You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July, 2008.
I am inching toward the 6-month mark of my separation and though the past 5 1/2 months oddly almost felt like a breeze (perhaps not a zephyr, but a cool November wind), I suddenly feel the pain of it all. Like the band aid of distraction that was covering the wound has been yanked off and has torn a strip off my heart. When I left almost half a year ago, I was in survival mode. I dove right into my new life, new place, new job, without so much as testing the waters. But I’ve since had time to swim back to shore where I’m dipping my toes in and the water doesn’t seem so inviting. The lake is full of ripples as if a thousand stones have been thrown in and I can’t see clearly.
The trigger of all this, I suspect, is my search for an apartment. I’ve been living with my cousin since February but it’s soon time for me to leave the nest and fly on my own, which makes the end of my relationship feel more final than the day I left. On some deep unconscious level, my mind being the trickster it is, I may have fooled myself into believing that my stay at Amy’s was a layover on my long flight back home. After all, I had no strings tying me here – a temp job and no place to call my own.
But now, I’ve been offered a permanent position and I’m looking for a 1 bedroom apartment. Strings are being knotted and my stay no longer feels temporary. It feels very real, very permanent and no matter how much I sugar coat it with images of freshly painted walls and vintage Pyrex dishes… it’s still me sitting on my couch, me eating leftovers, me watching a movie, me lying in my single bed, me sipping a glass of wine, me with my deafening silence. There is no us in this reality and that is where my hurt lies.
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Lately, the question du jour has been “what the fuck am I doing?” Between the chaos of a busy work schedule and a mind occupied with processing a million thoughts a day… my brain feels saturated and my heart is doing little to help the situation as it has its own mending to worry about. I feel pulled in a thousand different directions. I am afraid that I’m never going to figure out what I want to do with my life. What if I’m an administrative assistant for EVER? What if these little jobs that were meant to be a means to an end all these years end up being my life? Working for a company until I get a toaster oven in 10 years and a shitty pension in 30 years. I’m not judging anyone who is living this life, it’s just that I feel like I’m missing a dream I can’t see. Because when I try to think of what else I could do with my life, the answer is I DON’T KNOW. And though that answer felt okay when I was 20, it was like a little Who voice inside my head, now the voice is that of a giant and it is filled with dread. Whereas before I could at least say that I had the relationship thing figure out, because really, all you need is love… now, that has all changed.
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In all the confusion, I feel the need to let go of something and had considered quitting this blog because if you don’t have time to do something well, don’t do it at all, right? False! Still, this made me wonder why it is exactly that I blog?
And the answers came threefold.
1. I crave the attention and the praise (c’est vrai).
2. I do it for my mother because I know how happy it makes her and I like to make her happy.
3. This is where I come to find myself, writing makes me feel sane.
Sometimes, you get the real me. Sometimes I am the person I aspire to be (my higher self speaks through me). And sometimes I am the person I want you to think I am. So allow me to introduce myself. Hello, my name is Jeanine and I am only human. I’m trying to find my way in a strange world that is also full of beauty. I am darkness. I am light. I am scared and I am hopeful. I can sometimes be a total selfish, judgmental bitch but I’m trying to be a better person every single day. I am negative. I am positive. I am the girl who will do 2 hours of intense yoga then drink a bottle of wine and perhaps puff on a cigarette. I am contradiction, I am balance.
And I am most certainly in the gray zone right now. The zone where I don’t have everything figured out. And though I may not have time or energy to write right now, I have a feeling that my creativity will find its way back to me again and I would regret not having this place when the time comes. So for now, I have to accept that this isn’t quite home yet. It’s more of a Motel 8 room, which my creativity checks in and out of when it’s in town. And it’s okay if I only pop in to share a quote and a photo. And it’s okay if, when I find my way back, nobody is here to greet me because ultimately, I am doing this for me (and me ma).
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I was talking with Kevin the other day and he said that while waiting tables last weekend at the bistro, he chatted with a table of 3 going on their third bottle of wine and one of the gentlemen said in pure Nova Scotia fashion “I’ll tell ya one thing for certain… everyone is fucked up”, to which the other replied… “and that’s why we drink”. That should be a t-shirt, a bumper sticker, the title of David Sedaris’ next book (whom I recently met at a book signing, but that’s another story… he is fantastic, by the way).
And then my cousin told me that she walked into the changing room at the yoga studio a few evenings ago and found one of the instructors, who has been practicing for 20 years, punching the yoga mats furiously. It seems one was out of place and as she pushed it back, she noticed all the other misplaced mats and lost it. Amy said she must have punched at least 10 yoga mats before entering the studio, sitting in lotus and breathing deeply before teaching her class.
This was both shocking and comforting to me. To know that we are ALL only human. We are all fucked in the head on some level. We each have our own nagging doubts, insecurities, awkward social moments, fears, weaknesses, shortcomings. Even those who appear to have their shit together. Even those who spend a lifetime practicing yoga. Remember that when you are being hard on yourself.
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Another yoga teacher said something the other day, which resonated deeply with me, as I lie in savasana after an intense heart opening practice with heavy tears forming at the corners of my eyes. She said, when you find yourself not living fully, with intention, whatever that means for you, just start over… and over… and over. Each breath is an opportunity to change, to accept… to let go.
