Tag: love

Trying something old newly

Today, I was granted the opportunity I have so greatly desire these past few years to compete in a certain category of dancing.  Years ago, it was only normal for me to compete in this category, but then some mental things happened, I didn’t like where I stood with the category, and so I stopped.  Until I had a new perspective and relationship with it all, it was best that I not participate…, though I am only just now realizing the truth to this – at the time, I was just tired of my fear of rejection, and especially the seemingly constant unfortunate partnerships in which I ended up being.

So today, I had a beautiful and brief and clearly god-given chat with someone who gave me my new perspective.  There was barely ten minutes remaining for sign-ups for all competitions, though everyone was pretty much all signed up for everything desired at this point, and a guy near me suddenly turned to me and asked me if I were competing this weekend.

We talked about it.  I explained where I stood with perspective, including my desire for a new one, and he gave me his own perspective, and well as some on-the-spot thought-out ideas.  I was nervous, yet excited, as he accompanied me to the registration desk, and I registered myself for one category, and asked for help in finding a partner for the other category.

Thirty minutes later, I had my partner (who had already signed up, but just without a name for the parent, so we just added my name onto his registration), and I was even excited about competing.

When it came time for competition tonight, he and I had danced maybe four songs together total.  So our fifth ever song was in competition (and sixth and seventh).  I felt a bit meh about our performance, but I was okay with it – we had only just met, and I hadn’t really known the songs too well or at all, not was I in the habit any longer of competitive dancing.  So there were a million improvements to be made to meet just my own standards for making finals in a contest of this caliber.

Sure enough, my sentiments were validate when I  watched the videos of our dances – not bad, but not great either.  Just meh – average whatever mixed with good spurts here and there.  And so I didn’t much expect to make finals, leaving me comfortable with the resulting non-finals-making.  Yeah, it’s a bummer not to make finals.  And I want to be confidently in finals whenever I am in them, instead of being in them by surprise.  You know what I mean?  I want to deserve it without a doubt, as opposed to being mediocre and that being enough.

And so, I am happy that I competed. And tomorrow, I might not make finals either.  That one has been mentally harder for me on the past.  However, I think this is the perfect time and place for me to try it out, give it a go, and keep my head held high, all in preparation for future dancing events.  I want perfection of myself, and competition is a darn good way to work towards that.  I was reminded of that today.  Both parts of it.  So I no longer have to compete to win the competition, but can compete in an aim for my own perfection.  I mean, come on – who doesn’t want perfection when hundreds of people are quite obviously watching?  Hmm??  🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Rain and Love

Last night, as I was heading out from school, I left the well-lit library to find incredibly dark hallways.  As I passed an adjoining hallway, I joked with a group of girls who seemed to be heading in my direction.  We all headed down the hallway and downstairs in a goofy, laughing group, and were met at the front doors by a group of students and pouring rain.  I sighed at the rain, and began to accept my wet and cold fate, but slowly.  I was mostly concerned about my backpack and the fact that I’d only just this week left home without my backpack rain cover.

“No umbrella?” one of the girls asked me.

“Nope.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too!”

There were several other nods to these statements.

“Six people. One umbrella.”  They all laughed, and I with them.

I quickly corrected the ‘too’ to ‘neither’, and we all set out to the entranceway’s outdoor covering, where another group of students was standing around.  With only a brief pause, as though to psych ourselves up, we then shot out into the rain with squeals and laughter and sloshes and splashes in what seemed like every direction.

As we bounded down the hill, I fell behind with calls for being careful on the slippery slope that had developed from our driveway.  One girl called out to me, and urged me closer to her.  She was on her own now, the pack of howling girls just ahead.  But she had the umbrella, so I had little hesitation in joining her beneath it.

