Category: heartblog

the act of unraveling

So much of my time is spent photographing others, writing on behalf of others, and using a different voice to portray a certain message. I have found it hard to really know myself because I focus so much on everyone else.

It is easy for me to pick someone apart by listening carefully and paying attention to their responses and the things they say and do not say. I am an expert understander.

It is not easy for me to put into words how I feel about things, maybe because I am not often asked. I am the asker.

Lately I’ve been asking myself how I can open up more and trying to mirror the vulnerability of others. I write so much, and sometimes feel so in tune with myself, but I don’t know if I have ever truly shared that with someone else. I don’t think I’ve ever voiced my deepest darkest thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears, and I don’t remember ever wanting in such a precise way before.

I have kept me close to me, worn my emotions and complexities like a tight second skin. I wrap myself around myself around myself around myself like a snake coiling and ready to strike in case someone tries to get too close.

But what am I protecting myself from? Where did I learn this behavior?

How do I put the fangs away and unravel myself, now that I want to let someone really know me?

This is what I’ve been trying to do, I am currently in the pursuit of being known by someone that I want so badly to know me. To like me for me, and isn’t that all that anybody has ever asked for?

passionately, not reasonably

Do you really love me? Much?

Passionately, not reasonably?

Virginia Woolf, letter to Vita Sackville-West
December 29, 1928

I have been working so hard to better myself this year, in just about every way. I am working toward things I don’t want to jinx by writing out.

I’m trying to stay in the present as much as possible and not focus too much on outcomes. I want to enjoy the things that are good now, and not be impatient. I am happy, now.

I am not yet where I want to be, and I believe by the end of July I will be. I think in 6 weeks I will be much better than I am now. In 9 weeks I will be even better.

By the time I’m 24 I think my life will be a lot different, with more to balance. But more is good, it means my life is fuller.

I know it because I’m working so hard towards it all. It’s inevitable, unless something that I can’t plan against happens. If you put in the work you will get the reward, and I refuse to listen to people who say otherwise.

It is both passionate and reasonable to chase after everything I want and earn it all and love the moments in between the beginning and the goal.

sonata no.14 in c-sharp minor by beethoven type of post

A person can be defined by their experiences. Their understandings of those experiences, their reactions to those experiences, the conclusions they draw from them, what they learn from them. Their thought process, the kind of relationships they maintain with others, their character, the way they speak.

I’m the melting sea caps pouring into the ocean.

Probably more closely is that I’m defrosting like a frozen chicken.

I feel really good things are on the way, are here already. I am living with high stakes and high payouts.

more good things

Another list of really good things:

  • Sharpie fine point marker pens that let you write small and precisely and remind you of getting shitty Circle K coffee with your friend Chicago because it’s what we deserved
  • Putting plans into your calendar at the beginning of the month and knowing you have something to look forward to at the end of the month
  • Listening to someone talk and coming up with the perfect response that makes them feel heard and understood
  • Ultra-precisioned writing that leaves no doubts or questions
  • Hearing your mom talk about her day and knowing that she is smiling because it was good
  • Taking things one day at a time and doing your best each day, so at the end of the day you feel truly satisfied
  • Getting one minute of full uncertainty and pouring all of your hope into those 60 seconds and then getting what you hoped for
  • FMSP (Fat Man Starfish Position) – when you eat too much so you Just sprawl out like a starfish on a flat surface and let the tides of your tummy take you where you need to go
  • Knowing someone misses you as much as you miss them, and knowing you will see eachother again
  • Being proud of your friends for achieving their goals and reaching new stages in life
  • Picking out little baby clothes for your first pregnant friend even though you can’t believe she is cultivating a human being in her body, that you will be amazed by when it enters the world
  • Eating ice cold watermelon like you are four years old and not giving a single care about being sticky

fix me or conflict me

Have you ever been very cold and someone gives you a hot drink? You know, the sensation of warming up from the inside. It feels like it starts like a lit firework in your chest, sharp and hot and burning as the liquid makes its way down. While it travels it doesn’t hurt nearly as much or feel nearly as warm.

I can’t even take a deep breath when I think about it, I am treading shallow air and my fingertips cannot get warm no matter how many times I sit on my hands or tuck them between my thighs. I have purple fingertips, when I think about it.

I thought I was supposed to feel like the monarch girl in that story I wrote over a year ago. There are no wings in this story though, are there?

