Science Fiction.

When I was a kid, I loathed science fiction, didn't get it, thought it was dumb, etc. It just didn't interest me, and I couldn't understand how or why it interested other people. It scared me, to see aliens in movies (Signs scared the crap out of me; Star Wars was just a fad I had to be a part of). I also happen to love reality television, the delicious ridiculousness of it, the psychological assessments I get to do on the fly. The real vs. the unreal; this is my battle.

Flash forward a few years, and suddenly I'm super into The X Files. I think I even watched Zombieland recently with my teenage pals. I'm becoming more open to the unreal, to the imaginative part of life, and I think it's a good thing. I need more fantasy in my life to balance out the harsh realities I see every day. I need things to take my mind completely away from the day-to-day. I'm even reading Michael Crichton. Good stuff.

I'm avoiding life at the moment, making excuses, ignoring phone calls, hoping that nothing is waiting for me around the corner, hoping no one else will die or get some horrible disease. I just don't know if I can do this whole "getting older" thing. Because the older I get, the more people I love, and then people die. They get cancer. They get old. They get suicidal. It happens.

But I'm tired of it happening, and I'm just done for right now. So yeah, I'm not my most exuberant self, but I'm alive, and I don't have a brain tumor or epilepsy, so I'm trying to find some goodness in that. But otherwise, I'm wishing that I hadn't chosen to let myself love people so long ago, because it hurts to lose them.

So I go thrifting every day. And make apple muffins for breakfast, and hope that life will smooth itself out, because it usually does.

Peace out :)

I guess it's 9/11.

I work with people who are hurting, and oftentimes within that hurt are questions of forgiveness. What is forgiveness? How does a person forgive? What does forgiveness mean? And I never answer those questions for another person, because those are deep questions about faith and belief, and it's incredibly important for a person to be able to make decisions about forgiveness autonomously, without the interests of other people getting in the way.

Larger issues of peace are incredibly complex. Forgiveness and peace may be inextricably linked, but how one goes about finding peace is also a deeply personal issue. Sometimes we get very sidetracked with blame, and wanting answers. Sometimes there are no answers. Sometimes life sucks and we just have to keep going.

In Bikram last night, the teacher (or supreme yogi, or whatever they're called) reminded us that Bikram helps us to find stillness, or forces us to be still. All I know is that at the end of the class, I want to jump up and run out the door. I want the hot to go away. I want to breathe cool air. But I heed those words (because what am I there for if I don't listen?), and I lie as still as I can, for as long as I can (probably less than the recommended three minutes), before I hurry to test my sugar and get some fresher air.

When I lived in the jungle, I had few moments of cool crisp air to breathe. When I came off the plane, I thought I would die. It felt like an oven (it was the equator, after all). And my body suffered in the heat, and my soul suffered with loneliness, but I survived. Sometimes all we can do is survive, and hope that God really is there and real, or else none of it means anything anyway and there is no point.

So breathe the hot air, because it's all you have. Be mad if you want, because it won't make the hot air go away. I like to be mad at God. God can handle it.

Lisbeth Salander :)

She can't fight who she is!

I've been reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, and I'm on the last book right now. These books pretty much sum up my love for recycling, and my love for people. I love the people who've been discarded and who rise above the trash they've been disposed into, and make lives of functionality, and sometimes even meaning.

Lisbeth Salander is not my doppelganger, exactly. Our situations have some pretty strong similarities, but I spent the past decade getting over my anger and trying to make my life worth living. But her refusal to let people in, her well-guarded interior combined with a tough exterior - that was me as a teenager. It was a necessity, and I wore it with intention. Letting people really see me and really love me took a very very long time, and along the way, I lost some good people. I also lost some not-so-good people, but I don't cry too much about them.

I wish I could really explain to everyone I meet where I come from and who I am, because those things make me who I am. They make me understandable and lovable. But, so is every other person in the world. So, it's a draw. We're all worthy of love. No one deserves to be thrown away.

Saving the World

I am super frustrated today by people unwilling to budge a little to admit a bit of responsibility and do something to solve a small problem.

