It's a New Day…

I want a lover that wants to share words with me written on paper.  I want notes left for me with simple messages of love….with messages of comfort.  I have this idea of love that to so many seems so unrealistic.  Romance has died for most people but my heart can’t let go of the feeling that there is something….someone beautiful out there for me….someone that wants to leave notes for me to find letting me know that their heart feels the same way mine does.  I am one person on the surface but someone so completely different within.  I used to believe the surface was my mask but it really just is a part of me.  I unveil my mask to those that I grow comfortable with…sometimes this ends in great pain but other times I learn more about the many degrees of love.  I am a person that loves hard…..I love so hard sometimes it hurts.  I feel every emotion with great intensity and I never stop questioning why.  There is a reason and I don’t know if I will ever find it.  It is this complexity within me that I have yet to truly share with someone because I am terrified.  Emotions can so easily be misconstrued and my sensitivity and anxiety could easily be seen as dramatic and chaotic.  I cannot help the battles I fight in my head and sometimes I grow exhausted always trying to push them to the side.  My battles are part of who I am and I want a love that sees those battles and knows that those battles are fueled by passion and not self-absorption.  Every feeling I have is fueled with passion because I have this never-ending desire to learn and to experience everything I possibly can until my last dying breath.  I know so very little of what this world is all about and it drives me and maddens me all at the same time.  I am inspired by everything and it makes me feel like a character in a book wandering to find all of the answers…..knowing some things have no answers.

 I want to fall in love.  I want to feel someone fall in love with me.  I want to let go of all of the wants and wishes and live this life of love that overwhelms my entire being.  I don’t want to live in just one moment….I want to live an entire lifetime with someone.  I want to be understood and wanted in a way that I have never felt.  I want to share my words and my thoughts knowing that they are understood and that they are valued.  The real me is not on the surface and I know that is so cliché to even say but with me there is such truth to it.

I pick up these habits in life that are really quite maddening.  I tell myself over and over again that I do not really want to fall in love or need to for that matter when in truth it is all that I want.  In my 35 years love has become this undefinable thing that has torn me apart because it owns me and it kills me all at the same time.  Love is this “thing” that I long for that also brings me great anger.  Now, if that is not contradictory I don’t know what is.  I make the same mistakes over and over again  and I start to question the evolution of love and the evolution of people in general.  I try so hard sometimes and I see myself doing it and I just can’t stop it.  I ache on the inside wanting to be seen and I push in a way that infuriates me…..I become someone I don’t at all want to be.  Why do we do this to ourselves periodically throughout life?  Why do we fall into the same traps?  Why do we force ourselves to have to re-learn the same lessons over and over again?

I am the person that loves so hard that it hurts.  I do not love only in romance but I love hard in all of my relationships.  I may be selfish but I love so hard because I want to be loved in return.  Of course it is more than that though.  I love hard because I see the hidden parts of people.  I find the beauty in them that many people might overlook.  I love hard because feeling love is way easier than feeling hate or feeling pain.  But sometimes no matter how hard you love, some people will never love you that same amount.  I am a hopeless romantic in life.  I live in the world of fairytales because I don’t want to think about relationships being painful.  People tell me everyday that my thought is unrealistic and that relationships are hard and are a bunch of work but in my heart I am unable to accept this as a truth.  Love is about learning and compromising yes but I have a full-time job and I don’t believe that my relationships should be another one.  Relationships are not jobs they are these little lucks that fall into our lap when we need them most.  The problem is that I live this life of fairytale and romance and I sometimes cross paths with those that don’t see through the same vision that I do but I still hold on.  I hold onto those that would abandon their grip on me without a second thought.  I hold onto those that have nothing but a weak grip on my hand.  I stay for those that would not stay for me.  I stay for those that don’t see me the way I want….NO….NEED to be seen.  Someone recently told me that two people in a couple will (maybe the word was can) never be best friends.  Even after time with this person and the many conversations we have had, that is the one thing I could never agree with….even if I never shared that vocally.  This statement has lingered with me since the words were uttered.   Love will never mean anything to me if the friendship is not there.  Friendship is the truest form of love.  Not generic friendship but friendship that makes you feel connected to another person naturally.

