Relearn to Love

It is so funny the way drugs play on our emotions. Or maybe it's just for me. But they are like a hand that reaches down into my body, past the tissues, and rips feelings out of me, sometimes violently.

Last night it was my friend Max's birthday and since I wasn't really in the mood for drinking, but still wanted to be on the milky way comfort of being relaxed with the other soon to be inebriated people, I ate some hash. At first it was good. I was dressed up and feeling good. My fav snug jeans. Check. My low lacy blood red top. Check. Dangley earrings. Check.

Heading to the bar I was already feeling the effects. My mind felt slow and dreamy. The city became beautiful. The nightlife energy seductive.

Once I arrived, and my best friend Patty and I caught up, I was immediately next determined to finally make a move on this cute acquaintance that I had been sorta crushing on for awhile. I sat close to his side on the long bar stool at the table, made the usual cute banter, indulged in some playful tickles and slaps. I also unfortunately let me friend Bernardo fill up my cup a couple times with beer so that rule went out the window.

By midnight my friend Patty, her boyfriend, and my crush all were suddenly leaving. Seeing as I only arrived an hour earlier I felt annoyed and scared. I couldn't help but feel disappointment, frustration, and a little crushed. I really had wanted this to be a good night with my buds that I very much needed, and also maybe embarrassingly an ego boost if I could get my crush to show interest. Niether happened.

I didn't really know or hang out with anyone else in the group much, and the ones who I did like Diego  and his brother Bernardo and of course Max where already way passed hammered and not exactly in the mood to socialize unless cursing and shouting profanities to the ceiling counted. But because I felt like I should at least celebrate for bit since I was already dressed up, I went outside with them eagerly when i heard one of the mention they had a blunt. Weaving through the crowd to get through the door, Diego came behind me and slid his hands over my hips in a way that made me both cringe and surprised.
 Diego is really usually this sweet and shy, and very innocent guy. But I guess by the way his eyes looked like melting soft suns, he was definitely drunk. I laughed his move off and pulled out, trying to defuse the situation by just pretending I needed to walk ahead with the other boys.

While we smoked outside I felt at least a little better. A little weirded out since I seemed to be the most sober and I watched while the rest hollered and joked around. But after a few puffs I could join in the jokes, make a few at their expense and generally be one of the boys which felt nice.
Bernardo sat down with me against the concrete circle that surrounded a few randomly placed trees in the city. We talked for a bit, mostly about his family since he had 4 brothers, all spanish, big, and loud, and they were all outside together. I felt a little jealously now. Here were 4 brothers, maybe a bit too loud, and a bit too tipsy, but together and all hanging out like a unit. I couldn't remember the last time my siblings had been together. The last time were had even hung out. It felt terribly wrong and terribly sad.

For awhile it was nice to be outside. With the cool clear sky, a crisp ice wind, and the stars so damn clear you want to grab them. Eventually though it felt a bit like I was juggling. Whether because I was the only girl or at least the only only who seemed friendly to them at the bar, a few of guys were getting too familiar and touchy with me. I also was having a hard time, maybe from loneliness, knowing if or who I wanted to flirt. I decided to leave when Max and Patrick left. Diego and his brothers were heading inside when I announced I was gonna leave too. A few protests, but mostly they just stumbled back inside. While I was saying my goodbyes Diego looked at me like he was considering something.
"What?" I said
"I dunno. You going home. I thought you were more fun than that."
I sort of did wonder when I was on the bus whether I was no fun anymore. But after feeling the crash of my high coming down, the fact I had to piss like crazy and it was hurting, and the fact that yet again "going out" was a lot less glamourous and fun than I think it will be, I decided it was smart to have left.

Another "perk" of going out is that the night bus only runs every 45mins and if you miss it you are screwed, and if you catch it it only goes on main streets so you have to walk the rest of the way. I had to walk 16 blocks before I got home. Thankfully or maybe not so thankfully an old friend from the US called me to keep me busy. We have this kind of messed up background of bad and good times. Sometimes the bad was so bad it still feels painful to even bring it up.
Anyways, we ended up having this gigantic mess of confessions and recriminations and crying (on my part) and apologies about the past. He kept saying he loved me. And the worst part is I wanted to believe him so bad, but after the way things had happened, I don't think I can ever trust him.

