The Horizons, They are Definitely Interesting

     Well, I'm coming back. This is indeed going to be a much more positive entry than before and I am happy to admit (yes, admit. It's actually really hard for me to claim positive accomplishments and positive...anything really) that things are on a wildly progressive or uplifting. Simply put, things are going good.

The routine I've used here is to talk about my feelings, problems or thoughts and then give a life update. And since I'm a slave to tradition, that's how I'm gonna roll today. So...

So I've been working on gathering intangible things that I've needed for so long.
   I've gotten myself a decent job that suits me perfectly right now. I have a little bit of freedom with a flexible and fairly open schedule and I am doing things that are actively teaching me a lot.

   I am getting my health insurance back and will get back on the medicine that helped me before so much in my ability to be productive.

Not my actual new glasses

   I got glasses, which has made it possible for me to do my job and also has helped me in so many ways I didn't understand before I had them. It sounds like a no brainer but for so long I had no choice and just had to deal with my very very poor sight. And I made it...barely. I missed a lot more than I realized.

   I started going to the gym and have been dedicating regular time to it. This has been a great encouragement to be able to get there 5 days a week or more I have always struggled with ambition and motivation for some reason. I used to picture it like there were bottles in every person's body and each one was filled with motivation or ambition or talent or abilities or other things like that and mine was broken and nothing could cause mine to actually fill up fully/stay filled for more than a very little bit. This made sense because for years even when I had things to look forward to or had clear goals ahead, I'd still lose the ability to stay motivated enough to fight for things I needed to fight for.

   One small thing that may seem so minute or not worth mentioning is drawing. For the lat few weeks, I've been getting to work about 2 hours early, sitting in my break room and drawing abstract
art till it's time to clock in. The reasons it's so big for me are: it gives me time to cool down, gets any bad vibes out of my head and gives me time to breathe and relax before work. This practice truly has given me an ability to deal with things much better than before. The therapeutic results of putting my pen to paper is a big reason I'm able to do the next positive thing as well right now.

   I've been able to handle and deal with negative things that pop up. Friday morning on my way to work (it's about a 2 mile bike ride from the train to my job) I ran over what turned out to be a GIANT piece of glass and my tire instantly popped. That kind of thing could put me down in so many ways

and in the past that has been the kind of thing that would cause a depression and a slide into the worst. I've closed myself even deeper into the darkness that eats away at me, many things at a time. I've been unable to go to work or call and felt so confined in the darkest place in my mind and lose everything quickly.

Friday, I walked to work (justifiably angrily), went in, worked, called a bike place near where I live, left my bike there and had my cousin pick it up later and moved on with my life. I got it fixed Saturday morning and it even ended up costing about half the price I expected.

The thing I'm taking away from that situation is I didn't shut down emotionally, I dealt with it and didn't let it ruin my mood...after about an hour anyway; I was sooo ready to fight anyone that walked near me for a little bit.

   And here's the most surprising thing I've dealt with recently; a person who was my boss at an old job reached out to me. At first I wanted to let this person know all the negative things I had to say and be brutally honest in telling former boss every angry thought I had from when we worked together.

Here's a quick recap of why I wanted to jump on the chance to say some stuff to former boss:

     I worked at a job not too long ago where I was pushed to limits in ways I saw as very unfair and very mean. Certain managers were doing things both on a personal level and on a professional level that made my job beyond just difficult and frankly hurt my feelings.

I'm being vague because though I had a very bad 

time at the hands of certain people, I don't 

think it's right to bad mouth someone and it's 

even worse to talk about them when they have no 

way to defend their actions at the moment. I didn't 

and still don't know the while story and I'm 

not trying to say that because things were 

really bad then, they are bad people. 

Back to the story...

So this person sent me a friend request, so to speak, on social media and I was shocked. The last time I had any communication with this boss, I was scheduled to work one morning and I saw that they cut my hours so much that I wasn't going to be able to pay bills...so I walked out and that was the end of my time at that job. Three years there and I just walked out without saying a word.

I got the request and my first thought was, "Oooh now I can say all the stuff I wanted to say before!" I was ready to demolish that person and leave them with a mic drop message. I smartly took a little bit of time before responding and calmed down a little; I messaged that person later that night and I was brutally honest in questioning the friendship request but I didn't attack or say "all the things I wanted to say" but instead just questioned if the request was by accident.