Maybe this is vain but I feel sorry for those that have not fallen in love with me.  I feel sorry for those who only saw surface deep with me.  I wish others could slide into my body because what I feel almost daily is intense….intense to the point of almost overwhelming.  It is an intensity that has made me fall in love with myself but an intensity that also makes me question who and what I am.  I question why certain things are as they are and why certain things aren’t.  I wonder how others my very same age have experienced this entirely different life than I know and I sometimes wonder which life is better.  It’s not something I should worry about but I do.  It all goes along with that cliche statement of “We’re human.  It happens.”

I sometimes wish I could slip into the minds of others to see if they are all as much of a cluster fuck as I am.  Are their minds as beautifully chaotic as mine?  I found the ability to quiet my mind one day past and life was so different then but I have allowed myself to get sucked back into the madness of life and of society that tells us to “GO GO GO.”  I find these passions and I forget about me.  I give so much to others and in mere moments I come crashing down because I feel this strange wreckless abandonment.  I realize I have once again become lost.  I have forgotten to address these things called feelings.  I have stayed within the madness to avoid the pain or the terror that life might bring.  I used to see this gigantic world outside of myself and I have now pushed myself into this little bubble that has confined me…that has blurred my vision.  I have abandoned so much knowledge I once gained and the desire to step FAR outside of my comfort zone.  I guess I return many times over to thinking of Christopher McCandless and the words “Happiness is only real when shared.”  I hold onto this because it is that happiness that makes me understand love and it is the desire for me to share my everything with someone that makes me not want to give up on love.  It is the longing to have someone waiting to hear my words at the end of the day and even if the words may seem nonsensical they do not care because the words are coming from me.  It is that simplicity that is love but it is humankind that makes it so complex.  I want to escape the complexity but I am unsure of how to.  I feel as if the grip of society has poisoned me and although the simplicity of love is my biggest desire I fear that my exposure to the societal/media elements has done damage that most likely can never be undone.  I guess that is why I always refer it back to being a fairytale.

I work with autistic children.  I work with some of the most amazing kids I have ever encountered in my life.  These kids have made me grow to wonder.  They have grounded me and have made me understood what is really important in life.  I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live just one day in their minds.  I joke with these children and tease them (in good fun of course) and I wonder how literally some of them take the things I say.  I may pinch one of their noses and tell them I am going to take it home with me and shortly after I wonder what visual went through that child’s head after I said that.  Did they picture me carrying their nose in my pocket and pulling it out to lay on my dresser at home?  Autism is seen by so many as a deficit when it truth it is just a difference….it is this mind-blowing, wonderous difference.   We know so much and so little about it.

I admit that when I work with these children I sometimes struggle.  I struggle with some of them conveying themselves as being a blank slate while others seem to lack any sort of emotion or social “normalcy”.  I grew up in a household where love was shown each and every day.  Hugs and kisses were (and still are) just something natural that we did and it never felt weird or forced.  My job has grounded me and has allowed me to ease myself from passing judgment on others before I know their story.  Some of these children might seem to be blank slates but I truly believe that to be furthest from the truth.  I was talking to a friend (who is also a coworker) the other day and told her that I (along with most people I work with) have to worst habit of talking about the child to the parent/guardian or even to other coworkers right in front of the child.  We have talked about them as if they weren’t right there or as if they could not possibly understand anything about our “adult” conversation when in truth we have no idea what could be going through the child’s mind.  Just because some of these children have little or no verbal skills does not mean that they do not have a brilliant mind.  Just because some make strange noises or flail different parts of their bodies that does not mean that they lack intelligence or sensibility.   Imagine to yourself not being able to speak and having people talk about you in a manner that made you out as lesser of a person….as a flaw.  Imagine not being able to defend your brilliance.  We may struggle in understanding their “lack” of emotion and we sometimes forget that they are also struggling to understand all of the different emotions they convey.  What they see as so simple may be so very complex to us….or at least that is what our emotions make it seem like.  I sometimes envy those that see the definitive answer because my mind and my emotions can sometimes be maddening.