I don't know why or what this world is about. But I honestly am constantly battling between two strong urges. To run and run and run until I am as far away from civilization as possible. Find a small piece of land, live alone, and commune only with God and nature. The other is to "make" something of myself in the society sense. Make money, impress my family, do something big and recognizable, and find security.

The thing is I don't really recognize myself much anymore or enough to make that decision. I feel both like I am withering away with each day I don't focus on some direction. That I am so fragile, that just because a crush won't make a move on me, that I am worthless and ugly and boring, and maybe like Diego said, "No fun"anymore. And it's funny how only a few crumbles of hash and a beer will make me go through an entire lifetime of worries and thoughts and beliefs in one night.

I pray each and everyday in my own way that I recover what little self esteem I have left. That I can relearn to love and be the person I was. Even if now I wear glasses, or have few friends, or don't have money, or don't have a focus, I can still be that kooky crazy and entertaining girl who loved to make other laugh and laugh at herself.
Live and laugh. Thats all I should focus on now.

Unreality to explain Reality

Goals. Goals. I need to try one of those things every happy person keeps raving about. I think I want to write a book. Or a screenplay.
Just some form of living art.
A way of presenting love, thoughts, and questions that bother me.
I think thats why books for me, even movies (well the really good ones) are so inspiring to me. They act sort of as experiments where we get to try on realities and thoughts that may be familiar, life affirming, or new and different. Like a way of acting without changing, or jumping off and into something without any risk. I can't decide whether I want to write a love story, or maybe just the story of my life and the people in it. The first could be a liberating way of expressing the hurts and happinesses I've felt in relationships, and kind of building the beauty of the connection I've always wanted. And the second kind of will be like a very angry, gut wrenching, and heart releasing affirmation of how hard life can be and yet how perseverance is that much more astounding and admirable when people keep going.
Dunno. Dunno.
Maybe I just want to write because school seems boring right now, and responsibilities piling up.


I often wish I could enter into my stories and vanish. Never come back. Live in the bodies of characters that have a hold on my heart from the first page….
oh well. Sorry for the rant. Just wonder sometimes if I am the only one who is unsatisfied with reality. But maybe I need to focus on building the reality I want.
Goals. Happiness. Perseverance. Hope
It's just kind of ironic that my first goal is to write an unreality to explain my reality.

22

I am 22 and I don't know what to do

I am 22 and I don't know what to do
my friends are fools
boyfriends are tools
and the loneliness is everywhere

I got not genuine friends
no money and no benz
and i'm still learning to be okay with the quiet

For in stillness is noise
of inner turmoil and rage
a place of no poise
I am a mess of tangled thoughts
which judge each other like high schoolers.

It is sad to think I believe that they are who I am
when all I want is to tell them to shut the fuck up and leave me alone with some good ones

How can I do that?
I need community
This is the first era where people have gone off to live separately, and isolate themselves in separate places in separate areas. I mean theres no connection left. Between people. Or to our past generations. Or to what once was.
Industrial revolution man.
Beginning of everything and the end of everything.
Beginning of plenty yet emptiness
Beginning of production, but not creation.
Beginning of saving time, but not relishing it
Beginning of security, and yet uncertainty
Beginning of choice, and yet paralysis
Beginning of order, yet chaos

Where and why did we go wrong? All the lonely people? Suicides? Depression? Drugs? both legal and illegal? It's all symptoms of something wrong. The wrongness of what this planet has become. We have to fight to get back to the original. Get back to roots and righteousness, and family, and bonds, and support, and faith, and goodness, and kindnesses, and community!

