Happy Birthday Blog

Last year, on July 19th, 2009, I started this little corner of my heart.  I made my mind up on an airplane flying from Seattle to Philadelphia.  I had finished a book about a famous blog and how it changed that bloggers life.  I didn't want that.  I wanted something though.  I wanted to capture my life, to challenge it, and to expect more from myself.  I wanted to infuse the essence of who I was before I moved.  I wanted to push myself to seek my own mountains out East.  I wanted to stop wasting time.

While it has always been believed that the fundamental search of human beings is for the meaning of life, what we are actually searching for, yearning for, is a feelings of aliveness. -Harville Hendrix

When I was 18, I felt that aliveness.  I had a car that was packed with camping gear, with tokens and bandanas for little kids, with clothing that could all be washed in one colorful load.  I was lean and tan and strong inside and out.  I had a job where it didn't matter what your hair looked like. We ran and we had campfires and pizza once a week.  We were able to kiss the day goodnight in the dusk everyday.  We were able to giggle with children and swim under the warm, sunny sky.  I felt alive.

And then, life happens and people come in and out of your world without warning.  And you forget what makes you really feel alive.  But, that's okay.  It's okay because every person who comes in and every person who leaves changes you.  Change is good.  It's healthy.  I know this because I do have faith.  I believe that the choices that we make and the people that we make them with are still guided by something grander.  Maybe you don't know the reason at the time of heartbreak, but if you're open and you haven't completely put up those four walls around you, you'll find your reason.

When I was 20, that part of me that I had lost started to creep back in.  That survivor in me--that was shattered from broken promises, crazy-ass red haired ladies, the stress of growing up, realizing that things aren't as easy as they make it out to be when you graduate form high school, from deaths and missed chances to say goodbye--it started to take over.  It started to yell loud things like, "Wake-up girl!  This person is not right for you and you have a future to get working on!" and "Make your own path.  Don't take the traditional way if it's not right for you!" I fought it, over and over again. 

When I was 20, I started a journal.  A journal that had no rules, no expectations.  Something honest and something real.  A journal that I put down whatever I was feeling, did not date it, and moved on. I put down those things that I was yelling at myself.  It was my way of pushing myself to feel again. To feel alive again. To feel what was lost through living.  So I wrote. 

And I started to realize the person who was writing was amazing.  This person would share this journal someday with her children, and show them that life's struggles are what make you that person you want to be.

We are born with three instinctual directives: we want first to stay alive, but beyond that, we want to feel fully alive, and we want to express that aliveness.

So. I. Wrote.  I wrote about the things that I want to do before I die.  Like learn Italian, and go skinny-dipping. And carve my love's initials in a tree. Have a real gelato. Learn how to french braid. Have no enemies. Bring life into the world. 

I copied my favorite quotes.  Like: The unexamined life is not worth living.  And: At the core of every solution to every problem, we will find a virtue. 

I became my own therapist.  I wrote down that he wasn't right for me.  I ripped it out.  I wrote on the connected, left-over part of the ripped out page that I should have listened.  I wrote that "If you can honestly say that you loved as much as you could, that you gave without hesitation or reward, that you did all that you could, then ITS NOT YOUR FAULT."  I wrote about the kind of man that I deserved.  One who wouldn't stand for disrespect, who could randomly bring me flowers.  I wrote "True love waits for me" and that I believed in him.  I believed he existed. 

And he did. 

Because, when you pick yourself up, when you dust yourself off and embrace your life, the Universe turns everything around and rushes in.  I took that journal and opened to a random page, far from where I was writing at that time and wrote to my future self, asking "How are things now?"  And things were different.  I was alive again.  I was in love again.  Here comes the sun.


The radical position that I'm taking is that Love is the answer.

But--the story does not end there.  We don't live in fairy tales and simply having love does not heal all.  You still have to push yourself and you still have to work as hard as you can.  You still have to claw your way out sometimes.  People still leave, people still taint, life still disappoints, stress is still unbearable. 

I didn't hit my lowest point when I was 20.  That heartbreak was nothing compared to that feeling of numbness that I felt when I was 22, 23 once again finding myself without that feeling of aliveness.  I had no one to blame anymore, his neglect was gone and in its place was this pure love.  And yet, I still felt the way I did. 

Because, depression is a bitch. 

Depression is a bitch because it takes everything good that you have in your life and makes it useless.  Depression is a bitch because the only way to get over it is to make the decision to get over it.  When I was 22, I felt nothing and nothing could make me feel.  I didn't have plans to hurt myself, but little persuaded me to fully live.  I craved those old feelings, but had no answers. 

Then, one late night, in a moment of clarity, I wrote in that journal.  I will leave this world in true beauty, body and soul. A promise to my future self.  To stand-up. To try.  To keep clawing myself out of that horrendous hold that depression had on me.  To not hurt myself physically.  To stop hurting myself emotionally.  To let go. To move forward. 


So I did.

You are the sculptor of your life.  You have the tools.  You have the choice to react, to respond, to run and hide, or to face yourself and to look inside.  That sounds cliche, but its true.  No matter what, no one can complete you until you complete yourself. 

I am 25 and I try to feel alive everyday.  I breathe in the day.  I write down the beautiful things that I love like Azteca salsa, Dahlias, and air-dried linens.  I listen to music like this and this. I bought a dog that brings instant happiness and instant energy.  I worked through problems with the love of my life, leaving me with the most meaningful and soulful relationship that I know exhists. I seek laughter in every shift at work.  I make lists with goals and I do a little giddy dance when I cross something off. 

I fall sometimes.  We all will.  But this time its different. 

This last year has been the most productive of my entire life.  Not because of work or school, but because of living.  Tonight, Lilly and I slipped out of the house around 9 PM, and headed to the field.  Me in a long sleeve tee and yoga pants, dangly earrings, and flip-flops.  We saluted the day and welcomed the starry sky.  We headed to the field, and we ran.  We ran like crazy people, and we smiled and laughed.  I looked to the sky and told God of the things I was letting go, of the things I was opening my heart to. 

That is living. 

Thank you blog, for letting me write this living down.