I used to put my thoughts to rest.
They would begin with a capital letter, swirl around commas and end up in a pretty period.
And then there was space in my brain for new words and for things, and for doing because the thoughts had been neatly put away.
I have no time to tidy up these days and my thoughts keep circling the edges of my head. Over and over, the same words, the same feelings, run over me for hours with no end.
It’s exhausting to think the same thing six hours straight.
Stopped at a red light, besides a six car line, I observe things that I don’t think others do. I notice which car carries a child, and where is a whole family. In a few seconds I have figured out, if I need help, which car I would approach.
Not that I need help. I just wanted to have that figured out. It makes me feel ok.
Having a gallon of water also makes me feel safe. After the hurricane, drinking water at hand makes me feel like the day is fine. Sometimes the day is not that fine, sometimes the day almost sucks, but if there’s a gallon of water at hand, I can’t complain.
Others can. If someone at work doesn’t like their food, they can complain. That’s fine.
I have to hold it in. Inside me, all the feelings are safe.
My friend lost her father and I can’t call her because if I do, I’ll cry. She’ll feel the pain, but I’ll cry harder. I can not let her hear me crying her pain.
I hold the sadness and the anger and the frustration. Until one day it all begins to trickle down the tips of my hair.
I stop my car and I cover my face from myself. I cover as much as I can so I can’t see me crying my feelings and I cry them one by one until I’m exhausted enough that I can’t bother to punish me for it.
At some point, there’s nothing left to hide and I carry on. I observe.
Have you ever heard someone talking about something you both know in a way that made you wonder if they were talking about the same thing you experienced?
It’s called perspective. Our brains filter everything we see or know and manipulate it to fit as per our experiences and feelings.
Pretty much how someone manipulates a bonsai to be something it is not, we sometimes form in our heads a much different perception of reality.
I know, because I made my own bonsai.
I wanted to believe I had a good relationship. I trimmed off all the pain, all the hurtful words. I made most of it smaller and unimportant and I kept believing I was in a good place. I could be happy if I just worked harder at it, if I just changed more, if I made everything perfect.
But I couldn’t make anything perfect. I couldn’t keep bending over backwards and still feel happy. I wasn’t even me anymore.
My relationship was my bonsai. I made all the suffering much smaller than it really was and I thought it could work that way.
And then one day I stood in front of my bonsai. I saw it towering over my entire life. It overshadowed everything that I was, and in front of it I felt small, like I had never felt before. I felt insignificant and unimportant.
So I stepped away from the shadow of that giant tree that for so long I had tried to make a bonsai and then I started seeing myself again.
I was there, and all of me is much bigger than that tree.
Ivette almost never cried.
She had a policy of not crying in general, but specially for boys, while we were all crying our eyes out during those first college years when we knew nothing about how to manage heart breaks, she was blowing it all off with a clear “fuck it”.
So I was pretty shocked to see her barge into my dorm room and throw herself, pretty devastated and literally bawling into my pillow. I asked her what happened and her answer was one single word: Juanma.
I fell on my knees too, of pure SHOCK.
Her boyfriend of about six months was going away to another campus and they had broken up on the last day of classes. I have to give it to her though, she was devastated, but still very much in her mind when it came to making a clean cut decision; she was not trying a long distance relationship. I mentioned it as an alternative to being a mess of snot in my pillow and, sobbing as I had never seen her before (and I knew her since ninth grade) she shook her head and very clearly, almost loudly said “that wouldn’t be fair”.
With the same force that it took her to flop into my bed and collapse in a fit of tears, she suddenly picked herself up, dried her face, re-did her hair in front of my mirror and very calmly walked out to meet the rest of the world again. Poker face on, strong heart mode.
I never heard her complaining about that again.
She talked to Juanma again and we even visited him once. They were very much friends and that, I remember, was what I found the most incomprehensible. It took a lot more strength and courage to remain friends with someone you so wanted to be with than to just put him in the past and never talk about him again.