I started writing this piece because I just watched the movie Temple Grandin and I felt inspired.  If you don’t know who Temple Grandin is I strongly recommend watching the movie and doing your research because this woman is the picture of brilliance.  She did not speak her first words until she was 4 years old and doctors tried convincing her mother to put her in a mental institution because autism at that time was viewed as a mental illness….as a form of schizophrenia.  Her mother could not bring herself to do that and Temple grew up to be a Masters of Science Graduate and her research on cattle and the slaughtering process was published in many scientific journals.  One may think that this type of research would be a real snoozefest  but when you watch the movie and learn the thought process behind  the research you quickly learn that although the emotions of this woman may not be conveyed on the outside and given out freely to those around here that surely does not mean that they do not exist.  This woman with autism showed great compassion for animals and had an eagerness to learn and she had mentors that guided her throughout her life.  She may not have always expressed her gratitude and caring for these people, but it was knowingly there….no words were needed.

This blog entry did not start with a question and really had no set direction to take.  I started writing because I felt lucky.  I felt lucky to have been given an opportunity that has allowed me to “see” into another person’s world….to see a world so different than my own.

“You see the world in ways that others can’t” ~Temple Grandin

What is love?

My parents are in New York visiting my sister (I am in South Carolina) and we all decided to Skype today.  The entire time that we were talking to each other, my mom and my sister were bickering back and forth.  My mom said my sister was mean to her and my sister talked about how my mom instigated arguments.  I listened to them and thought to myself how I had been in that same place just a few years ago.  It bothered me seeing them argue but I didn’t say anything out of fear that one of them would think I was choosing sides.  I understood where both were coming from but I also saw the changes that “should” be made by both parties to improve their relationship before it is too late.  I am far from perfect and in the past I spent far too much time and energy on being angry and screaming at my mother because she looked at me the wrong way or because I felt like she was instigating and argument.  I can’t tell you the day it happened but I changed.  I stopped seeing all of the things that annoyed me and bothered me and I started seeing all of the things I love. 

Love is unconditional acceptance of another human being no matter what flaws they may have or how much they might drive you crazy sometimes.  Love is not a concept but a feeling.  Love is putting yourself in another person’s shoes to try to understand where they are coming from before choosing to judge their thoughts or actions.  Love is wanting only good things to happen for another person.  Love is having a fear of losing someone because you are unsure how you will survive if they are no longer a part of your physical life.  Love is helping someone through heartache and pain and experiencing sadness yourself because you cannot stand the thought of that person hurting.  True love is being empathetic and compassionate and having a willingness…not not a willingness but a wanting for another person to experience optimal health and great success throughout their life.  True love does not have to be a romantic love.  True love is a feeling outside of yourself…..the willingness to give up your own happiness just so another person can experience their own happiness…even if it is short-lived. 

Love has become this concept that has been sensationalized in a way that has made it nothing but generic in the eyes of the masses.  I have fallen prey to this social stereotype.  I have given up on love more times than I can count because I have yet to experience the fairytale that I have witnessed in dozens of romantic comedies.  It took me 33 years and many tumbles and heartaches to realize that love is all around me…I just need to focus my eyes a little better.  Real, honest and sincere love does not make you question yourself or make you feel bad mentally of physically.  I have listened to so many women (myself included many times in the past) talk about different guys and how he did this or that and made them feel horrible yet they still return to relationships that are made up of nothing but chaos and dysfunction.  Love is not something you question….when you know you know.  Real love makes you better not bitter.  I may still be single at the age of 34 but love is something I will never give up on because I think it is the most important thing in this life…..and in every life before and after.  I think love is the only thing that could possibly save this sinking planet and bandage up the wounds caused by such great anger and disagreement.  I am a dreamer yes and it is what I love about myself because one million times over I would rather carry love in my heart all day everyday over anger, hatred or sadness. 

I do not follow religion….I question religion.  I do not have a specific set of beliefs but my mind is always open.  With that being said, there is a verse in the Bible (as cliché as it may have been made over the past few years) that holds such great truth in terms of the real meaning of love.  I speak of Corinthians 13:4–8a.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

To whomever has chosen to read my words I ask you to take these thoughts and ideas in and study your own life.  I hope your life is filled with great love and if it is not I hope that you find a way through the darkness into the light and see the love that surrounds you each and every day. 

