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.
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