The Proposal

It was anything but a dark and stormy night – in fact it was one of those nights where everything looked and felt so perfect that you couldn’t imagine it getting any better, and then it did. We were spending my birthday in Washington with Kyle’s family so that my younger sisters, who have been visiting, could meet them, go out on the river, hike, eat vegetables straight from the garden, and play with some farm animals. His aunt, who we were staying with in Chehalis, said that since we would be there on my birthday she would insist on having a family BBQ to celebrate. And so she did – most all of the family was there and I suppose there were signs that it was more than a birthday party but I didn’t want to believe them because I thought I would just be reading into things and then not be able to enjoy how great the night was on its own.

As the evening wore on it hadn’t dawned on me that Kyle had not given me a gift until whilst being sanctioned to the dining-room so my hot fudge + ice cream + brownie combo was allegedly being assembled and topped with candles, he came in to say my gift was outside. All day we (the family at the house) had been talking about the fairies in the forest behind her house and he said that the fairies had a gift for me and led me toward the patch of trees. I laughed and as we turned the corner I could see the forest lit up with candles, torches guiding a path and arrows made of glow necklaces and dancing rings lighting up the trail. We walked down the trail and he helped me up onto the little platform that has a table and chairs usually but was now covered with more candelabras and glowing candles and he kneeled down to pick up a frame that was turned upside down, he turned a switch and when he looked up at me from bended knee he held the big wooden frame wrapped in white lights and the place where a picture should be was a big paper that read: Marry Me?

And without a second’s hesitation or room for any other thoughts in my head I said yes. I never knew you could know something so completely as much as I knew right then that every bit of me, to the smallest corner of my heart to the greatest depth of my soul, knew that I want to, will and am so blessed to get to, spend the rest of my life with him.

His family, and his aunt’s camera, instantly descended upon us and he showed me a picture of the ring he designed (that I go in to get sized for, and give final approvals to, today) and in a whirlwind there were toasts and champagne, hugs, giggles, laughs and congratulations from friends and family. Finally we had the hot fudge + ice cream + brownie combo, but no candles; there were enough in the forest already.

Self Control

It feels like it has been so long since I have written. Many nights my mind has buzzed with ideas - many commentary or fiction or almost-fiction, but the thoughts seem to be lost in translation, they do not carry through from my mind to a paper, or keyboard as it may well be. But one thought I have had lately is on self-control.

Self control is something I have always struggled with; be it in food, shopping or all around healthy life choices. There is still VERY much to be worked on and there are certainly areas in which I need to monitor myself better - but one that has drastically improved is in diet and exercise. Yes for a while I have been that annoying calorie counter, the one who checks the box and picks up everything in the grocery store or while waiting and the cue and reads the Calories section. But lately it has worked - and I'm not even starving! Like I thought I would be and like I felt I was at first. It is a difficult task for me to learn to eat better, to notice that something I usually would've eaten any day is actually a special occassion sort of food, or at least a every-once-in-awhile or treat-food. The thing that has helped is accountability. I have to actually track everything. I put it into my phone that calculates everything (including all of my exercises which I am QUITE diligent about tracking)and I can see how I have done - did I meet my goals? Did I go over? What should or shouldn't I have done? Did I make good choices? Did I need 8 pieces of those deliciously decadent chocolate covered orange treats from Trader Joes?

But this is bleeding over - or at least in my brain. For example, I am terrible about tracking money and as my money is quickly drained from my account and yet my bills seem to only go up I am thinking that I need to better track that too. I mean I am far more responsible than I used to be but if I don't find a job soon . . . there won't be money to pay rent in October and September is iffy at best right now -but hopefully my meager financial aid will come through and cover those two months.

I am thinking that it might actually be coming up on the time to panic, but I won't yet . . . I'll just apply for more jobs and have some faith that something will happen. Someone will hire me. . .

But I digress, the point is that having self control has been huge for me. I won't go into the other areas that I have grown in with this but I am able to be a much healthier person - holistically speaking.

Anyway, this isn't the most exciting thing I suppose, but it is a bright spot in what has been a rough couple of months. But I refuse to sink again! Or at least I am trying my hardest not to. I am at risk of it with my financial worries, but if I can keep it up in other areas it will help me be more positive in this one. Right?

I need to be like Indiana Jones, pour out the dirt to show that there is another step there. But for me, it is just believing that there is a step at all. If I am able to learn this though . . . I think I have made one step already.

June 23rd

Three years ago today I almost didn't go to a BBQ . . . and I would've missed out on a life time of happiness.

Three years ago tonight, I met Kyle and I knew about 4 hours into our 8 hours of conversation that long evening, that he was going to be trouble. I also knew that he wasn't the sort of boy I could date because he was the sort of boy I would fall in love with.

It took a while but eventually we got it right. And I am awfully grateful to my friend who kept calling and texting me to tell me coming to her BBQ was not optional which is why I finally got in my car and drove the 30+ minutes to her house. Sometimes it is good to have persistent friends, isn't it?

I'll have to tell you the story of that night later, for now I have to get ready for my date.

For all that is wrong in the world, or in my corner of it, there is one thing that is awfully right. And for that I am forever grateful.

