I don't think that I have much to write right now. It's just that it's been a while and I can feel myself sort of twitching. The twitch means I need to write. Something.
I have found a new consequence to this whole non permanent living thing. It seems that my personal relationships are the newest victim. Well, I don't suppose they're the newest victim. Just the most recently discovered.
My first year here was magic. Sparkly and warm and intense in the way you want every moment in your life to be intense. I felt that entire year down to my toes. I still feel a cliched, cosmic connection with the people I met then, even though I have not seen many of them since. At that point, I didn't know what life I was about to high-dive into. I didn't know to keep at least a small canyon in between them and myself, so they had something so deep to fall into when they left that I had a hard time remembering what it was like when they were right in front of me. It hurts without the canyon. Without the canyon, you can see them get smaller as they walk away. You see them the whole time.
So after that first year, I watched all the people I fell in love with get smaller. And I started digging.
Admittedly, there is not much I remember from college. But I paid attention in my Eastern Philosophy class, where I learned that The Tao of Pooh is amazing and that attachment is a chief cause of suffering. That did not make sense to my 20 year old brain, but I think it's sinking in a little more now. If you realize that all thing are non permanent, (except for Sharpies and the smell of burned popcorn in your microwave) then you will not become attached to them and, thus, will not suffer when they are gone, as they inevitably will be. It's not about coldness. It's not about feeling less or keeping any distance in the moment. It's about living in reality and not trying to constantly convince yourself that the life in your relationships is enough to keep them going forever. You learn quickly that you really have no knowledge of the future. You don't know who will fall out of your life, or back in. You don't know which relationships were real and which were simply the result of unique, like circumstance. You're blind in a dark room, to be frank, and there really is no way to tell.
So now, with Bon Iver in my ears and another generation of migrants going on their way, I am wondering how anyone can make it work. Like I said, it's not about coldness, and an arm's length is too much distance for a true friendship. But how, when you know that you don't know, do you get close? There is not much of me dedicated to self preservation, but the tiny bit of me that is tends to scream loudly and flash bright colors when it feels threatened. And in the spirit of any self preservation, I have cooled down a bit, haven't I? The arm's length gets longer and the canyon gets deeper and this, I'm finding, is what causes suffering. The anticipation of pain. The prevention of it, even to the detriment of my own experience. I need to forget what it's like to say goodbye. I need to do that high-dive with my eyes closed and my arms out like I did that first year, when I didn't give myself enough time to think about how deep the water at the end of the dive might be.
The whole "Live in now" thing is overused and its sheen has faded some as a result. Every new-age guru and guru lover says, "Live in now!" But I suppose every overused phrase would have been abandoned early if it did not hold some truth that people, for whatever reason, can't quite come to on their own.
At the end of every long day, I would much rather be sad to see someone go then to not feel anything when they do. I worked hard on that canyon, damnit, and I want to get some use out of it. Even if it hurts. Hell, especially if it hurts.
Dear Universe: Please let me feel this year. The whole thing.
Thank you.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Gottagetout
Do you ever feel like you're staring directly into the stone eyes of a looming wrecking ball?
I get the sense lately that I am clinging tightly to something I know to be entirely temporary. If the last few years have shown me anything, it's that it is in my personality to crave impermanence of some sort. I tend to gravitate towards things I know for a fact can not last. Summer-only jobs, disposable cameras, various boys...etc. Seasonal life is just that. Seasonal. Waxing and waning and never static. Tourist worlds are built on people who always, always leave, which means a tourist world can never really feel the same one day as it might the next. It seems like a perfect fit, right? But somehow, my commitment-phobic, restless, gottagetouttahere self has managed to make seasonal life, among the most transient of lifestyles, permanent. How the hell did that happen? As magic tricks go, it's one of the best I have been witness to...the magician doesn't even know the secret.
And somewhere, something in me is holding on. This is clear, as I have officially been at Maho a year and a half longer than I planned. But holding on is not really an option anymore, and the looming wrecking ball is also the light at the end of the tunnel. I did what I swore I wouldn't do: I got attached to a place. I settled in. I have even gone online looking for furniture and curtains so I can adorn my tent the way I like it. Effing curtains! I refuse to live in a place long enough to want curtains. As soon as I leave here, I am going to settle back into not settling in.