And so, with this breath, I am starting over.
***
“Would it be as much fun, Jeanine, if you never stopped laughing? If there were never any clouds? If you were never challenged? If you were never alone? If you never heard the whole truth when it hurt? If you always knew what would happen, what to do, and where to go? Or would you be like, “Beam me down, Bro!
Yep,
The Universe” Notes from the Universe
“…but the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.“ Anna Quindlen
Happy birthday, Christina. May you treasure each little moment. I love you!
Andrea Scher’s post Having it All couldn’t have come at a better time. Lately, I find myself acutely aware of the ever widening gap between everything I want to do and the little time I have in a day/week/month/year/life.
Perhaps it’s the arrival of July that has me in such a frenzy. I feel like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, running around, mumbling to myself “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” I haven’t done this and this and that and before you know it, summer will be over and we’ll be ringing in 2020 and my hair will turn white and then I’ll be dead. Melodramatic? Hells yes! With reason. This is my life and it’s passing by one speedy second at a time. And even though I try to live breath by breath, moment to moment, here and now… the passage of time freaks. me. out. y’all!
I think it boils down to this. Life is so rich and colorful that I want to live it all. I want to breathe it all in. I want to see, taste, smell, hear and touch everything at once. So much so that when I’m living one experience, I’m often simultaneously thinking about another one. I could be having the time of my life but a little part of me mourns those things that I’m not doing at that moment (imagine how amplified that feeling gets when I’m doing something unenjoyable).
When I’m writing, I want to be outside, out there in the world, living so that I may have something to write about. When I’m out there losing myself for hours with nothing but my camera and my wallet (should a soy latte or grapefruit & cassis gelato call my name – it can get pretty deafening, you just have to give into it), I fret over the fact that I’m not sitting in front of my computer writing. Call me a Gemini.
I suppose I’m just easily inspired, I get so excited about everything that I end up picking things up only to leave them in a corner to collect dust because I find something else to wonder about or I get discouraged at the time it takes to become really good at something (and secretly, or quite obviously actually, I’m afraid to fail). As such, I go through life taking little bites of everything. Samples, really. I guess you could say that I’m in the All You Can Eat buffet line of life (hold the MSG) and my eyes are bigger than my stomach.
So what a relief it was to read Andrea’s post in which she asks the question: “What does having it all look like in your world?”. I don’t think I’ve ever visualized having it all because the word impossible keeps popping up to obstruct the beautiful view. I want it all (and I’m not talking about the house on the hill and the Benz in the driveway and the bling on my finger), but I seem to want it all now and the only thing that gives me is a pit of anxiety in my stomach. So I felt about 10 pounds lighter after reading Andrea’s take on having it all: “What I really want to say is that I haven’t figured out how to have it all just yet, but I want to believe it’s possible. And for me, I suspect it’s about agreeing to having it all eventually, just not all at once.” Amen, sister.
Having it all means something different for all of us. I do think that for Tia, pictured above, it means getting that piece of string cheese in her belly and going for long walks and sniffing bums along the way and getting belly rubs and chewing on sticks and living with such a loving family.
For me, it goes something like this…
Being a gypsy for a few months out of each year, traveling to a different part of the world with eyes and heart wide open, a camera on my back and a notebook in my hand.
Having an eco-home to come back to, that smells like home and has cozy cushions and sheer fuschia and lime curtains blowing in the wind. Ideally sitting on a little self sustainable farm with a fruit orchard and a big organic garden where I could tend to plump tomatoes and ruby beets, barefoot, following the waxing and waning of the moon. Garlic braids hanging from shed rafters. Lavender fields and herb beds perfuming the air. Espresso in the sunroom by morning, blogging away on my laptop and wine on the patio overlooking the lake at night, laughter echoing through the forest. Midnight skinny dips and cold wakeup swims at 6am (hopefully to the sounds of loons calling). Chickens laying eggs and goats to milk. Wild medicinal plants to make salves and lotions and tinctures. Many dogs running around and cats lounging. Popcorn à volonté.
I want to be a yogi in body, mind and spirit, which takes much dedication to the practice but I’m also not an extremist… this yogi will probably drink wine on her death bed. I want to wear fisherman’s pants and patchouli on my wrist as I read a book in my hammock but also want to don the little black dress for a night out on the town. I want to have girl retreats and solo road trips. I want to be a kick ass photographer, environmental activist, digital artist, travel writer and farmer. I want to learn Spanish and Italian, spend days creating, make art journals, sew my own clothes, find my own voice, learn to play the bongos and jam with friends, go rock climbing, take salsa and hip-hop and belly dancing and Nia classes, learn to ride a motorcycle, own a vineyard and make my own wine, go to music festivals (Burning Man once in my life, I hope), hula hoop, do 10K races through the forest, spend time in nature every day, play in the kitchen dehydrating raw treats, making bread, canning jams and jellies and salsas strait from the garden, cook yummy healthy meals for a man I love with all my heart, have dress up parties and corn husking gatherings with family and friends, and finally learn to meditate so that I can recognize each of those moments as they arise in my life without wishing, hoping or thinking about anything else.
