Can I get off now: Riding the emotional rollercoaster.

I haven't written in ages...literally. So much has happened that I cannot even begin to recap; honestly I feel like a different person (and NOT in a good way.)

Do you ever just wonder how the hell you got to where you are?? Like, we make a million decisions, everyday. We actively participate in our lives, navigating and trying to make it all we dreamed of. Then...life gets in the way. I don't really even know how to explain it- I have spent a decade trying to describe the void that comes from having a life that doesn't match my dreams, and living with the fact that it never really will.

So my new quest in life was to really figure it all out. If you read my last blog, I was going to take the "road less traveled" and make a decision to try to get to know me; and discover what I want from this ever fleeting thing we call life. Let me just say, I haven't gotten that far. (unless you consider the road less traveled moving back in with your parents and putting your entire existence on hold). How is it going, you ask? Well to give you a little insight, I don't even wear makeup anymore. Not that that matters, but it is probably more symbolic than I would like to admit. I miss everything I never had in my previous life. Does that make sense? I miss the idea of my past, but the reality of it was not so great. Do you think we all do that? Miss what was never really there??

I am so terrified. I have no idea what comes next. I am stuck in a REEEALLY unproductive and almost paralyzing place: emotionally and physically.

I've always been one of those people that always had something up her sleeve. I always had a bigger plan, and by the grace of God and my sheer will, they always happened exactly as I planned...then one day, I went and changed it all. I decided that my plan was going to leave me homeless and jobless so I got out when I could..or so I thought. Which brings me to my current state. Where is that exactly? I have no fucking clue.

I have been searching my soul for a few months now, trying to make sense of all of this chaos I have brought upon myself, and I am discovering that I am missing two main components: Inner peace and joy.

Having inner peace and true, unadulterated joy is, in my opinion the golden ticket. They are the key to life. In this insane crazy, dishonest and horrifying world, if you have these things, you can be a rock. Whether you are in New York City, Paris or Fort Worth, without peace and joy, you won't get very far.

Wow, I think I just realized the magnitude of what I just said.

I have traveled the world, and lived in, well, quite a few places, and I am discovering that in all my adventures, I think I was missing this. Peace and Joy are the difference between actively living a life you choose and just surviving a life you don't really know you are choosing. Not that I am Buddha or anything, but I am learning that what my life has been missing isn't something physical, it's something that comes from within.

Inner Peace.
Peace that resonates so deeply it can bring you to your knees and gives you a security you never thought possible. No matter what storm rages outside or within, you have a calm peace that can get you through anything...and that knowledge in of itself takes away about 90% of turmoil.

Joy.
I like to describe joy as happiness on holiday. Joy has no conditions isn't really physically based, knows no boundaries, and never really leaves. Joy doesn't come from anything but a heart and spirit so full that it literally overflows. When you have joy from within, your soul is always smiling.

Joy is one I am still working on. (okay, let's face it, I am working on both, but whatever!) Despite all the yoga I am doing, I am finding it so difficult to be truly joyful. Right now being joyful consists of praying (a lot), and being grateful for what I have in my life. My biggest problem (as it's always been) is not letting other people bring me down. This, I am sorely afraid, will always be my challenge.

So that's it. I gave it all up to discover that in order to truly understand, appreciate and KEEP my journey my own is to look within. No, it's not glamorous, it's not fabulous or pretty. It doesn't look good on paper and it certainly won't be good for my resume, but I think the day I decided my soul, my heart, my GUTS were more important than being who EVERYONE ELSE said I would be, I made the first step to becoming the person I said I would be. And now I am. (Well, I am at least in the right direction).

So THIS is my life, now....here's hoping.

Aaaaand...end scene.

