Dear Hannah,
You’re right – you will be okay… you will make it through all of this, and be the better for it, and even more so than you currently can imagine.
You can do it.
And it’s okay to be scared a bit, too, and to cry a lot… totally part of the whole process of turning into the person you want to be. š
Peace and Love be unto, from, and within you
Hannah of the future
Post-a-day 2019
What are you doing right now?
Can I play ukulele to you?
Iām feeling a bit lonesome and useless, and that would be a quality purpose
I considered guitar, but the strings really need to be replaced
Those were the messages I sent.
And then she called me…, and I played ukulele and sang to her, and we talked a bit afterward about some things, and it was great.
My mission was accomplished, and I felt so much more at ease than beforehand… service given, art made, purpose felt, love shared.
Friends are wonderful, even when they are all the way across the country.
š
P.S. I spoke briefly with a friend in D.C. earlier, and then this one in Oregon tonight… I really do span the country with my closest friends… it’s almost as though one must live farther away in order to deepen our friendship more. š
Post-a-day 2019
Remember how I shared about that guy from Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic”?
Well, I did as planned with the whole ‘one last purging cry’ to finish off all of the stress of the situation… for the next while, it was still a bit unsettling for me, but increasingly better every day that passed.
By the time I saw him again this week, I had truly let it all go out of the way – we had (at least, I had) and awesome time talking about this and that and being wonderful, somewhat silly people together… I got to have the friendship experience I truly want to have with wonderful people, especially wonderful men.
Eventually, I want to have a certain kind of awesome relationship with a my man in particular, but I want always to have these wonderful friendships with men otherwise – I think they are good for me and for the world.
And then, as I was considering today how it had gone so well with him this week, and I thought about the song again, I turned on the radio in the car for once… and would you guess what was playing on the station that came on?(!!!)
Yup.
“Ironic” by Alanis Morissette… and it was about five seconds before the exact line I’d been considering… talk about perfect timing.
I took it as a total sign of success on my part, that I’d done good. š
It was great. š
Post-a-day 2019
To this day, I remember Kristin L— in the bathroom at middle school, saying that the ideal roll for a t-shirt sleeve was two rolls up…
To this day, I still agree with her…
And I think of her just about every time I roll or consider rolling my t-shirt sleeves…
And, every time I think of her in this scenario, I have a fleeting moment of physical memory of my nervousness, my sense of not-quite-adequacy I always had around her… I envied her, and, at times, longed to be her (she, of course)… I watched her, observed her, taking in the lessons.
What did I love so much about her?
Well, she was somewhat popular, but it wasn’t so much that as the qualities and attributes that made her popular that had me longing most.
She danced.
I eventually became a world champion dancer (yes, I have an actual world title).
She did the French tuck with her t-shirts, and rolled the sleeves up twice, always looking fabulous.
I now do that when I feel like with my t-shirts (instead of being too scared of declared to be “copying”, and then not doing it st all).
She wore bras that looked feminine.
I eventually got there, but have found my own version of balancing feminine with natural and with comfortable.
She was confident in life (mostly, anyway… an air of general confidence, we’ll say).
I am comfortable in who I am, and am generally confident in myself and about life as a whole (though the rough bits get to me at times).
She had a Jeep destined to her, horses to visit, and a determined location for college.
I had lots of openness and no-idea-ness for my far future, and kind of still do…, but I embrace it as a dream board to collage nowadays… and I’ve been interning with horses, learning to care for and ride them, too…
All of this made her gorgeous in my eyes.
The comfortable self-confidence projects radiance from my own eyes, and I find myself staring at smiling me in the mirror on many of the good days, and even on some of the not-too-good ones… the rest of my accomplishments have little to do with the beauty I see and admire in myself.
Yet, there is still something about her that makes my insides feel clenchy and hollow and longing, whenever I think about her or her life at present… I still little girl style long to be more like her (she)… to be her (she)… even though I know I want to be myself… that little girl still longs for something unsatisfied in the relationship, it seems, and I’m not sure what it is…
Perhaps I could write her a letter, read it aloud, as though to her (but not actually to her), and then let it all go… perhaps that would handle it all for me.
