Tag: love

Skin and Clothes

Okay, so this time all on my own and with my lonesome thoughts has been tough and uncomfortable on me…

🙂

In a way, I’ve been totally fine, yet I’ve been kind of a total mess – I’ve had to sit in some really uncomfortable space emotionally, and, not having any distractions from life has really given me the conscious opportunity to be okay with the discomfort. :/

So, though it has sucked, it has been good for me as a person, I believe… and it will continue to be better and better for me, so long as I persist is allowing the emotions to happen and then to disappear after being heard.

Also, I desperately miss hugs and physical contact right now… another really stressful point for me that has been bringing up a lot of history for me…, yet a good opportunity for me to learn to be my best self, even in the face of no agreement from the world.

I am finally doing a bit of genuine work for work, as of yesterday, and not just waiting around for e-mails most of the day, however, my time has passed greatly in the pursuit of playing music (learned to play the harmonium!), listening to music, making malas, making an art journal, painting, walking, cycling, checking on my friend’s cat for her, cooking and eating food, exercising, sitting on the porch swing, working on photos, watching(?) a few movies, reading books, daydreaming like no other, reminiscing, eating loquats off the tree out front…, and I started a puzzle today… to name a few of my activities 😂

That vein said, this has really been a wonderful time lately of me exploring my self-expression in my wardrobe… one area where I do feel comfortable and at ease.

I just put on what I genuinely want to wear each morning, and I don’t even have a thought of concern when I have to go outside or to the store – I am comfortable and confident in my clothes, and excited by each outfit, every day… and delighted at how varied it all is, and at how I find myself chuckling at times, when I see how much skin is (potentially) visible – I never would have Dared wear such an outfit as some of these before, even at home… let alone Out in the world!

Yet, today’s outfit was just the same: I dressed how I truly wanted to dress this morning, having true fun in picking out the pieces, and then I had to go to two grocery stores…, and I never even considered a need to change clothes or anything, because I was already so okay with what I was wearing – of course it was fine to wear in public.

And so, I publicked in it, I laughed when I realized how I couldn’t possibly have worn or even considered this outfit in the past, and I was overjoyed at my clear progress in this realm of my life.

The outfit:

I know it isn’t exactly scandalous, but that’s exactly the point: It isn’t scandalous – just great, and it happens to show skin (especially when the wind blows).

And I love and loved it.

So, yeah…, there’s that for joy from today and these past couple weeks. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

“Dreams are my reality”

Have you ever been so supremely satisfied from a dream, that, even when you wake up and discover that it was all just a dream and is not, in fact, your real life, you find yourself still feeling satisfied?

Despite the harsh reality that those amazing hours on end of your every wish right now in some aspect of your life coming true were merely a dream, and not how your brain felt and believed them to be, your deep-seeded experience of utter bliss is unshaken – you are nevertheless content…

This morning, I was heartbroken when I realized that I would have to accept that my dreams-come-true had only come true in my dreams…, yet, to my core, I was nearly overflowing with love and satisfaction, so fantastic were those lifelike dreams…

I wanted to cry, yet I didn’t even need to do so, for I was so calm and centered in my cellular and brain-function satisfaction from the night’s adventures… my mind had been so pleased, and my body had responded in kind – I was at ease, and I chose to dwell in such a blissful space for a while, merely lying awake in bed, taking note of how wonderful I felt…, and wondering how I might feel one day of those dreams really did come true, but in no way regretting their having been in my dreams last night – a spectacular dream is always welcome, when it is uplifting, inspiring, loving, and empowering… and this one, these ones, was and were.

And then, blessedly, my day today was supremely satisfying, as well – kind of a beautiful combination from the universe for today… how I would love to have another tomorrow(!).

Perhaps I can start the day right with beautiful dreams again tonight…

Here goes…

P.S. That’s a song from a French movie I saw back in high school… it had a lot to do with a roller rink with a slide, and that’s about all I remember, aside from the song. 😛

A Retirement for the Day

We had a lovely retirement party for my uncle this evening… 35 years working for the same company, doing, essentially, the same work, day after day… completed.