I'm having one of those final scene movie days. One movie in particular: Prime. (warning, I have tweaked the ending to suit my situation...it is not completely accurate!) With Rachel yamagata playing in the background, we pan onto to a scene in a small, cozily lit manhattan restaurant. At long table, we see a man (tweaking slightly for gender respect), surrounded by friends. As the camera pans out, we realize we are viewing this scene through the eyes of our brave heroine. Once upon a time, these two people, now Newly strangers in the city of 8 million stories, were madly in love. You can't really remember what happened or why they aren't together anymore, but it is clear both have moved on. Despite the slow, sappy music playing and the major mood lighting, the scene isn't particularly sad. In fact, it's actually quite hopeful. You see the woman's face, and you know the entire tale that brought her to that moment. She once loved this man, so much she thought it was forever, but chose to move on because of a whole bunch of reasons that may or may not even matter. Even though a dark street without wine and friends may seem like the sadder version, she actually embraces the road less traveled. She had made a difficult decision: to dare that something better was out there for her. So with her sad and hopeful music, she sets off alone, to her world where anything is possible. And while there may always be a longing to be on the other side of the wall, (the one with the wine and friends) it's not enough to compromise the possibility of living to the fullest...whatever that decision may mean. 

We all have choices. Every choice we make and have made, has brought every single one of us exactly where we are, this moment. (for me its people watching at the Starbucks on lex and 77th). Choices can be easy or they can be difficult. My choices, as of late, have proven to be the latter. But like my heroine in my final scene movie, I'm daring to discover what life holds for me when I decide to just jump off. A part of me wants to be inside the restaurant, safe and unchanging, but the bigger part of me wants to discover what the rest of the world (physically, spiritually, emotionally and hypothetically speaking) outside has to offer. So even though there is sad music playing, my scene is actually hopeful. So yeah...I'm having one of those final scene movie days...remember there is life after the credits.

Even then, it was never really all that simple.

After watching The Way We Were for the 500th dozen time, I actually started to realize something. Perhaps it's the wisdom that comes with age, or I am just in a completely different place in my life than I ever have been, but something shifted in my perception of the interpretation of this epic movie, and the (formerly ill) fates of those involved.

I'm not going to do one of my quppy movie recaps (as I am certain I have done exactly that with this movie at some point in my blogging...) but I am going to sum it up with this: A fiercely independent woman falls hopelessly for a dreamy man who grows to love her just as fiercely as her, but in the end, chooses to opt out.

Here come the waterworks. How sad, how tragic. Just another modern day Romeo and Juliet: star-crossed lovers who don't end up living happily ever after. Every time I see it, I bawl. "Why oh why does Katie have to end up without Hubble?" "Why does he have to be such an asshole?" "Why can't they just stick together, they have a child for God's sake...why can't they just work it out?" And then, in what probably was the ORIGINAL "awkward ex run-in" on the street, we see that both parties come out alive. Yes, they are okay, but wouldn't they have been so much better together? They were MEANT for each other...or were they?

A close friend of mine described a great love as one where both parties give it all: everything they have, and whatever that is, plays out. As society has made us love-obsessed, over time, great love has equaled "successful ending in love." Marriage. Happily ever after. Kids. House. Growing Old. ETC.

What if, though, just what IF we entertain the possibility that being great in love AND life equals "messy as hell." Broken hearts. Blood. Tears. Tragedy. PAIN. Happiness. Being REAL and true to everyone and yourself. Not being perfect on paper, or kissing until the credits roll.

Now that is a daring suggestion for the ending to our movie lives, huh?

So back to the story at hand, Hubble and Katie. Lots of people claim to watch this movie, and even a racous sex and the city episode has portrayed parts of it, but believe me when I say, I am an expert. I have been watching this movie religiously with my mom since I was SEVEN years old. So this Hubble character, I pretty much have figured out. And let me tell you, apart from his dreamy heartthrob looks, he wasn't THAT great. He had asshole friends and an arrogance that could make Napoleon seem humble. Never accepting humility or the possibility that he could learn a thing or two, we constantly see him take his "lawful place in his social hierachy" making Katie often feel she was a day late and a dollar short.

