Staying hot.

Um, how 'bout you do it yourself, yo?

Relationships are ridiculous. My relationship is ridiculous. How else can I possibly describe something that involves being with a whole entire complete other person, another human being, who has an entire life of their own, who thinks thoughts that are their own, who has been and done things for a lifetime that have made them them? Relationships are crazy and hard and anyone who says otherwise is wrong wrong wrong (but not really - I just like being right).

I struggle with wanting to control other people. I struggle to admit that I am wrong. I am defensive and angry when I'm scared, and other people scare me all the freakin' time with their otherness. I struggle to be myself in the presence of other people, to truly be myself and not adjust myself to be more in-line with the other person. I am weak in that way. It worries me.

All of these things are compounded exponentially in an intimate romantic relationship, in a one-on-one, no-one-else-sees-this-but-us kind of relationship. And my flaws are microphoned out on a loudspeaker with the person that I love. I am ugly when I don't get my way. Ugly ugly ugly.

I am drinking a cup of coffee from a small coffee cup, and it gets cold very quickly. It is hot for a moment, and then it is cold. I have to refill it if I want it to be hot, or have one of those constant-candle-warmer kinds of things. I need a bigger mug. It needs to be thicker and deeper so the coffee stays hot. I need my soul to be thicker and deeper so I can stay hot and grounded and steady. Some people call this an ego. It's all the same thing. It's my innermost part, my deepest me. This is the thing I am working on, this thing I carry around in my broken human body. This is the thing that matters. I have to trust that God is in control and can do all of those impossible miraculous things I've seen over and again, and sit in stillness and wait. This waiting will make me better. It will make me still. It will keep me hot.

An imperfect life.

I ridiculously love Degas, and have since I was a kid

I've been trying for a long time to have my perfect life, to be the perfect me, to get to the edge of my potential. Is it possible that I've been trying so hard to be awesome that I've neglected how awesome I already am, just as I am?

I've recently learned that I'm a pretty attractive person. Heretofore, I still held the beliefs bestowed upon me as a child: that I was annoying, dressed like a man, had terrible hair, and just generally looked horrible all the time. So naturally I assumed these things meant that I was ugly, and unlovable. Funny thing is, I'm not ugly, and I'm pretty damn lovable. All of that time spent believing the lies made me create a persona to cope with the ugliness. Everything I wear is an attempt to not look decrepit. I avoid certain hairstyles because they accentuate my utter awfulness. I exercise and eat healthy because it keeps me from looking horrifyingly ugly.

But now I know these things are a lie. Every. Single. One. So now what? How do I find out who I really am under all of the things I've put on to keep from showing the world the ugliness underneath? How do I become someone who is completely herself whilst still communicating health and well-being in my professional life? Where is the perfect middle and how do I get there?

And what happens if I stop striving for perfection altogether?

I'm afraid of new things.

I'm pretty much on vacation right now, focusing on my store, resting, considering the possibility of reading a book instead of watching old Law & Order episodes on repeat, and just generally attempting to re-center, ground myself for the pending new year.

I have this new thing in my life, this new person, and as I move through the unknown of this relationship, I am faced daily by all of the things I try to avoid most of the time. I'm recognizing how much I avoid risk, perhaps not risk in the standard sense (I'm not risking my life or anything), but risk in terms of my own heart and soul. See my thrifty heart is a frugal heart. I calculate and recalculate. I weigh pros and cons. I anticipate potential problems so when they come, I'm not surprised. I know when to throw in the towel and call it quits. Thrifting is the way I control my life. Thrifting is the way I make sense of my own soul.

But nothing new and wonderful can come out of something known and understood, at least not intentionally. I've made a lot of choices in my life for the wrong reasons, and they ended up being for my benefit in the end, but I couldn't have orchestrated that; I couldn't have known the future.

So yes, I dig for treasures, but I don't know what I'll find. I don't go looking for particular things; I find wonderful things because I open myself up for them. I spend time preparing, and at the right time, I know what I'm looking at.

People are like that, in some ways. We become people who know what they're looking for, so when we see it, we'll know. I guess I'm wondering if I know what I'm looking for, after all this time, if my years upon years of singleness have taught me anything, or if I'm still just my naive sixteen-year-old self in a grown up woman's body.

Only time will tell, because only time can do the hard work of growing up. Being a grown-up is hard.

So yeah, this is me.

Vintage Crewel Embroidery Kit :)

I feel alone right now. I feel alone in a way that is new, not terribly painful, but strange nonetheless. I have, for the past twenty-some odd years, sought to demand love from other people. I have done this in a variety of ways, and have failed, miserably, time and time again. I have wanted desperately to fill holes in my heart that were never filled, holes that make me feel weak and vulnerable, scared and crazy. I have tried to get other people to fill them for me. Let me be perfectly clear: this does not work.

Now, all that "love yourself first" and "self-love" bullshit is true. I believe it. I call it bullshit because I think people use it to avoid pain sometimes, to mask a carnal dependency we all have as human beings. We all need other people. We all need relationships. But we cannot make other people love us if they don't. We just can't. I can't. I want to, but I can't. I want the people who I love to love me back, to feel as deeply as I do, to cross that relational barrier that divides us all. But this doesn't always happen. It actually happens very rarely, and that's okay.

The answer to that is not to turn inward and avoid befriending, coffee time-ing, and generally reaching out to other people. It may be appropriate to take a moment to deconstruct the reasons why a relationship didn't work out. It may help to make stronger decisions in the future. But it doesn't mean that we quit loving others, ever, or that we avoid the intimacy that got us tangled up in the first place. I've fallen down so many times now in romantic relationships that I don't want to get back up again. I don't want to bother. I'm a big fat failure, and I want to turn in my "coupling" card. I want to stop pouring my heart out to people who don't love me. I want to stop loving people who can't love me back. I want to stop obsessing over things I have no control over.

I think loving yourself means filling up your own damn holes, and then reaching out again to find someone who honors them.

Love one another.

 

Be the kind of person who is never silent about evil.

Me.

Discerning the truth is a difficult thing. Religion often gets in the way, makes us hate eachother instead of loving one another. We use religion to hurt people, instead of help them. We use religion to do harm instead of good. We use religion to avoid people instead of embrace them.

Hate is evil. When you wish harm on another person, for any reason, you perpetrate evil. When you silence another person, you perpetrate evil.

When something goes horribly, horribly wrong, it did not happen overnight. There were signs. People saw them. Some people chose to be silent. Others were silencers.

And we are all complicit.