love.

i really that i felt love for this last ex. now i find myself 3.5 weeks out of the relationship and completely void of all love for her, not even wanting her to be a friend. so bizarre.
i think, actually i know that i never really got over nyc and that was over a year ago...when my heart aches, it aches for her. when i dream at night, i dream of her. she was so kind and giving...she saw inside of me like no one ever has and it scared the crap out me so i pushed and pushed and pushed until she was gone.
this last break-up happening so close to surgery was a sign...a sign that the concept of me never really worked for her and i knew it. it's so interesting to talk to friends, my therapist, my doctor about it now...they all see what i knew inside..that she was never the one. i felt self worth in the things i did for her...all along i should have been doing it for myself.
i mistook physical chemistry for love. i feel sad about that. like i had been so jaded by my nyc break-up that i was reaching for anything that felt like a connection. in reflecting i realized we had nothing in common, i didn't really like who she was as a person and how she made me feel. she took some of the most painful parts of my life and manipulated them to make me feel bad about not spoiling her...who does that? who makes their bf feel bad about asking her to be present at his birthday? i'm so angry that i put so much energy into a selfish void.
during surgery recovery tens of people came through my house with so much love and support...people that i have spent minimal energy on even...from this break-up i have learned that i have amazing friends who i love madly. it is only now that i realize how much unconditional love nyc gave me...she expected nothing in return. THAT is what i deserve from a partner...the same sort of energy and love that my friends give me.
i'm worth that and never again will i fall into an illusion of love.

18 days post op.

holy crap surgery has been rough and amazing.

the whole first week of recovery was such a blur...i just know i was surronded by so many amazing people and so much incredible energy. i wasn't left alone for a moment over that first week and a half. the rotation of friend, phone calls, gifts, cards and amazing vegan food showed me the level of unconditional love that the universe has given me. it couldn't have come at a better time.

having a break-up at such an odd time was difficult but the support i felt made up for everything. the potential for conflict arising during my time of recovery was too great and while it hurts inside i have finally resolved that it is for the best. while i hope for a level of friendship reconciliation at some point, i'm not holding my breath. i am friends with so many of my rad exes, i guess that just isn't the route some people take. i have to respect that. i know that i did my share of crappy stuff in the course of this most recent relationship and i will accept responsibility for that. my friends will kick my ass if i go back again so i'm trying to be strong and focus on my healing. it's amazing how many exes came out of the woodwork to support me during recovery. i guess that is something to consider in this very painful lesson from the universe.

i am very ancy to get back to yoga and the gym but i'm not going to push it for a few weeks. the pain that i have no is almost worst then it was post-op because i am on much more low key pain meds. driving is really difficult. today is actually the first day since surgery that i have stayed at work all day but my boss has been amazing.

i keep expecting to wake up and feel 100% again but then i am reminded, by people like my dad who know better, that i just had major surgery and full recovery is going to take months. i guess i was so excited about the actual event, i didn't think too much about the time i find myself in now. i have had to resolve to sit still and ask for help. i've gotton better at sitting still but the asking for help part has never been easy for me. luckily i think my friends know this and are way faster to volunteer than i am to try and let my toughness down long enough to ask for help.

the journey is just taking a new step now...i feel more doors opening and happier every moment. the pain will subside but the commitment i have re-made to myself is only in it's infancy and i am beyond stoked to contine forward.

113 days on t. 18 days post op. walking towards content.

we are nowhere and our time is now

and then one day, my life was changed for forever.

i still do not completely know the extent of the change. i continue to find it difficult to wrap my head around that sunday afternoon on the beach when two coasts met and fell. hard.

i realized recently that now, a lot more than before, i put a lot of stock into what creates change change. into moments. ideas. people. semantics, songs. wrong turns...all can cause massive shifts in one's reality. lately i focus on those details intensely. i wonder if i just said that or thought that, met her first, took the chance on that...didn't bring a map...where would i be. overanalyzing it may very well be, but i didn't grow up to be a lawyer for nothing. for me, in this moment, the cause of change is in the details of the choices...

a veritable choose your own adventure book i guess.

i had a few of those funny little books when i was small. i remember seeing a boy in my class reading one, he let me browse through it a bit and i was perplexed. these books you didn't read from begining to end, you jumped around based on choices you made...
"if you choose to enter the woods go to page 45,"

or

"if you choose to take the long road around the woods go to page 74."

faciniating.

or they were until i got my hands on one... perhaps because i cheated. i would read the options of my choices and choose based on the result that best suited me (that is of course i would read all the options AND their results before in my 7 year-old mind i really committed to a choice) and in the end i read every possible version of the adventure anyway because my feverish young mind couldn't fathom that there was really only one option...ever...