They responded and basically said they missed me as a friend and they understood my somewhat angry message, causing me to asses what I was really mad about. Since the day I walked out, my life has gotten better and enough time had passed that any repercussions from everything that happened then was over.

I thought about this:

     I could have gotten all the brutal things out to them in that message. I could have told my former boss off without any worry about that person impacting my schedule/pay. I could have said anything to them and felt like I "won" but what then? Then that person either responds with anger and fights back or they walk away being beaten. That person took a chance at possibly being rejected by being the one to request a connection and they were at least more vulnerable (though it's a very small way, they were).

I thought about what I would gain by getting back at them now and it left me with a temporary good feeling and an empty feeling when I considered after that one response. I don't want to be like that, I actually got along really well that person before things went really badly and I would be closing the door on any chance at a friendship ever. Winning has never been my hope in life, just like making money has never been a motivation for me.

So after the initial message, I explained that I was just shocked by the request. I told that person that I can put the past behind me and I'd like to be friends. And at the end of a few more messages back and forth, we are gonna hang out. I could have held a grudge and lost a potential friend...but why? What would that do for me as a person?

I'd rather let go of that stupid grudge and re-connect with a person who was a good friend at one time. I won in such a more real and deeper way and I'm actually really happy about that. Also, I found out after I sent that first message that I have become so good at cutting people out of my life that I put that person in a box in my mind without thinking. When I gave myself a moment to actually feel, I realized I missed them and didn't WANT to cut them out.

Sometimes, I do things on autopilot that I might not actually want to but because it becomes the routine, I do it.

     At this very moment (Saturday May 25th 2019) I am 17 days away from my first big vacation. I, along with two good friends, am going to Hawaii and I could not be more excited! I also have plans to go to see the Grand Canyon in November and a BIG trip in 2022...but that's another story for another time.

Work has been really good and I'm moving about two blocks away some time in the near future. I have been fine tuning daily routines such as when I get to work, what I eat and my workout routine. The more I sharpen my life in little ways, the better I have become as a person.

I'm so close to getting my health insurance back and once I do, I'll be able to take medicine I need, migraine medicine and allergy meds.

I've been working on my YouTube future plans, I'm really excited about getting my vision out of my head and into the digital world. I have some decent plans that I hope I can share with the YouTube world and possibly find some way to gain a following. I'm gathering episodes now and I'm currently looking for guests who want to get their story and knowledge out there for fans to watch and relate to or learn from. It's gonna be good!

And finally I'm trying to figure out how to be happy, like actually happy Through my gender issues and understanding how to do things I want to do for myself, I've been trying to make myself a better person. I've been working on small things from training my voice, learning how to makeup better and better and how to accept compliments to big things like lose weight and eat better. So far so good. 

     The best thing to happen today is I finally gave in and signed up for my own internet so hopefully I won't be left in the dark like I have for the last few weeks.  Hopefully you'll be hearing from me more through this blog, instagram and YouTube (Knock on wood)

Inspired Thoughts

     Where am I? Where was I? Those are very similar questions but with such drastic different answers.

So recently I ran into a hockey player from my favorite team in a nearby mall and the circumstances made me think hard about something. My cousin was going to drop me off to get my phone fixed and I had planned to have another friend pick me up at least 4 hours later, something I didn't want to do very much but it was my only choice.

So I start getting out of his car and he, at the last second, decides he'll go in with me.Cool with me, I was gonna be bored for most of that time. He said if it was gonna be less than like an hourish, he'd stay and it turned out to be an hour; he decided to stay so I didn't have to stay another 3 hours after that and we walked around.

So we're walking around and talking about our plans for the summer and other progressive plans; I look next to me at him and over his head I saw a tall man with red hair. For a second I think, "wow that guy's tall...WAIT!" And it hits me...that's Jake Voracek of the Flyers. Jake freakin Voracek!

I kinda hinted to him that I'd like to fangirl out and get a picture, which he was fine with, and we took a few pictures. I told him good luck than proceeded to freak out to my cousin about how awesome that was.

