Hello, World!

This is going to be a more personal post, but if I try to write this I will lose my thoughts before I get them on paper.

What I am wondering in this moment is how am I supposed to reconcile not being ready for the one thing I have always expected to define me? I am a relationship girl, yes? Yes. And I have lived my whole life thinking that without a relationship I am not whole. I've lived my whole life waiting for this one thing to happen so I could start really being me, or being confident, or being valuable. I thought I had to wait to feel these things. I assumed I would have to, I assumed I was going to feel bad until I had a particular someone who loved me. You know, You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You. It's a classic, but I was living it. Sure, I would stay single for a reasonable amount of time between relationships, but I was always looking for the next one in my mind - I was always trying to figure out where I was on the journey to my soul mate. I was always defined by my relative position to the opposite sex.

As I was driving home from my last Couple's and Family Counseling class session, I realized that for the first time in my life, I am starting to understand what it means to be whole without a significant other (and without the possibility of one). I am learning that it is possible to feel together without leaning on someone else (or the idea of someone else, and this point is more applicable to me and my daydreaming, prince-charming-conjuring self).

I've been standing with my face and hands pushed up against the window, and now I've just seen someone walk through the door 3 feet to my left. Who knew? But apparently the door was there all along. Now I know I have access to that sense of security and surety that I've always wanted - I don't need this fundamental aspect of my life to change before I can be fulfilled.

Imagine that. Y'all probably thought I was independent or something.

I think this will always be a struggle for me. I think I will always desire a relationship, and I'm getting to the point in my life where I desire family. I don't think those are bad desires. They are only harmful when they become the "if only" or the miracle cure to something I'm dealing with in the present, in my single state.

Well.

Sha la la la la la la

[Matt Costa]

Definitions: Terminology can be confusing.

Today's title brought to you by the Merck Manuals Online Medical Dictionary. I desperately needed to post it somewhere because I thought it was hilarious.

I have been attempting to figure out how I am for the past several weeks. The problem is that my mood is not consistent enough to put even the smallest finger on. I have decided that I am ok, I am busy, I am working toward being pretty burned out, and I would love to spend two days (or five) on my futon and ask the birds and creatures to clean my apartment for me. Shout out to Disney for how completely they have encouraged my inner dreamer.

So I'm fighting recovery mode with every inch I've got because I still have a week and two highly personal and comprehensive papers to write about myself. Meaning my cultural orientation (one) and my reaction to the class material discussed in Couple's and Family Counseling (two). You will be proud to know that being forced to self-reflect has decreased my tendency to over-analyze things - I don't have any more room to think when I'm done with my school assignments! That's not completely true, but I am a more efficient thinker most of the time.

Organized analysis is not nearly as fun, but it is more productive :) I can feel my frontal lobe forming neural pathways - hooray for physiological adulthood?

I know, I'm terribly nerdy. I apologize.

Happy [Glorious] Weekend! No more procrastinating for me.

Walking the Trail*

I feel growth. I have been forced to relax and just be in the past two weeks and it has done me a world of good. Maybe when I'm not supposed to be writing an ethics paper, studying for two finals, and catching up on 10 book chapters, I will tell you about it.

Until then, I will say that I am well, but I need to continue my self-reflection. I will not neglect you forever, but right now I need to be caught up in my own head for just a bit longer.

*A novel by Jerry Ellis.

This Flight Tonight

I come to you after wasting more time than I'm willing to admit on facebook and compulsively checking all of my email inboxes...school is definitely in session, as are my well-practiced procrastination tools :)

Ginger honey tea, check.

Joni Mitchell, check.

I am in my second year of a Master's program that will hopefully lead to a Ph.D. program and I am, admittedly, lost in the process. In a good way I think - school is hard and time consuming and my job takes up plenty of brain space on its own, so in a lot of ways I am in get-through-school-so-I-can-live mode. What I appreciate about being in the program that I'm in is that it keeps me a little less likely to ignore the present. Hooray for counseling - even if I wanted to avoid myself my professors wouldn't let me! It's good - I'm too emotionally active in the present not to address it, but the part of me that checks all my email inboxes everyday will always be tempted to glaze over the present in favor of the future. I think I am a very confounding combination of Type A and Type B personalities.

Anyway, I've been doing well the past week, really - my sense of purpose in this crazy move-7-hours-away-from-home thing has been restored in the start of classes. And I do feel at home in the apartment I've found - I am content to be pretty independent but am plugging in with groups of friends that I didn't really have access to last year. It's exciting, and the realization that I only have one year left to do what I hoped to accomplish in two is kind of overwhelming. I don't regret where I've been, and I think I will do just fine this year - I think it will be what it needs to be, and then hopefully I will move on and be able to settle just a little bit more into myself and my location.

Now let's hope I don't get too caught up in the present to pay attention to important things like recommendation letters and application forms... That would be so ironic :)

I'm going to continue procrastinating with TV. In my defense, I read four chapters today and posted on my online class discussion forums. Baby steps - I get used to doing nothing very quickly, and I had a month to settle in to a 'summer' routine.