The crazy thing is, what made Hubble so great is how much Katie loved and believed in him.. (Must I remind you, Mr. Redford didn't receive any awards for that performance, Mrs. Streisand took all of them...)

So that's it. He WAS: only because of her. What a "non-perfect ending" type of statement.

I remember, when I was around 14, (I am ASHAMED to say) that I used to be EMBARRASSED for Katie! I would cringe at the way she was so loud and obnoxious and wouldn't take social clues from her beloved to just sit there and stop talking or thinking. She was always over the top; always so fiercely passionate about EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING! I used to think, why can't she just shutup! She is going to run off the greatest thing that ever happened to her (let's face it, he's WAY better looking than her...) I would ask my mom, "Mama, what is WRONG with her? I seriously don't understand. No wonder why he left her. She never shutup. She never stopped." My mom would tell me then, that one day she hoped I would understand.

I think that day just happened. I get it. She never stopped...because that was who she was. She never stopped being herself. Hubble lied to himself for years..for the rest of his life. He was never honest with himself; he couldn't ever admit that he was ever wrong. It was so much easier to believe the lies he told himself; to drown in his shallow friends, alcohol and his social privleges. He fell for Katie because she represented the one thing he didn't (and subsequently could never) have: to be real. True. Crazy in everything she did and believed in.

What an earth-shattering revelation.

So back to the movie review. I still cry everytime. But for the first time EVER, in my 21 years of my relationship with this movie, I am not crying for the love lost. Let's face it, it was a great love. I cry, for Hubble. It IS sad. It is so sad that she wasted so much time on someone who would never be the man she knew he could be. And the crazier thing, SHE was the ONLY woman who would ever believe in him or love him as much. And he still couldn't handle it. He still chose to give up on himself, and everything that WAS real about his life.

In the last "run-in" scene, the tender looks they give to each other sums it all up: He was at his very best when he was with her, but he never deserved it. She's better than ever, because she grew and never betrayed herself. And all that's left is "the way we were."

Some people will never understand the power of love. And to that I say, those people don't deserve that kind of love. The kind that Katie never hesitated to give. Sometimes in life, we give more than we get. But we should ALL take a page from Miss Katie Morosky and to NEVER compromise who you are, especially for love.

And you may leave several people in your wake, but they'll never forget, and eventually you'll receive exactly the kind of love you give. And we all deserve that.

Lost love?

When we stop loving, or lose love, where does it all go?? Forgive me for sounding a bit too carrie bradshaw, but I can't stop wondering what I am to do with all this lost love.

It's a funny thing, love. It's one of those rare English words that seamlessly transforms from a verb to an adjective, to a noun, an adverb and back to a verb again. Yet, we can't touch love. We can't technically see it either. It's much like the wind, or faith. It's intangibility is only made tangible from a feeling.

So what is it, exactly? In Greek, there are 13 different words for love. This is how loosely we define our English words. We have one. One word to encompass every feeling under the sun that stems from this love. I love new York in the fall. I love my Chanel sunglasses. I love all 94 pairs of my shoes. I love my family. I love vanilla cupcakes. I love sleeping in. I love my friends. I love cheese pizza. I love traveling. I loved a boy...
And then I stop short. LoveD. Is it really possible to stop loving someone the second they cowardly break your heart into a million tiny pieces? Does the love just evaporate into thin air? Where does it go? If they can quit so easily, shouldn't all of us be able to break the intangible bond, if for no other reason than to stop the endless torture?
Here's my revelation: Once the passion, the euphoria, and the pleasure fades, all you're left with is a choice. A recognition that love isn't always cupcakes and high heels and pretty leaves and glitter. It's a choice to stick out for the long haul; to understand that with the fabulous new York autumn, comes the inevitably unbearable winter, and to get one, you must have the other. A choice to choose to stay. To make it happen, to recognize that half of love is the hard stuff...it's what makes the good stuff worth it.

It brings me back to my original question: when love ends, where does it go? With all its illusions and games, I would still like to believe that love, in all its forms, comes from a pure and sacred place, and if love does have to end, if it were really love, it would come from a place of purity and peace.
So maybe the lost love wasn't ever really love after all.