Of course, we are not exactly permitted to be together for a party, so we did a Zoom video conference party – which, actually, allowed even more people to come than would have been able to make it even if we had been allowed to have the party in person, and saved All of us loads of time in driving, and even allowed for last-minute (literally) guests to join the party – and made it a total surprise for my uncle.

I ended up organizing the call, since I was the most apt to figure such computer-y things out, as well to manage a group of people and make things happen the way we want them to happen, and so I arranged with everyone (via a liaison I enlisted – aka my cousin who was originally put in charge of organizing things, but who quickly handed them to me, when we discovered his lack of and my having experience in such a thing) when to meet and how, explained the goal of the quick conference and how it would run, offered up and accepted my mother’s ridiculous idea of our all singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow”, after the initial surprise – yes, we had discussed how we would be all out of synch, but that that merely would add to the enjoyment of my aunt and uncle, who would be the recipients of our group singing – and informed my aunt that we were all ready.

The surprise was lovely, the singing hilarious; the photo I was asked to share was a hit; the ‘quick five, max ten minutes’ for the call turned into 45 minutes; as arranged, my aunt went through and had each of us say something individually, and lots of tears happened, even from those who avoid tears, especially for such occasions as this public one; and we all had a lovely time from all across the country, and even down to El Salvador.

Also, fun fact: the grandparents (my grand, that is) couldn’t quite get the technology to work for video conferencing, due to their having older phones, and so they each were Skyped or telephoned in and held up to the computer screens of others, so that they, too could be part of the celebration, despite their lack of technology or technological skills. 😛

It was adorable.

In short, it was a spectacular 21st century retirement party, in more ways than one.

Our family is no stranger to long-distance and cross-country calling and video calling (and jut working with what we’ve got and making it work wonderfully) – we have had our fair share of people living here or there around the country and world – but this was the first entirely digital event we have had…

And it was actually really quite cool.

Technology is quite spectacular, when we allow it to do its best and we use it well.

I express tonight extreme gratitude to all those who have played a role in the development in technology connected to what our family used today – thank you, all.

Post-a-day 2020

Lazy days of love

Today, I hopped out of bed only six hours after I gotten into it, and headed to my friend’s apartment (where I’m taking care of the cat and watching over the place) to meet a technician.

The technician, named Roland, was incredibly sweet, and even a bit fun for that brief half hour of having him in my life – I hope I was able to bring light to his day as he did to mine.

After that, well, I was already at my friend’s place, and the internet now worked, so I finished watching the currently available online one-hour Cirque du Soleil special, while snuggling with the cat.

I then made a brief trip to the grocer for eggs, and then returned to more time sitting on the sofa, cat pointedly on top of me, legs intertwined with my arms and hands…

I watched the film “Moonstruck” at last – she was 40 and he was 22! – and enjoyed the artistry of it, as well as the comedy and the use of Italian.

Otherwise, I spent the majority of the day and evening just sitting there with the cat, napping off and on together – I guess we were cat napping [Can you cat nap with a cat, can you do it in a hat?]… every hour or so, I’d take a bathroom break from our lazy times on the sofa, and I would stop on the way back to see if I could do a pull-up – I had done my first ever strict pull-up this morning, dead hang, arms locked out, feet off ground, no swinging, strict, chin over bar (without lifting my chin either)… a real pull-up(!!!), and the first in my life…

So, I guess I spent today either lounging and cat napping with a cat on top of me, or in practicing pull-ups…

And, somehow, I am going to bed extremely satisfied… the cat was just as bad as I am in terms of needing that physical touch love today, and it was wonderful and wonderfully fulfilling for my soul… and the pull-up was kind of amazing, too, and also very satisfying. 🙂

A good day… a very good day.

And it is truly a blessing after my struggles last night…, I am extremely grateful for the experiences I had today… I knew I would be okay, and I was today. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Stressed

Why is it so hard?