Goodnight :)

Growing Pains: Part 376,542

You know, the mood to blog is a very unique one - it's not quite a journaling mood and it's not quite a suck-it-up-and-deal-with-it mood, but it's somewhere in between. I don't feel it that often, so I'm afraid my posts are sparse and sometimes short. I guess I have to make up for the novels that I've written in the past somehow :)

I'm at a place in my life where my ideas about my self and my future are being tested. I'm having to make a decision between what I want for my life and what others think is best. I remember typing away on this thing a few summers ago about how terrifying it is to commit to yourself - funny how things come back to you, isn't it? Here I am, a solid two years later, having to recommit to my ideas about where I want to be and where I think I should be.

The problem is not having to figure out where I want to be, it's being certain enough in my own decision to share it with others, even if it's in conflict with what they think.

This is a tremendously hard lesson for me - but of course the fact that I feel like I'm having to rip my way out of a shell means I'm growing, right? I think it does. I don't resent the process, but sometimes I wish I could avoid it. Sometimes I wish this was something that came naturally to me - communicating myself in spite of disagreement, but then where would I be? What would I have to learn? Not that this is my only area of weakness, mind you. If I were good at this, I'd be grumbling about growing in some other area so I might as well take this as my own and do it.

*Sigh*

I'm way too much of a relativist for my own good - I guess what I'm doing at the moment is learning what absolutes exist in my life. I want my Ph.D. in counseling or psychology, I want to be close to my family, I want to be loved and understood by those who love me, and I want to live freely.

So, I suppose I should go live freely then, shouldn't I?

:)

And again!

I've moved into a new apartment, successfully navigated my travel-filled month and a half, and am in a bit of a lull right now. Sure, I have things I need to do, should be doing right now actually, but they are not pressing. I don't feel pressed anyway :).

Every time I go through a busy time, a stressful time, or an uncomfortable time I come out of it with a little more perspective, and I think that is what I'm enjoying right now. It will only last for a little while - I outgrow my own perspective pretty quickly and then it's time for another period of stress, etc.

For now, I'm doing well, but I should really go make lunch before I have to go to work. There is more that I don't have time to tell, so I'm not going to attempt it :).

Happy Tuesday.

The comfort of my mind

I am here, I am here, I am here.

Relationships are my world. They are the soil to my sprout (I have little baby herb plants peeking out at the moment, which are very exciting), my purpose, my life-source. Of course I would have to learn my hardest lessons through my relationships. Of course I would.

What lessons am I learning, you ask? To be patient, to be kind, to be honest. To stand up for myself, which is the hardest of all. I am learning to be present and objective about my surroundings. And I think that I'm learning these lessons now so that one day I will fully appreciate throwing them to the wind.

To work. Hard, personal work. And to growth, my ever-present friend. May I be committed to both and not wear myself out.

Hm :)

Conversations in the snow

I'm mad. And appropriately so, I think.

Ugh.

A bittersweet toast to friendship: that I will continue to care when I really don't want to.

This is charge that I would deny in a heartbeat if I could. Oh selflessness, what a love-hate relationship we have developed :)

slickery slopes and other things

I am the kind of exhausted that only comes from emotional and spiritual work. I don't know if other people feel this way, but I think they must - it's like the whole world turned to sand-paper and now I have to squeeze through it.

Is this life? Is this par for the course? Because it kind of sucks and makes me want high school back, when my biggest problem was disagreeing with my peers' philosophy while sitting comfortably in a coffee shop drinking my mocha. Yes, I drank mochas in high school; I've since moved up to vanilla lattes and chai tea. Maybe I am growing up!

Seriously though - everything I touch is rough and unfamiliar. I have to make time for myself, literally, or I get lost in swirls of practicality and compromise. All I really want to do is be emotional and react how I feel like I should, but no one seems to accept that here. 'Here' being my geographical location as well as adulthood. Anyway, intuition is not a factor to live by, it is corrupt and illogical. And I don't believe that! But standing my ground leaves me with scraped up outsides (and insides).

I am learning to stand my ground, because the alternative is to accept the other side. I might as well sell my soul to the devil if I forsake my emotionality - he'd be able to knock me over with a feather once I give up the weakness I'm supposed to be living out of. Paradoxical? Of course. Get used to it :)

So, to scraped-up outsides. I just hope my endurance has improved, because this could be a several-year process depending how school goes. I don't know if I can do this that long without coming back home with 357 pounds of emotional baggage. Just an approximation, of course.

I guess that's my main fear in all of this - that I won't be able to leave it here; that my move back home will bring some of it with me and that I will regret coming for it.

*Sigh*

I think regret is a choice, just as growth is. I want to grow. I don't want to shrivel, and my hope and prayer is that my desire for that will overcome my defense mechanisms.

Hm. I hope you all have a lovely night, and I hope this wasn't too much of a dump load :)

and back we are!

I come to you today in much the same place I was while writing the last post. I am more certain of myself, however. I think it is time to shift, and I am preparing for the consequences that will follow. I will be happier, I think. I will be happier.