     So the fact that I just got to meet and talk to a player on my favorite team was beyond cool but my cousin brought up this thought, if he wasn't there I would have seen Voracek and gone crazy...I would have had no phone to capture that moment with.

     He was so right and how lucky was I that he decided just to stay and walk around with me, THEN I said, "Wow...what if we stopped to get gas? This entire random lucky chance would not have happened." And we kinda took a moment to think about how EVERYTHING worked out for meeting to occur. If I didn't make the appointment that exact day, I wouldn't have been at the mall that day, if my cousin picked me up a half hour earlier (like he was planning to at one point) no Jake sighting, if I went to the bathroom like I was going to when we first walked in... that moment doesn't happen.

    This has been a kinda theme in my life lately and while it goes both for the good and for the not so good, I'm trying to remember the things that have been great additions to my life in these kinds of
ways. There was one clear defining moment in my life that had I not decided to take a stand, I would have never lived near the church I go to and I never would have met all the friends I know and love dearly now.

It's kind of insane to think about all the good that came from me moving to Riverside, NJ and what I'd miss out on without that one moment; that one time I refused to go live with my mom and her boyfriend when they were moving and when I refused to go live with the rotting scumbag that donated sperm to create me. I wasn't usually the kind of kid to say something like that exactly but that one moment defined the rest of my life.

     I say all this to myself to fight all the negativity that I hold onto so tightly, I am a mess and have been a screw up more than not BUT I have made it this far and not by accident. I don't know why I'm still here but I am sitting here typing this right now, I'm still here to feel pain daily over losing my Uncle Mike and over never having a 'dad' and other things that have sucked...but I made it through all of that and a lot more. I made it.

     If I made it, you can make it too. You  really can. And not only can you but you can have an awesome story to tell someone else and maybe you can tell someone your story and inspire them to keep going. If we can make it this far, far enough to be reading what I'm typing...if we can get to tomorrow together as friends or family or strangers who need each other, then we can seriously make something great happen for ourselves and for someone else.

     I don't like to use foul language much but here's the bottom line, This world is fucked up and will not stop fucking you up if you let it even a little bit. You and me and your friends and my friends can decide to make something good happen. Let's spread the hope instead of letting this world spread negativity.

Side note:
Thank you so much for reading this blog, there have been times where I was planning on giving up and I truly thank you all for reading and helping give me the inspiration to keep going and thinking there might be something positive to strive for. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Anxiety, Birthdays and Positivie Thinking

     Hello, again. Thank you for visiting this blog, I will be your tour guide through the mind of Layla Lee Gilmore. Please hold any questions for the comments section and we must insist, no eating while in her brain. Crumbs may affect brain cells. Thank you and enjoy the ride.

     Alright so I'm gonna jump right in, I've been dealing with anxiety at very high levels lately. Very. High. It's becoming very hard to keep my emotions under control and mainly in certain areas mentally. I've been able to handle things like being patient with people who are not accepting of my transition or when it comes to waiting for the train to come but when it comes to things like me wanting to perform a certain act and unable to do it in the time I need to. or if I have to leave work and my coworker is late, those situations have become so much worse emotionally.

     I'll give you an example of something that has really been draining emotionally for me:
I was at work, I'm a cashier, and a person I used to know came in. Now the last time I saw this person, I was being yelled at threatened and had to call the police to assess the situation; said person came in and got what they needed to get.

In my mind, I went through a thousand different scenarios of what was going to happen when they got in line.The person was polite and said hello, which I wasn't expecting, then I did my job and was polite back. This whole thing took about 9 minutes from the moment they walked in till the moment they left and afterward I felt like I had run a marathon.

     My emotions in that situation (or non situation) just blew me away at how my overthinking and over...fearing, I guess you could call it were so  encompassing that I physically felt drained. Not exactly like the same as running a marathon but draining nonetheless. I've hit a few situations like this that have drained me more lately than in a long while.

Michael Patrick Bossler

     And now for birthdays...oh birthday, how you never want to leave me alone. I am not a fan of my birthday and I don;rt know how to deal with it or come to terms with it. To explain that, my uncle Mike never missed my birthday, not when I had nowhere to live or when I was at my biological father's or when I was at Bible college. No matter what was going on he called me or visited and I counted on that, he was the only reason so many times that I even cared about celebrating my birthday.