I've got one year left. One year of the kind of stability that I don't have any desire to continue with. And then I get to live. A bit scared and totally alone and happy, just the way I like it. I get to close my eyes and point at a map and figure out what's next. Hop in my car, maybe hoping that it will break down somewhere beautiful, and then leave again when I am done there. All I need is a backpack and my iPod. And no. Effing. Curtains.
I get the sense lately that I am clinging tightly to something I know to be entirely temporary. If the last few years have shown me anything, it's that it is in my personality to crave impermanence of some sort. I tend to gravitate towards things I know for a fact can not last. Summer-only jobs, disposable cameras, various boys...etc. Seasonal life is just that. Seasonal. Waxing and waning and never static. Tourist worlds are built on people who always, always leave, which means a tourist world can never really feel the same one day as it might the next. It seems like a perfect fit, right? But somehow, my commitment-phobic, restless, gottagetouttahere self has managed to make seasonal life, among the most transient of lifestyles, permanent. How the hell did that happen? As magic tricks go, it's one of the best I have been witness to...the magician doesn't even know the secret.
And somewhere, something in me is holding on. This is clear, as I have officially been at Maho a year and a half longer than I planned. But holding on is not really an option anymore, and the looming wrecking ball is also the light at the end of the tunnel. I did what I swore I wouldn't do: I got attached to a place. I settled in. I have even gone online looking for furniture and curtains so I can adorn my tent the way I like it. Effing curtains! I refuse to live in a place long enough to want curtains. As soon as I leave here, I am going to settle back into not settling in.
I've got one year left. One year of the kind of stability that I don't have any desire to continue with. And then I get to live. A bit scared and totally alone and happy, just the way I like it. I get to close my eyes and point at a map and figure out what's next. Hop in my car, maybe hoping that it will break down somewhere beautiful, and then leave again when I am done there. All I need is a backpack and my iPod. And no. Effing. Curtains.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Home.
So, I'm sitting at my parents' dining room table. I have got the house to myself (and the two dogs, three cats and bird). It's entirely possible that it could snow today. Ok, that's probably a slight exaggeration. I guess I have to leave room for the fact that any cloud cover here means I am going to be cold, which is what's actually happening. But still. It's spring in Colorado and you never really know, do you?
I've been here for 6 days now and it's been nuts, like it always is. Running all around Colorado trying to squish every little bit of the state into ten days is not the easiest thing ever. It is something I keep doing to myself and maybe I should consider a longer vacation next time. But my commitment phobia does not limit itself to relationships and TV series. I am just as scared of a long vacation as I am of feeling hooked into people that do or maybe don't exist for any promised amount of time. In that vein, how do people consciously and happily get involved with TV shows like that? If you started watching Lost and you just stopped watching Lost, you decided to enter into a relationship without a foreseeable end. And what happened? You were there for six freaking years! How anybody leaps with glee into addiction is beyond me. I feel the same way about personal relationships, but that's deeper than I'm going to go on a dumb blog that no one reads.
Anyway, I have finally reached a few moments where I do not have any planned meetings or events to get to. That moment inside a short vacation where you can finally breathe is a conflicted one. You're glad for it, right? You're glad to have, at some point in the recent past, allotted yourself a few hours where there is truly nothing to do. Flip the coin, though, and it's a maddening few hours. I am sitting here racking my brain for who I have not yet seen and what I have not yet done. Sure that there is something I'm missing. Half sure that what I'm missing is rest, honestly, and I should relish this opportunity. But rest was not part of the deal here.
It's been a different visit than it usually is. I've done this vacation home thing a few times now and it's always the same. I drive through the Garden for nostalgia's sake. Remembering the picnics and midnight visits and all the people whom I've taken on this drive as they've passed through my life. I bring a 12 pack of Fat Tire to a friend's house, fully aware that they'll be left with 8 of them when I leave. I go to the mall with lofty intentions. Planning my new wardrobe in my head. Excited at the thought of cheap, cute summer clothes that were not purchased at exactly the same place that the 45 people I live with shop every time they need something new. It never goes the way it should, though, and I find myself searching desperately for the exits as I can no longer handle fluorescent lighting or an abundance of concrete surrounding me. I usually go to Fort Collins and come back from Fort Collins and fall in love with driving for hours. I go out to the bars and soak up feeling out of place. I can say that downtown Colorado Springs is not somewhere that makes me want to fit in. I wear heels as long as I can stand them and then bring the flops out of my purse and proceed to get funny looks all night long. I make a mess out of the room that still looks like it did when I was 17, looking through my drawers and closet and the boxes of my things that my mom has packed up. I don't know what I am looking for, but I look every time. At the end of the trip, I am both sad and happy to say goodbye to the place again. I'm ready to get back to whatever beach I left behind for a few weeks and the friends that are there.