If you had an opportunity to get a message across to a large group of people, what would your message be?

I have spent a lifetime trying to validate every one of my feelings and thoughts.  I have questioned whether my thoughts and feelings were right or wrong.  I have lived to believe that there are a certain set of rules to live by….a specific right way to live.  I have come to learn that this is wrong.  I am not always ok with my feelings and my thoughts.  I do have moments of guilt for feeling less than happy.  I have read enough works written by philosophical gurus to believe that happy is the only way to be.  Happy is what I strive for as much as I can but it is not the outcome of every situation or every day.  Human beings are these amazing creatures designed to think and feel more than we can handle sometimes.  We have come to understand anger and sadness and although those emotions are not idea or beneficial….sometimes they are necessary in order to pave the way to the happiness.  I can’t help but think that it is of the utmost important to accept everything we feel and think because that is our true self in the moment…whether it is pleasant or not. 

I returned to this blog and answering all 365 questions over again because I realized that it was my expression and my honesty that saved me.  It is what made me happy.  Whether or not I would like to admit it, I have slipped since then….I am happy but not as happy as I was when I was doing what I loved every day.  I stopped seeing myself and that has brought discomfort.

So, you may ask what any of this babble has to do with the question at hand….well trust me it does.  The message I would give to a mass audience….hell to everyone I possibly could…is to be ok with yourself.  Be ok with what you feel and what you think in the moment even if you don’t like it.  Lately I have felt so rejected which in turn has made me feel so ugly and so useless.  I detest that this feelings and thoughts are even a part of me but they are and I have to be honest about them if I have any intention of moving forward.  My thoughts have felt so ridiculously superficial because I have spent the last few years standing on my soapbox saying that having a significant other in my life will not make me complete.  I still believe those words but I also believe that no experiences are as good if they are not shared.  I have come to accept my moments of loneliness and see them as opportunities to get myself back to the gym and to express myself as creatively as I so desire.  A part of me does wish that I had a “special someone” (ugh I hate that term) to share myself with….to feel a level of comfort that is so rare between 2 people.  What I want to tell people is to not let others dictate how you should think or feel.  In my moments of loneliness I worry that others will view me as weak and needy and I want to be perceived as an Ironwoman made of great strength.  Well, I am a woman…I am emotional.  I have needs and wants and sometimes I desire companionship that has the potential to last a lifetime.  I have learned that I cannot keep apologizing (even if it is only in my head) for being sensitive and for being worrisome.  I have days in which I spend endless hours laughing and smiling and hope that I can relive those moments over and over again.  I also have days where I spend time degrading myself in my own head and worry about the masses and what they think of me.  I am ok with having both of those kinds of days because I am who I am and I accept it…..I accept the beauty and the gifts I have but I also accept the imperfections.  It is not always easy but as the extremely overused and pretty much annoying saying goes…”It is what it is.”

I think we live in a world where the majority is not ok with themselves.  I think we live in a world where we focus so much on teaching the basics (math, science, English, etc.) that some (a lot) of people are fearful of what they are feeling and thinking.  We don’t share compassion or empathy with each (at least not on a regular basis) so we don’t know how to deal with each other.  We don’t know how to express our anger without harm or our sadness without falling into a depression.  If I were on my soapbox with the world as my audience I would tell the people to try their very best to accept themselves and to ask for help when they need it.  I would tell the people to accept themselves and to not feel shame for their mistakes because it is those mistakes that make us human.  I would tell the world that mistakes are made only once…the second time is a choice.  As people I can’t help but believe that so many people are living behind masks because we have become afraid to express how we feel or what we think out of fear of judgment.  I would tell the world to try to let go of this fear because simple expression can be a beautiful cure for the insanity known as life. 

