Have YOU seen this missing mini pony?

Now that I'm back to school hopefully these blogs will become more funny and informative and less introspective again. I suppose introspection is to be expected when one has alot of alone time.
I'm halfway through my first week and have experienced all of my classes except for Armenian Culture which is once a week on Fridays. My first day back was an okay start with Conversation French but I started to panic as our first assignment was an oral autobiography. I HATE speaking French in front of any sort of class. This sounds stupid coming from someone who is a French major. I don't mind one-on-one conversation where I can take my time and find the words, still sounding like a retard, but at least its only in front of one. In all of my classes it feels like I'm the worst one, although I'm sure quite a few others feel the same. Tuesday came and my next two classes were also French but upper-level this time. These are classes I shouldn't be in, but have to be in order to finish my major and graduate on time. I am only catching about 50% of the lecture in both classes, which is problematic since one of them is a lecture course on French Civilization. By the time I left school at 7pm after being there since 11am, I was ready to throw in the towel. My Pop Culture class is nearly 3 hours long and with the first class always being incredibly boring with administrative stuff I was bored into a headache. I don't mean to be snotty but if you can't figure out how to log onto a website per written instructions I suggest you ditch college because you're beyond help. I don't like to be bored, I don't like to go slow, and I don't like to be hand-fed simple information. It's always been hard for me to step back and realize that not everyone thinks like me. This is half the reason I picked a foreign language major, everything else arts, English, or humanities related would have been a cakewalk and I need to be challenged. This knowledge doesn't, however, stop me from being a baby about having to work harder.
Surprisingly enough today has been the most fantastic day. Not for any reason in particular, which is the best part. I got some sleep, did most of my ridiculously long to-do list, and after checking out the syllabii from my classes I readjusted my attitude. I may not get the grades I want necessarily but I will be fine. I even stopped being anxious and silly about the autobiography presentation, which I didn't even have to give this morning. I bought some new music on iTunes the other night and one song in particular was my anthem the entire time I was in the car....Bonfire by Third Eye Blind, off their new album. Also check out Ingrid Michaelson.

There's been some sort of shift in me about everything that I've been pondering this summer and now I know I've surpassed so many of my stumbling blocks. I was literally laughing in the car to myself...just happy. I think I've finally reached a new level of confidence and concreteness in myself. I wish I could articulate why but I just can't. Maybe it's simply because being absolutely concrete in who I am obliterates all worries and doubts when it comes to my relationships. It's been amazing to watch alot of my friends realize their lessons and come into their own. These are usually things I pinpointed ages ago as simple guesses with my perceptiveness. I think it's building my confidence in my intuition to finally be proven right over and over. My point is...I know what's going on!! Life is crazy, and weird, and always surprising, but if you can pay attention to the signs, the details, you can start to see the pattern. Shannon always says I read too much into things. Maybe that's true but practicing being aware makes perfect.

Hurry up and wait OR Be Here Now

School starts Monday...darn! I am both excited to go back to classes and 'blah' about it at the same time. I didn't get the exact schedule I wanted, which means I have to take an extra class but at least it's one that's online. I'm enjoying the last week of freedom but mostly I'm just bored. Not exactly bored but right now I am struggling with patience and waiting. Everything I want is concreted into a process. It will all happen, it just has to happen eventually. I'm working on getting the discipline to stop wasting my time sitting around waiting for it but to live in the now and get stuff done. It's not that I don't have stuff to do so it's just a matter of shifting the focus. I'm very much the kind of person who will stay up all night to get something done that needs to be done and none of these things call for that kind of work ethic.

There has been alot of relationship-type news this week from all fronts and most of it makes me want to scream, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE?" Are we so fundamentally opposed to being alone that we marry in haste, or deal with crazy people, or get married at 19, or any number of stupid things I've heard this week. What is so wrong with solitude?? Not saying I've got it all together or that I do everything right, but with the wealth of bad examples around me I don't see any reason not to be absolutely cautious before jumping into something with another human being who is just as flawed and full of issues as I am. And no matter what our emotions say, love is not enough. I've loved a number of people in my life that I would not be able to stand on a daily basis. Really LIKING someone is key, also getting to know them well enough that you figure out their flaws and decide whether or not they're flaws you want to deal with is helpful. Everyone has them, and we all have different things that we will and will not handle. I'd rather not do all this figuring out after the fact. More important is knowing myself. If I don't know myself and my good and bad points, what I like and don't like, how on earth will I be able to accurately assess a decent partner. It's like walking into a car dealership with no idea what you want or need. 5 hours later and you're walking out the door with something that may or may not have decent gas mileage or trunk space and then you spend the next however long realizing that something else would have fit you so much better. But at least it's pretty on the outside, right? And it seemed like a good idea at the time because of the adrenaline rush of actually purchasing something that's just yours. What kills me more is the people who have had failed major relationships including marriages and have no issue jumping right back in. Someone failed to learn their valuable lesson here. Maybe my standards are impossibly high. The fact that I've only met about 4 people in the last 10 years that even come close to good enough might evidence this but I dare you to tell me that I need to lower them. I've had enough experience to know exactly what I do and don't need in a partner and I'm not afraid to wait for it. I may not LIKE waiting for it, but I'll do it anyway. I grew up in a war zone and I refuse to reconstruct that for my future. Obviously I am slightly annoyed at this point but I just have trouble understanding what everyone else is thinking.