Easier said than done, right? So that's it. Maybe we're all mistaking the good stuff for love and love only, and we are just waiting; hoping that if we finally find our "match" and true "love", the glass slipper will always fit. Unfortunately, feet grow (hello pregnancy). Styles change. Glass breaks. And if its really love; true abiding forever love, you know you can always just go to the 4th floor of bergdorfs to get a new pair of shoes. 
It's like one of my fabulous femmes,  Coco Chanel said: "Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. When Passion goes, only boredom remains." passion is never enough. The second we realize it's the passion AND everything that comes along with it, we'll have passion filled relationships forever. Courage of conviction, and a heart ready to endure a ride of its life- these are the only souls that survive love and still live to tell about it, or rather show it; in 13 million different ways.

The first night of the rest of my life.

I realized there is a horribly distinct pattern in my writing. I tend to only do it whenever something shakes my core to the point of no return. To no avail, here I find myself, once again, clicking away on an empty screen; to prove my case in point. The difference this time, I think, is going to be the outcome of my core-shaking moment.

It comes at an opportune time. Weeks after reaching my 28th (gasp) year, I am faced with a decision that, to most people would seem, at first glance, more like a requirement than a decision. The decision to finally be the woman I was destined to become.
What most people don't know is that choosing to become who you actually are is a quite difficult and intricate process. A process that, despite many who are led to believe they constantly and inevitably live day in and day out, very few actually follow. The majority of people in the world follow a certain prescription of life. Because they should. Taking each day in stride, following a path that was already given to them; from their parents, lovers, husbands, teachers, wives, etc.. In fact, very few of us create our own paths. We end up falling victim to something or someone that comes along the way, and eventually convince ourselves that it is something we wanted all along.

Who really and truly has the guts to search within oneself, discover what it is that fuels them; to find the desire and passion to take them through anything and actually live it, everyday and never stop, no matter what the obstacle?

The fewest of the few, this much I know. In the next few months, I will be researching and revealing these brave souls. The fearless women who stop at nothing to be all they can be; never letting anything or anyone get in their way.

Through these brave hearts, I pray I find my place. Among the few that fought and fight the good fight; that live every day to the fullest, and leave a mark on us all. I know I was destined for greatness; and my place is among these women. Watch out world. Here I come.

Tick Tock....

Time. Its a tricky thing.
 I'm battling with time at the moment; Its the one thing in life that we are truly helplessly controlled by. We can't stop it, we can't slow it down, we can't speed it up, can't turn it back. It is the most final thing in our lives. Time has brought me a magnitude of catastrophes...all at once. I guess thats life, though.
 I moved to my dream city over a year ago, and the only thing that remains the same is where I reside. Its amazing what time can do. It literally Creeped up on me and changed my entire world (as if it was ever going to  do anything less).

Billy Joel wrote a song in 1977, five years before I was born, that I swear was meant for me in this exact time in my life. It's called Vienna, and its about someone being so focused on "being someone monumental, achieving greatness, leaving a mark..." that eventually you let time pass you by, and you forget to have a life... not even realizing that a life is exactly what you need; what we all need. A real life. With real mistakes. Real accomplishments. Real love. Real pain. 
All in all, it's a song about time. Time doesn't wait. It can't. It's the most beautiful and tragic thing about being alive. The sand never stops.
 My epiphany, at this moment in time is simple: since we can't control time, we have to learn to control what happens during our time. We all have dreams, and of course they won't all come true, but I think I'm learning that while our dreams are dreamed up by us, they can actually determine how we live our lives today...and if we don't have dreams, we are just wasting our time. 

My current dilemma finds me Feeling like i have no dreams left. Time has come in and swept them all up, and my heart has been broken into a million tiny pieces, that are scattered all throughout this city, all the way to Texas. Soo what now?

