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Finding Magic

Sometime, 8 years ago, I wrote an honest blog wanting for someone…anyone…to recognize my self-worth. To find me special. To say that I was not an option. 

8 years later, I would have the most magical, open, and perfect year to teach me I had been asking the wrong “anyone” to find me special. 

Have you ever felt your heart cracking open? I’ve mostly ever felt it in a painful way. Though, I can recall a time, a year after I wrote that blog, when I was learning how to ask for help. And then when I was in grad school learning that I had grown up too early and certain things I’d always ignored were in fact not okay. Then when I first step foot in an Al-Anon meeting. And most recently when I finally told him to never speak to me again. 

It feels as though I am tugging at the edges of my heart as though I’m ripping open a buttoned-down shirt. There is sunshine and immense clarity in the midst of a waterfall of tears. In my case, the tears have little control. They just come. But they aren’t sad.

After all the good of this year, I have cried. I keep thinking it’s because I’m so overwhelmed with the pure love, support, joy, utter happiness, and truth I’ve quite possibly spent my entire short life looking for.

Once I delivered the letter to his work, ending it once and for all, the literal world opened up for me. Our final argument was me trying to express how I had zero control in the relationship. Everything was according to him. Feeling completely out of control, I needed to be acknowledged as an actual person with some control in the relationship. That was something he refused to do. 

I accepted it. I had enough strength within me to know that I am a full-fledged human who never, ever deserves to be treated as a mannequin for only adult activities. (Seriously, I pass my medal wall multiple times a day. I’ve got stories for weeks. But his one race he ran amounted to more than I ever did…the number of times I was subjected to the one story versus being heard and respected). Okay, enough of that. 

So the world opened up. I could see brightness everywhere. I finally earned a new job- a job that I had been trying to get for over a year. I was finally the me who was ready for the job. It was as if somehow all the job gods knew I just wasn’t going to be ready until I let go of the bad. I traveled with friends and hiked on grounds I’ve never touched before. On those grounds I reflected on how strong and genuine I am, continuously, with the right supports around me. I finally went back to UMass for homecoming.

When I sat in the stands among my sisters and fellow UMass alumni, my entire body fluttered. Waiting for the halftime show to start to see the Marching Band which made the entirety of my college experience, I couldn’t help but think, “I’m healing.”

The last time I had visited to interact with my sisters, I brought with me a boy who would destroy me in 3 months. I continue to want to show this part of my life to a partner. Though when I was there this year, having just let go of 8-year (time) boy, I had no inkling of wanting to share the experience. At least with anyone who didn’t want to be there. I was with me, with people who knew me, understood me, and accepted all my idiotic bossiness and craziness. The people who did not judge me for me. 

I felt hugged without being physically hugged. Being me was incredibly safe. “I’m healing,” I continued over and over, to myself. There was something about coming back home that made me feel as though, this is me, unapologetically, and I needed the reminder of me when supported with love.

I told my dad the truth. After hiding the last 8-years out of “respect” I told my dad everything. About my actions and how I had let a boy treat me. There isn’t much I’d like to say about this other than the conversation resolved the bulk of my remaining grief. I let out a true sigh of relief. I concluded that if I ever must hide a relationship out of “respect” to my dad again, it’s not truly a relationship. Anyone else can fill in the lines of what it is. 

The new job, I was told I wouldn’t like it from my former boss – emphasis on the former – it has been a complete dream. In that I’m always exhausted and can’t tell how many fingers I have, and that everything is blissful. I’m at a point in my career where I am able to work, really WORK, use my brain, create services, solve problems and execute solutions, all at 1000mph. I am the adult in the room trusted to do my work and expand it. With that comes a lot of responsibility. Though it is responsibility and work I was pleading to have.  

Everything feels new. But mine and not judged, just cared for. I feared returning to the Maryland area initially. Now I don’t because I know my power can’t be taken away. I have actually said to myself, “I’m okay,” time after time. I mean screaming “I’m not okay” (My Chemical Romance) is still cool and all, but I actually feel okay. I wasn’t aware of what that feeling was. 