I have baked this lovely cake to only discover that, yet again, it is composed entirely of crunchy cockroaches. And I didn’t even look properly before I bit in so now I’m just left with this taste in my mouth. And I’m humiliated that I thought I could bake in the first place. The worst part is the bits and bobs in my teeth.

multitasking

Being a girl is sitting in the salon chair every two weeks crisscrossing your arms for the fill and hoping that the movement from the massage chair doesn’t move the drill and burn your nail beds while trying not to kick the nail tech scrubbing the soles of your feet with a pumice that tickles and hoping you picked the right color.

It’s wanting an iced americano but without sugar so you can be skinny and thinking about when you’ll squeeze in 45 minutes of cardio before your plans tonight and how your concealer is running out so you can only put on makeup after the gym but before plans and you need to wash your hair today and style it and you really just want to stay in and read a book and not go out at all.

But that guy you almost went on a date with but ended up being actually still married even though he’s 25 is going to be there tonight so you want to go out so he sees you even though you won’t date him because ew and either way you don’t want to date anyone but maybe one person but that’s complicated for no real reason except for some very real reasons involving the future and time and space.

Being a girl is exhausting and full of multitasking and caring about everything and never feeling like you’re caring about the right things but not being able to make yourself care any less anyway.

thick as thieves

I want to convince you to design a smile just for me. Yes, I do want to be your friend. I want to be your best friend in the entire world.

Unravel Me

It feels like cold water around my ankles, and I am playing the violin and hoping I do not notice the cold anymore when it envelops me. That I am not shocked.

Not to make a love metaphor out of the whole titanic incident, we are not that big. We are something very small.

I wish I had the type of self control to be a pusher awayer but I am self indulgent when it comes to making myself happy.

I wish I knew it wasn’t going to hurt so much when you leave, sooner or later. Because you will, and it will suck and I will miss you and I wish I could flick a switch that makes me not care about you at all. I care enough that I will happily spend whatever time you will be around, being your friend and enjoying it all, even when it’s boring.

I want to be able to put it into words to explain to you how I feel but I can’t yet, not well. Not perfectly.

All I know is you make me happy in this unique way, and that I am not ready to let go of it. It might develop into something more but it also might never and regardless, it is special.

Is it? Are these pandemic thoughts? Do I see you through pandemic eyes? Am I seeing myself through pandy eyes?

I kind of want to stop talking to you for a week just to see if I make it. If I could do it. I don’t think I could.

the girl with one (1) cold shoulder

I am best friends with the block button and the read receipt. One of my shoulders is always cold.

I feel like it’s a self-preservation thing instead of a confidence thing, because when someone I don’t care about does something I don’t like I almost always immediately fling them to the depths of The Blocked. Ex: the first week I got a Twitter I blocked Chrissy Teigen. It felt good.

When someone I do care about does something (not small) that I don’t like I have to activate my logical checks and balances system and go down my Checklist To Keep People In My Life & Not Be Dramatic. Ex: I have been known to temporarily ground my best friends from my life. One of my friends kept repeatedly saying something I didn’t like and I asked him many times to stop and on the fourth time I didn’t talk to him or interact for four months. It felt fair to me. It was dramatic.

The checklist includes:

  • How do I feel? How should I feel?
  • What do I want to do? What should I do?
  • What can I do? What are my options?
  • What will I do?

Most of the time it’s always better to underreact. I can always ramp up the reaction later but honestly, it usually just makes me feel bad and I’m in the business of making myself feel great and not bad.

Count to ten, drink a glass of water, whatever it takes to not strike the match that ignites my fiery little heart.

pink incense

I am still learning how to find a balance in everything I do and love. I gave myself a schedule and am working towards discipline instead of the free fall that I seem to always be in.

I want to read, write, work, laugh, exercise, eat healthy, kiss, sleep well, prepare myself to apply for grad school and take on more responsibility at work, laugh more, kiss more, talk, listen, get stronger, and take care of myself.

I have been writing so much lately, about everything. The spin classes I found on YouTube with the instructor who plays Taylor Swift. The way I relate to Patroclus now. The pink incense I bought that smells like roses and something I can’t identify.

I have had the same bed frame since before I was born. I am finally ready for a new one. And couches.

I also need to save money for my master’s degree.

I find myself daydreaming often about small love-filled comforts like laying next to someone and reading a book with our shoulders touching. Going grocery shopping and splitting up to cover the store; knowing smiles when we spot each other across an aisle. Little little little things that seem so out of my reach currently.

Tomorrow is a full moon in Libra. I’m a Libra. I wonder what that means for me? I like to pick and choose what symbols affect me, and I want this one to mean something in the same way that sunflowers and the rain do.

Maybe something good will happen. I feel like it has to. I have been so good lately, to others and myself. I hope there is something that will come out of that, for me and for others.