I’m certainly not as strong in the romantic side as Ivette.
Separating from the father of my daughter is the first instance in my life when I can’t do as usual and soak the past in gasoline and then walk forth after throwing a lighted match over my shoulder. It feels like someone’s filing my teeth with metal; not unbearable, but obviously not pleasant.
Something amazing happened the other day though. I reached out to Ivette, told her I would like to see her and give her three month baby boy a little thing. She was all “I WANT TO SEE YOU!” It had been something like thirteen years since the last time we had seen each other.
Well, we hugged and talked about half an hour (it was the only half an hour available in her day) and coming back home I felt that connecting with her connected me with a very solid part of myself, one that I desperately needed to “see” again. The outgoing, silly and curious person that I was in college suddenly was very present.
And that made me feel stronger.
Do you know where can a dream catcher get a flush? How does it get empty again?
A couple of years ago ex-manfriend’s uncle gave us a small dream catcher. We were living in his brother’s house and the very first night I hung it beside the bed I had a clear sleep. No nightmares or tense dreams, for the first time since we had moved.
I only took it down months later because Baby J grew enough to be able to get a hold of the feathers and started plucking the thing. That night I had a bloody dream. And not in the English way, I mean there was blood in the dream. I don’t remember if it was the one where I slit my own skin, but it was equally horrible.
So when I moved to my parent’s about a month ago the first thing I hung up was the dream catcher. I slept wonderfully since the first night. Everyone kept asking me, worried, if I had been sleeping because it’s normal to not sleep during that kind of thing, and I was so happy because I was!
But then a few nights ago I had a dream that I was inside a school. Some of my school friends were there, not young as we were in school but as old as we are now. We were trapped inside the school where all the doors were sealed closed and I was the only one trying to find a way out while everyone was all chill and I freaked out.
This might have something to do with the fact that Baby J started pre-pre school this week. My baby now goes to school! And I’m wishing and hoping she likes it so badly.
If you know what to do to give it maintainance let me know.
My paternal family lives in one of the highest towns of the island so, when I was child we would visit several times during the year.
I had this thing where I believed that whenever the road went up – because of a mountain – it would leave the ground (cartoon-like) and raise independently and I would be able to see the ground below if I could just look out far enough from the window. So, every time I felt the car climbing a mountain I would stick my face unto the window hoping this time I would be able to see the ground below the road.
I was always so disappointed when I could see the ground beside the road.
The other day I was driving and I was reflecting on everything that has happened the past weeks, all the ways my life has changed, how I’ve changed; and I felt this longing to know where the road was taking me, or at least which road I was on.
And I had this moment where I thought, you know what? It doesn’t matter because, while we always have that feeling that we pick a road and we travel through it, the truth is: the road follows you. We put our feet out and the road is made beneath them. We are building the road we journey on while we live.
There’s a song in spanish that says “caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar” which translates to “walker there is no road, the road is made when you walk”.
I finally understood what it means.
We get so anxious to always know where the path it’s leading and it’s us leading the path all the while.
come on road, I’ll make you mountains
do not fear road, I’ll swerve you right
follow me road, follow me
because I don’t know where I’m going
and not knowing makes me lead you right
It’s ok.
What have you done to regain your way when you’ve felt lost?
I discovered a silly thing about starting up again, as they call it.
Not that you ever, truly, start again – different stages have a beginning and an end but; where ever you are, or what ever you are now, it’s the sum of where ever you where and whatever you were before. If we actually started up again every time we changed a stage in life, we would always be nothing.
But, in any case, I discovered the other day that being in this “new place” position puts your brain (and possibly your heart, I’m not very sure because I’m new on this) in this weird double-plain place where anything you think (or dream, I’m sure of this part) becomes a reality for just a tiny moment.
It’s a way of giving you the boost you need to accomplish whatever idea – or dream – you decide to make true.