It is my belief that I am an unexceptional (though awesome) human being, and that everyone cares about other people and systemic functioning as much as I do. But time and again, I am proven wrong. Should I trust people selling me their used car? Probably not entirely. Should I assume that other people want to help as much as I do? Probably not. Perhaps I should pay a little less attention to global problems and a little more attention to my own.

I didn't become this way on accident. I was raised to depreciate my own health in the interest of the well-being of others, and this seems to be an issue I'm still working through. Now, my occupation is evidence that I care a lot about other people, and it offers me opportunities to continually manage boundaries, but it is also evidence that my "helping others before myself" attitude is not easily ignored - it's something I deal with regularly, and something I often have to keep in-check.

Call me a fascist commie, but I think that we, as human beings, need to pay attention to one another a little more, and ourselves a little less. We need to think about how our actions affect others a little more, and our smart phones a little less.

What do I do with my car?

Two days ago, I was in a hit-and-run on a local freeway. A large truck was swerving in the far left lane, ran into me on my driver's side, then sped away. There was a fair bit of traffic, and I couldn't move or swerve. It all happened so fast, and for the next several hours, I wasn't quite sure if I had done something wrong, but no, it was an accident, and it sucks, and that's just how it is.

So now my car is in worse shape than ever, and I don't want to deal with it anymore! I just want it to end, this whole car craziness. I don't want to drive a car that people feel compelled to run into (as per this comment last night from a friend: "Yeah, I'd run into that"). This darn rabbit keeps digging me into a deeper financial hole, and all I want is out, out, out!

Yesterday, on a lovely trip to see my parents, and do their laundry (disabled parent = need to be productive in the face of chaos), a friend offered me a non-running 1990 Toyota Corolla which needs the following: serpentine belt, temperature gauge, radiator. It's been sitting in their back lot for at least a year, and was running fine until the aforementioned items exploded from the dashboard (no joke). The car has air conditioning, four doors, and upholstery, all of which I covet. And it may be free (before repairs, obviously). So I'm spending a few days deciding what it will cost to fix, whether or not it's wise to do so, and praying to God that somehow, in some small way, I can be relieved of this mess.

Peace out :)

I love Air Supply :)

Miniature oil painting - It reminds me of my home

Perhaps some of you wonderful readers remember last summer's heartaches and long posts about love, and longing, and loss, and "Oh! The meaning of it all", as I struggled through ex-boyfriends and trying to figure out how to be grown up.

I was watching Crazy, Stupid, Love for the second time yesterday, trying to turn my brain off in the midst of familial clatter. There was a lot of stuff in the movie about "soul-mates" and how when we find our soul-mate, we should never stop trying to be with them. I don't know how I feel about this. Just because we feel a certain way about another person, doesn't mean that that person feels anything similar to that for us. I don't believe in destiny or fate. I believe in human beings and the choices they make.

I'm a huge Air Supply fan (Making love out of nothing at all). I am a lover of cheesy '80s rock ballads. I'm ready for the time in my life when I can look backwards and think, "It was all worth it". I don't know if I've completely learned that lesson yet. I'm ready to be grown-up already. When does that happen?

Have you ever been in love?

I don't have relationships with exes. I imagine that some people do. As I said before, I am like a sponge, and I don't do well managing feelings without slipping into old patterns. I doubt it's always the healthiest option, but for me, it's the best one. It protects my heart, and in odd cases, the hearts of other people (I just don't imagine anyone is too hung up on me post mortem).

And it works well. I leave, try again, mess up again, and no one is destroyed in the process. I was finding that every time I went back to my ex-boyfriends, my heart only became more attached, and more difficult to pull out of the relationship. Where once we might have been able to make somewhat of a clean break, re-entering the fray only made it more difficult to leave a second time without major trauma to my heart. Maybe our hearts were made for monogamy. I don't know. Sometimes I imagine that they are. But I don't think that our human-ness makes us able to not hurt eachother, and sometimes moving on is the best thing for everyone involved. Maybe in a perfect world, we could all mate for life, but I doubt anyone makes it to adulthood without breaking a heart or two.

Be kind. Being a grown-up means sacrifice, usually the sacrifice of things we thought we needed to survive. Maybe it can be okay to let go, if it means that in the end, you save a heart or two.