As we made our final descent to the train station, she struggled through bits of English to inform me that her grandmother’s car would be waiting for her after the bus, and so she only needed to get to the bus at the station, and then would not need her umbrella, so would I please take it?  I eventually acquiesced, thanked gratefully, and told her to come to my desk the next day to pick up her umbrella.  She was delighted, and so was I.  I was delighted beyond reason at the scenario itself, and I was naturally excited that the contents of my bag were now safe.  What an evening!  🙂
Post-a-day 2017

Good Books

A good book is one that makes you want to stay up as late as possible reading it, even when you know that you get to spend all the next day reading it, anyway.  So, logically, you’d go to bed, so you can wake up earlier and read…, but the book is so good, that you just don’t want to stop.  Yeah, I’m reading a series of those right now, and I have to force myself to do other things in life, instead of just sitting around, reading constantly.  This is a good feeling… a very good feeling.  😛
Post-a-day 2017

Workouts, Teachers, Tears, & Careers

I honestly don’t know how to describe today. It was good and bad and wonderful and horrible and surprising and loads of other stuff, too. I’m not sure there’re real words for it, even. And not in a bad way, of course. Just in an indescribable way. You know?

I guess the best way to describe it is by saying that today was filled with love.

I found out on Tuesday, that one of the teachers at my gym was leaving at the end of the month (i.e. this Friday).  I was rather distraught upon learning the news.  However, I wasn’t too surprised about it – she had always seemed like a superstar in our kind of gym.  We are casual, everyday family, exercising together and having fun.  She is one of the most fit, beautiful, sexy women I have ever known.  And her enthusiasm and real-ness are both top notch.

She has this one class that is insanely difficult, though totally simple, and today was the last time that she she would be teaching it.  Afterward, she kind got a little red-eyed after one lady hugged her after our high fives (she always starts and ends that particular class with enthusiastic hang tens).  When she was saying a thank-you to everyone, I started to redden around the eyes, too.  And, when she started to talk to me while I was finishing putting away my weights and bands, I just went full-out crying, and we hugged multiple times, both crying and saying thank you (in Japanese, of course) to each other.

The gym won’t and can’t be the same without her, though I know it will still be good.  In the midst of my depression, this gym, and especially this teacher’s classes, were the main thing that started me on my road to becoming myself again, and they now have been a fixture in my life.  I have never before scheduled activities around a gym schedule, nor preferred to spend hours at the gym on my own instead of, well, doing anything else.  The gym was my life for a while, and it was what helped me to be healthy enough to find more to be part of my life.  And, now that this teacher and her classes are going to be gone, I can now spend more time doing those other things that I want to be part of my life (because, up to now, I have tended to cancel other activities when they coincided with her classes, because I so loved her classes).

Plus, at some point, I am going to be leaving myself, so I needn’t be too upset at her leaving first.  But that isn’t exactly the point.  Tangent-ish.  Anyway…

The group gave her flowers, and we took a group photo with her, and various folks were crying (or perhaps it was just she and I), and it was super sweet.  

When I asked for the group photo, I got to find out that she is going to be studying instead now – she wants to study physical training and English, and working here keeps her from having the time to do that.  So she’s giving up one love for a greater one. And, when she asked about when I’m leaving Japan, she was all surprised and distraught that it’s so soon (four-ish months), but was really excited for my own plans for what’s next in my life.  She could relate to how I felt about wanting to pursue the things most important to me, even if they seem a bit abnormal or crazy.

Then we took a few selfies together, at her request, even finding better lighting to make sure they were good ones, and then we hugged some more before a final goodbye.  She didn’t ask for solo pictures with anyone else – just the one big group picture.

All in all, it was awesome.  And, possibly the best part, is how much love I felt.  From me to her and from her to me, there was so much love.  I don’t know lots of Japanese (though I understand a good amount), so I don’t typically start much chit-chat with people, simply because I don’t have the words.  I always would find ways to talk with her – often using English, which often resulted in a fun befuddlement on both sides of the conversation.  She was always hesitant to use English herself, but she usually understood me, and I usually could understand her, so it worked.  However, her hesitation with English made me wonder if it were the English or the Hannah that had her be hesitant.  I always suspected it to be the English, but it wasn’t until today that I really discovered that for sure.  She loves me and I love her.  And I believe I have never cried over any kind of teacher the way I cried over her today after our last class with her.
Post-a-day 2017

 

Stuffed Animals

I love stuffed animals.  Really, I do.  I sleep with them almost every night (when I’m at home, anyway), because they give me constant comfort.  These creatures love me for everything that I am and for everything that I am not.  They snuggle and cuddle willingly with me as much as I want, and none of us minds if someone wants to scoot away a bit during the night (though falling off the bed is always a ghastly event, and we work together to bring back the overboard sleeper).