Because I let myself suddenly believe that something I had carefully placed at the back of my mind and dreams as ‘extremely unlikely, so don’t even bother, honey‘, might actually be not only possible but likely…, and then it seems to be following a path toward not being the case at all, and being disappointingly unlikely, all the more disappointing for the recent hope, and still more so due to the original evaluation of its being unlikely, and yet I changed my evaluation…

So, I not only feel like I am losing a sort of dream, but I feel stupid over changing my mind, and embarrassed at ever thinking it was possible.

And then – as though that weren’t already enough – I have the part of me that believes anything is possible…. and that other tiny part that still, despite the stress, believes that this dream is possible and could really happen, sometime soon, too…

So, it is all so very hard, because I have basically the whole spectrum of positive to negative feelings around it all, each side seeming to be at odds with the other, going back and forth between which one will won out for this particular ten-minute span of time…

Yeah…

Also, I’m tired of having this weight at all – because it does weigh – yet I acknowledge that my dismissing and letting it all go would include letting go of the parts of me that believe it can work out beautifully… and, though I seem to be leaning more and more to the ‘unlikely to happen’ side of things, the fight between the two sides is what makes it feel real, possible, even… without the struggle between them, it wouldn’t be real at all right now… and O want it to be real, so that the possibility of its happening can still exist.

I have not and shall not give up hope… I just feel I need a different approach.

Post-a-day 2020

Friday night sucks…

Let’s talk for a minute about how we live into the future…

You know, on any given weekend, Sunday is kind of the sucky day of the weekend, because we are acutely aware of having to go back to business Monday morning… and then, if we have a vacation coming up, we’re overjoyed and excited all the time, all throughout the day, even if it is Monday morning, and we have work to do…, because our vacation is soon(!)… The boring meeting right now has no power over our cruise that starts Saturday morning…

In that sense, we live into our future, right?

Right.

So, for me, I need to be around people – I need to have my solo time, but I also need to be with people, really be with them… a friend(?) recently mentioned the term “ambivert” to me, and I like it… it very well describes my situation with all of this being extroverted and introverted…, which people almost never seem to understand, by the way…

Anyway, I need people in my life.

For the past two weeks, I have been living with very few people in my daily life… it was enough to get me by last week and the start of this week, but then the working from home this week has crushed all interactions with people in my daily life now…

However, I had work to get me through the week, e-mails to exchange, interactions (though cyber) guaranteed to be had throughout the day…

But tomorrow is Saturday… I have no work, no e-mails, no semblance of human interaction…

And I am miserable… I almost – scratch the almost, I feel like weeping, I am filled with such an experience of stress and of being unloved…

There is that beautiful quote of, “I have called you by name; you are mine,” and, though it is used initially as defining a part of the relationship between God and humanity, I feel it applies to how we interact with all things and beings in our life… when I have called you by name, given you a name of my own, I have given you a place in my heart, and you are dear to me – in some way or other, you are mine.

When people interact with me, call me by name, I often am filled with the love that is present in our relationship, whatever that relationship may be… essentially, when people interact so directly with me, I feel and experience their love for me.

In contrast, when people do not interact with me directly…, I sometimes lose sight of that love…, I sometimes begin to convince myself that the love has faded, and that I am left to myself, to be loved by no one else…

And the experience of that always sucks.

Just saying, it does.

And I know that my love is enough, and I know that the pieces of God that reside within me are enough to sustain me and fill me in every way…

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck to feel unloved by the rest of the world.

I know I will be okay… I will be far more than okay…

I’m just letting myself experience this overwhelming feeling of sick right now, so that, in acknowledging it, in allowing the intense, hiding yet ebbing emotions to express, I am able to let it all go, to release it all in a cathartic convulsing of body and searing tears…

It is already late tonight, but I know that I will go to bed in an intentionally much improved state…, and I will get out of bed in the morning and take care of myself – I will play music and make art and work my body as hard as it needs to release anything else that might remain in the morning… if I cannot focus my love on others, perhaps there is something missing in my love for myself, something on which I would do well to improve… I am worth loving, and I know that and experience that with my whole being… even when I stray to wonder at its being true…

Nonetheless, I will take care of myself… I will do what I wish others would do to show their love for me, because I love me, and I am worth being loved (and even lavished), and being all alone for so long and for so much foreseeable future is scary right now…

But perhaps it is this problem exactly that has me in this situation… perhaps I need to grow more comfortable with providing all the love on my own, so that I become fully clear and comfortable in the fact that I do not need the others’ love – I merely want it.

