VernetteOutLoud

Truth be told…

*office phone rings*

Me: Good day. How may I help you?
Caller: Hi Vernette, Bob* here.
Me: Hi, Bob. What’s up?
Bob: So am…about that thing on Sunday. D hike nuh. Did any sexy, older…um mature…no middle-aged sexy ladies attend?
Me: …..Bob is this a serious question? *most disgusted tone*
Bob: uuuh…Yes.
Me: Look Bob, I don’t have time for this. You have a good day.

Click.

*name changed so as not to shame the obviously-crazy person.
True story.
Happened today.

I just had to share this. Bob* is very lucky I wasn’t riding a high horse today, because that conversation would have ended far worse than that.

Onward to my “One Word” Update.

So it’s been six months since I’ve done a “One Word” update. The same update I committed to write on the 15th of every month for the rest of the year. HA! SO much for stick-to-it-tive-ness right? It’s been a tumultuous six months and even though I may have had a good reason at the time for not doing an update…if I’m honest with myself, the reason behind the “good” reason is that I was lazy. Plain and simple. Just lazy.

However, I have been living my “one word” – TRUTH.

Truth has been the at the centre of my relationships, interactions and how I love myself. I may not have been writing about it, but I have been living it. And that makes me grateful for having this “one word” to focus on.

Over the last six months, I have been tapping into how I really feel about situations, people and life and I have been trying to align this truth to my actions. I have been having more authentic experiences and that has made a huge difference in how I perceive the world I live in.

Yes, at times, my choices have pissed those closest to me off, but this has only been for a short time. As I live a more authentic life, I’m ultimately making my world a better place and thus positively affecting those around me. My light can only shine if I am walking in truth. Win/Win as far as I’m concerned.

I have a couple difficult conversations I need to have and I’ve decided that I must have them during the next four months and I will allow only truth to guide them.

Look out for my next update on September 15th. To read updates from other bloggers click here!

…and that's a wrap!

I’m still here.

While I didn’t believe for one second that the world was gonna end yesterday, I chose not to make jokes about it. I believe that yesterday, for some people…for far too many people, their world did end. Loved ones died, parents were burying children far too young to be put into the ground and someone, somewhere found out that it is in fact cancer. This is the world we live in. It sucks ass more times than we feel comfortable admitting.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. – Richard Bach

Many times this year, I thought my world had ended.

Lesson learned: I. AM. A. SURVIVOR.

I’ve learned that I am more than I think I am. I can go further than I think I can. I endure. I rise above. I move on. I try again. I learn. I grow. I evolve.

Caterpillars don’t just enter the chrysalis and sprout wings, you know. Before they become butterflies, they essentially become bug soup, dissolving completely before being reborn as something new and beautiful. – Lissa Rankin

The caterpillar’s world has to end for the butterfly’s world to begin. The butterfly knows patience. The butterfly trusts that everything is happening as it is supposed to. The butterfly arrives right on time.

Patience. A year of patience. I wanted to fast forward the healing of my broken heart. I wanted to skip the hard gym days and go straight to the me who is now 18lbs lighter. I wished my promotion would just hurry up and be official. Needless to say, nothing happened before its time. The lessons were in the details. If I’d skipped the “hard” parts, I would have missed the experience of the journey.

I’m sure I will have more lessons in patience. Letting go of the outcome and trusting that everything is happening as it should, is going to be a recurring theme because I’m still pretty selfish and I want everything now. I’m still learning that the best part of delayed gratification is the delay.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. – Bob Marley

Failure is slavery. I can be controlling. This can be problematic when it comes to real life. One cannot control everything. Therefore when things fall apart, when the world as I know it ends, I tend to trash talk myself. Learning to reframe failure into just an experience to learn from has been freeing. It means that there is no right or wrong path…there is just a path. I live and I learn and I grow.

What is to give light must endure burning. – Viktor Frankl

It is said that the cracks in a broken heart allows light to shine through. My heart must look like a disco ball by now. That’s the thing about human beings and all the relationships we find ourselves in….someone is going to break our heart. Mother. Sister. Brother. Husband. Friend. That’s the risk of “relating”…of loving. This has been a time of releasing those who hurt me. It’s been hard. Some of the hurts I’m still not over but by acknowledging it…releasing it, I am now free to connect with those who can fill those holes.

