Forgiveness.

I believe very strongly in the power of being able to adjust and control your own attitude.

I, however, have not quite learned the finer art of being able to do that. There are times when my mind plays tricks on me, runs away with tiny, negative thoughts, and my rational brain is unable to rein it back in.

I have always been creative. The downside of that creativity is that I often can create scenarios that are unlikely, if not impossible, to happen. When I was dating my ex-girlfriend Jenny, I was struggling with the feeling that I was still in love with my ex before her, Bridgette. In the shower yesterday (I do some of my best thinking - and singing - in there!), it occurred to me that it was Bridgette's constant reminding me how much she loved me and how much we belonged together that convinced me that it was inevitable.

Now, with the benefit of time and space, I can see how little I was making and influencing my own decisions. Besides being a kind of gross realization, I also feel awful because I ended up hurting a lot of people in my quest to get to my real feelings on the situation.

I've started, recently, trying to forgive myself for my past. I hold myself to a pretty high standard and any deviation from what I view as perfect behavior just totally fucks with my brain. I've hurt people, I've made unpopular decisions and I am a human being. We aren't perfect, we CAN'T be. We can only move forward having learned who we are and what we want out of life... and that's what I'm doing.

I have a wonderful girlfriend who, knowing my past, chooses to love me despite it. If she can, I should be able to.

Writing.

Do you remember that scene where Indiana Jones fell into the pit of snakes? There are big snakes and little snakes and hissing snakes trying to bite and snakes that could care less... and there he is, in the center of all that, trying to figure out how to get out of there.

That's my head these days.

My brain is full of squirmy thoughts that don't necessarily have any negative desires, but become something that I am completely unable to not focus on.

It's tough to live like that.

I've recently had to make the choice to set aside one of the longest relationships in my life, the one with my little sister, while she is figuring her life out. I'm not interested in putting any of this into the public forum, but I am unable and unwilling to have a relationship with someone who is capable of saying such hurtful things to me (especially about something I pride myself on being good at). I know that's vague, and I intend for it to stay that way, but I need to put it out there because it has greatly affected my life recently.

It's also inspired me to write again. I remember being that age, thinking I knew everything and everyone else was wrong, wanting to take on the world... I miss the inspiration that drove out of me. Sitting at Starbucks the other day reminded me that, while I might not always take the time to write, that writer is still inside me dying to get out.

Accountability

162.8#. I actually got on the scale four times this morning to confirm my weight. I knew I had put some on, knew I felt (for lack of a better word) plusher, but I didn't know that it was actually 10#. Technically, almost 25# in 2 years, although some of that was weight loss due to stress after my ex-girlfriend and I broke up.

I was shocked. But, oddly, I didn't feel like crying. I have a plan. I have drive. I'm ready to change my lifestyle. I'm actually kind of excited to eat a banana for breakfast.

Let's do this thing.

Vulnerability

There is something about a thunderstorm that rains down a sense of renewal.

There is something even more poignant about that thunderstorm if it occurs after months of drought.

I feel like I've been that grass recently, dried out and crying for the one thing I need to survive. Begging, arms stretched to the sky, for that sense of relief and purpose.

When the sky broke this afternoon, when the thunder rattled the house and the heavy, thick drops of rain splashed through the screen door and onto my feet and the linoleum, I felt myself break as well. 

I'm not sure why I've been so creatively stifled lately. I used to joke (although, looking back, it was one of those jokes that stem from a truthful place) that I couldn't write when my ex-girlfriend and I were together. I remember once standing naked in front of a large window on the twentieth story of a beautiful high rise hotel in Chicago at dawn, starting down at the sleepy people making their walk to get the paper or grab a breakfast croissant, and wishing more than anything else that I could write. Just pen something, jot down something small but meaningful, but feeling so stuck that I felt broken. 

I never understood writer's block until that moment. I had heard people talk about their inability to write, the feeling they had trying to get something (anything!) out but unable to...creatively constipated. Much like trauma or winning the lottery, I thought that only happened to other people. 

Turns out this whole time I've been feeling the same way and too afraid to admit it.

Writing, especially for me, stems from a place of emotional openness and rawness. When I write, I bleed out all my feelings and hopes and dreams and fears, which leaves me feeling incredibly vulnerable. It also leads to me feeling, well, better. 