(insert thanks here for hippie parents who gave me lots of choices and opportunites long before i knew what that meant)

things are different now...the mind of a 7 year-old may not understand that sometimes you make a choice and you can't turn back the pages to chose a different path that might suit you better. the mind of this 28 year-old has a hard time with that too. trying to move forward with a life of no regrets seems so difficult when a choice in a moment can change everything.

i have made so many choices over the last year that have completely altered my life...
to show up that day in venice. to take that first flight. to love hard. to let go. to subvert the hostilities that lay on the 33rd floor of a downtown la office building. to find myself on the therapists couch. to begin a transition. to accept who my family really is. to return home. to be honest despite the consequences. to fight hard. to turn around to give my brother one more hug. to value the friends i have chosen as my family more intensely than i ever have before.

i sit here. now.

missing something and having everything. wishing i could flip back through those pages i read through too quickly to contemplate the result and still somehow settled where i am because i know there are more pages to turn through. reflecting on a year of complete change i see the way weaving in and out of the maze of pages of choices has put me here. a place where i am okay.

i used to want to map out everything. plan precicely...then one day (i think at some point between panama and costa rica, a subject for another blog)...i just threw the map over the bridge. i let go of the planning...let my choices, my opportunites, that wonderful nexus of heart and mind be my guide.

things could have been done differently...that is always true. but i made the choices i did and this heart beats and this blood pumps through it. i am aware...finally completely cognizant of those small choices that put me here...i think that is why i have intensely examined them lately. it truely is facinating that such small choices can create change of such a large magnitude.

i may choose my next adventure with cation. i may dive in head first.

although i may not have that ability of my seven year-old self to chose those adventures with full disclosure i think now...yes, i know now, that i finally understand the importance, the gravity, of a moment. a word. the action of turning around. of taking a chance. all of those things everyday...every choice, it all moves me through this adventure that i have chosen. this lesson is something i could never have learned if i was always allowed and able to read ahead to the end of the adventure.

so a year later though everything on that day remains the same in my core, everything is different and while there may be places i hope this path weaves though, warm spots i hope it returns to, cold dark places i hope to avoid and places i will fight to remain, i cannot look ahead to the moment of that fork in the road that will cause me to end up here or there...the choices on the way will be my next adventure.

and i am glad i threw the map away.

conversational freeballing

ah myspace. those blog archives contains hours of my life devoted to letting out what was in my brain. to processing, musing, healing, venting, recovering. it's all there. i see now that i need to continue to do that but in a different forum, here i guess is as good as any. my voice needs a new home.

so here it is.

i've spent the last several months moving into a new identity. feeling safe there. comfortable there. i think i've always known who i am and been keenly and tragically aware that i would always be a shifting force. passive followed by agressive. happy followed by sad. a girl who now wanders into his boihood and i feel like i'm home. oddly since i have found my home. found my space. i feel a persistant need to leave it. to wander the hot and dirty south. the misty air or the northwest. even the gritty streets of this city that i call mine. i want to wander. explore it all, take it in and allow the world to take me in while i walk through it with this new acknowledgement of self.

and i want to explore people.

take people in. understand or attempt to understand how all of our experinces are constantly coming together to create this reality of madness. maybe because it makes me feel comfort even though people aren't always comforting. knowing we are all on some crazy path that happens to cross with the paths of others daily. there is comfort in that. and i don't always need to feel comfortable. uncomfort. wiggling through that. working out the kinks and the miscommunication. the process. the process like exploring is what i enjoy more than the end result of getting there.