Like, that day, I was falling asleep in a hotel room, and just before closing my eyes I took a minute to really look around and then when I finally closed my eyes, an image of Lorelai Gilmore came to me. Instantaneously I thought – because I want to start my professional career anew – well, I could very well be an Inn owner! Why not? Find a place, already have seen a few, do the redo, do the promo, people will love it and everyone will be there. It would be quaint, but chic. Vintage but minimalistic. It will have flair and sass.
For the next five minutes I was an awesome Inn owner. Every employee loved me, I had all the regulatory agencies enchanted.
Or the other day when I was organising my makeup and I was a makeup artist. I would make house calls and start doing brides and quinceañeras. I would do everything from natural looks to wild and colorful styles. Of course I could, I have a makeup course certificate from a workshop I took back when I was in college. It took me six hours to complete it. And I was for the next ten minutes (I had a certificate to back me up this time) an amazing makeup artist.
I’ve been a business owner, a great employee, a professional service consultant, a recruiter, a secretary, a student – I have been pretty much everything you could think of the past three weeks. Every day I imagine something different and every day I feel a bit more confident that, what ever it is that I’m going to end up being or doing, I’ll get there and it’ll be ok.
It’s like my imagination is my safety net.
Be brave
I hear it whispering.
I am
I answer.
I couldn’t call it home.
The place broke me. I walk around now holding the pieces of my spirit, trying to keep them all together, trying to not loose them anymore, but I barely remember who I was am.
I tried, but I couldn’t call it home.
There’s a rule written up somewhere that if you suffer enough, you don’t have to stay. I know because it kept coming up everywhere; “go away”. “Be brave”. “Get out of here”. “You hate this place. Leave.”
I tried. I really did try, even if no else saw. I gave it my all. I loved the peace, the nature. But it isn’t enough. I also need love and the comfort of knowing someone cares.
It’s not home if it feels like no one cares.
“you can’t keep doing things the same way and expect different results”
someone said. Probably a scientist. I like science. And it’s time to try a different way.
Every Tuesday I post an image of a texture or the use of a texture and invite you to join in the fun of sharing a detail of your part of the world by linking your own post to this one. You can also @ naramilee in twitter or instagram if you want to share an image from either platform.
You don’t have to make an exclusive Tuesdays of Texture post, you can find an image during the week and join any day you want and this event is ‘theme free’. I share contributions on twitter and mention each one the next week. Hope to see your part of the world!
I recently began doing a Liberation Rosary that my mother gave me, after years of not touching the rosary and I feel like sharing it.
I have been going through a lot of stress, sadness and frustration in many aspects of my life (professionally, personally, in my relationship with manfriend, with the Hardcore Country Life) and I just felt it was time to meditate again. I used to meditate with the rosary almost every day a few years back and it lifted my spirit greatly, so it feels natural to turn to it.
I bought this rosary several years back. The beads are made of rose petals and it smells glorious. This is also one of my favorite macro shots of all time. I should have never let go of that camera (it was a point and shoot Samsung, with a great capacity of manual functions).
Last week we had a lot of cool participations, please hop around for a few minutes and leave some love:
ladyleemanila shared a collection of photos and there is ice cream and bees. I think that’s pretty much all you need in an invitation to make me go YES.
klara shared a stunning spider macro shot. She was giving the camera some love!
this is a shot shared in Una Vista di San Ferno a few weeks back and I think I stole it for Tuesdays of Texture because I couldn’t resist it. I stole it with permission.
St Germain has a cool post up including a few awesome experiences. And ART.
There’s a cute shot and dessert over at Joan’s Retirement and Beyond. Count me IN.
I don’t know why I think JayJay (my mom’s cockatiel) would love to play with this. Cool macro at Land of Images.
Let me see a part of your world! And have an awesome day!
My thirty fourth birthday was last Wednesday and this week’s challenge couldn’t be more fitting:
I spent it being a reflection of both who I was and whom I’m yet to be.
Cheers!
de monte y mar 