Into The Rabbit Hole

I was once told that there are two emotions: fear and love.

While going through the motions of ending a relationship, there are often sad feelings– and I’ve decided those are rooted in fear.

Of course, in me, there are also feelings of love, because in all things, I intend on love.

Love doesn’t quite cancel out fear, but it certainly makes fear lose its power.

My battle strategy: In all things, find love.  Love for me, for my experience, for this life I call my own…

And in that, I find comfort and happiness.    Read the rest of this entry »

I have never seen myself so clearly. JZ posted several videos from our youth.  In one of them, was me. 
The first few times I watched it, I was embarrassed, a little saddened by my inability to dress myself in a fashion that would not leave me red in the face at a later time. Honestly, my first thought was that I looked fat… which really didn’t make much sense to me, because at the time of the video, I wasn’t eating.  I have seen pictures of myself as a non-eater. And in other pictures, I look quite the opposite of fat… I look sickly…skinny.

I want to tell you something about me… I’ve been thinking of how I was going to present this to you, and I could never quite find the words to embrace it.  Now I understand, clearly. When I was about twelve years old, I decided that I wanted to disappear.  I wasn’t quite suicidal, but I was definitely feeling very low about myself.  Instead of the more gruesome alternatives, I decided to starve myself.  I figured that the best case scenario was that I would become skinny and beautiful. Instead, I was wasting away.  I didn’t feel beautiful.  I didn’t feel lovely.  I felt like I needed other people– specifically men– to tell me who I was.  I needed validation, definition, molding… from these men that I loved. I was anorexic.  I didn’t like me.  And I didn’t know who I was. Read the rest of this entry »

I had an interesting day yesterday.  The culmination of some recent mistakes left me reeling from the moment I took my first sip of coffee.  I love my coffee in the morning.  I like mine thick, dark, and creamy.  I like the smells of the wet grounds and the sound of the hissing, steaming frothy goodness that comes spewing from my machine, the one that sits waiting on my desk, eager for me to smile at it. *pets her coffee maker* 

The first sip is always bliss.  But I was interrupted with some information about a few things I had made mistakes on– not by virtue of an angry boss, but by crying parents, sobbing mothers, and my office mate saying, “hey that surgery that was cancelled, well…”  Anyway, it was a pretty hellacious morning.  I learned something about myself throughout the experience though.  First of all, I’m impressed with my honest and my immediacy in taking responsibility for the errors, and then scrambling to do whatever was necessary to fix them.  I got my boss involved.  Her boss, too.  I discussed with the nurses.  I apologized, and I did it with passion and integrity.   I like me for this.  I also realized just how much I beat myself up over making mistakes.  I am one of those people who won’t let it go for a bit.  I constantly re-play in my head the key parts where I dropped the ball, re-enacting, figuring how I might do better in the future.  I learned how to talk myself down, calm myself, and accept that I’m human, and I make mistakes sometimes.  Ultimately, it’s better to make mistakes early on in the experience rather than never make mistakes at all and thus never learn from them.  So, this really turned out to be a good experience for me.  I learned from it, and I’m learning more about the job, and getting better at it.  A greater understanding is always something that benefits me– reminds me why I’m doing something, etc. Anyway, so the moral of the story is this: It’s okay to make mistakes–even HUGE ones.  It’s okay to be human, and it’s okay to not necessarily get it right the first time. 

• “The best managers are the ones who make mistakes and then figure out how to fix them…”  -Sheila

Yet another thing I learned from the former job from hell.  Huh.  *nods*   It’s always perfect, isn’t it!

Day two of meditation.

I lost my body.  It’s not sleeping.  It’s a very aware state.  It’s just… almost out of body, really.  It’s very grounding, peaceful, clearing…. I came out of my meditation very comfortable with me.  It was as though something had moved inside of me– flipped a switch maybe, that changed my “I need to be this way” into “This is me.” I really like this sense of… comfort?  Is that the right word?

Before I was born, my mother and my father ran this business, “Float to Relax.”  It was a place containing a number of sensory deprivation tanks, that people would pay to come in and float in for set amounts of time– half hour, hour, etc.  In my mind, it reminds me of a tanning salon: that in and out, that time for silence… But it was likely more to it than that.  In the late seventies, these tanks were inciting out of body experiences– hallucinations of sorts.  They were a craze that no one really talks about much any more.  

Honestly, I’m not uncertain that this meditation business isn’t somewhat similar.  I can see why it offers health benefits– it’s rather important that we all take some time out every day to just BE… to let go of the other things in our experience, to give ourselves time to process, to rejuvenate.  Many people I know struggle to sleep, even.  This, to me, would be a super helpful means of assisting the mind-processes in order to speed up the process for when it’s time to actually nap.  Interesting. I only did it for half an hour.  I feel like I slept an entire extra night’s worth of sleep.  This could be good.  Very, very good.   Now… off to study for another chemistry exam.  I can do this!  *grin*

Have you ever personally tried to get to know yourself? 