Too busy to care

My idea of Hell is to be young again.

- Marge Piercy

As I get older, I find that life is never what I expect it to be. It is always more difficult. It is always more complicated. This past week, I have found myself at an end I've never experienced before, some sort of emotional place I didn't know existed, where life can be physically exhausting, and still continue. I can be more tired than I've ever been before, but still go to work, and still be good at my job.

Everyone is limited. We are human. But to choose to live in that imperfect humanness, accepting all of one's faults and limitations, allows us to be who we were truly meant to be. For me, that means that I am less able to be "on" than other people I know. I have less energy to give than other people I know. And every effort I make to fight that reality just puts me further behind.

Today, I didn't go to church. I felt guilty. There are things I need to take care of, and people expecting me to take care of those things. But I only have what I have. I can only give what I am able to give. The past few weeks have opened me up to a new reality of understanding what people mean when they say that the older they get, the less they care about what other people think. Older people also say that they like themselves more than they did when they were younger.

It's way better being a grown-up.

Tactile love

So, I'm single and for the most part (yeah, I have to finish this damn paper, but that will be done in a few days), 100% available. I'm kind of enjoying this newly-found emotionally-stable freedom. It's kind of awesome.

I'm interested in how my online blogging friends (with a penchant for the tactile realm of thrifting) feel about the online dating scene. Which way do you swing: tactile or online? When I put it that way, it almost seems counter-intuitive. I spend my days on a treasure hunt, driving around town, searching, touching, feeling. This is all in the midst of lots of other people, with the radio on in the background, and more often than I'd like, a screaming child. It's stressful and exciting. I may even get hit on, and that's always an adventure (think stringy, dirty, and frugal).

Online dating is hidden, behind-the-scenes, inorganic. I need eye contact, fumbling, blushing. For as much as those things may hinder my own confidence, they also make me a stronger person in the long run.

So in the interest of face-to-face, sometimes scary, but always exciting, interactions, I put myself out there in the real world, every day.

Set-ups welcomed :)

My pending memoir :)

Retreats are awesome! Every once in a while, I should find a place and just go. Of course, this time, I'm working the entire time and I'm physically and mentally exhausted, but someday, I will not be a student, and maybe I can write a novel or my ever-pending memoir. Imagine the possibilities! Blue sky outside the window, maybe a beach, or some other wonderful view. It's lovely to be with someone you love too. It makes the whole thing enjoyable, even if it's work.

Also, the television show that I'm newly hooked on at this particular moment-watching it at the end of a long day is all the sweeter after so much mind-numbing paper-writing.

A writers retreat :)

So, a friend and I have decided to create a DIY writers retreat this weekend. I have a tendency to commit a day or two to something, but then sit in my apartment the whole time and get nothing done. Well, my senior paper, my final paper of graduate school is on the line, and from my general reticence over the past couple months, I think we can all agree that some serious writing needs to be done, and it needs to be done soon.

Today was a long day. It was full by itself, but it was also the first day I'd been out of bed since being sick. My caloric intake still needs to be increased for a couple days to make up for the under-load, as it were. I'm going to take a couple days now to write, and eat, and not worry about money, or the future, or anything else. I hope it works.

I am not an alien.

 

When I was seven or eight (or nine?), at Sunday School, we were asked to draw what our life would look like when we were 26. I wrote that I would be a professional ballerina. That was what I wanted to be; I worked like a maniac to be that person, and it didn't work out. My body didn't have what I needed to go as far with dancing as I wanted to go. Then the same thing happened with swimming. My body didn't have what it took.

So now my life is different that I thought it would be. The faces are different from the old faces. The people who were in my life at ages seven, eight, and nine, are no longer in my everyday life. Not a one. And that is strange. I don't have all the markers people commonly have that remind them who they were, and how they became who they are. That disconnect is jarring sometimes. It's normal for a person in my situation, but it's still jarring.

I talk about this stuff a lot, because it's central to my everyday functioning. Sometimes I have to remind myself daily that I'm still real, that I'm a person. I am not an alien. I am not invisible.