Time will invariably move on. Silently marching until the end of creation, sweeping up countless dreams, heartaches, loves, and hopes in it's path. I would like to think that time cared a bit about the damage it causes, but I know better, however, simply based on the good things that come along with time as well. It's a bit of a yin and a yang; good and bad if you will. I guess this is it. Life. And when we die, time doesn't stop. So I guess the lesson is to show time what we are made of. In the face of adversity, rise above that ticking clock and show everyone what you're made of; we don't have forever.
 Remember, too, to Take a cue from time. When something so unbearable crushes your spirit, cutting off your air supply, crumbling your heart in so many pieces you believe you can't go on; just pick yourself up and keep on dreaming. Never stop believing, always remembering that time heals all wounds and if you take the time to dream and believe, great things will happen. Time has scientifically proven it, and for all of us skeptics, whats better than honest proof?

My eternally frayed rope

I have been battling, quite unsuccessfully as of late, the subject of loss. In my traditional exploratory manner, I am trying to really identify with the feelings that follow when something is invaribly lost in our lives.

Let's take a set of keys for starters. When we lose our keys, the first emotion that sets in is panic. We search. And search, search and search. Looking high and low, we expect to find our object of desire right around the corner, under the nearest cushion or the last place we left them. Once finding said object becomes more difficult and seems increasingly impossible, a bevy of a emotions can follow. Anger could set in or varying levels of sadness. Regret finds its way in there as well. Perhaps also disappointment in oneself, or blatent disbelief. Whatever feelings come, it doesn't change the subject matter. Something, big or small, has been forever lost. Beyond this point, we must choose to take action. Depending on the degree of loss, we may have to find a replacement. Or just cut the loss and try and start over. Or even get a better version of the lost article. No matter the form, we have to move on. It's as simple and as complicated as that.

I can be completely rational and level-headed when applying this logic to a set of keys or a pair of sunglasses; but when trying to apply the "moving on" bit to a big loss; an epic void left in my life, I am finding it a bit more difficult.

Obviously, emotion can never be taken out of it or it wouldn't really be a loss. In my life lately, loss has sort of become a theme...an almost means to an end if you will. With Spring bringing new life everywhere, I am, in return, losing all my "old" (and current) life...and I am not taking it so well.

Much like losing my earrings or my Gina Leopard shoes, I'm approaching every one of my current losses: my heart, my confidence, my dog, opportunity, etc. with the same beginning process: I panic.
Putting out fires all over town, I have begun the process of each of these "losses" with the reactionary mindset of a panicked, desperate Crazy. It may not be as literal as "looking" for the loss, but it is denial in its rawest form; a trial of convincing myself that whatever "loss" in question can be saved. You can imagine how successful I am being at this. Obviously, I am finding that denial really is only a river in Egypt, and it leads nowhere.

I guess my saving grace is that at least all of the losses I am experiencing are at different stages in my whole "loss process." It's the only way to cushion the inevitable blow that will come upon the true realization of each loss. Some are further along than others, one, in particular, can and will never be replaced, and this fact in itself is a majorly disheartening one.

The more abstract losses I am experiencing are, for the most part, not really new, but perhaps are on a different level. I am slightly confused, however because once we lose something, such as ourselves, how can we continue to lose them over and over again? Is there something that I don't know?

It seems, as humans, loss is a vicious cycle. And here's the reason. With those salvagable losses, the ones that we can replace with a shinier model or a better version, we continue to do so. It's like lose and replace. Lose and replace. We replace so frequently at times, we can't even remember what we lost in the first place.

Perhaps I am getting too philosophical for my own good, but I am trying to understand why loss, in my life, has decided to travel in packs. And with most of them, I don't even want to get to the "moving on" part, because then it would validate the whole losing process. Why is it that we are so reluctant to let go of things that aren't even there anymore? And furthermore, how is it even possible that the LOSS, the void of something can cause so much pain?

I just wish I could cut my losses, and for once the cut would be clean; with no frayed edges. Anyone know where I can get a really sharp knife?