Honestly, in going through this experience of getting to know so many people, I have sometimes forgotten that I need to also know who I am, what I bring into the experience, too. I think it’s a priceless exercise!  I have been in the dating world since I was seventeen-ish, and I’ve repeated some pretty curious behaviors over the last *gasp* ten years. I go through the process of getting to know a person, then for one reason or another– whether it be on my part or his, we have come to know each other well enough– and then we moved onto our next victim(s).   *grin*In all this time, I’ve slowly been getting to know myself– to know my wants and desires.  I’ll try one thing, give it a whirl, and then depending on how it turns out, learn from the experience and essentially move along. Eventually, in time, I’m quite certain that I will know what I truly want from companionship and partnership.  It seems, though, that because I haven’t truly made an effort to get to know ME, then I would expect that perhaps what I know of myself isn’t truly enough to aim for what I really want.  You see what I’m saying here?

So, in observing this pattern, I have decided to make it a priority for me to know me purely– in as many experiences as necessary for me to really know what I want. (heh heh heh)I’ve been doing a lot of things by myself recently.  I’ve been going clothes shopping, out to eat, for walks around the reservoir, hanging out studying, spending time at home by myself.  I’ve been able to watch the things that I do, and am feeling that I am spending enough time to at least know me a little better.  And you know what?  I dig me.  Like, really dig me.  (Even though I type the word “like” probably more than is necessary, it’s all good.) Read the rest of this entry »

I had a moment of clarity.  I’ve been trying to put it into words since I realized it this morning.  I have posted a few non-sensible blogs in hopes to be inspired when my fingers started typing in my box-o-comfort that looks like a blog posting box. The problem is that I’m suddenly presented with a writers block. Suddenly, I’m concerned about putting it down in type. Suddenly, I am uncertain of things from behind and yet at the same time, things before me look brilliant. How shall I put this….?

So.  This blog is a diary for me, so to speak.  I don’t put everything in it– but I put a lot of soul, a lot of spirit, a lot of my thoughts down here.  I’ve recently met someone– erk, not met, but re-connected with– someone who reads my blogs, now.  I was wondering how it was that this person could know me… could really know me, if a good portion of their exposure to me is primarily through my writing.  So, out of sheer curiosity, I wanted to go back and read my blogs.  I wanted to see what it was that I’m putting out there– what it looks like from your perspective… how you pick up with I put down… you know what I mean.    Read the rest of this entry »

Celebrate, even if you must do it alone.
Be satisfied, even if you don’t always get what you want.
Take pride in who you are, even if you aren’t perfect.
If you don’t like something, find a way to change it.
Don’t fear change; embrace it.

Love your body as you would if it was someone else’s.
Don’t be in such a hurry.
Learn from uncomfortable experiences.
Don’t wait for tomorrow to make progress towards your goals.
Fall in love easily.
Take care of your environment… where you spend most of your time should reflect what you want from this experience.

There is a fatal belief that you can only love one person at a time. I grew up believing that it should not be said all the time, because it shouldn’t be cheapened, it is special. That is non-sense, and I’m here to tell you why! How you deal with love is your own thing. It’s obviously terribly personal. However, I think you are selling yourself short if you go your entire day with out experiencing the joy that love brings. Whether it be love for a significant other, love for a friend, love for a pet, love for an experience… love is one of the most passionate forms of feeling good. It does not get any less special by you expressing it out loud. This idea is absolutely flawed, and it’s absolutely silly to force it upon yourself if what you want is to be happy, to feel good. If that isn’t your agenda, then by all means, go right ahead and don’t love. But… if you are like me, and realize that happiness is what you’re aiming for, then I would encourage you to shed your fatal belief that you should not say “I love you.” Take baby steps. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes.  This is one thing he taught me.
I walked by his side step by step as he worked through his emotions of breaking up with his wife. letting go… divorcing… filing bankruptcy.  It wasn’t so much that I was someone he cared about, really; rather I was a body to hold him at night, to wipe away tears, and to offer up sound advice on how to work through the scariest parts of depression…  I learned a lot though.  I learned about pride in myself… in choosing the right people to surround myself.  I learned that sometimes beauty is only skin deep.  And I learned that “if you won’t love her someone will.”  He used to whisper it as he rocked himself to sleep.   “someone will…”  And if you weren’t that person, very likely she was lost to you forever.    …If you won’t first.   He said it because it was his lesson from life… from the marriage, from the experience.  His lesson was that if he had tried harder, loved more, paid more attention… maybe she wouldn’t have turned away from him.  Maybe.   This man didn’t love me… so I found someone who would.  I still think about him.  But now it’s through the eyes of someone who has known love… who has experienced it from the inside out…  He didn’t have to love me.  Someone will.  I will.  

A light bulb went off today.  Like, smack in the forehead kind of went off.  I love moments like these.  I have to take note so I don’t forget every piece because I’m so excited to share these kinds of things with you. Actually, I’m somewhat apprehensive about sharing them… but at the same time, the whole AHA! moment came at a time when I’ve insisted on being honest with myself… and since I’m my own worst critic, I figure that I have nothing to lose in sharing it with you– people who might just know what the hell I’m talking about. So, here it goes…“In order for a relationship between a couple to be successful, you have to be on the same page.  You have to be able to communicate about what you want from the relationship, and you have to both want the same things.” Read the rest of this entry »