Openness

We are not loved for what we do, rather, for who we are.  When we let love flow through us like the beam of energy that it is, we are rewarded with a sense of joy and peacefulness that cannot be replaced.

The most beautiful thing about loving fully, is that we are open to realize damage.  We can get off the treadmill that keeps us walking on eggshells and having the same fights.  We can detach with love from the people in our lives that WE are no longer good for.  We can send love, light, and happiness their way every time we think of them, and know that they will always have a home in our hearts. 

The most rewarding thing about love is the filling feeling it allows us to have.  Love is like a big meal- it sustains us and keeps up going forward.  Without love we are empty lifeless bodies made up of hair skin and nails.  The feeling of being nothing is devastating.  We question our need to be on this earth and we doubt any reason for our existence- but when we allow love into our hearts we can live again.  Freely.  Joyfully.  Truthfully.

We fear so much in our lives; failure, success, crowds, loneliness, death, life.  But often what we fear most is true happiness as it has the ability to take us to a level we never expected.  It transports us to another dimension where we lose control and often find ourselves laughing and smiling so freely that we immediately recoil from it like a hot flame.

At the end of the day, the biggest fear I have, is not letting love take me to where I need to go.  Not having the courage and the faith to trust that the path that love will guide me down the is the right one.  I fear looking back and realizing what I missed out on.  It requires surrendering to what is Greater than I and being willing to ask for help when I need it.

In this place, this moment of compete peace, fear, surrender, courage, and FAITH, we find ourselves.  We find what we are looking for and that is patience.  We sit and wait for what must find us and we believe that it will.  And when it does, we are ready. We are open to joy, freedom, love, and happiness, and we do not fear the unknown that is tomorrow.

Butterflies

I have this stupid grin on my face.  I can't stop laughing.  I am told that I look better.  My shoulders are rolled back and my head is high.  Why the sudden change in behaviour?  I am the fake happy girl- the one who smiles when appropriate but really inside feels like she is getting stabbed in the gut.  Not these days though, lately I am really happy, all the time.  I smile because I want to and because I mean it, and I laugh with my entire soul.
How!  Why!  What did I do to change!
I let go.
I let go of the pain, the angst, the hurt, the disappointment, and the anger.
then I opened myself up, as wide as I could, and I let myself be flooded with whatever feeling came my way.
I cried in the arms of a good friend one night, I smoked too many cigarettes for a couple weeks, and I journaled Carrie Bradshaw style until I felt normal.  And when I felt normal, and I opened my eyes and I looked around at all the beauty the world has to offer- I discovered what over indulging in yoga, running, friendships, and new crushes can do.  I sprang free of resentment and expectations and began to love again.  Really truly love- but not X, or Z....I began to love Y (I am Y).
I realized one morning that I am so okay with who I am.  And I lead the most charmed life.
When I began to be happy, i began to attract happy people.
I have someone in my life these days who makes me laugh (SO HARD) and makes me feel safe when he hugs me.  I am finally not walking on eggshells, or trying to be someone I am not, and it feels so good!

So, open yourself up.  To pain, to hurt, to joy! to freedom...
be one with yourself and God as you understand Him.  Pray, meditate, journal.  And believe that everything that is meant to happen, WILL happen.

Understand that without openness, you are nothing, that without hope the world will die, and without love, new or old, the heart will cease to beat.

Make decisions as they come- don't wait.
Pay compliments as people deserve them.
Forgive when it is needed, not only when it is deserved.
And FEEL.  Most importantly, just feel.

XYZ

My head hurts from the all the f***ing.  Not the fun kind, but the mind messing, head pounding, fist clenching, shoe throwing kind.  You know the good ole’ head screw that comes because you give someone else too much power?  The one person who can make me go “mental”, as my mother says, is the one I have deemed all powerful.  What kind of craziness is that!  For the answer, refer to my last blog where I describe my addiction to chaos.  Insert chaos here.

I read in one of my dusty self help binders (because I print stuff and put it in binders rather than pay for it), that when you are experiencing negative thought, you should talk to yourself like you are talking to a good friend in the same situation.  Well okay,

DEAR GOOD FRIEND, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!

That is what I would say.  Nothing consoling about that hey?  I guess I need a good kick in the ass- any takers?  Not that it would matter.  My unmanageable head tells me chaos is the only way to live.  I guess after years of it I have become dependent on it- God I am crazy aren’t I?  I am stubborn, rotten, and very confident that my way is THE way (probably not a good Lava Life line).  In this case, as in most, those traits are not really paying off for me.

I have been letting X text me and call me at his convenience…be nice and charming to me…supportive, kind, and even loving….yet I am left with the final knowledge that he is X and I am Y and we will “never” be XY again.  Does that make sense?  We broke up.  Again-still-not really.  Who knows.  All I know is that I am happy.  I love yoga over fights, I love the gym over sexless nights, I love eating dinner at 10pm over walking on eggshells, but I can’t seem to let it go. 