Right now, I have a large elephant from IKEA, who pretends he’s a person, wrapping his “arms” around me whenever I sleep on my side; and I have a small (though, normal for a stuffed animal) dog who typically sleeps on my chest, and who came to me probably a decade or so ago from my childhood best friend, Jennifer.  They are both incredibly soft and wonderful snugglers.  I love having them in my life and I love them.  No matter my day and no matter how I’m feeling, these guys are ready for me each night, and they hold me just a tight as before, surrounding me with love (as best only two can manage when it comes to the surrounding part).

In college, a friend was staying over at our flat one night (I had a full-sized bed), and she said I slept in the jungle, because of all of my stuffed animals.  I really did have a lot at that time, though.  A small, round tiger; a very large Pink Panther; this same dog here; another dog, too, I think; and a few more I don’t quite recall at the moment…  Essentially, it could feel like a full house, even when I was the only person in the mix.  And, possibly the best part is that none of them cares about getting smushed, so I can roll and turn and crush and cuddle however I please, and they’ll all be happy as ever.  

Stuffed animals are possibly better than real people, actually.  I always struggle to snuggle comfortably with people – it’s almost effortless with my stuffed animals, though. Ten minutes max, and I’m out, totally happily asleep.  With people, I shift and adjust and squiggle, until I finally give up and roll away to rest solo.  Yeah,… maybe I needn’t worry so much about having a husband or anything – we wouldn’t be able to snuggle at night like I’d want anyway, so I might as well stick with the stuffed animals.  ;P  Hehe
Post-a-day 2017

Soundtrack to life

Tonight, I dedicate my writing to the songs that make a soundtrack to life.  Riding home on the train this evening, exhausted, watching the lights blip on and off in the darkness as the world glided cooly by, my forehead and hand pressed against the glass of the door to block out the light inside the train, I noticed how the song in my ears was a perfect fit to the soundtrack for that scene of my life.

I truly don’t know what song it was, – something new from NoiseTrade – but I know that it was perfect.  If someone were filming my life at that moment, – what I was watching anyway, and how I was feeling – the song would have been what was playing with the clip.  That hopeful, I can make it, even though life is hard and lonesome at times feeling was so clear, I wanted to know what happened next in the movie.  Alas, it’ll be weeks before the next five minutes of that film make themselves clear (movies are such cheaters on time), but I’ll hang in there – I’m here for the long haul, anyway.  😛

It wasn’t as good as the time I was saying goodbye to the acrobats in Dallas (another time, and I’ll tell all, song included), at which point my life really was like a scene from a movie, soundtrack and all.  But it was still a good one.  It reminded me a bit of the power of music, the things it can do to the mind – give us hope when we’re hopeless, lift us when we’re down, energize us when we’re exhausted, sober us when we’re going a bit nuts-o.  Music is like love, but more easily acknowledged and with benefits more often reaped.

So, tonight, I say a hearty thank-you to music and to those who create it.  Especially to the ones that work so beautifully as soundtracks for life.  Thank you.  Thank you, all.  🙂

 

Post-a-day 2017

 

Life and Movies and Longing

I’ve been a dreadful sort of sick all weekend, though I’ve been mostly un- or half-conscious through it all, so it’s been somewhat tolerable, I suppose.  Finally, today I was able to watch some filmage, as I have been conscious these past seven-ish hours, and I was finally able to tolerate sound.  As I searched for a movie to watch, I got to wondering about the kind of movie I was wanting to watch.

I noticed that none of the movies coming up on the scroll (Netflix Japan) were really appealing to me, although I have enjoyed several of them in the past.  Why do I not want to watch them now, but I liked them at another time, and likely will want to watch them again in the near future (I have had this happen many times, you see)?  What causes that change in preference to happen?