How can I be more a part of that?
How can I further beauty on this planet, for both me and the world?
That is what I want to focus on this coming year. That is all I want to aim for this new year of my life. Because if I just go along with it any longer, go along with being sad, and hopeless, and unsatisfied, and just bloody miserable with circumstances…I don't think I'll make it to my next birthday with any soul left intact. Lord guide me and send me where I need to be sent. I want to serve. And learn. And do something worthwhile with my small life. Please come to me. Please Please guide me

But Thriving

I just came back from a week visit to see me sister and her new baby. And boy was it both not what I expected and what I needed at the same time.

First off her little guy was absolutely gorgeous. With colour changing eyes and a giggly smile that can squeeze your heart. I felt absolutely overjoyed when he would dain to smile at my stupid made up sing songs or my shake the rattle skills.  And I also felt extremely sensitive and anxious every time he groaned or whined, or even looked like he was about to cry.

It was a joy to meet and adore this little one. But at the same time, sometimes it really really felt like I wish he wouldn't be there so I could at least talk to connect with my sister one on one. I know its horrible to say let alone think that I wanted to treat a baby like a pet who could be put in another room and left there for a bit. But yes that thought did cross my mind.

I came there expecting that the sun would shine in sunny Cali, that delicious home cooked meals would be served to me, and that me and the family could sit at the river and swim and play all day.

What really happened is that is rained the entire week. Those meals had to be made by me (and also cleaned immediately after) and then by the time I finished I would have to start preparing the next meal (no joke). Or otherwise I was helping prepare orders alongside her husband Ty who runs a catering business as well as his regular day job.

Days were spend inside and it was like I was in constant library mode (as in SHHH) and when the sun did shine outside for a brief period I'd prepare to go out but then would be detained by some odd job or task or holding the baby which "would just take one sec". Invariably it'd take long enough for the sun to be gone and squash my will to go out.

I'm not saying it was all hard. But sometimes I actually felt so run down and overwhelmed I had to go into my room, lie on the floor, and just well, cry. With my insomnia, depression, and the needs of a baby…things can kinda get out of control.

But as a gift friday night my sis had some of my old friends Jaiya and Chris over for dinner. Ty cooked a beautiful dinner. And when our bellies were full from too much food and too much laughter we retired to the couch. Ty and Chris picked up some acoustic guitars and played together, plucking beautiful soft harmonies off each other. Ahhh music…. And because I was in that place of absolute satiety and peace I lay down in the crook in between Jaiya's belly as she gently played with my hair in a gesture so familiar and so comforting as only family can know. In that moment of closing my eyes I felt bliss.

My last day I decided a few hours before we had to leave to go for a walk on my own. I went to the ridge. The ridge. Sounds so plain but I cannot fully explain its beauty. It looks like a mother fucking post card picture. Its the highest hill in the Nevada city foothills. In one direction you see layers upon layers of evergreen mountains. They finally lead up to ice cap peaks in the far distance which hover like small triangles amongst storm clouds.

 In the other direction there are the dry sand hills of the desert and the horizon which displays a 180 degree view of the most intensely pink and orange sunset of your life. I lay on the hills facing the mountain, lying in grass that even smells green. Watching pillowing white clouds mixed with storm edges pass the hills that flash sunlight and darkness like the shutter of a camera. In that moment I was again overwhelmed by sadness to leave and the beauty of trying to soak every last goddamn drop of this as I can. A few tears did manage to slip out.

I realized as I sat staring in the sky, that I am mourning the loss of my family. Not in the sense of physical death but of the attachment of the original ties. As the youngest of 4 kids I was always intensely dependant and enamoured of my brother and sisters. I loved them fiercely and always strived to matter to them. We were a team who played, wrestled, and yes fought, but always had each others back.

Now as an young adult I see that cannot be anymore. The eldest is a traveler, a roamer finding her place in and of the world as her family. My brother moved across the globe to be with his partner and is focused on building his career. And now my other sister has truly moved forward. She has a family of her own. Her affections and energy now must be to the little one and to her partner. I had to figure that out the rough way, but yes it finally clicked.

I can no longer be the baby or seek attention from my family. I must forge my own life now and depend on myself. That thought to some may be liberating, but honestly for me it has been a painful journey in which I am constantly relearning to let go. Let go Tina. Let go.