I had an at length discussion with this nameless someone (and I choose to keep this person nameless not out of shame but instead out of the sacredness of our relationship and the wanting to keep it only between us) a few days ago and I told him that showing vulnerability was something I hated…deep down to my core I hated it.  He then followed up with, “Well what is vulnerability?”  My senses knew what I meant but the words felt nearly impossible to express.  In that moment I felt vulnerable.  I had to think before I was able to speak.  What is vulnerability to me?  I first had to remember my belief that everything can be defined so differently by each person that roams this earth.  So, again, what is vulnerability?  Well, let me back up for a minute and explain my relationship with this person.  I met this person through an online dating site well over a year ago.  I remember reading his profile and I knew immediately that I had to write to him.  The first words I wrote were:  I think you may just be the male version of me.  From then on the conversations continued and we spoke of meeting but it had not happened (until just very recently).  Throughout us chatting online I was unsure of how I felt.  Was this merely a friendship or could it be more?  After several months and a countless number of electronic exchanges we finally spoke on the phone.  His voice changed the entire game for me (I use the word game loosely so don’t get it mixed up with thinking I view relationships as games).  All of our previous exchanges were miniscule in comparison to hearing the sound of his voice….the rises and falls and the ease in the words as they fell off of his tongue.  I immediately became eager to meet the person behind the voice….the person that made words so beautiful without even trying…..the person that told stories of a world that he sees so beautifully….a world that so few other people are able to see.  The day finally came, after many months of electronic and verbal exchanges, that we were due to meet.  Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was nervous.    Well we finally met and the time we spent together left me feeling something I had never felt before.  The nervousness never disappeared fully but the ease of being around him was something so very new for me.  I listened to him without questioning motives behind his words.  I believed what he said without assuming there was some sort of ulterior motive.  I felt inspired because he made life look so easy.  I was drawn to him because he is someone I unknowingly had been looking for.   He was that comfort that very rarely existed in my being.

So, to get back to my definition of vulnerability….In our lives we experience an abundance of pleasure (if we are lucky) but we also experience pain.  We need this pain in order to truly appreciate the pleasures.  With that being said, pain is never simple and just like pleasure it stirs up a variety of other emotions and feelings.  We all have a story….a history for lack of better words.  People will hurt us while we saunter on the path of life as we will hurt others (sometimes knowingly while other times unknowingly).  Some people in life experience the pain and move on to the next thing.  I am working to be one of those people but I have not quite mastered the technique.  Being vulnerable means showing the true and honest me…..showing all flaws and ridding myself of the mask that has been worn from the time I was a young child.  I am not confrontational and I would always choose to make others happy before making myself happy….this is an unbalance in my life.  In the written word I see myself as brilliant but in the spoken, three-dimensional world I am still a lost young girl wandering around watching everyone around me living lives that I am unsure are meant for me or not???  I hate admitting that I need other people because in the past I have lost many and my heart has hurt unbearably because of it.  I know that the past is simply an illusion but it is hard to forget that sort of pain and it is easy to avoid ever feeling that way again if you possibly can.  So, instead of admitting and expressing my true feelings I hide them….I bury them deep within me.  I guess  a part of me feels that I will no longer do that when the right person/people venture into my life….I will be able to give all of me as opposed to just pieces of me….I will come out of the hiding…..I will be vulnerable and be comfortable with that vulnerability.  Whether I like saying it or even writing it, we all need people in our lives.  As quoted from one of my favorite books, Into the Wild, “No experience is ever as pleasurable if it is not shared.”  These words seem so simple as does the concept.  We may not be able to share all experiences in the physical sense but we have opportunities all of the time to share them in the written or verbal sense.  I want to share my life with someone.  I do not need or want the traditional lifestyle and to live in a manner that society sees fit but I do want to talk endlessly with someone until my last dying breath and have them share as much of themselves with me as they possibly can.

I feel like if my life comes together with that of another beautiful dreamer so much like myself that our lives could and would be surrounded by art.  I imagine rooms being filled with inspiration and the written word.  Through the chaos of words would be the beauty of life.  I cannot share my life with someone that is not an artist….it took me a long time to learn this but there is nothing more true than this.  I may fear love in the manner of losing it but I feel love in a way that makes me feel alive…..love is the most sacred thing in this world that I know right here right now.  I know that I must step out of my comfort zone and rid myself of the fear that is only there because of my past.