Mostly, I just wanted to watch Mona Lisa, Smile with Julia Roberts (yet again), and I knew it was because I 1)loved the fashion and lifestyle in the film, and 2)wanted to be like Julia Roberts in the film.  And that’s what had it click.  I realized: I’m looking for the life I want.  Rather than sitting here on the sofa in aches and pains, simultaneously wishing to get well asap and to prolong the illness so that I don’t have to go to work tomorrow, I want to be somewhere else, in some other part of life, even in someone else’s life.  And, since I can’t actually do that, I seek this alternative, improved life via film.

I notice, too, that I sometimes do the same with books.  Now, while I do read the ones that peek over the fence to that desirable and unrealistic life I want (think Shopaholic (the book, not the terrible movie that I turned off in disgust after about five minutes)), I make sure to put in the various classics and highly acclaimed books that have to do with depth and such, as opposed to my girlish ridiculousness and fun, so as to keep a good balance.

Though, as I debated about how to word that second-to-last clause, I thought of books that I have loved over the years.  From Bunnicula to Ender’s Game to Shopaholic to Pride and Prejudice, there was always something I desired and somewhat envied about each of their worlds.  The friendships, the sneaking around, the detective mentality, the genius, the fashion and money, the lifestyle, the travel, the love story, the love… they were all things I would love to have in my own life, in my own world of here and now.  It was never merely a girlish crush on the handsome and strong Native American so in love with the female protagonist (I admit, I truly did love reading those bits of Bis(s) zum Morgengrauen and the whole series.), but often something much greater, much deeper.  I wanted, if not the whole thing, a piece of their lives to come to life within my own life’s story.

And so I think it is with the movies I most love, as well.  Why else would I love my favorite films so much as I do?  I can relate to them for how they are like I am, as well as for how I want to be like they are.

And, to further and complete the thought, when I am sick and alone and longing to be in almost any other part of even my own life, the movie I most want to watch will be the one that best depicts the ideal situation for my life right now.

And, for today, I think that is somewhere with a great beach and the perfect mixture of warm and cool breezes, filled with people who are fun and who love me and whom I love, and where I am already slimmed down from my winter warmth weight.  So bring on some Eliza Thornberry or Just Go With It, yeah?  ;P

Except actually.  🙂

 

Post-a-day 2017

 

And Unexpected Story From… Somewhere

Tonight, for whatever reason (aside from the part where one thought links loosely to the next, those tiny threads of ideas drawing you quickly along the ever-unexpected path with them, until you eventually find yourself miles from the original thought, wondering how on Earth you got there), I was reminded of something I wrote a while back.  As I mentioned to my friend when I sent it to her, it is rather messy, and it just kind of came out of me.  One day, the words were just in my head, as though urging me to write them down, and so I did really quickly… It was almost like an ‘I have to do it now’ experience.

I have various theories as to how the story came to me, as well as to why my mind wanted me to write it down on paper (yes, the original is with paper and pen, not computer), but I find them unnecessary to include here, as none of them was present when I actually had the story pouring out of me that odd morning (odd, due to this near-overwhelming necessity to write this story, which had never quite happened to me in such a way until that day).

Anyway, it is sad – dreadfully sad to me, anyway – and it is terrible, and it is a miniature story that asked me to write it down, and somehow got back into my head tonight to get me to share it with the world (well, whatever portion of it will cross this weblog posting, at least).  Enjoy… or whatever… you know…

 

“No,” declared Jessica, exasperated, “I’m not going to call him.”

Yet, even as she spoke, she knew deep down that she would be with him again.  So she wouldn’t call him…, but she’d said nothing about texting.  Or his calling her.

Soon enough, perhaps in a matter of hours, she’d be with him again.  And then, in a matter of minutes, she’d be lying there alone, feeling gross, almost wanting to hurl.  Or else hurl something… he wouldn’t hold her, no matter how she wished it.  He never did…  But, for a few moments, she would feel the pressure of him resting on her chest, and it almost would feel as though it were intentional, as though there were someone – right here and now – who wanted to be with her, who cared for her, who loved her.

Though she knew it wasn’t so.

“This is so messed up,” she would say to him…  And she would mean it.