All that ended in November of 2012, he took his life and with it he took a giant piece of my heart. The last serious attempt to take my own life was the birthday after that and I created a short film depicting that night
(trigger warning: suicidal issues confronted in this video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQfpNVVl7gE

     Anyway, ever since November of 2012, I hurt the most during my recognized day of birth and it seems to be harder each year. I remember a time when I had been sleeping in a baseball field in Camden for a few weeks, things were really bad and I barely had any food to eat throughout that whole and on my bd, he got in touch with me and sent me some money. It wasn't about the money that made me feel so much better, it was that he cared enough to find me and he wanted to help.

And on my bd in 2013, my friends tried to do something nice and people tried to say something on facebook and that was very nice but I needed to hear from the only person who has ever made the word 'family' not feel horrible...the only person I couldn't hear from.

   To this day, it hurts to go through that day every year and I don't even know how to pretend to be okay on that day. I guess that's one of my dark days. My uncle's passing anniversary is another and his birthday is although I'm trying to make that a good one. So if you know me and want to do something for my bd, here's steps to actually be positive:

1. Do not leave a comment about  the day I was born on my birth anniversary. You can feel good about yourself while hurting me at the same time or you could just not.

2. Pick a random day in the summer and do something nice like draw me a picture or buy me a piece of cake but don't say why. The summer is a long and at times grueling season for me and I'm sure I'll forget I wrote this by then so I won't be affected in this way if you do something nice for me. DO NOT SAY HAPPY B******Y TO ME THOUGH.

3. I love chocolate chip cookies or strawberry flavored cake...or limes if you want to be a little healthier. Also I don't want to sound like I expect or deserve things that take your money, seriously the most meaningful things I own and hold onto are things that took way more thought than money. I have a friend who made me a poster by gluing crayons to a canvas and used a blow dryer to melt them in a rainbow. I will never choose to get rid of that ever. It took thought to make something for me and that is more valuable than anything she could have  bought me.

     And finally, I have been trying a lot more to be positive in my thinking. I've been working on being grateful for specifically small and daily things that I have made a habit of ignoring because my life sucks.

Every morning I've been reminding myself of the good things that happen to me and I've been praying thankful prayers for those things and for the people in my life that mean something to me. Doing this has had a small but noticeable affect on my moods at times and I hope to make this more of a routine than I ever did before. I've put a lot of negativity on God and whether I'm right or wrong, I am trying to take all of that off Him and just focus on the thankfulness I should have. I want positivity to be a stronger force than depression

Thank you for reading and make sure you please deposit any trash in the waste basket that on your way out. Hope you enjoyed the tour

More Deconstruction: "Dad"

     I have a few things that hurt me to think about, a few things that mess with my head even on my best days. Can you guess what this entry's topic is about? No, not the fall of Rome...that's a topic for another time. The word "Dad" hurts me every time I hear it.

     It all started when I was very young, old enough to use a phone but not very old. I heard the phone ring, picked it up at the same time  as someone else and because I have always been nosey I listened.

I don't remember the exact words but the gist of the conversation was that the man (and I use that term loosely) who was supposed to be a "dad" to me said he didn't want to take me on a trip or something, he said he never wanted me at all in the first place.

I knew that sucked hearing but didn't fully understand what I had heard. Over the next few years, I grew curious and made sure to pay attention to things he said or did when I was around and it made sense later that he never wanted me to be his, he never wanted to be my "dad"

Which was a good thing for him because he never was that, at all.

     Skipping ahead to a big day trip. A trip to Collingswood, NJ where there was a fair along Cooper River. Live music, games and lots of people having a good time. Same...let's call him a man...he picked me up and brought me to the fair. We walked around for a while, it was him, his wife and me.

I was not exactly a fan of his but like most kids, I didn't express my full feelings really ever. We walked around for a while together and at one point told me I could go off on my own, we were in a relatively small area and I wasn't dumb enough to go away with anyone else or anything like that. I have always been a wanderer so I went and checked out some tents they had and talked to random people and tried to just have fun. We set up a time to meet up and a certain place, that was my only stipulation from him.

So I'm having fun and walking around and I saw that it was nearly time to meet at that certain place.

Now one thing my friends and employers 

know about me is I am obsessively early 

whenever I have to be somewhere. 

