day notes

001

When the shitty days turn into shitty weeks that turn into shitty months, do the best you can and try not to hate how minuscule the difference you make is in the grand scale. You could have done more in the past, sure, but you can’t go back to the girl who would grind herself into exhaustion and call sleeping 6 hours one night a week “self care.” Do what you can and leave the rest for tomorrow.
Right now it feels like all you can do is continue to destroy good things. This is not true.
Right now, you feel useless and talentless. This is also not true.

Reflections after scrolling through Instagram: EVERYONE IS IN A RELATIONSHIP AND HAPPY AND I'M ALONE (expect the people who are single, and you're not alone. Call the friends you are homesick for).
The risk of deep heartache is worth hearing his subtle New York accent and seeing his freckled face for a few minutes.
I refuse to allow myself the option to be great because I believe I don't deserve it and that the pain of losing something I care about and have worked hard for is greater than the joy of having it for a moment (I know understand what Larry Smith meant when he wrote that I have a "fear of success" on the top of my favorite essay).

Running is good for you and good to you. For 30 to 60 minutes, you practice revering your body instead of scrutinizing it. This is a gift.
When I was practicing yoga the thought "he's not leaving because of you. He's leaving because he hates Long Beach" went through me and it was such a deep truth I felt released of all the guilt I had put upon myself that I did not deserve. The world does not revolve around me and it is a freeing thing to understand that a little better.
I came to Steel Craft five minutes early so I could arrive a casual 15 minutes late. I want friends and to do that I have to make myself do things that make me feel awkward at first. It was a risk worth taking and I hope to remember feeling of inclusion for the next time I feel tempted to skip out on the opportunity of being known.

Two men were talking about diet and exercise in the waiting area of the car service shop. One man ended the conversation by saying “don’t make your wife a widow. Change your diet now so you can be with her longer.” Later, when both men were somewhere else, she started talking with me and told me that her husband had cancer. He was going to make her a widow at some point. It struck me how careless we can be with our words. We think we are doing the right thing by saying something blunt and rash to the stranger we just met or the people we love while having no idea how these words will settle on the person we have given our idea of wisdom to. Is there hope for humanity to be more gentle with each other? Can we just speak to one another without having to immediately find and fix the needs or flaws we think we see?

Opening yourself up to love is not kissing boys who like you but you’re not drawn to. Being open to love is letting yourself be seen even when you don’t think you’re good enough.

I have been given a fresh start. The end of March marks the end of the relationship that gave me anxiety and tension. I am starting to feel confident in my job. I am starting to look at myself and see beauty instead of failure and mistakes.

I am deserving of the love that is offered to me. There is vulnerability in letting yourself be loved as you are. It’s easy to ask for more time, to say that you need to work on yourself before you deserve the person who wants to love you now. Sometimes the only way to be healed is to open up your wound and let them see the mess

These times will pass. These times will pass. These times will pass. The most frightening and beautiful phrase is “everything is temporary” the times when you can’t stop crying or wish you could cry so you could feel normal and not numb to your situation will one day pass and light will come through the cracks in the walls you’ve built around yourself. The times when you’re feeling so put together and like you're finally on the right track will unfortunately pass too because that’s the way we grow. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy our good times while we are in the middle of it. We shouldn’t be looking over our shoulder wondering when the bad times will come up behind us to ruin everything we are so thankful for. We should be present in the goodness and bad; because that’s where life is.

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. I wonder while eating an actual spoonful of brown sugar ill be able to say the words abusive and manipulative after I swallow the sweetness. I remember doing this as an overweight, severely depressed high school girl when I couldn’t face my sadness. It only made me feel shame for being addicted to sugar; to being so slowing and being a below average athlete. I wonder if I’ll be able to stop since I recognize the self-destruction

I'm sitting in my car on a Sunday morning and not wanting to leave the stillness. How often are we gifted with complete silence? When I hold my breath I hear nothing. How is that possible? How can I return to it more often? I’m so taken aback by the lack of noise, be it ambient ocean waves or mid afternoon traffic outside my bedroom window or an album or movie played for the purpose of distraction. All of my anxieties seem to slip for a moment and I can just exist without thinking too much of it.

I have been outside for two hours and it feels like I am waking up for the first time in ages. I feel at peace. I feel a deep connectedness with the plantet. This is what it must look like to fight the burdensome frustration of life, to put yourself in a simplistic state of joy it is impossible to damage or darken it. I was made to love and appreciate this moment and not worry about what moment will come next or any moment that has happened before this one. I am here. I am OK.

I am thankful for the friends who are heavy-lifters. They step up to the 500-pound bar I've been trying to lift by myself and snap it over their shoulders in one graceful swoop. They are the ones who silence your groans of self-hatred with a simple battle cry, "Woman of Valor, stand up."

In this moment, it is him. This moment belongs to him. Belongs to me. Belongs to us. Our moment might last forever, it might last as long as the summer nights or it might end tomorrow. But there will always be a place in time where this moment is alive and so are we.

Today, tomorrow, and however many days I have left on this earth, I will commit to continuous growth. I will take chances and revel in any failure that follows because at least I was brave enough to try something outside my known or perceived limitations. I will gloriously fail or surprisingly succeed; both of these endings will make for a fantastic story. I will no longer dream of an enjoyable life, but enjoy the gift of being alive.