'This time next year you will wonder what on earth you'd been so worried about'

I have been home from Paris for about 6 weeks now. The summer is flying by and before I can even blink I will be back to the daily class grind. Maybe because I was in Paris I didn't notice the warning signs of the coming avalanche that is now my life. I'm sure there were little trickles of shale, a golf ball sized rock or two, along with a couple of tremors but no inkling of the massive build up of just life that has swept me off my feet. I've done alot of life experimenting now that I'm back to my real life. I wanted to keep up the momentum of experiences that was set in motion in Paris. There was no reason to just sit on my couch and do nothing just because I'm at home. I think I've managed fairly well. Los Angeles has so much to offer if you just venture out into it. I've had some amazing random nights out in West Hollywood where it's a normal evening for people to be standing on the street corner handing out free hugs, and you never know who you might run into. In addition there has been alot of Pool Party USA time with my girls. The making of essential new friends. A hilarious night of shooting music videos with puppets. BBQs and Taco Tuesdays. A first Ethiopian food experience. Drinks and music and dancing. Visits from long lost friends that will always be near and dear no matter how long it's been. The most amazing kiss of my life to date. A much needed mystical encounter. Nights of insomnia where, for once, it was me making the 2am phone call to someone else. Plenty of nights where I was receiving the 2am hysterical phone call. And there have been sunsets...exquisite moments of stillness and beauty. There is just so much going on and everything has such a momentum to it that I feel like one of the kids when Rob or Walker would take their hands and spin them around in the backyard. I am suspended in the air, secured only by the grip of those around me, and the world is rushing past me. Of course I am laughing, loving every minute, but I am dizzy all the same. Dizzy, and overwhelmed. There seems like too much all at once and I'm trying my best not to be afraid.
Last summer on my birthday I had a vision of the woman I wanted to be. She was confident, secure, classy, with perfect hair, and a really fantastic pair of shoes. At that point I had no idea how I would ever get there because it doesn't take a genius to realize that you can dress up every single day and that doesn't buy you class or sophistication. It's like there was this giant black abyss between who I was and who I saw myself becoming, and what's worse is that I had no idea how to even go about getting there. Little did I know that a little time and faith, and life will lead you where you need to go, it provides the way. I am not there yet, but I feel like that dark divide is getting smaller and smaller until one day I will just be there. I correct myself, because I don't feel that it is smaller, I KNOW that it is. I had no idea the 'becoming' would be so painful. It's crazy the people who end up teaching you things and even crazier when a 9 year old and a 4 year old can bring your past and your future crashing together without even being aware of what's happening. I feel like I am on the brink of getting everything I ever wanted in life and that adds a new scary dimension of "well now what?" It's easy to want, you know where you stand, it doesn't require much of you, and more than anything it's safe. I like being safe, but I like expanding more. If you aren't living most of your moments scared out of your mind then you're not living up to your potential. Leaving room for possibilities leaves room for the universe/God to bring in more amazing things than we were even able to imagine existed.

I have been struggling because my heart is a willful child who does what it wants without consulting me. It doesn't listen when I tell it to stop running so fast or to put down the scissors or to stop talking to strangers. But the point is that it doesn't need to listen to my silly head. A head filled with doubts and the opinions of those around me. It only amplifies the fears that are collected from a lifetime of heartbreaks and disappointments and the little voice on your shoulder that tells you to be careful, you don't want to be stupid AGAIN, you don't want to be heartbroken AGAIN, you can't trust that ridiculous child, give it any leeway and it'll jump you off a cliff. I finally realized this morning that I'd been listening to my head too much and I've been angry with my heart for all the times I feel it's led me astray. Angry that it could even consider doing the same thing to me again. All the times I've loved someone and it didn't work out or was unrequited, or felt secure in some circumstance and it changed. What it's taken me all this time to realize is that my heart is the only thing that I can trust, the only thing that makes any sense when there are so many words and details I can get bogged down analyzing. The people I have loved in my life have all led me to where I am now. I've been thinking I need to battle myself and my emotions, squash them, manage them, put them in a box so they can't torture me at night. I have been thinking so wrong. Perfect love is freeing for both the party doing the loving and the object of that love, whether it be a friend, or whoever. It means that you love them enough to want them to be happy, even if its not with you, or them not doing what you think they should. This love creates a fullness and a healing for the person doing the loving. Obsession is the antithesis of this, it's selfish and restricting and usually mistaken for love. The right kind of love allows for a release in both parties and whether that love comes around to meet yours or not it won't even matter because of what's been gained by simply allowing it to just be. I have been instructed by so many to figure out how I feel, to put a label on it, and up until this point I have been at a loss and I couldn't understand why. I realize now that it's because I've been cripplingly obsessed out of fear for myself and the outcome. I can now accept that what I feel is love because I've risen above all that and truly let go. Release of the stranglehold on something that refuses to be held brings such peace. There is no need to be afraid, as Rilke says, "life is in the right, always." It may bring us what we want, but if it doesn't it will bring us more, and it will be sweeter than our sweetest dream.
This life is difficult and rocky, but that's why we have people around us to hold our hands and break our fall...to pick us up, crying, off the floor when putting a beautiful little boy to bed touches a soft spot of emotion so deep we didn't even realize we had it in us. Life demolishes and rebuilds, and yes, it hurts, but the end result will be truly amazing. It's all about faith after-all. Faith that life knows what it's doing. Because it does.