My thirtieth year is almost over. In a few short months, I will be turning 31. My life is upside-down, backwards and sideways different than it was when I turned 30, in some of the best ways ever. I have a partner who lives up to that term, someone who is actually there for me and supports me and loves me just how I am. I have a daughter getting ready to turn 11 and enter into her last year of elementary school. I have a job that fulfills me and leaves me feeling like I'm in exactly the right place. I'm contemplating losing weight, going to nursing school, getting my shit together after years and years of just letting the cards fall where they may.

None of that is easy. All of that requires my vulnerability, the understanding that I can and might fail and fall and the drive to get right back up. 

Writing is the same way. I always make excuses for why I can't write - no time, no motivation, nothing to say. But maybe, just maybe, having nothing to say is a cover for being afraid to say it.

Lessons learned.

The last few years of my life have been a whirlwind.

It wasn't a tumbleweed tossing, have to rescue your hair from your lip gloss type of whirlwind. It was more of an F5 tornado, leaving behind it a swath of destruction and mayhem.


But god, how I've learned.


I've been through two relationships, both very different in the lessons I've taken away from them and the pain that was left in their wake. I've learned that, although I might want to, I can't force myself to be someone I'm not. Sometimes, simply loving someone isn't enough. Trust is hard earned and even harder when you have a hard time even trusting yourself. Self esteem can't be faked or fixed in a day, a week or even a year. It's a constant internal battle; sometimes you win and other times you lose.


And, recently, I've learned that there are people out there who just "fit" with you. Usually, those people appear when you least expect it and change your whole life. You can't be looking because the universe likes to work in the most mysterious of ways, no matter how cliche that might seem.


I've gone from a job and a career path that I expected to work in for the rest of my life to another completely different one because of a very adult decision. I've worked two jobs, 60+ hours weekly, barely seeing my daughter. And, let me tell you... choosing to work at the job where you are respected, your opinions welcomed and validated, is worth far more than money. 

Friends will come and go but the true friends stay. And some of the truest friends are the ones you see once every few years and that you can click right back into your friendship with as though no time has passed at all. Others will stab you in the back for no justifiable reason at all and smile in your face. Even in 30 years of life I haven't always been able to figure out which is which.

Just some random musings today.

Unwritten.

I used to think writing was a gift, a small shift in the grey matter of the people chosen to have it, that enabled us to be able to create.

Some days, it seems like writing is a curse. It's the need to get something, anything, out and having the words flit away from you like butterflies in a field.

These days, writing is more like a muscle, one that I've let atrophy and waste away until I worry that there is too little left there to develop back into the behemoth it once was.

I used to not be able to go anywhere without jotting something down on scraps of paper, littering my purse like a ticker tape parade. Anything that caught my eye, any random idea that popped into my head, they were all written down and compiled in standard unorganized fashion. I've written an entire novel.

I feel blocked and frustrated.

Hello lovers...

Long time no write! I've been adjusting to the major changes that have occurred in my life over the past few weeks and writing was, for once, the last thing on my mind.

But I'm here now, ready to sing like a songbird in the morning.

I'd like to start by addressing my critics. You may not understand me, you may not like me, but you have no place to judge me. Unless you've walked in my shoes (or skated in my roller skates), you don't know my life. You don't know how I feel, what I've been through and why I do (or have done) what I do. And, conversely, I don't know your life. Please don't think that it's ok to judge me and my choices. And please don't mistake me for the type of person that lets things like that slip. If you have something to say to me and, believe me, I know you do... say it to my face.

A hem.

That said.

I am so happy right now. I am almost unbearably happy, like my happiness might slip out of my pores and puddle on the floor around me. I never have ever thought I could have what I have right now - the movie fairy tale, the love from the books I've read since I was a kid. The person that would dance with me in the kitchen, hold my hand even when no one is looking. I feel constantly lucky to know her and to have her as my girlfriend and even more lucky that she feels that way about me back.

I used to think I knew what love was. I was so silly and so wrong and so so naive.

It isn't about changing yourself to fit into the mold of what you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to want. It's about meeting someone so complimentary that the words that come out of their mouth are the words that come out of yours, whose body fits against yours like a puzzle piece made to be there.

I am astounded and giddy and happy all the time and I refuse to apologize.

She's brought me back to life and I can never thank her enough.