I know that I’m an incredible person. I believe it. I know that no one will ever take that away from me again. I’m smart, funny, weird, romantic, a persistent advocate above all else, and special. I know me….well right now. I am pro-change. 

I don’t feel the regular loneliness I would have felt this time of year: from being angrily alone or the standard second thought. Instead, I feel so content and secure with me. I’m okay with me. I have hope, real hope, that someday a man will appreciate my quirkiness and ambition…rather truly support it. I don’t feel a need to go hunting for it. I just have hope that a good man will love me in the right and safe ways. 

This has been a year of magic. I owe it to all my friends who have been there with me and provided me opportunities to finally say yes to. To those friends who never gave up on me. I owe it to my dad for being my forever person. I owe it to myself for finally saying No to the one person who deserved it and deciding to live my authentic life. 

  • Years ago I would end a post with a playlist or a witty video. Those have been removed from the ether…somehow. However, I sincerely hope this video does not disappear. It is incredibly important. For women. For all.
  • “I want a big life. I want to experience everything. I want to break every single rule there is. They say ambition is an unattractive trait in a woman. Maybe. But you know what’s really unattractive? Waiting around for something to happen. Staring out the window, thinking the life you should be living is somewhere out there, but not being willing to open the door and go out there and get it. Even if someone tells you you can’t. Being a coward is only cute in the Wizard of Oz.” -Midge Maisel, 4 minutes
2023
12/31
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CATEGORY
A Story
Finding My Wild-A Romance
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Nothing Changes (Short Story)

This is something new. Something I haven’t posted to this blog yet, but I’m a little tired of writing about my own life. So for the remainder of the year I’ll be posting these short stories. Enjoy!

*****

Jenny had been driving for three hours. Where she was going, she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure if she would ever reverse her direction. But all she knew is she needed her phone to die and soon.

He kept calling and when her voicemail filled up, he was intermittently messaging her. She had notifications from any messaging outlet. He was trying and he didn’t deserve to.

Jenny combed her fingers through her hair once more and rubbed her eyes. She needed to stay awake through the dark, open road. Just long enough to get away.

There was nothing for her anymore. She wasn’t happy with her job. She had no family; at least in the Midwest where she had thought she would escape to a year and a half ago.

She thought she had seen everything, met all the people she would from her time growing up in North Carolina. After the last man had broken her heart she needed something new. She needed a different atmosphere and different people.

It was what she did. When Jenny was bored, when she believed there was nothing left for just her, she ran to a different area of the country in hope that something would be different.

But right now she found herself driving east. To what she might know. To something that could be comfortable, predictable, and broken.

A semi-truck coming from the opposite direction had blinded her as she fought back tears for the eighth time that night. She used the sleeve of her neon green runner’s jacket to wipe away what salted liquid had managed to release.

The edge of her sleeve was cold and wet from the first and only time she really allowed herself to cry hard. And that was all she would allow. It didn’t take long for Jenny to crawl back in her shell. No one would touch her, no one would know.

No one would see the pain she felt and felt guilty for having. All she would show people was what was easy. She had been down the path of letting go of her shell too many times. Too many times wasted letting someone understand her. Too many times wasted caring about someone who had meant nothing but pain.

Jenny was shackled to hiding herself. And if she ever let it go, the shell was still right beside her waiting for her to crawl back in. As though the universe, the pull, knew that whoever she had just opened up to would leave just like the last; so better not to run very far from the shell.

But when she did, when she had moved time-zones she believed it might be safe enough to keep her shell packed up; unshackled and wrapped in bubble wrap in a cardboard box.

Her phone lit up and the hum of Edward Sharpes Janglin felt like a pounding in her head. She saw the glimpse of his name across the front of the phones screen as she grabbed it and threw it out her window.

The only reason she hadn’t turned it off was to let the phone wear out. For no one to be able to find her when it was gone. If she turned it off, the battery would still be able to function should have decided to turn it on. And if she did, she would be bombarded with the messages, the faint sound of his voice, the promise that he would still find a way to get to her.

She needed it all gone. She needed to have no remembrance of him. She would think enough about the times he held her, he listened, he carried her around like she was a weightless being and too precious to walk over a puddle. She would think enough about how he had another woman sitting on him.