Here's where it's different. The leaving thing. I know it's still almost a week away, but I feel totally different about going back to the islands this time. There must have been a Big Maho party last night. I saw announcements about it all over Facebook. And for the first time in years and years, I didn't wish that I was there. I have looked at the pictures people have posted in the week that I have been gone and there was no pang of envy. No little sting that made me wish I was there. Nothing.
I could ponder why that is. Wonder if it's because I am finally getting tired of the Caribbean (I am) or if it's because I have enough of my own pictures from my own Big Maho parties (I do). But those aren't the reasons. The reason I am not chomping at the bit to get back to my life on vacation has nothing to do with my life on vacation. It has much more to do with what I've left behind while I've been there.
I came home this month because two very good friends got married. A couple I have known since I was 15 tied the knot and I couldn't fathom not being here for the big day. It turns out, I wasn't the only one. A group of people I have not seen breathe the same air for about a decade was finally in one room again. It became more than a simple happy reunion, although it certainly was that. It was like we all looked around and thought, "Why the hell did this take so long?"
I have met a lot of people in the last five years. A lot. Nomads and homebodies and people who are trying to find some title in between. I have seen people come and go and I have been one of the people who always seems to leave. I write letters in an attempt to touch my fingertips to some of the people I'm afraid I've lost. I recently noticed that most of those letters are written from an airplane seat and are rarely finished and never sent. It's not that I'm ok with letting all of these people go. I'm not, really. It just feels like something I have gotten used to and have begun to regard as a normal, necessary part of my twenties. And so I have lived for the last 5 years. With fairly deep if entirely temporary attachments to amazing, wonderful people I am doomed to wish I had known for a little longer.
Enter this crew of old friends. The way I felt around them caught me off-guard. Sure, they've known me forever. They have seen me change and stay the same. Ups and downs, boyfriends and break-ups. They met me in all my JCPenney clad, bass clarinet rocking glory and somehow liked me, anyway. Though I never grew all the way out of my nerd phase, I can at least mask it with a good tan and lip gloss now; I had no such self awareness nor pressing need for social self preservation at 15 years old. The person they met was just me. Awkward, unsure, hopelessly ridiculous and juvenile. Dancing circles in the rain with my arms stretched from my sides. In love with 'N Sync. Boy crazy and restless. All this and they still wanted to hang out with me? I didn't get it then and I don't really get it now. Every single one of these people is infinitely cooler and more interesting than I could even try to be. But at 15 years old, they took me in and thus started the kind of relationships that I would never be able to replicate.
I have missed them. I had no idea how much I have missed them. We have all gone on to live drastically different lives and to examine us all individually would leave you wondering how the friendships have survived. We have a teacher, a zookeeper, a veterinarian, a photographer and a wanna-be gypsy. Some are married, some divorced, many still single. We have lived all over and out of the country, stopping in to say hello when we can and running off again, barely adjusting the rearview mirror enough to check out who we just waved goodbye to. And then the universe was kind and two of us fell in love and it finally happened. A reason. An excuse to see each other for real again and remember why we have such sweet tasting memories of all the nights we spent huddled together. As many miles and years as are between us now, it didn't feel like anything had changed. As it turns out, the only thing different since my nerd days is the tan. Well, I probably couldn't exactly rock a bass clarinet if you handed me one right now...But for the most part, I am the same. It took seeing them to figure that out and remember that there are people I don't have to write letters to. They're still here. They still love me and I still love them and they will be my intangible, abstract definition of home for as far into the future as I can see.
So, now I know.
I've been here for 6 days now and it's been nuts, like it always is. Running all around Colorado trying to squish every little bit of the state into ten days is not the easiest thing ever. It is something I keep doing to myself and maybe I should consider a longer vacation next time. But my commitment phobia does not limit itself to relationships and TV series. I am just as scared of a long vacation as I am of feeling hooked into people that do or maybe don't exist for any promised amount of time. In that vein, how do people consciously and happily get involved with TV shows like that? If you started watching Lost and you just stopped watching Lost, you decided to enter into a relationship without a foreseeable end. And what happened? You were there for six freaking years! How anybody leaps with glee into addiction is beyond me. I feel the same way about personal relationships, but that's deeper than I'm going to go on a dumb blog that no one reads.