i have noticed recently as i feel settled in to this new job and a new home and i am finally in a place that i am aware that i am no longer a student that my brain is constantly in motion and sometimes that scares me and i wish i could turn it off. that's why i like to be underwater so much, why sometimes i lust for the act of sex and not the person to share it with because in those moments my brain stops and i live to truley experince the present tense. that's a difficult thing for me to articulate even to an annyonomus blogging world but it's one of the most raw honests things that i can say and i feel the need to expose something like that in this first post. to own it.

this brain is why i am good at what i do. i can roll through legal arguments be they on paper or in a court room and i can somehow make all these racing thoughts come out in some sort of logical cohesive format. i love what i do so there is part of this dichotomus kid that is grateful for a brain on overdrive.

and then there's the part that wishes, really wishes that i just didn't give a fuck. but that's sort of out of context for this and perhaps a subject for a later post.

i want to exist in the moment more. another reason why i have recently taken more to exploring people. in conversation...in that flow of words i find emmense pleasure in just existing in space with someone else. exchanging words and ideas. i have recently discovered that in some cases i feed on that. i want to absorb. perhaps it is okay that i have recently intensely desired what i see as the chaos of absorbtion.

but enter another dichotomy here...i love calm and i think i have it in the exterior form most of the time. i know i present myself as calm and mellow but then i meet people who i can see have just as much going on in their heads as i do and i let the chaos of my brain roll out front and center without even thinking about it, it's like the little boi runs into the ocean because he is so excited and when he gets in and feels the sheer wonder of the waves at his ankles he realizes he is still wearing his shoes and while he loves the feeling he casts a sheepish look over his shoulder at the onlookers that just saw him run in.

when i feel stimulated i let myself and my inner chaos run out of me without any regard for a filter and i think i am grateful for that. i think that it is a piece of childlike wonder and excitment that i want to hold on to. but i don't want to question it anymore the way i have been. it's that child in me butting heads with the adult in me who wants to tell it to chill out. but i go back and forth on whether i want to. whether i should. it seems dishonest to filter thorugh things when, in a specific moment, i find them pouring out of me. it seems like that is part of the experince that i have been craving. that i have gratefully found myself in several times recently.

when i share those moments. i am grateful for people that let it just flow out. let their brains pour out of their mouths. there's a human connection there. a sense that while i'm walking this path in my own mind and body i...even if just for a moment merge in time with someone else and our brains flow with words back and forth in a rythm that can be spastic or slow but that is true. gritty and dirty and raw and true.

i think that is why i am so intensely bonded with my law school friends. most of us that were drawn into our circle that remains insanely tight have minds that seem to move like mine. constantly thinking, seeking, exploring the possibilites, questioning the outcomes. that's why we continue to have long debates via email or over beers. we need that, need each other to make ourselves understand that we are not alone in this never ending madness of an ever churning mind.

i think in those experinces, with people whose minds are just as full of thoughts both interrelated and completely random, i able to be more true, more real and honest than at other points in life. i suppose other in this context is relaitve but it is the only way to describe it. i feel instantly connected when i flow with people like that. like two long tunnels of thoughts connect and we walk through them together, in the present, in the moment...thoughts and ideas and chaos flying.

and then here in as this brain churns through these words i see the answer and as i type this i am somewhat amazed that it came through this rambling. i crave those moments of freeballing conversation because in those moments i exist perfectly balanced in the two parts of me...i am both in the moment experincing the present tense and breathing it in while i am stimulating and allowing the stream of thoughts that is perpetually running through my head to be okay.

i am honestly shocked that i just came to that conclusion but it makes sense and in the madness that is these moments of clarity are rare...for this boi anyway, they are rare and when they come i tend to cloud them up with overthinking the conclusion i just made.

i would like to hold this piece of clarity in a box in my pocket to keep it safe. i think i need to remember this moment in those angsty moments of self doubt when i feel like i am putting to much of myself out there, when i look back at my actions and realize just how vulnerable i make myself sometimes. vulnerable is raw and it means i have a core and something to let people into. i need to own that one too.

so i am taking my moment of clarity and putting it in my pocket to remember for the next time i question that boi bolting into the ocean stil wearing his chucks. perhaps i will tie the box with a shoe string to remember.

i find that fitting because in reality...this boi would perfer not to wear shoes at all.