The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others. – Sonya Friedman

We teach people how to love us. This is one of my favourite posts, because this is the standard I set for myself this year.

When, I moved into my apartment last year, one of my first guests said, “You know, maybe your mum had to leave this world, so you could finally find your place in it. So you could grow up.”

At the time, I was like…wait what?! But my world as I knew it, ended on August 07th, 2010…a little before 2:00 p.m. and all this time, I’ve been trying to work my way out of the cocoon.

I’ve done a lot of growing up in 2012. I have a long way yet to go. I am grateful for all the love in my life, for the people who love the work-in-progress that I am.

Light, Love, Passion….and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.…and that’s a wrap!

It began with Red

When I saw this week’s writing challenge I thought to myself, here is something I can do. I’m from the Caribbean, colour is in our blood, I could really sink my teeth in it and give it a go. So I started with the ending in mind.

It began with Red.

I knew I wanted to end by saying: I’m red-hot and full-hearted and something about passion. But working backwards all day, I couldn’t come up with anything coherent.

My first thought walking to work this morning was writing about red wine. I wanted to expound about the fact that I love red wine and prefer it every time to white. That the first sip of nicely chilled, dark red, full-bodied wine, is sometimes the absolute perfect end to my day. The best way to unwind and relax from the crap I have to deal with at work. Or I could get a little more personal and say one glass is nice but two glasses…well let’s just say, red could take on the sexy shades of passion. But who really wants to put all their business in the road? Right?!

Then I thought maybe I could talk about my short fuse, kinda like a bull seeing red. But again, we’ll be stepping into some personal territory not to mention the fact that it’s so cliché and I still am not sure where this post is heading. And do I really want to talk about how I can go from 0-60 in two seconds flat – red-hot anger, razor-sharp tongue capable of decimating everything in my path with red lasers shooting out of my eyes and then once I’ve calmed down which usually takes about the same amount of time…I’m back to being a kitten? Man, do I really want people to see me as a kitten though?

Maybe I should talk some more about red wine.

Or I could take it in a whole other direction and talk about blood. That the sight of it completely freaks me out, a trauma I go through every month. I could share about how, I want sons someday and that I already have a little speech planned for them when they are old enough to understand that mummy will cry harder than they can at the sight of blood. Should they ever get a bad cut or break any bones, the go-to parent would be their father, because mummy will not be able to help them.

Hmmm, I’m pretty sure at this point that I’m not doing this challenge right. Now I’m thinking about traffic lights and that the red light means STOP and maybe I shouldn’t even publish this. Maybe I would have done better choosing green or even yellow. Yellow reminds me of that Coldplay song though.

It’s hard corralling my thoughts, being Trini is not helping me one bit and I’m back to thinking about wine again. Maybe if I were home, I could have a glass of wine and the words might just pour right out of me. Or maybe not.

When in doubt…Google it! Here I learned that there are 285 shades of visibly different red to the naked eye, for a person without any colour blindness and 20/20 vision. Of these we have:

Scarlet. The colour of our national bird the Scarlet Ibis. Scarlett. The name for the female lead in one of my all time favourite novels, Gone With The Wind. And one of my all time favourite quotes, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Maroon. The descendents of Africans who refused to live in slavery in Jamaica from as early as 1655 and to this day, are to a small extent autonomous and separate from Jamaican culture. According to Google, the name Maroon is the British corruption of the Spanish cimarrones, meaning wild or untamed. Also the name of one of my favourite bands Maroon 5. I love you Adam Levine.

Crimson. Aaah blood again, only this time I’m thinking about Dexter and True Blood. Funny, they are two of my favourites despite all the gore!

Ruby. Makes me think about ruby slippers and yellow brick roads and finding my way to a cohesive post and a bombshell ending to rather scattered thoughts.

Wine-Red. Taaah dah!!! Need I say more?

Cheers!