Anyway, I have finally reached a few moments where I do not have any planned meetings or events to get to. That moment inside a short vacation where you can finally breathe is a conflicted one. You're glad for it, right? You're glad to have, at some point in the recent past, allotted yourself a few hours where there is truly nothing to do. Flip the coin, though, and it's a maddening few hours. I am sitting here racking my brain for who I have not yet seen and what I have not yet done. Sure that there is something I'm missing. Half sure that what I'm missing is rest, honestly, and I should relish this opportunity. But rest was not part of the deal here.
It's been a different visit than it usually is. I've done this vacation home thing a few times now and it's always the same. I drive through the Garden for nostalgia's sake. Remembering the picnics and midnight visits and all the people whom I've taken on this drive as they've passed through my life. I bring a 12 pack of Fat Tire to a friend's house, fully aware that they'll be left with 8 of them when I leave. I go to the mall with lofty intentions. Planning my new wardrobe in my head. Excited at the thought of cheap, cute summer clothes that were not purchased at exactly the same place that the 45 people I live with shop every time they need something new. It never goes the way it should, though, and I find myself searching desperately for the exits as I can no longer handle fluorescent lighting or an abundance of concrete surrounding me. I usually go to Fort Collins and come back from Fort Collins and fall in love with driving for hours. I go out to the bars and soak up feeling out of place. I can say that downtown Colorado Springs is not somewhere that makes me want to fit in. I wear heels as long as I can stand them and then bring the flops out of my purse and proceed to get funny looks all night long. I make a mess out of the room that still looks like it did when I was 17, looking through my drawers and closet and the boxes of my things that my mom has packed up. I don't know what I am looking for, but I look every time. At the end of the trip, I am both sad and happy to say goodbye to the place again. I'm ready to get back to whatever beach I left behind for a few weeks and the friends that are there.
Here's where it's different. The leaving thing. I know it's still almost a week away, but I feel totally different about going back to the islands this time. There must have been a Big Maho party last night. I saw announcements about it all over Facebook. And for the first time in years and years, I didn't wish that I was there. I have looked at the pictures people have posted in the week that I have been gone and there was no pang of envy. No little sting that made me wish I was there. Nothing.
I could ponder why that is. Wonder if it's because I am finally getting tired of the Caribbean (I am) or if it's because I have enough of my own pictures from my own Big Maho parties (I do). But those aren't the reasons. The reason I am not chomping at the bit to get back to my life on vacation has nothing to do with my life on vacation. It has much more to do with what I've left behind while I've been there.
I came home this month because two very good friends got married. A couple I have known since I was 15 tied the knot and I couldn't fathom not being here for the big day. It turns out, I wasn't the only one. A group of people I have not seen breathe the same air for about a decade was finally in one room again. It became more than a simple happy reunion, although it certainly was that. It was like we all looked around and thought, "Why the hell did this take so long?"
I have met a lot of people in the last five years. A lot. Nomads and homebodies and people who are trying to find some title in between. I have seen people come and go and I have been one of the people who always seems to leave. I write letters in an attempt to touch my fingertips to some of the people I'm afraid I've lost. I recently noticed that most of those letters are written from an airplane seat and are rarely finished and never sent. It's not that I'm ok with letting all of these people go. I'm not, really. It just feels like something I have gotten used to and have begun to regard as a normal, necessary part of my twenties. And so I have lived for the last 5 years. With fairly deep if entirely temporary attachments to amazing, wonderful people I am doomed to wish I had known for a little longer.
Enter this crew of old friends. The way I felt around them caught me off-guard. Sure, they've known me forever. They have seen me change and stay the same. Ups and downs, boyfriends and break-ups. They met me in all my JCPenney clad, bass clarinet rocking glory and somehow liked me, anyway. Though I never grew all the way out of my nerd phase, I can at least mask it with a good tan and lip gloss now; I had no such self awareness nor pressing need for social self preservation at 15 years old. The person they met was just me. Awkward, unsure, hopelessly ridiculous and juvenile. Dancing circles in the rain with my arms stretched from my sides. In love with 'N Sync. Boy crazy and restless. All this and they still wanted to hang out with me? I didn't get it then and I don't really get it now. Every single one of these people is infinitely cooler and more interesting than I could even try to be. But at 15 years old, they took me in and thus started the kind of relationships that I would never be able to replicate.