Every Flyers game I go to or day I have to work, I'm just about 

always so early it's kinda silly.

So it's just about time to meet up and I get to the spot...and I wait.
                                 
                                           ...and I wait...


                                                                       ...and I keep waiting...

     So the meeting time was 1pm and I'm waiting so long that I started to see the sun going down. And after about another hour, the fair starts packing up. And I'm still standing there waiting, as instructed. This was before cell phones so it's not like I could have just sent a text or made a call to him.

At sometime after 10pm, a person came up to me and asked if I needed help. I told him my situation and he led me to a police officer who got me in touch with the man who was supposed to be a protector to me. The man who told me to meet him at a certain tent at the fair at 1pm, the man who was home laying in bed. This was the man who invited me...and forgot me.

He forgot me. I was maybe 14 or 15 and he just left me there. Oh by the way, he lived about 45 minutes away in Bensalem, PA.

     This is what most represents the word "Dad" to me throughout my life. I have been trying to learn to be happy for people with good dads and for friends who ARE good dads, and I truly am happy for them.

I never want anyone to go through the crap I went through so if I can encourage people to do one thing, it's to be a good parent or relative or friend to those around you. You can create a dictionary of words that make someone feel good and happy instead of what I'm going through constantly, you could make someone hear a word and smile.

And that is an amazing thing.

My TV Influences

     I am a sitcom junkie and one big reason, like a lot of other people I'm sure, is because they're an escape from my boring life. I also in a weird way look up to certain characters who resemble my own ideals or wishes. I'm going to list four of the most influential characters in my little bit of existence on this oddball planet.

1. Ted Evelyn Mosby.

     Ted, portrayed by Josh Radnor, is a hopeless romantic who at times ruins everything and at times does the perfect thing at the perfect time. His creativity, romantic spirit and opportunistic personality are the essence of why I relate to him and wish I could be more like him.

They wrote him to think ahead in a big way and that optimism is beyond admirable.




2. Bull Shannon.

     Bull Shannon, played perfectly by Richard Moll was a character that looked menacing or seemed weird but the more you learned about the character, the deeper you understood just how real and big his heart was.

Bull often ruined things by being clumsy or not realizing his own strength but when someone needed any kind of help or a friend to be there, he would move mountains to help. There was a particular episode that exemplifies why I appreciate Richard Moll's wacky character: a bailiff by the name of Flo (acted by Florence Halop) had been mean to him all through the show and he didn't retaliate at all.

In the end, she found out she needed $2500 desperately for a reason I forget at the moment and Bull had just received a large amount of money and he instantly gave it to her in an emotional scene for Florence's character. She teared up when she realized he knew she was making fun of him and he still gave the money to her even though he needed it too. Yeah.


3. Harry T. Stone

     Harry was a goofy, sensitive, sweet, romantic, smart, out-of-the-box thinking young judge. Another creative hopeless romantic on my list, he was known for pulling off a silly squirting tie gag and bringing a fighting couple together by pretending to sentence the husband to 20 years in the slammer for a domestic disturbance case, forcing them to reveal that they really care about each other.

Things like that and his ability to bring the best out of people he came in contact with made me want to be a good person early in my life. There was a prostitute character that he gave time to talk with who just needed someone to treat her like a human. That trait in him resonates in my personality regularly when it comes to racism, sexism and any time someone is ignored or forgotten about.

He created in me the desire to do things like pay for someone in line behind me and leave before they realize it, something I hope I can do more and bless more lives through it.

4. Jim Halpert

     I could not have a list like this without adding one of the funniest, romantically gifted, witty characters maybe ever written. Jim was always good for a quick comment, usually at the expense of the deserving Dwight Schrute or the awkward Michael Scott. Jim made pranks into an artform and John  Krasinski's character had patience that both gave us fans hope and drove us crazy at the same time.

     If I had a "Mount Rushmore" of characters that have helped form my own personality, these are it. They've all had very real affects on the way I treat people to this day for what I see as greatly important reasons.

I want to remind myself that while things aren't always great or even good...or even just bad but there are things to look at in our lives that are a positives.

Let me know who would be in your 

"Mount Rushmore" of tv characters.

Thanks for reading and pass it on.