Wants: i'm sending you a big bunch of love today.........i have had so many of the same feelings that you wrote about. you articulated, almost in my own words, the feelings that i've had for the past ten years. there seems to be one aspect of my life that is different and it is that i have two daughters and that impacts my life in a way that sometimes really throws me for a loop. i don't tell my feelings IRL because my oldest daughter seems to be very angry that i'm not the woman i used to be, before my depression/bi-polar got so much worse....our communication ends up with her yelling at me...i can do nothing right in her eyes..and when she yells, i leave. we used to be very close and now she cannnot be accepting of who i am now. when i told her that my nursing school tests were scheduled...i got no response.....i've only been to her house once in two weeks and that was because i missed my granddaughter so much....

i've digressed a bit..but wanted to talk to you about my big picture.
i had a much different, in a way, upbringing than you in that the spirit of volunteerism was, at times, the only thing that kept our community going. i grew up on a small ranch in Oklahoma...my father drove a road grader for years and years...he worked for the WPA and my daughter and granddaughter and myself still swim in a river where he helped build a dam. we were very poor when i was small. we got our first vehicle in 1951. before that, we went in a wagon pulled by mules....

i grew up knowing that you helped everyone that needed it. i wuold wake up at night and someone would be out front, needing my dad to pull their vehicle out of a ditch, etc. etc...my mother delivered all the babies in the area. no "training", she just did it. the politicians all knew that if they wanted to carry our county, they came to our house and enlisted my parent's endorsement....my dad traded watermelons and potatoes, that he raised, for work with people in the area.....my mother milked a cow and made butter..she also had hens and she would trade eggs for other things.......

i simply grew up knowing that you volunteered...the difference in that volunteering, and what i've done today is that alot of it was done for survival... but what i've done in my life has always been for a "greater cause".......whether it was working 5 years for the Humane Society, investigating large animal cruelty, serving on a board for victims in our county, being on the board of Planned Parenhood, organizing art shows for my church, raising money for Hospice and most recently, working undercover for The American Humane Society, going to MoveOn.org meetings and working endless hours on the computer for the Democrat party, True Majority and Common Cause...it has always been something that i believe in, as in rabid.....that's how i got this job offer...and my link to it was through "League of Conservation Voters"....

looking back, my feelings about myself were always better when i was serving the "greater cause".......my feelings about myself seem to originate from what i'm involved in...you know that my job, now, is ***** and my moods get momentum from that.....after reading Myzen's post, i agree with him about "wanting the easier road" but i don't have it...so i'll trudge on in this one..

i've learned so much from you and it pleases me that we can have these "discussions" because i so envy your skill with the written word....i hope that i haven't muddled your mind with my rambling tale of how i got to volunteering so much....

there have been many, many times when i've hated the whole tedious process that we have to be in, to live. here i am....no money, a few friends, barely hanging on by a thread but i have a life plan this time.....now, i will worry about whether or not the "plan" will work out. i pray that it will, because i'm not sure i'll rise from the ashes many more times........much love, pat