And yet she couldn’t stop herself.

He was in need, and she could help.  Besides, she had been curious in the first place.  Now she knew.  Perhaps that was a good thing.  If nothing else.  And an icy feeling told her there was nothing else good about it all.

Jessica wouldn’t see how he only appeared to be in need – she was too trusting of him and his word; she had looked up to him for too long to question what he expressed to her.  And so, in her time of extreme need for love, she would leave the love of her friends to go to him, and be robbed of what little she still had, knowingly sacrificing her own happiness and love to help, to serve, to please another.

 

Post-a-day 2017

Dreams that inspire tears

This morning, I woke up in such comfort as I had not known in months.  As I began to come to, though, confusion roused within me.  When I finally discovered where and when and what I was, I pitifully crunched myself under the blankets, smashing my face into the mattress, and resisting the intense, despairing urge to cry.

Why all of this, just from waking today?  My dreams.  I cannot say how many times this has happened, but I do know that it is incredibly rare for me – when I awoke this morning, I initially believed that what had just been my dreams were, in fact, memories from actual events.  They, of course, were only dreams.

On this occasion of dreaming, I was wandering around a warm, beautiful place (beautiful in the sense of the space, as opposed to scenery) with a friend of mine.  His parents were in and out of the events, too.  At one point, we were all participating in a fun effort to help a group play fabulous music (It was like a modern-day version of pumping the organ, but for the musical ensemble as one large unit in need of this pumping.).  We all sighed happily from the effort when the music was finished, and walked separate ways from the band’s setup to relax after the sort of workout.  My friend handed me a local coin, mentioning the nickname people have for it, and thus his reason for giving it to me.  We both laughed as he passed it to me with a slight flourish-esque bow (think old-timey British servants presenting something to the master), and then he gave me a kiss on my forehead, rather casually.

I smiled, and even gave a small chuckle at the gesture, both via the sweet joke about the coin and comparing it to me and the loving kiss.  We each briefly said something else, immediately after which, he casually lifted my chin and gave me a full, brief, and, again, casual kiss, this time on the lips.  I was surprised, though not opposed, and even had willingly accepted/participated in the act.  We both turned to resume whatever it was we were doing before these two kisses, but glanced back at one another as his eyes went wide and he made a face of “Uh-oh.”

  1. He’s not one for public displays of affection.  2.  His parents were nearby.

Naturally, his mother, though across the room, had noticed, as we could tell by her loud and calmly delighted, “Aaaaaaaaah, whaaaat is thaat, exactly, hmmm?”  And his dad expressed a chuckled agreement to the question.

I replied quickly and with honesty and ease, “Oh, we don’t even know, really.  He can’t seem to make up his mind about it, and I’m too lazy to do anything about it.”

And we were all, in a semi-silly way, happy and together and lovingly content.  My friend slipped his arm around my waist, and pulled me into a big sideways hug as I said the words to his mother, and everyone had a nice laugh or chuckle of true and easy contentment.

 

And that was it, really.

And it was all so believable, because of the experience of being there.  It was real joy and caring for one another (all of us) and ease – life was easy with all of us together, where we were, just like it is when I am with family and my closest friend (a different friend from this one).  So, when I awoke this morning, I was going from perfection (you know, the goofy ‘life is perfectly imperfect’ kind of perfection) and the bliss that followed after such an experience, to a cold (literally) realization that my circumstances are actually the opposite from how it felt they were…

How’s that for a start to a Friday, huh?  Though, I do recall how our dreams help us handle all sorts of psychological struggles, it kind of makes me even sadder.  How bad off am I right now that my sub-conscience decided I needed that kind of and that specific dream?  Kind of made me hope for it to have been an accident that I’d had such a dream, as opposed to intentional in any way.

But, after the rough day that has been today, I’d be quite happy to continue these dreams tonight.  Even though they have a near zero percent chance of coming true, I’ll be able at least to go back to sleep in the morning, free and at ease, because it will be Saturday, and one with no specific daytime plans but to sleep in.  And everything feels better when you get to sleep in.  🙂

 

Post-a-day 2017