Sitting now at the train station I feel I would give up anything just to be back there at the house washing dishes or even changing diapers just to be part of that sweet home and the environment again. I wish I had cherished more the peace and routine of looking after my sister and her baby who really do deserve to be waited on dammit. Sometimes its hard to see what you should be doing until the moment has passed.

I am trying with all my might to be okay with who and where I am in this period of my life. I also hoping eventually to make it out of this tunnel of depression in which I am constantly running towards the small hole of light up ahead, yet which I never get any closer to.

I pray that I make it out. That I make it out. Not just alive, but thriving.

Look Up

I realize its not purpose I'm so obsessed with but communication. Communication in the broadest sense of the word. The way we communicate information. The way a stranger communicates an idea to another in a way that outlines his thoughts to become a clear imprint in theirs. The way a mother communicates through touch to her baby. The way lovers can understand each others gestures like their own language. The way the digital system teaches and withholds to convince of certain attitudes which are not our own. The way the old communicate to the young. The way stories, books, plays, music, art, dance, and healing all tell stories that are both specific and personal, yet universally understood at the same time. The way emotion is communicated through the body, or art, or speech, or even just gestures. Communication does not = connection. But, Connection= the purpose of communication. Whether we notice it or not, its there every day in every way, nudging and waving, and smiling and yes sometime flipping us off, yet at the same time trying to open us up to the new. Or maybe its the old. Things we know but must must relearn, or be made aware of again. Like walking. We did have to learn that remember? But somehow the beauty of it got lost in the casual ordinary use of it everyday. But then all you have to do is look at a person in a wheelchair and BOOM. You remember, yes I have it good, I am lucky, I can walk, I should be more thankful, I should realize some have it rougher. All from the image, the sight, the communication of seeing a person pushing their wheelchair past you.

Just the other day I realized how simple communication is if you are willing to receive it, or at least paying attention to the beauty of its simple forms. It's sad to say but in the technology age, I find people actually more concerned with the communicating part, but less about the connection part of it. We email, text, yes even blog, but do we talk to people on the bus who sit right beside us? Do we smile at strangers? Do we even make the time to wave anymore? That last one especially.

It hit me like a hot bullet the other day how pleasing a wave and a smile can be between two people. Because honestly i am guilty of being caught up in my own world and forgetting to do it myself. Preoccupied and busy to consider looking up from the vortex which usually surrounds my head wherever i go. Remember those cartoons that had those storm or raining clouds above them to show that they were troubled? Well mine in a tornado.

Anywho, I was biking up the residential streets on my home from school awhile back and as usually i was in one of my preoccupied moods. Not even noticing cars much (almost got run over by some tard who came fast up behind me). And then for some reason I looked over to my right and there was this little old man about to cross the street. Classic grandpa with funny golf pants and tucked in shirt, little cabbie hat and big half moon glasses. And as I passed him, I literally heard in my head, "Turn back," as if he had spoken aloud. I thought it would look strange if I did, but hell the pull of those words and this feeling like he was emanating, I turned my head over me shoulder. And he smiled. And I smiled. And I waved. And he waved. And in that one second I turned the corner, and he was gone from sight. But in the one second, we had transpired. We had connected. Yes sounds like an overstatement or me making a mountain out of a mole hill, but I that second I remembered what it is to feel weightless in my heart. To know that we are all here. We all have problems. And the world is always going to be hard and rough. But that shared appreciation of us remembering we are all together, that we all know what it is to keep going, and that acknowledgement of each other in that one wave. That one gesture of appreciated kindness in a way gives me hope for the next month even, to try that much harder to love life. And to love others.

Sufficient to say, its proven, a wave can save a life. A smile can boost a persons day. A conversation can make a friend. An apology can change a future. A hug can deepen a relationship. A compliment can start one. Telling a joke can make history. None of these things can happen via text. None of these things happen when you're looking down. So look up. If not to save your mood, than to to save connection.

Meditation Magic

Visualize. Unwavering and undoubting. And then let it go.

Something I learned today from a small, yet significantly big moment.