Why is that?  Why isn’t happiness a good enough reason for me to stick it out?  There is even a Z in the equation now.  I am quite fond of Z...I don’t know if he knows this.  Would it be juvenile to pass him a note that says, “I have a crush on you.”  Yes- yes it would be, but so cute.  The thing about me turning from XY into Y and so quickly wanting to be YZ, is that I know what I like as Y, but when I turn into Y with anything else….I lose track of it all.  Suddenly things aren’t important and my happiness becomes dependant on the other “letter” (please tell me you’ve gathered what I am talking about).  I know I know….I am co dependant and my life in unmanageable.  I have work to do don’t I?

I think tonight ill do what I am good at- gym, yoga, ½ a pizza, then JERSEY SHORE.  See I still find true indescribable happiness in the overly tanned, too drunk madness of MTV.  I’ll close with this question though…what in your life is unmanageable but oh so good to feel the sting of…do you have an X?

A splash of indifference

I’ve been thinking (and not acting because I am terrified of my mother) about tattoos a lot lately.

A couple things jump out at me:

“everywhere she goes, a million dreams of love surround her”

And

“when the world says give up, hope whispers, try one more time”

Why am I thinking about tattoos?  Perhaps it is because of the milestone I took in the beginning of June, or the end, yet again, of the same relationship. 

I feel like I am in a more accepting place with both those things than I would have been a year ago.  Milestones are a good time for reflection…they allow us good reason to look back at where we were and where we came from.  I have been stuck lately on who I was and not living in who I am.   I feel stronger, more mature, and a tiny bit wiser, but not as confident, honest, and sane as I would like to be- but WHO is as sane as they would like to be?  I don’t lose my temper anymore like I used too, now that could be the meds…but I still feel like I am riding this wave in  and I never know what the next day, or moment is going to hold.

Is that exciting for you?  Not knowing the future, because it sucks for me.  I like things NOW and I like things MY way.  I don’t care if my imagination is a fairy tale.  I like things to be perfect and I am not so good at letting things go when they aren’t.  but the insane part of me loves the chaos too.  I love the drama and the edginess and the revolt and the unmanageability.  I get that all those things are strange addictions….but I thrive off them.  I take things personally just to get a rush.  Sometimes, often lately, I feel like a zombie made up of hair, nails, and skin…and I have nothing inside.

I am not dying, nor am I depressed, but I am constantly searching for that rush.  I do hours of yoga almost every day and push myself to dizzy at the gym…I find that head spinning, almost vomiting point of excitement for 1.2 seconds then it is gone.  Why do I search so hard to find something so chaotic?  It is probably the addict in me that loves it so much.  Too many cigarettes, too much tanning, too much exercise, too much of the same boy…whatever it is, give me drama in excess and I feel ALIVE.

So yes.  I want to feel the familiar prick of a needle etching its way across my skin, permanently marking my body just for the rush and to forever remind myself of where I am at….so mom, be grateful I am not getting some God awful body piercing….or Heaven forbid- coloring my hair dark again!   

sluts are just girls starving off boredom until their soul mates come along

Valentine’s Day.  Hallmark’s money making scam between Christmas and Easter?  The most romantic day of the year?  An opportunity to dress up and either drink alone, or laugh when appropriate at your significant other’s stories?

Who knows.

I have had one good Valentine’s Day.  Three years ago....new boyfriend, new top, new restaurant.  We did the whole thing to the max.  An amazing five course meal, two mind numbing bottles of wine, strawberries dipped in North America’s aphrodisiac (chocolate), and the romantic chat and cuddle in front of the fire place.  I got a card, flowers, a spa day, concert tickets, and an evening of compliments.  Since then, it’s been downhill.  Guys do that, they impress me so much at the beginning that anything after the initial courting is below par.

I don’t know the meaning of Valentine’s Day, but I know I have a love hate relationship with it.  I am in love with effort that my friend’s go through to please their significant others.  I am in love with the Valentine’s Day cards (I have about seven blank ones at home that I “had” to buy).  I am in love with the dress up, be wined, and dined, concept.  But I hate the “I’m alone and have no one to go home to” part.

The radio has told me that if I don’t get a Hercules Knot (Spence Diamonds) this year then no one loves me; the card store has shown me that there are thousands of moderately well worded poems out there and if I don’t get one, I am no one; and the street side advertisement about roses being on sale tells me that even when roses are half price, I am not “sweet” enough to get any.  I mean, COME ON!

