Newton, CT Dec 2012

I'm not a pro-gun advocate anymore than I'm a pro-life advocate. I take the same stance on both issues, you should have a choice. But there are limits to my understanding. I don't think you should be able to abort a child at 6 months along in pregnancy and I don't think you need to have automatic weapons as a choice of self defense or hunting. No man goes out to deer hunt with an AK47.
 Let's get our hands around this issue, but let's not let that distract from MENTAL ILLNESS and the fact we have nearly 0 institutions for people who need long-term mental health aid. Our country is sick and it's not because people are defaulting on their loans, want immediacy of their lusts, it's because mental illness is a very real threat to all of us. Keep in mind, governments both state and federal SHUT DOWN mental institutions throughout the 70's and 80's. Those individuals did not disappear, they went to the streets. And now they are inside our prisons because there is no where else to put them. "It's time to address the why," as a friend so eloquiently put, "there will always be a how." So let's encourage legislators to put OUR money where WE will see lives changed.

The dream.

I hope one day you look over
  and see the dream beside you,
Because you've caught up to it.

And I hope you keep running.

What I seek.

I am not following a script, I am not behaving in a way so that you will find my life comforting or usual. I'm just trying to find out what makes me happy. I don't want you to envy me, or dream my life into anything more than it actually is. I have the same issues as everyone, maybe more. I just choose to live in humor and optimism and love.

I don't think there is a recipe for that, there is certainly no other life I wish to emulate. I refuse to let the things society expects of me be the same things I find important. Society can be ignorant, selfish, and short sighted. I'm trying to live bigger than that.

I don't have it all. But I want it all. And I'm willing to pursue risk for greatness, I'm willing to pursue love, but not for fear of being alone. I'm not trying to find something broken so I can fix it.

I'm trying to find someone else that's living as eagerly and with the same vitality as I am.

A strange sensation.

It had been so many years that I'd been in love with him, that I had to squint my mind back in time to remember when I hadn't loved him. Ever since our intense, magnetic, young and spinning love affair, I'd loved him. And in my mind, wholly.

Five years I think, something like that- actually more but it's just too depressing to count the time, so call it five. And then I saw him. He came, unannounced from out of country and somehow landed on my doorstep. I sat, nervously talking and filling up the silence with my chatter. Not knowing what to say and therefore saying whatever came to mind.

It dawned on me slowly and in momentary exchanges; maybe in his gray facial hairs, the decisions he was making that I disagreed with, the immature pastimes I'd passed and he still lingered in-- somewhere in all of it... It dawned on me.

It was over.  It was really over and he was really not the man in my mind at all.

And all I could think was, what am I going to do with all of this? All that space in my mind?
I honestly could not find an answer. In the following days I sat silently waiting.

What struck me most was that I was ok with it. I put that dream down, put that memory on my path, looked at it with a sheepish grin, stood up from it, and then I walked on. I think I glanced back once and saw it sitting there. The dream still smiling, but both of us knowing, bigger dreams are ahead of me and that this dream was old, faded, and worn from my mind dragging it along for so many years.

I set myself free, I finally realized.

Maybe realizing that was the answer I thought wasn't coming.

that day

I'm struggling.

I'm struggling because she's fading away right before my eyes.

Being Mindful

I want to remember and be cognizant, more readily, that each day, whatever I do, I'm trading my life for it. So it better be worth it.

Change

Enzo is moving. It sucks. Enzo is my nephew and he is very young. And he has changed the way I feel about babies and more importantly he's changed the way I feel about love. When I get the opportunity to be around Enzo my heart gets so excited; it feels like I'm 9 years old and I'm worked up over Santa on Christmas Eve. Enzo is my new Santa, the magical, joyful, hopeful thing that brings little treasures. Little moments together. When I give him a bottle and he just looks, intently into my eyes and no one else is around. And he doesn't speak yet, and he can't understand English, but we are telling each other in these quiet moments that we love each other. We both know it. And I haven't experienced that kind of love since I probably looked into my parents eyes. 

So now he's moving, because life changes and new opportunities arise and you just never know will the road will turn. I'm okay that he is moving, his family has deep, meaningful roots in their next location. But I'm terribly scared to have fewer bottle moments and the continued lessons that I'm learning about love and silence and baby bottles. 

Enzo, thank you for coming into our life. Auntie Hil loves you so much and even though I can't be close to you anymore, I am ALWAYS with you and you are inside of my heart forever, no matter where we are. 

Happiness

Source: iwantmybearsuit.tumblr.com via Katie on Pinterest

And remember that whether you like it or not, in the end, everyone goes away.

I keep hearing from people these, some of my most hated words, "you know how grateful I am."

Do I? 

This comment, to me, is a slap in the face. Gratitude is something you show, not something you say. It's something you do, not something you "assume" other people are going to read into. Has someone done something wonderful, generous, hospitable, kind, or sympathetic? TELL them you are thankful. SHOW them you are thankful. Shower those people with the positive things you have to offer- they've earned it. And yeah, you're gonna have to do that for as long as you hope to receive generosity from those people.

This bullshit about people "knowing" how grateful you are has got to stop! That's called taking them for granted, not showing them your thanks.

Having recently experienced too many "you know how grateful I ams" I have decided that, because I can't change anyone but myself, that I need to pull back on the generosity. If I'm apparently "in the know" about so much stuff, than you won't mind me knowing that you're taking me for granted and then changing my behavior.

I have a poster that reads, "This is My Year" with a burnt orange background and a trendy offset image in white behind it. I hung it from my wall amidst a lovely collection of art pieces. One night, as I slept, it fell right off the wall, face down. All by itself.

It was several weeks later that the irony of that moment finally dawned on me. Maybe this was not my year after all, I remember thinking as I lay motionless on my bed, hastily typing notes into my hand held. My shutters were adjust just so and I could see a near-perfect crescent moon. I wondered when I would have the courage to live my dream and travel away.

Did I even know what that meant yet, I thought?
Before I had an answer I was asleep.

An unusually warm winter.

Vee and I pulled weeds this afternoon and cleansed the yard of negative energy.

She said it felt good to be outside.

I tried to be strong but I cried.

And then I pulled every god damn weed in that garden.

Vee

I looked at her and said, "we're in some shit, ya know?" And she pulled her arms up behind her head like she was lying on a lounge chair and we were in Hawaii and she said, "yeah, I know."

And we were.

Facing Future

I'm totally trusting this is all going to make more sense when we look back on my life; you know- with rose and creamy cheeses.

Except I've been loved.

Veee

It's cancer and there is no fear.

I envy and yet pity the thought of such denial

Cause that means we're scared alone.

Like a big waste of time.

And it's not

everyone knows it's not.