs that make me mindful, lately, though...  Hm.  

But surely a lot of it is all the worry on my mind and heart, sleep disruptions, etc.  Even so the energy has been doing interesting things, and the head explosion feelings of kundalini have returned after being gone mostly for a while. 

So It makes me wonder what’s up and what causes these things to come or go when they do,...  Many things seem to be going on at so many levels for me, culminating lately just now, good and bad, and complicated things...

things that make me hope but also fear, love but also contract and feel confused over the spirit love and what to think about it, the astral experiences, soul connection possible experiences sometimes, etc.