Last night I went out with a friend from a late night Cabaret show and some drinks. Walking home at about 2 am and freezing out, my legs bare and the temperatures below freezing. But a soul quenching cold, the kind that sucks the blood to the surface of your skin, so that everything outside is that much more clear, that much more focused by the acid trails of ice that burn themselves to the brain, making the outlines of tree and the outline of the moon that much more defined, that much more beautiful.

That's besides the point. When I got home I was doing the lazy getting ready for bed wind down, and was reaching to my numb earlobes for my earrings. My favourite yellow and red feather earrings which had a special soft spot in my attachment section of heart. They were the first gift I had ever given to myself without feeling guilty or withholding myself from something pretty that I wanted. I know it sounds like a petty attachment, but I guess I can't word their meaning properly. What I mean to say is I never, never allow myself treats or little pleasures, always tight on money or low on self esteem I chain myself back from so many things. But one day I saw those pretty exotic looking earrings, and holding them up to my ear and seeing the way the tips dangled against my neck, I felt beautiful for once. I felt what it must feel like for those gorgeous woman who collect stares in bulk.  So I bought them because it was a small token for the goddess in me who wanted to feel like she deserved to be given some beauty, but also a reason to show off her own dusty, packed away beauty.

So as I reached to delicately pull them off I noticed there was nothing there on my right earlobe. Looking in the mirror I had a moments panic. Fuck.
I lost one. Probably on that walk that I had so much enjoyed a few moments ago.

I usually give into anger when things screw up. Or sadness. But for some reason I just decided to give up this attachment. To not let it bother me tonight. I had made up my mind, tomorrow I would go looking for it, and if I found it fantastic, and if not, I tried. That reaction itself was a gift in that it is sooo not me to let things go. But either way that night I had a deep and effortless sleep.

The next afternoon, by the time I woke up, I was a bit nervous about feeling hopeful that I could find it. I mean not only was I drunk the other night, but it was dark, my earring was only a couple of inches big, and I couldn't remember the route I had taken home, what chance would I have to actually find this thing? But I visualized myself looking down and seeing it on a sidewalk, and picking it up in my hands. I felt sure that I would find it, not even doubting the possibility that I wouldn't, and then gave up my worries to the universe, content with whatever happened. So when I took my bike out, going in an direction chosen by random, I rode past 5 blocks, trying to recognize something from my route last night. Nothing seemed familiar, but I kept going. And then by chance I looked down at just the right second and there, hardly visible at all, was my earring in a crack in the crosswalk. It seems like such a small thing, but it gave me so much pleasure and thanks. I looked up to the sky and said thank you, making sure to pay respects to where its due.

So this power of positive thinking might have something to it. Not in "The Secret" way where you just visualize ways of accruing a BMW so you'll automatically get it or a means of pulling filthy wealth towards oneself. I mean in the way that visualization, trust, and giving up expectations knowing that life will be fine either way, equals success. Success in the sense of a sense of security and peace in yourself. You might ask how such a small thing could actually solidify this notion in my head? I don't know actually. What I do know is that that feeling was foreign to me, and yet felt so familiar, like a effortless calming magic trick I had learned but forgotten. All I know is from now on I am going to practice this meditation "magic" more often.

Better and Better

Have not written in awhile. Life is a whirlwind in which I am caught and yet aware of myself spinning. A endless array of doubts and fears, and small happinesses and fleeting joys. I cannot explain how hard I am battling right now. My health problems, my emotional storms, my disintegrating ability to socialize, my loss of security literally and figuratively, and my unyielding desires to make something of my future and yet still enjoy this present moment. Contradiction. Stress Infliction. All bleeding into each other until I cannot even differentiate any of it from the massive ball of tangled weeds that it has become. I am not complaining, I am just so confused as to how to make it out, or why I seem to attract problems all at once. Please Please. I want to come out of this, a blazing unstoppable force, more alive more bright and more beautiful than I ever was. This is my opportunity. Every day in Every Way I am getting better and better. Or as the Beatles say it so well,  "it's getting better all the time…."