Yes, I think I’ll give that a go next week (because I still have final papers for this week to do).
Wish me luck and freedom! š
Post-a-day 2019
It all seems to hurt now… I’ve only taken a day off from the exercise, but all the muscles seem to hurt now.
My aunt adjusted one of my shoulders – deltoid was kind of up in the shoulder, thus some really odd feelings from time to time – today, and it feels loads better already.
However, it kind of just brought attention to how messy everything else is right now… no, they aren’t as bad as that shoulder was, but they all kind of suck right now, nonetheless.
I did an upper body chair yoga stretch class video just now, and I am acutely aware of what feels like a hundred plus tiny spots of tightness and soreness throughout my upper body… my neck feels absurdly tight on each side, all the muscles that connect along the sides of my spine seem to have knots in them, somewhere, and my left shoulder is just far too high (now that my right one is in its proper place)…
I feel like I need to be tossed like a rag doll into a trampoline, and then bounces around a while, so everything can be shaken up just enough to relax and, eventually, fall back into its proper place.
If only that were a viable option… as it is, it’s probably a good thing I have no trampoline access, because it wouldn’t work out as I’d like, anyway… š
Ugh!
God, please, heal my body tonight and tomorrow…. take full advantage of my two days off of exercise, and heal my body to a comfortable beauty, that I might better share your love in and with the world.
Amen
Post-a-day 2019
The wells of the sky now seem to be dry.
And I,
Alone again in my room,
Singularly sigh.
“I feel you, skies… I feel you…
Today was not as expected,
And I can’t quite tell if I am preparing to burst into song – somewhere way in the near future – or am replenishing the water within, that I might, once again, let it all flow forth, releasing all of this ick inside that cannot abide…
Ugh…”
Post-a-day 2019
I entitled this “Fitness”, but the phone decided to change it to “Fatness”, when I went to click on the writing section, and the phone offered/suggested alternatives to what I’d written… it still somewhat applies, so I’m leaving it… it’s like a Freudian slip for the technology age. š
So, after class today, I was talking with one of the coaches about when I might expect to see visual results with my body from these workouts.
We talked briefly about my diet, and then he requested to speak honestly.
“Of course(!).”
“When you first came in here…[…], you looked kind of sedentary…[…] Now, you already have definition in your body… in your legs… in your – you look like an athlete…[…] before, …” (makes faces) “… Now, you look like an athlete.”
It’s been a month of these classes, and I’ve attended 23 of them so far.
I checked my activity log for running, walking, and biking – and I only log my bike ride to and from the workouts, as well as any runs of a mile or more in the workout, not the actual workouts themselves – and I already have almost half the number of activities and half the distance covered that I had in all of last year… and I’ve gotten almost all of that this past month.
I had one activity, a 3-mile hike/run through the hills in Redlands, California, when I went with a friend who was moving there, logged this year otherwise… nothing else.
So, in one month, I’m already almost halfway to all of my official exercise activities last year.
Pretty cool, huh?
I mean, totally bummer that I had so few last year, but we can’t change that, nor can we change the mental struggle that kind of ran the show regarding all of that…, we can, however, embrace the freedom that is the new state of affairs, where I am now governing my fitness and my fitness activities (not some mental freak-out), and I am actively pursuing genuine and somewhat intense physical fitness.
So, woohoo!
Yay!
And, though I’ve felt that my progress visually is slow – aka my belly and haunches and inner thighs still seem so ugh – it is nice to have the positive encouragement from the coach today, as well as my sneaky shoulder muscle for when I brush my teeth. š
Yay, for mental and physical fitness! š
Post-a-day 2019
I had my hair cut today.
Actually, I had a whole lot of my hairs cut today… and voluntarily.
I’m extremely pleased with the result, though it somewhat freaks me out a bit… as though the person I see in the mirror is someone else from the person I saw every time before this evening.
The whole goal to the haircut was to step closer still to the person I want and long to be… and every time I take those steps, then tend to be quite scary… the fear of failure – and various tangents off of it, too – always makes me feel a bit wobbly as I take these steps, though they usually gain solid ground and confidence rather quickly once I actually take them.