I have missed them. I had no idea how much I have missed them. We have all gone on to live drastically different lives and to examine us all individually would leave you wondering how the friendships have survived. We have a teacher, a zookeeper, a veterinarian, a photographer and a wanna-be gypsy. Some are married, some divorced, many still single. We have lived all over and out of the country, stopping in to say hello when we can and running off again, barely adjusting the rearview mirror enough to check out who we just waved goodbye to. And then the universe was kind and two of us fell in love and it finally happened. A reason. An excuse to see each other for real again and remember why we have such sweet tasting memories of all the nights we spent huddled together. As many miles and years as are between us now, it didn't feel like anything had changed. As it turns out, the only thing different since my nerd days is the tan. Well, I probably couldn't exactly rock a bass clarinet if you handed me one right now...But for the most part, I am the same. It took seeing them to figure that out and remember that there are people I don't have to write letters to. They're still here. They still love me and I still love them and they will be my intangible, abstract definition of home for as far into the future as I can see.
So, now I know.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Soooo....things aren't going quite well for me right in this moment. Nothing is seriously wrong, either. I have just found myself having one of those days where you examine your life more closely than is comfortable and find out, without much surprise, that you might not be perfectly, blindly happy. This is not a revelation, really. I have had these days before and they mostly make me shrug my shoulders and say, "Ok, so what are you gonna do about it?" I have so little pity for myself. I am sporadically glad for that.
I'm not going to delve into what I know is making me feel this way. This is one of the few things I have been able to sort out without writing all of it down first. I get it. I know what's wrong. I also know exactly what and how I need to change. This dissatisfaction is no enigma. It's more of a pain in the ass, to tell the truth of it. And the pot of coffee I just drank is probably not helping. Maybe I'll just sit in the sun and listen to Cat Stevens until Wednesday, when I get to go home and get some space from everything that is driving me crazy. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.
And right now, instead of letting myself sink into this bummer of a mood, I am going to focus on things I am excited for. Home things, to be exact. I will make a list of everything I am stoked to go home for. And then when I get home, maybe I'll make a list of the things I thought I missed but don't. And the things I didn't think of that I miss terribly. Happens every time. Here it goes:
-Whole Foods!!! The beautiful, unparalleled produce section is bigger than my entire store.
-Driving and actually getting somewhere
-Country radio!
-Going downtown and not seeing ANYONE I know.
-My mom
-My dad
-My whole family, actually
-Blasting my car radio and cruising on I-70
-Coffee shops
-Ice cream parlors
-Walking barefoot on grass
-Carpet
-Cool nights
-Friends I have known for more than 2 years
-New nail polish colors
-Shopping! Buying a pair of shorts for less than $60 is a big, big deal.
-Puppies
-Good beer
--Ok, I'm going to go to the beach now and work on that Cat Stevens thing. The list has certainly helped my mood. More later.
I'm not going to delve into what I know is making me feel this way. This is one of the few things I have been able to sort out without writing all of it down first. I get it. I know what's wrong. I also know exactly what and how I need to change. This dissatisfaction is no enigma. It's more of a pain in the ass, to tell the truth of it. And the pot of coffee I just drank is probably not helping. Maybe I'll just sit in the sun and listen to Cat Stevens until Wednesday, when I get to go home and get some space from everything that is driving me crazy. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.
And right now, instead of letting myself sink into this bummer of a mood, I am going to focus on things I am excited for. Home things, to be exact. I will make a list of everything I am stoked to go home for. And then when I get home, maybe I'll make a list of the things I thought I missed but don't. And the things I didn't think of that I miss terribly. Happens every time. Here it goes:
-Whole Foods!!! The beautiful, unparalleled produce section is bigger than my entire store.
-Driving and actually getting somewhere
-Country radio!
-Going downtown and not seeing ANYONE I know.
-My mom
-My dad
-My whole family, actually
-Blasting my car radio and cruising on I-70
-Coffee shops
-Ice cream parlors
-Walking barefoot on grass
-Carpet
-Cool nights
-Friends I have known for more than 2 years
-New nail polish colors
-Shopping! Buying a pair of shorts for less than $60 is a big, big deal.
