I want to be happy everyday.

Simple words for what seems like an impossible wish.
But still they are words to live by.

How can I let myself be happy?

Is it the right career?
The right home?
The right relationship?
Or the right me?

Maybe a combination of all but most importantly the latter.

I need to be me.

The me that I've always been AND the me that I CAN be.

I've always see it in the bigger picture.
It's the details I have yet to work out.

I no longer feel like it's the decisions I have to make.
I know I have choices and options.
Each scenario can lead to happiness.
While some may lead to a higher level of happiness,
I know that no matter what I can be just simply happy.

So why am I still afraid to make a move?

Truth is that I've been working on my dreams and goals my entire life.

Some years I make more progress than others.
Some years I stay still.
Some years I fall behind.
But I'm still living, still going.

Many options and different paths-- all lead to a "right now."

And right now,
I choose happiness.

Nothing Has Changed, but Everything Is Different.

We made it to the top of the mountain by taking different paths.
Crossing at times, mostly far from sight but never out of mind.
I've stumbled along the way, fallen down and veered off course.
Ran backwards, crawled, got lost and reached out for help.
I've looked around for you as fear choked my voice from carrying over the terrain.
Even if you heard my cries, how could you have found me from 2,162 miles away?

Wasted time in-between growing up and finding our own lives.
The details were blurry and fading as feelings were pushed aside but never erased.
Ironic how we got here, where ever "here" has found us.
But here we are with less distractions and lessons learned.
Still no map to comfort the journey and only a few necessities on hand.

We climbed the mountain on a faded and narrow path.
Slipped a few times and moved out of the way to catch my breath.
Together at the top with no way of knowing what the descend will bring.
But the view from up here is beautiful with possibilities.

(1/23/12 and 2/7/12)

So there was this break up...

Back to a Me, Without a You.

I should have hit you harder.
I should have hit you sooner.
I should have never let you in.

You forced your way through.

Thank you for having the strength to let me go.
My heart would have been stuck on you,
wasting away never to be loved the same.

You had the whole world convinced.

I wish it was my choice, it would have been easier on me.
But now I know it was what I needed,
I was just too afraid to accept the loss.

So thank you for breaking my heart.

I kept blinders on and believed all of your lies,
Made it easy for you
to take advantage of my open heart.

I always try too hard.

You had me fooled before it ever began.
Holding yourself high with pride and values
just a cloak over your selfish juvenile dark soul.

You don't know how to love.

The whole world is not actually a stage.
Someday your make up will rub off
and no one will be around to feed you a line.

You don't know how to live.

I am free now to love again.
Someday I'll find the love
you were never strong enough to have known.

For as much as I ever loved you, I hate you even more.

(from 12/16/11 and 1/16/12)

On the Way to Another List

Someday I'll be ready to let it all out, take it in, let it out.

Pour over the pages of the future with the tears of the past.

See it all for what it was and will never be and let it claim a home on the page and off my heart.

Someday I will move into myself and settle down to a place I can call home again.

My bucket is filling and soon I will have enough water to quench the seeds I have been saving all these years.


To Do List:
Read idiot proof books on gardening
Document everything
Watch carefully
Water often
Keep in the (sun) light.

(6/25/2011)

And so it's here...again...

...this wave of sadness that hits every few months. I wonder what it would be like to have him still around. (To have them both around). I wonder if I would have made the same mistakes. 

Would he be able to give me the answers I can't find in a dictionary, the man who knew something about everything? Would he fix all my broken toys? Mend my broken heart? Would he buy me, and 36 of my closest friends, the latest gadget or gizmo that is sure to be a crazy, sold-out-by-Christmas-but-forgotten-about-by-New-Years? Would he still draw out routes on maps in different color pens? Or would he have mastered using the google maps on the internet? (I'm not sure he ever had the pleasure of sending an e-mail on his own). Or dare I say, a G.P.S? He would have never gotten a G.P.S! 