So, with the hair, I’m still a bit wobbly on my feet, so to speak, but I am finding the ground to be increasingly solid and stationary, the more I allow myself to experience the panic and discomfort, and, therefore, to let it go.
And no, this is not over just a little haircut, just so you know – this was my hair this morning:
and this was the floor* after the haircut:
*Including the 18-inch section that I set down for the photo; hair that I am donating for wigs for cancer patients (yet again)
And my hair is not very thick, mind you… that’s a pile of an additional four and a half inches that came off after I relaxed a bit about it all, and I was ready for the real haircut and style to happen. š
That’s 22 and a half inches of hair for the longest parts, with the bulk of it being around 20 and a half inches long…
Kind of crazy, huh?
Post-a-day 2019
I feel that one of the most valuable things that school could give a student at the time of the education (that is, while in school) is relevance and immediate applicability.
As we have been reading various books on utopias and dystopias in one of my classes this semester, so much of it all has become relevant in my life within a very short time of its initial introduction.
The struggle one character has with God in this book, and how she finds change to be inevitable (and, therefore, God), applies to my life the week following my reading of it… I can relate to her struggle immediately, and then the change comes up in conversation and contemplation regarding my relationships with people in my life.
I think teachers, schools, curriculum planners aim to have books students read in school to be relevant to the students’ lives, but they often fall short of the mark… they miss the applicability of the ideas and actions somehow, and only assume that this specific struggle must be applicable to all students of this age… and it often isn’t.
From English class, we need concepts, ideas, brainstormed theories that we can learn to apply to any part of life…
For history class, a historical context would be only an enhancement of our understanding of what’s going on right now, what people are discussing from the news, and why it seems to matter so much… we hardly do more than regurgitate facts, and rarely know much about what they really were like or why it mattered to people who lived it (and therefore why it might matter to us).
I today was learning of a book about a man struggling in Russia, and, as I heard the details, I knew it was around the 1920s…, because of the Russian refugees in season four of “Downton Abbey”… there was a story in which I could invest myself, and ideas to which I could relate and from which I could draw my own ideas and conclusions, and the history just kind of stuck with the affinity for the people in the story…
I interested myself with the French Revolution recently, because I discovered the wonder of the film “The Scarlett Pimpernel”… and I remember details about the revolution because of how they connect with the story of the film and its characters.
The actual history became relevant and immediately applicable for me, because of my investment in the film.
The same is so with my investment in “Downton Abbey”.
How could I possibly relate to the Russian refugees or to the French upper class, when I merely read some statements of facts, names, locations, dates, and a summed-up given political meaning to it all?
I guess that’s why I remember just about nothing from my history classes in school…
Perhaps it everybody needs this kind of education, but everyone certainly could benefit greatly from it, I dare say.
You know what I mean?
Post-a-day 2019
I started today with lots and lots and lots of tears… and a decent amount of snot, too….
And then, as though I had just ended a long-term dating relationship, I finished crying, cleaned myself up, and spent the day with my mom, my eyelids weary and, ever so slightly, burning…. every mirror glance made it look as though I had just been crying, though I hadn’t cried since hours earlier…
I felt a heavy weight had lifted away from me, one I had very much grown accustomed to being ‘normal’… and the ghost of a weight still lingers, as though my emotional and psychological muscles are gushing back to normal size, the blood finally flowing through much more freely again, oxygen reaching the muscles fully, at last… and a certain sense of nervousness at what is to come from this openness, this space that had been so large and so occupied (and heavy) for so long…
And I can feel how much my everybody wants this rest that tonight has to offer me in this big and cozy bed at my mom’s house… I cannot quite imagine what tomorrow will bring, but I can sense that there will be a sort of ‘other side’ I will reach, come morning…
Although, this dog that just began barking next door… could be a problem here… when the neighbors first got him, months ago, he barked all night long for days… and I slept almost not at all, until the dog went hoarse from the barking, and I couldn’t hear it anymore……… oh, goodie(!) – he’s stopped.
Anyway, I await happily the person I will be not only free but able to be tomorrow.
Thank you, God, for today.
It was terrifying.
And I think I’ve been working toward it for quite some time now…
So, it is nice to have it somewhat handled, at last.
Thank you. š
Post-a-day 2019
hannah ananas 