-Puppies
-Good beer
--Ok, I'm going to go to the beach now and work on that Cat Stevens thing. The list has certainly helped my mood. More later.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Rambling without direction.
Oh, hello there, May. Are you already here again? That happened fast. Season is, in all true definitions and understandings, over. Another crazy year under my belt. Another ten BVI stamps in the passport and another departing staff full of people whom I will probably not ever see again. I think I've gotten good at goodbyes. Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but I never wanted to be good at goodbyes.
I don't know that I would consider myself a nomad, though I have always regarded the word romantically and wish it could pass as my own classification. I'm just lost and then found, generally in succession. Over and over and over again. I stay somewhere until I'm unhappy and then I leave. I'm not a hobo; I'm just logical. And portable. I also happen to like living in places where most people only get to vacation. I don't really understand why everybody doesn't live this way. Why on Earth would you live somewhere mundane when you don't have to? When there are a million places so beautiful that they make you wish you never had to blink? It's true, I tend to love in fairly expensive spots. It works for me, since being broke seems to be my most natural state. I can see how that would not work for everyone.
It can also be exhausting to live this way. You spend a few months gearing up. Preparing and planning and scheduling and trying your very best to get ready for the tazmanian devil that is a throng of pasty, hurried tourists. Then you're in the cloud, just trying not to get hit by the suntan lotion bottles and tiny paper umbrellas that fly off the frenzied mass. The frenzy lasts a few lucrative months longer than you would like it to. And then...then it's like you were going 95 on the highway and saw a cop. Slam the brakes. Slow the hell down. Try your best to act like nothing happened. And then, before you know it, you're prepping again. There is barely time to catch your breath.
So I guess I can understand why people wouldn't want this life. But I still do.
I don't know that I would consider myself a nomad, though I have always regarded the word romantically and wish it could pass as my own classification. I'm just lost and then found, generally in succession. Over and over and over again. I stay somewhere until I'm unhappy and then I leave. I'm not a hobo; I'm just logical. And portable. I also happen to like living in places where most people only get to vacation. I don't really understand why everybody doesn't live this way. Why on Earth would you live somewhere mundane when you don't have to? When there are a million places so beautiful that they make you wish you never had to blink? It's true, I tend to love in fairly expensive spots. It works for me, since being broke seems to be my most natural state. I can see how that would not work for everyone.
It can also be exhausting to live this way. You spend a few months gearing up. Preparing and planning and scheduling and trying your very best to get ready for the tazmanian devil that is a throng of pasty, hurried tourists. Then you're in the cloud, just trying not to get hit by the suntan lotion bottles and tiny paper umbrellas that fly off the frenzied mass. The frenzy lasts a few lucrative months longer than you would like it to. And then...then it's like you were going 95 on the highway and saw a cop. Slam the brakes. Slow the hell down. Try your best to act like nothing happened. And then, before you know it, you're prepping again. There is barely time to catch your breath.
So I guess I can understand why people wouldn't want this life. But I still do.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Cheers to the Past
It's amazing what a good chat with the past can do for a person. It makes you see the years for the small bits of world that they are. Here I am living my life like the last five years are the only ones I have had. True enough, I consider these five to be the most awake of my twenty six. But it would be an injustice to treat the first twenty one like a long nap. I did live then, too. I had fun. I made friends and mistakes. I laughed and loved and felt.
I call it my past life and I tell it like it's a story. But I think it's time to give due credit to my pre-Never Never land existence.
If I could sit down for a while with my twenty year old self, I would kick my ass into gear. I'd say, "Get out of your house, stop drinking so much beer and open your effing eyes. Have fun while you're here, because you won't be here for much longer." I would also mention that neon nail polish would eventually have a drastic effect on my happiness level and that I should hang in there and not bitch too much, since I would eventually land under palm trees. But maybe that would be crossing that weird butterfly effect line and I would change the course of my life, ending up on the street trying to sell my soul or working in a KFC somewhere, miserable. Anyway.
I wish I had looked around a bit more then. I may have felt like a zombie most of the time, but I wasn't. The people around me weren't, either. I owe my past an apology, I think. I probably owe that to the people who still float around inside the memories of everything I so harshly rejected.
I am sorry that I ran so fast. I am sorry that I gave no thought to leaving. I fell into a quicksand world where no one asks about who you used to be. I needed to start over, which is exactly what I did. But a goodbye was in order and in my rush towards the ocean I forgot to look back at the mountains.