Could he have ever really watched EVERY World War II documentary, or covered up his tears during a sappy "chick-flick"? When would he have stopped doing all the yard work himself? Would he have ever organized the mail or thrown ANYTHING away? How many Navy stories has he never told me? Do I actually remember any of them? Would we have ever gone on an adventure together? One more than driving across PA through the night and being lost just outside of campus at 4am, looking for the "entrance," having to stop to ask the first person we saw on the streets, who was dressed all in black with shiny metal things sticking out of his face and covered in tattoos. Would he really have disowned me for getting tattoos myself? Would I have gotten so many?

Would I have taken his advice? Could he truly talk to me without yelling and actually listen? Would he even understand me? What else would he have taught me? Would he have shared his love of words with me on the same level? Would I be reading to him now, like he did for me when I sat in the swivel kitchen chair with my feet not able to touch the ground as we took an adventure at sea on the Pequod? Would we whistle in harmony as we built something together? Would he have ever been able to tell one of his jokes without cracking up? Will I ever be able to tell a joke without cracking myself up?

Would I still have become more and more like him every day, the latter him that was all good and perfect? Would I still be me?

I know I have grown, on my own. In between the dry seasons I wilted away to almost nothing. But I have sprung back after the passing rains. But I would not be who I am without him. I am him and he will always be a part of me, but still I am lost at times. 

For as much as I am missing out, I do not need a care taker.

I just need my Daddy. 

(Happy Birthday).

Funny how they still bring me to tears

When I think of my childhood and time with my parents I mostly remember how much I use to cry. I know it would be honorable of me to only remember, or write about, the good times now that they are gone but those are too painful to conjure up and actually find words for. Hopefully, those happier memories will have a more glorified moment other than a blog I'm writing at 2am...

I have always been super emotional and sensitive which is something I was frequently reminded of. But my parents had this uncanny power to bring me to tears. Especially my father, on the first note of his anger my heart would race and the tears started. By the time he stumbled through everyone else's name to mine, in that way parents do when they are so angry they forget your name, I was in full blown hysteria and banished to my room. But I never really escaped. Hiding under the covers didn't mask the sound of disappointment in their voices.

Now, I sit in my room in that familiar soggy way, years later and too many miles away they still bring me to tears. Much like it was when I was younger, I did nothing to deserve this outburst of sadness. It just happens, uninvited and shameless. No one can fix it. My stuffed bunny, who was and still is my best confidant, can help absorb the drops of pain but as much as I'd like to believe, it doesn't hug back.

Hugs were something that was absent from my youth. I'm sure my parents hugged me when I was really little. I can imagine me being upset because I was physically hurt, probably from my brother's shenanigans or my pure klutziness. They'd rush over to me and scoop me up into their arms and hold me until the crying stopped and all was calm. I can't actually remember such an event but I trust that it had to have happened at some point when I was 4 or 5. I wonder when I became too old for that kind of comfort.

Of course, they were not the worlds worst parents and I was not a gold child by any means. But hugging isn't something I can miss from them because I don't remember the feeling. But I would give anything to hear them yell at me again. I wouldn't even care if my Dad called me the wrong name.

Where is the snooze button and I need to buy more ribbon.

(I promised myself I would write before I gave in to my down comforter and sleeping aide. I have to keep working toward this dream of mine while awake in reality.)

At what point do we put down our current life and start to build the future we've always dreamed of?
I feel like if I just get a week off I'd be able to do it. A week off from work, chores, friends, family and all relationships and responsibilities. A week for myself here and now. Not to plan ahead or clean up old messes. A week to just be. As much as I'd like to stop time, I don't know where the giant snooze button is so, how do I work in the "just being" when I have all this doing?

I think I'm trying. I feel like I am some days, but my little triumphs don't seem to add up. I've been waiting too long to be taking baby steps now. I want to leap, but I have weak joints and I'm kind of accident prone. Seriously. Taking risks is something I use to thrive on. I wasted all my courage on dumb, juvenile, choices. Scars are really REALLY hard to get rid of. Actually, I'm pretty sure they are permanent since those scare reducing creams I've wasted money on haven't worked. I'm holding on to the hope that some how, some day, I can figure out how to get rid of them...
or at least maybe I can cover them with a bow for a while.

I can make a bow tomorrow. I make perfect bows. Just need the right ribbon. Which I'm also sure I have somewhere in my attic. I might have to make a trip to the craft store tomorrow. Hope I have a coupon.