La Nada Cotidiana

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Probably best to stick to not feeling at all.

I want to go back to a time when things were simpler. When I start on this rabbit hole I think I want for a time when we all felt safe. When we felt protected, loved, valued. When we didn’t walk on egg shells or shy from the scary stuff. When I was your person; the one you confided in. When I thought there was endless opportunity; opportunity to grow and for our lives (as complicated as they may be) to become fully intertwined. My family would become yours and yours would be mine. Trouble is, those things don’t exist in a universe of safety. To get there, to be embedded in someone else’s universe is to be vulnerable. I tried that. Maybe not as whole heartedly as I should but after the first cuts, you can only through yourself in so far before you start building a life raft of walls. An out. For us, it’s distance. It’s family. It’s her. It’s a never ending cycle of vulnerability and arguments and with each one, we fade farther and farther from the place that felt safe. From each other. Who knows if there’s a way back. Will you ever trust me and want me to be a part of your life? And I mean your whole life, not just the pieces that feel less messy? Will I trust you to let me in? Can we go back? Or better yet, do we find a way forward? To a better place where rather than possibilities, we make space for each other. We let go of mistakes and cuts and regrets and make room for the people we are separate and together.

Done

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On holidays, nesting, yoga, and belonging… a hodge podge no doubt Chatting with a good friend recently about the purposed “heteronormative dating world,” he reflected on the perhaps unprecedented or surprising number of tinder/bumble/dating site “matches” he received lately. Without trying to undermine the excitement of potential new mates, my cynism couldn’t help but suggest that this may be a response to the holiday season and the human desire to nest. I think there are two parts to this desire; the first, and most cynical, acknowledges that many people will be going home to family over the next weeks to months and like most single people are, will be faced with the inevitable questions of dating, settling down, and in less blunt terms, procreating. The other part, however, is that regardless of your situation and the amount of family you are surrounded by, the holidays can bring an incredible weight and loneliness. You wonder if you have shown enough love, if you have written someone off who needed you, if you have been as selfless as you should have and as grateful as possible in return. This holiday is overflowing with all of these sentiments within my blood and extended family. It has undoubtedly been a bear of a year for all of us. MY goal, and one I hope to share, is that we not let the loneliness and angst of the days to come interfere with our capacity to love and recognize the needs of our loved ones, past and present. This was all formulating in my head during the quiet time preceding yoga, my first class since a whirlwind travel season and minor shoulder injury. The class was full of energy and mantras I repeated to myself dozens of times in hopes of remembering them (to no avail, of course). The general theme was two-fold; the sense of belonging to a community or space and being accepted as you are without expectation of perfection and being thankful for the less obvious or the things just below the surface. These are my hopes for this year. With all of the movement and change, I hope to find peace in what is, accept the transformations of relationships and life as they come, and manage to support those around me as it happens. I know there was more I wanted to say but for now, “I miss you and I (hate that I) think I need you,” seems to cover it. Happy holidays. x

It's the weirdest thing how people come in and out of our lives. The timing, the context, the first impression; never quite how we imagine. How we can go our whole lives without someone and within a matter of days, we can't imagine life without them. The opposite seems to hold equally true; how one minute someone can be everything to you, and the next, you're but a distant memory in their daily grind. The beginning though, the transition from strangers to more, it ties back to the German word, "fernweh." I first heard it a few months ago while fulfilling a dream of mine to help someone start a family. The word quite simply describes the sense of missing something you haven't known or didn't know you wanted. For me, at that time, the word described the act of starting a family. Today, it describes that stranger you never knew you fit so well with. Though surreal to look back on that first glance, the timing that seemed(seems) perfectly wrong, there is no escaping the fact that your paths crossed for a reason. I don't know what to do now. You've quickly become a part of my routine and just as quickly, I've been forced into the shadows. A necessary step in being able to give yourself fully. Trouble is, at the end of the day, who is to say who you will be ready to give yourself fully to? You can't predict magic. Fate. All you can do is wait. Stretch to the capacity of patience. Not sacrifice yourself in waiting to know how you fit or bend around another. “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.” Paulo Coelho