As I was thinking in a dreamed conversation just today, do you really want to be with someone who needs you?… Would you really choose that over being with someone who wants to be with you?

I have said it before, and it still holds true entirely, I want to be with someone – in all my relationships, really – who doesn’t need me, but who wants to be with me nonetheless… who wants not to be without me, and so chooses to be with me.

It is in times of these feelings of isolation that I wonder where the people in my life stand on this spectrum, to what degrees they want me in their lives…

I have yet to find the far edge of the spectrum of wanting me…, but perhaps it will come some day… soon…

Anyway, I’m off to clean up and get ready for bed, now that I’ve finished this whole cry fest… who would have thought that Friday night and an entirely open weekend ahead could be so upsetting??

Haha

Anyway, this was how I spent my evening: eating fancy stew straight from the pot, while watching the first half of one of my favorite films, which was just recently gifted to me for my birthday, all while detachedly wondering about something that won’t seem to leave me alone lately… (I mean, what are you gonna do, right?… it’s like when a song gets stuck in my head… just let it ride, and it eventually will be replaced by something [hopefully] better, you know?)

Post-a-day 2020

Dreams are my reality*

These dreams feel so real, so vivid… I can almost smell in them… and yet, they are so good, I wake up from them with a seeping feeling of sadness at the loss of them – when I awaken, they end, and I return to a lesser world than the loveliness that was my world five minutes ago.

The tips of my fingers still tingle, and the sides of my arms, too, from the touch of hands and arms in loving embraces.. I can feel the residual pressure on my chest, and the hands in my back… such embraces are filled through and through with satisfying, tactile love…

And, though they are not real in terms of taking place physically, they are exactly what I most need and want, and my mind allows them to be real, so far as my brain is concerned… we already know that watching something being done activated the same parts of the brain as actually doing that something… my mind knows I want this physical expression of love in my life right now, especially considering my current experience of physical isolation, and so it helps to take care of me, to give me what I most want and need… to love me…

And so, tonight again, I suspect, I shall have some more such dreams, and I will encourage myself to be glad of it – it is a beautiful blessing for my mind and brain to take care of me, and I want to respect their efforts with appreciation and gratitude, and to let go easily of my letdown upon waking and discovering that my world has suddenly transformed from exactly what I wanted…

But then…, what I want truly is possible…, so perhaps, one day, it will be my physical reality, and not just in my head anymore.

Now… that would be amazing…

Fingers crossed(!!!).

*Bonus points for knowing the song and singing along!!

Post-a-day 2020

Friends

I believe that, perhaps, one of my favorite things in life in whenever I have the opportunity to experience, even to witness, someone who is in the presence of his or her true and dear friends… when we are with our closest of people, we do not have to ‘try’ to be anything – there is no effort to be made – because we are able simply to be ourselves… that is the glory of friends…

When I am granted such an opportunity as to be able to witness someone I know with his or her true friends, it is truly a blessing and a gift… one for which I am dearly grateful.

In fact, it is one of my favorite ways to get to know someone new… I do not want to bother with either one of us putting our best foot forward, or putting on any kind of show, wondering what the other thinks, whether she might approve, accept me like this, and then, maybe, one day in the very distant future, accept me as myself…

I want to dive right into the truth of a person, who he truly is… who is she, really?

One of my favorite quotes about friendship was sent to me by the friend of a friend, back when I was struggling to find friends of my own, living in France all those years ago… I have kept it in my files ever since he sent it to me, because it so beautifully expressed my own sentiments, I wanted always to have it on hand…

It is:

“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series

Now, imagine meeting a person who is in that state, in the space of being with a friend, all guards and falsehoods down and dispensed… would that not be utterly spectacular?