The "I Wants"

I want the things that I assign as grown up things. I don't want to want them, but I do. I want the matching, or okay really eclectic not "matching" but cool furniture that isn't, well, hideous like my current furniture. I want a home of my own - but would settle for the furniture in my current apartment. I want vacations. I want to get married. I want a baby. I want, I want, I want.

For the first time in, it seems like forever, I have a future that I want to imagine. And when I do that it isn't really about the "things" I list above. I imagine being done with school, Kyle and I being married, Kyle having a teaching job and me a school counselor. Despite our terrible school loan debts, I don't think about those in "fantasy future" just panic-inducing future. Instead I have this abstract concept of a home and just hope it has a vegetable and flower garden. We have a kid (see I want to be pregnant but not and I want a baby but really like a 3 year old). We are doing creative thins and all of these images are dripping with sunshine and happiness. But with a sense of grounding and reality. It is hard to explain what lives in my head, but sometimes my mind skips right past this and I think of the I wants out of context.

My friend is pregnant. She is hilarious about it. She calls it her sea monkey (I blame Juno), She is 4 years younger than me and while they (she and her husband) have their problems, they have a home and matching furniture. But I don't really care about that, I don't want the life, I want to be younger and pregnant. Because babies are so so far away and health risks seem to increase - when did it get so scary?

And I want us to go on vacations. To go to the coast for the weekend, to stay in hotels and do fun things. I want us to go to Greece because Kyle has never left the country. I've been to more countries than he has states (and I've been to more states, but that's not the point).

I am happy for the most part but when the wants happen I get sad. Yesterday I tried to focus on my daily mantra. And it helped, but mainly buying my friend a cute onesie (really early I know but Kyle really wanted to) with a little giraffe cuddling with an elephant I had a hard time not being jealous - or sad.

We had dinner with a friend of ours on Saturday and his girlfriend has a 5 year old daughter. So all 5 of us were hanging out and Kyle was teaching her how to play chess and it was the cutest things. She was so focused and he was so so so patient. He is such a good teacher and so good with kids and I can't help but jump to what a great dad he will be.

And I am careful to think, "If I get to have a kid or kids" not assuming that I will because that is a dangerous assumption these days. I have always thought in the back of my head, for some inexplicable reason, that I might not be able to, like a hunch I really hope I am wrong about, but just in case I let it be there to ground me.

Anyways, I am so very happy for my friends who are in different places than me and I know that it was not meant to be in my past - kids etc. But I got married relatively young and had matching furniture and all the things that were supposed to establish a life. And while I no longer long for that back I manage to disconnect from that life and yet think how it is so much later than I hoped for everything. I love Kyle, he is a gracious, good and loving man, he is the partner I could never have asked for and I want so much to be a woman who deserves him, and am trying to be her. Though he seems to think I am enough as I am, I want to be a better person because of him. Which can only be a good thing I think.

But then I get greedy like having a good relationship isn't enough. A house that gets messy so fast, chores that I can't get myself to do, feeling overwhelmed in a life filled with time - time that I don't use wisely. I get stuck. And in that stuckness there is a chasm where my depression lives and sometimes it overflows like rushing water and it takes over the sane and grateful woman who lives in my heart and the "I wants" get bigger.

So I will go ride my 10 miles on my exercise bike and do my physical therapy and call about volunteering and try to get some other things done - DMV, buy wooden beads (trying to make prayer beads but I only have pretty plastic things and old necklace pieces and I find them more distracting), trying to become someone who is less of greedy me and more of who I feel I am meant to be or who I already am but sometimes forget.

Because "it is" - that is my meaning of life. It Is. You know the old joke, man makes plans and God laughs. Not because He's mean but because that isn't how it works.

I will go learn what today's mantra is and memorize it prayerfully and hopefully step towards the less of me idea. Because when am I truly happiest? When I am serving someone else. I want to - I want to, want to.

Thanks for reading what feels like a lot of whining.

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: A Way of Prayer

The Beautiful Messiness of Faith: A Way of Prayer

p.s. DMV . . . might have been right

I, er . . . may have been confused about the paperwork. Still am. Found a title, maybe, but am totally confused. Perhaps I shouldn't have made the poor DMV man feel bad for making me cry. I reassured him that it wasn't his fault. He either felt bad or thought a crazy woman in need of pharmaceuticals at his window. Maybe both.

Where She Stops . . .

It has been a roller coaster today. I have faith - I am panicking - I am crying - I am calm - I am anxious - I am sad - I am empty - I am full. Up and down, round and round. It is like that isn't it? "Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows."

I am guessing it never really stops. But sometimes we fly from one merry go round to another. It feels like one planet to another sometimes. Like we do not know who we are, we do not know what we seek. We want to be happy, we want to be present, but we get stuck. I just watched a movie about being stuck, rather getting unstuck (The Go-Getters).

These words seem to capture these sentiments:

“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be”

Marcel Pagnol

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

Anais Nin

I guess as long as we are growing we can try to stay unstuck. But being unstuck puts us on a new merry go round. I am hoping for the next one to come soon - this round has been tough.