Let's not get confused. Running was what I needed to do. I have argued to people that I was never really running from anything. I was running toward something. Pursuit, not escape. Which, it seems, is both the blue truth and an utter lie.
But if the pursuit is the truth, then I won. I did it. I can not name what I was looking for and I can not tell anyone for sure what it was I found, but I came out breathing more deeply than the shallow Colorado air ever would have allowed.
As has been said a million times and a million ways, if the past hadn't been what it was, the present wouldn't be what it is. So, cheers. To screwy, mixed up, angsty past selves. To the life I really did live then. To the people I knew before I was me. I finally feel like I can say thank you to the life I had for bringing me to the one I'm living now.
I call it my past life and I tell it like it's a story. But I think it's time to give due credit to my pre-Never Never land existence.
If I could sit down for a while with my twenty year old self, I would kick my ass into gear. I'd say, "Get out of your house, stop drinking so much beer and open your effing eyes. Have fun while you're here, because you won't be here for much longer." I would also mention that neon nail polish would eventually have a drastic effect on my happiness level and that I should hang in there and not bitch too much, since I would eventually land under palm trees. But maybe that would be crossing that weird butterfly effect line and I would change the course of my life, ending up on the street trying to sell my soul or working in a KFC somewhere, miserable. Anyway.
I wish I had looked around a bit more then. I may have felt like a zombie most of the time, but I wasn't. The people around me weren't, either. I owe my past an apology, I think. I probably owe that to the people who still float around inside the memories of everything I so harshly rejected.
I am sorry that I ran so fast. I am sorry that I gave no thought to leaving. I fell into a quicksand world where no one asks about who you used to be. I needed to start over, which is exactly what I did. But a goodbye was in order and in my rush towards the ocean I forgot to look back at the mountains.
Let's not get confused. Running was what I needed to do. I have argued to people that I was never really running from anything. I was running toward something. Pursuit, not escape. Which, it seems, is both the blue truth and an utter lie.
But if the pursuit is the truth, then I won. I did it. I can not name what I was looking for and I can not tell anyone for sure what it was I found, but I came out breathing more deeply than the shallow Colorado air ever would have allowed.
As has been said a million times and a million ways, if the past hadn't been what it was, the present wouldn't be what it is. So, cheers. To screwy, mixed up, angsty past selves. To the life I really did live then. To the people I knew before I was me. I finally feel like I can say thank you to the life I had for bringing me to the one I'm living now.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Just live.
I wrote this one a while ago, which becomes apparent. And I was feeling a little more bitter about life than I am right now, perhaps. At least, that's how I read it. Regardless, I like it. Ignore the bitterness and get on with it...
At some point, this all ends. The vines that peek over the side of the tent like they're trying to pull off a long glance. Like kids that climb Red Rocks to watch a show; Not really supposed to be there, but not exactly looking to leave. The sun hitting the driftwood that sits on my front porch. Sitting above and inside the trees. Strapless sundresses and tan lines three days before Christmas. It ends someday.
I spend too much time thinking about the past. Blowing kisses to ghosts. Wondering if it will ever again be like it was. Hoping at once that it will and that it won't.
I spend too much time thinking about the future. Questioning, rightfully, the sustainability of the life I am currently living. It's not sustainable, I know, and I dedicate far too much time to what might happen when the sand stops falling.
Live, Jamie. Live now. Look at your beautiful friends and your beautiful home and your days off filled to the brim with warm sun and deep breaths and just live. Once. Try it once.
At some point, this all ends. The vines that peek over the side of the tent like they're trying to pull off a long glance. Like kids that climb Red Rocks to watch a show; Not really supposed to be there, but not exactly looking to leave. The sun hitting the driftwood that sits on my front porch. Sitting above and inside the trees. Strapless sundresses and tan lines three days before Christmas. It ends someday.
I spend too much time thinking about the past. Blowing kisses to ghosts. Wondering if it will ever again be like it was. Hoping at once that it will and that it won't.
I spend too much time thinking about the future. Questioning, rightfully, the sustainability of the life I am currently living. It's not sustainable, I know, and I dedicate far too much time to what might happen when the sand stops falling.
Live, Jamie. Live now. Look at your beautiful friends and your beautiful home and your days off filled to the brim with warm sun and deep breaths and just live. Once. Try it once.
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