So, really, is it worth it parading around saying, “I HATE Valentine’s Day because I am single and no one loves me!!!”?  If you ask me, it’s the thoughtful moments that are not insisted upon that mean the most.  The random flowers and hidden notes that I remember the most and that make it into my Memory Box.   So , if you don’t get a card or flowers or even a Lindt Chocolate heart (which are to die for), put on your sexy panties Monday, apply an extra coat of mascara, and wear a great bra, maybe you’ll have a boyfriend by days end.  And if you are in love with the wrong guy and thus permanently single (or let down) like me, drink.  Or if you are single like me and don’t drink, do yoga.  Yoga is the new vodka, didn’t you know?

Happy (almost) Valentine’s Day Lovelies.

Live and Let Live

I’m being faced with something called reality.  It’s not pleasant, nor is it easy to accept.  I don’t like it and I want to change it.  I am unhappy because I can’t control it and it’s not my way.  I don’t want to feel it or learn from it or become better because of it.  I want the pain to be over and I want things my way.

I think I must have been cuddled a lot as a child and told I was loved quite frequently (Mom, you read this, am I right?) because when I don’t have those things in my life, I feel like I am wandering aimlessly.  I am dependant on relationships to keep me afloat because I am so unsure of who I am on my own.  I’ve led my life so I am masterfully intertwined with another person, so that I don’t have to look at myself or stand on my own two feet.  Codependent?  Yup.  I use people as a safety net.  Sometimes I wonder what would happen to me if I didn’t have the incredibly loving and supportive mother I have.  Or if all the strong women I have latched onto were to suddenly pull away…. 

I may be hurting now because my heart is broken, but at least I have this fantastic foundation of friends who I can lean on anytime.  I can complain about the same stuff every week, send the same heartfelt emails, and come upon the same solution…and these rock solid, totally sane friends of mine, STILL love me.  Then there is mother I so casually mentioned previously.  How lucky am I that I have someone who I can call and hang up on and she still answers the phone the next time I need her.  She’s honest, but good at biting her tongue; she’s giving, but won’t let me walk all over her; and she is compassionate without being too emo.  Am I blessed?  As rotten as I can be, and as ungrateful as I can seem…absolutely I am.

I am learning to Let Go, and to Let God (for my spiritual friends).  I’m in a situation where someone has decided to leave me for good, and guess what?  I have to let them.   There are some things that are far beyond my control. Even though I have the strength to fight for them, and the hope that things will change (do they ever?) I have to accept the cold, harsh truth…the person that I don’t think I can live without, can live without me.

At the end of the day though, I’ve lived with myself for 24 years, and I only had him around for 3; in the long run, I know I am going to be okay and I know I am going to bounce back (even if it means leaning against a good friend or a great mother) because I have friends that haven’t left me, and those are the relationships that count.. Even on the days when I'm bitching and whining and crying, I have the BEST friends in the world to restrain me from sending that text and to help me drown my sorrows in blizzards and diet pepsi.  So thank you D.B, J.B, S.C, and Mumsie, for being patient enough to love a batshit crazy girl like me.  And future husband, if  you are reading this, I am so sorry I am broken and twisted…but I have great legs...

What is Love?

What is love?

Is it willing to die for someone?

Is it living with someone?

Is it marrying someone?

Is it having kids?

I sure don’t know.  I live on my own, I’m not married, I don’t have kids. 

Love to me was fighting to stay with someone and refusing to let go of them.  Love to me meant feeling complete (sometimes) with one person.   Love was having that one person who would hold you and make the sadness of the day disappear.   Love was making dinner; watching the news; and lying foot to foot on the couch, rubbing each other’s feet and talking about the day.

That is what I thought love was.  I was incapable of looking in the mirror by myself and feeling love.  If I didn’t have that perfect man  behind me in the reflection, I was loveless and miserable.  I was broken on my own and fighting every day to make the perfect relationship. 

I say WAS because I’m growing.  I was told that today by a very good friend of mine, someone I trust.  He said, “do you have any idea how much you are changing and growing?”  That made me feel….well, loved.  And I realized that lately I have been able to look in the mirror, on my own, and think, I’m okay, and I love myself.  Ok, that is half a lie….I am starting to love myself.

I would still like to be a little trimmer, more tanned, and more tantalizing, BUT I am who I am, or as I really like to say, “it is what it is.”  It is easy to love myself when I have a man who can’t keep his hands off me, but it is harder and more important to love myself when I am on my own.

How do I go about ensuring that I am in love, or falling in love, with myself?  I love without expecting love in return.  I give without waiting for something to come back.  I care before being cared about.  By giving away compassion, trust, and love, I am doing things to not only show the world around me love, but to also take out some insurance for myself, hoping against all odds that on my own, I am capable of love.

Dictionary.com has seven definitions for the word love.  Everything from deep affection to sex.  That makes me wonder, how often do I use the word love to cover up the feeling of lust.  How often do I base love, on the physical action of making love?  I look at my past and can surely say, I have done so.  I wonder, can I really say I have EVER made love, when I haven’t ever loved myself?  I answer no.

I have said, “I love you!!” so many times, but really, do I love, or am I just afraid to lose?