To see a person for who he truly is, and not for any of the fears or concerns, hurts or airs… just for who she is…, it would be so beautiful, how could we ever want anything else?

In conclusion, I love who people truly are, and I am filled with love at the opportunity and blessing of being able to see people among their closest of friends, where they simply are their best selves, their truest selves… those are the people I want to get to know… and that is how I want people to know me.

Post-a-day 2020

I promise, we worked today

Office talk between a heterosexual male and myself:

…“it has a sexy 32-year-old Antonio Banderas…”

“Ooh!… Just my type.”

And, what’s really great here is that we both were entirely joking, but also totally meant it – he that the sexy man made it worth seeing the film, and I that the same 32-year-old A. Banderas was just my kind of interest. 😛

There is so much to appreciate in that man, especially when younger,… he was beautiful and healthy, handsome, he could act, AND he sang… beautifully… just uh(!) to my gut, he was so lovely and worth appreciating and sharing… all thumbs up(!).

So, there’s that to take away from today… 😛

Post-a-day 2020

I said I’m sorry, Momma…

I never meant to hurt you-ou-ou…. I never meant to make you cry, but tonight, I’m cleanin’ out my closet.

So, as usual, when with my mother today, though we agreed that we always get into a struggle whenever I have to cook in her kitchen, and that it was best that my mom do the cooking (she was already planning to do) alone, and that I wanted to leave by 7pm…, she did not even finish cooking until after 7pm, and she fussed at me briefly for not helping her cook.

::face palm

Instead of struggling in the kitchen, however, I ventured to the attic.

It is a tiny space for storage, for whatever reason, but I had verified a few years back with my mom that it was okay for me to leave just a few boxes-o-stuff until further notice, and without it being any kind of struggle or strain on her in any way, so I had a few things up there.

Of course, creatures had wandered through the cardboard boxes, and humidity or rain(?) had touched one of them, but the contents were all still okay.

(All except that one doll, that is, whose long, curly hair had started to disintegrate, first falling off in chucks, and then all eventually falling out when I went ahead and rubbed it just to see what the result would be…)

I went through two of the boxes, threw away unwanted, unusable stuff, washed some clothes and towels that had been keeping things safe, put various items into the donation box, and saved the handful of items I intend to bring to my house next week (assuming I am allowed by society, of course), placing the box itself, folded up, into the recycling bin.

Knowing what is in the final box and a half, I have a feeling I will be taking a few quick photos and then tossing most of the remaining contents… I have simply reached an entirely new place regarding having things – having so much actually stresses me out… it felt so good to go through those guys today, and to handle them already… they have been a pressure on me ever since I stuck them up there, years ago… I can hardly wait to finish them up, and to move forward comfortably and confidently with what I own.

By the time we were ready to eat, I had not only gone through most of the boxes and handled the contents, but I had vacuumed the hall (for what had fallen from the attic upon opening it), and I had raided my favorites of my mom’s old cocktail dresses, tried them on, and requested to take one of them and to have another re-made for me, both due to my desire to have it fit a bit more comfortably (especially considering that my legs are a lot longer than hers) and to have it not be falling apart (sad, I know).

I also had raided my mom’s record albums, and taken the majority of them off her hands… I originally was just checking to see if she had had one of my own albums that I can’t seem to find, post-Japan, but it turned into, ‘Hey, you aren’t using these… can I take them potentially indefinitely?’… and she has no record player anymore, so she agreed easily.

So, basically, I went to hang out with my mom, pick up something important from her that I need for work Monday, – I know, kind of crazy that we even have work Monday, but we still do, as of this moment(!) – and to eat food together.

As usual, things didn’t quite go as intended… however, I cleaned out the attic, and gained a bunch of record albums… thus my quick reference to one of my beloved childhood crushes at the top of this… it was an attic, not a closet, but oh, well… 😛

Post-a-day 2020