In their bed…. Really it was hers that she had moved from North Carolina and later into an apartment with him. It was her favorite, perfect, high-rise bed and he ruined it.

She saw his hands on another woman. Jenny had seen him thrust himself into that woman and pull her down to him. Jenny had seen the clothes scattered on the floor as her thoughts and image of what she believed him to be had scattered from her.

She had run from the scene slamming the apartment door and her car door putting all her strength on the gas. Was this her fault? Why it happened time after time and it never mattered whom she had been with. Did she continually do something wrong? Was she not something to every man she’d been with that they needed to seek what she wasn’t and they never bothered to tell her?

She refused to love. To care like she wanted to be cared for. Was that it? But that was a lie. She had loved every time she intended not to. She had trusted him. Believed that this would be a change with a new kind of man…but they were all the same.

Jenny’s thoughts had tired. She needed to hide somewhere. But she had no way to warn her best friend she was coming. Just after sunrise she would arrive with tears, a soggy sleeve, nothing, and nowhere else to go.

She would arrive at his house welcomed by the bark of his dog. She would have to explain why she had disappeared a year and half ago. She would need to plead for his help even when she wanted nothing from him. She would hope that the second to last man to break her heart wouldn’t be the one opening the door.

She embraced the convenient silence of the road in the middle of the night and the purring of the car engine as she powered east. She would accept this strange rock-bottom place, never care again, never come out of her shell.

Jenny was heading back to a place she once called home where she could stall anyone from ruining her façade. She rubbed her eyes as an orange hue peeked through the clouds. She saw the pitiful sign welcoming her to North Carolina. She believed it was all over now.

*****

This came with perfect timing….

2015
10/24
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CATEGORY
A Story
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The Hopeless Romantics Ruin it

“There are two types of people in the world: hopeless romantics and realists” –Stuck in Love

For those wondering, Stuck in Love is pretty much part two of Crazy, Stupid, Love. And it’s definitely worth seeing.

The line above is spoken by the cynic daughter in the film. She has seen a lot and in turn given up on a lot. She constantly gives herself up for one-night stands refusing any emotional connection with anyone because she doesn’t believe anything pure and honest exists. When a boy very cutely forces his way into her life, she later has a turning moment. They are sitting in his car going over their interests and in order for her to understand his favorite song she needs to close her eyes and listen to it. In this vulnerable state she begins to cry and says, “I don’t wanna get hurt.” To which he replies, “I’m not gonna hurt you.” Further on she asks for his help becoming less of a cynic.

Yet the line above was still very much representative of her character and I believe something that may be able to be blended.

I also saw Lola Versus recently and it re-sparked the Cinderella effect. I have briefly talked about it before, but most, all, girls grow up in the Cinderella effect. With the love of shoes- yes, but knowing that someday no matter who you may be (or if your fairy godmother steps in) your prince will come find you and sweep you off your feet. I’m only 22, but I have wasted half of my life in this Cinderella, hopeless romantic phase.

I started out this blog with how I thought relationships were and why they don’t work in this hopeless romanticism. Hopeless romantics are for the movies, and books, and music, and that fantasy world that we all like to drift off to. I realized there was more to my life around the time when I gained my independence and left home for the first time (in high school). Understanding that this hopeless romanticism wasn’t real was heartbreaking to me. Understanding everything that was cruel, and real in my life; I became a cynic.

But somehow, and not entirely and I’ve been able to blend what is a hopeless romantic and a realist. There is that difference between the cynic and a realist, I just say it like it is. I don’t hide anything because whats the reason, unless I’m trying to make something magical for the kids I’m teaching. I can’t buy into Disney or anything else like that. I like what’s plain, honest, and real.

That’s not to say there isn’t room in there to stretch for the romantics. Sure, like I’ve said having a man by my side would be nice, but for now I’m creating a life for myself. The romantics for me are when I escape on the brightest day or even the day when the sky is grey and the rain is falling. I go on a drive to nowhere, roll down my windows, and blast some music as if I’m the only one in the world. Or after a good, long day of work, when I drive away smiling, accomplished, and then I can simply enjoy an hour of solitude. For now, this is my hopeless romanticism.

I doesn’t mean I need to be swept off my feet now or ever. But I believe in the honest and pure.

“To love yourself, you need to learn to love other people” –Lola Versus.

I always thought that in order to love another person you needed to learn to love yourself. It has been one of my mantra’s for many years. However, hearing this the other way, it also makes sense. You need to be tolerable, you need to be able to make space in your heart, and you need to be able to care for people in the way that they desire. Once you have the capacity to accept another person and give them what they need, it is a step to becoming selfless. You can love yourself for something other than simply you.

We can spend our whole lives working on ourselves and perfecting ourselves, but without someone else there, without being selfless to other people and loving others, then what have you done with your life? Your project was you and there’s no one to share with?

After all, my favorite quote is: “No man is a failure who has friends”– It’s a Wonderful Life. 

2013
10/14
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A Story
The Fluctuating Life
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The Truth Within the Stories we Teach Ourselves

Note to the reader:

We read stories on a daily basis, so I’m sorry, but I’m giving you yet another story. This story is personal though. It is entirely real. This took place over a year and a half of my life between the fall of 2007 and the summer of 2009. Nothing in here is made up or embellished. What I want to project to you is that you can have a story, just like I have here. You may notice that there are two stories though. There is one story through music lyrics and media quotes which you will find on the forefront of every page. When you pull out the sheets of paper from each envelope you have my real story. I want to show you that there is a difference between the fictional story and the story we live, but that while we are told to believe to trust the fiction and then to not trust it as the world evolves with our growth, there is still hope for our own story, we just need to let it happen. So relax and follow along. My story is my own and nothing more.

 “We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be “interesting” to know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest or is about to be, the Aristophanic view, snatched back to the human condition by the fireman in priest’s clothing just visible in the window behind her, the one smiling at the telephoto lens. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

            Or at least we do for a while. I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition but one I found troubling” (Didion 11).

I have tried very, very hard to doubt all stories, but there’s something in me that won’t let me lose hope. I try to believe that everything that is a story is not reality. That what is written cannot be replicated or acted out because it does not reflect true human actions. Maybe I just haven’t had much hope for love and romance. But maybe that’s because I haven’t experienced everything that is possible and what I have been taught is what every girl has been told to believe. It is a flaw.

When we are young we believe in the stories of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, waiting and dreaming of the one day that we will find our prince and he will come to our rescue in some over-dramatic scene we have spent years imagining.

It’s never going to happen.

There is no such thing as a prince and there are no over-dramatic scenes. It’s just life. I realized the flaw in the stories I had been told to believe, or rather it isn’t a flaw, it’s just that they aren’t real and it took me a REALLY long time to figure out that these are only stories.

But then something happened that made me wonder…maybe those stories aren’t real and are made to ruin women’s perspective of real life, but what if we can all have our own story anyways. What if it can still be as magical as Disney makes it. It might not always have the happy ending as we are expecting, but what if everything before the end is perfect. What if the ending is just inevitable….

An Addendum to the beginning:

I’m not going to discuss the whole first nine months of this relationship because I’ll be the first to admit it, I went all weak girl: “I need a man to take care of me, I’m in high school, why doesn’t he care more”. That kind of bullshit.

It was my first relationship. He was my first kiss. I could have been kissed several times before, but I’m a difficult girl and the only way this guy was able to kiss me was when I was mid-speech. I didn’t know how much of myself to put into this relationship. I wasn’t sure how attached I should be. So after one overly dramatic confession of “I love you” and him being there for me exactly when my Grandmother passed away, I clung on to him and pretended like I needed him to take care of me at every possible moment. Some advice to all women, you don’t ever need anyone to take care of you. Especially a man. It might be nice every now and then, but you are a self-sufficient person just like everyone else. Back then, I was immature and it led to the relationships first demise. I thought that a relationship should be like the stories I had always fantasized over. I was trying to live them out. It affected everything and made it all a lie. I was trying to live something that wasn’t real and he was trying to live something that was honest. The two did not match up.

2012
04/27
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CATEGORY
A Story
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