Unpredictable Meteorology

1-3 inches of snow followed by an inch of freezing rain... no, wait... 4 inches of snow followed by sleet for 3 hours... oh, just kidding... snow starting at 4 p.m., continuing until 7 a.m. with mixed rain and sleet and hail... okay, so the snow started at 1:00 instead, and who knows what it will do from here?!

The variability in the weather, and in weather reports, is just as random and volatile as my emotions seem to be.  Yet, as the snow/rain/sleet is literally pouring from the sky, I can't help but feel a sense of calm.  It's so beautiful - to see the view outside your window that was once colored with green and brown and blue suddenly transformed into a crystal-white expanse against a pitch-black sky.  However, it's more than just the change in color; the mood that this type of weather brings is indescribable.  Amidst huge gusts of winds and torrential precipitation, there is a calm that one feels, to be indoors and surrounded by it all.

I want to learn from this weather.  And from the meteorologists who attempt to predict it.  I can see that while things - the weather conditions, events, people, emotions - can be capricious and uncontrollable, one can find a calmness amongst it all through centering themselves.  Regardless of the planning and predicting that I may attempt to use to structure my life and prevent anything unmanageable from occurring, it will not matter.  The weather will come when it wants to in any case, people will change, events will occur, my emotions will fluctuate.  All I can do is find my center, as I find it now with a blizzard raging around me.  And not only that, but to recognize that while what is going on around me and even within me is volatile, it can be beautiful as well.

For this is me, and it is my life, and it is what I've chosen to live.  

Reflection

"Look at me,
I will never pass for a perfect bride,
or a perfect daughter.
Can it be, I'm not meant to play this part.
Now I see,
That if I were truly to be myself, I would break my family's heart.

Who is that girl I see
Staring straight, back at me?
Why is my reflection someone I don't know?
Somehow I cannot hide, who I am
though I've tried.
When will my reflection show who I am inside."


~Lea Salonga, "Reflection"

Where are you, Happiness?

This time in my life has thrown me.  It is not what I expected.  After all, I should be happy... ecstatic, even.  Yet the emotions that run through me are complex and varied:

Melancholy
Hurt
Exhaustion
Hope
Depression
Confusion
Camaraderie
Pain
Affection
Betrayal
Suffering

I suppose I mostly feel confused and conflicted.  I almost feel bipolar; there are times when I feel amazing and all is well with the world and I can find happiness, or at least see it at the end of the tunnel.  But lately it's also felt as though the tunnel is being stretched out, and that the lights illuminating the inside, on the path towards the end, are slowly being extinguished.

I'm not currently in a depressed state.  I suppose it's more analytical at the moment.  But just upon my own observations, and relative to the rest of my life until this point, this is what I notice.

What I'm missing, upon perusing this list, is peace.  I feel as though I must come to peace with myself and the world before I can truly find happiness.  Only with this acceptance and serenity will Happiness, who is currently eluding me, once more be intrinsically in my life.

To Quote "Gone With the Wind"...

I'm wallowing in self-pity tonight.  Which I normally hate to do.  After all, there is nothing productive that can come from self-pity: it prevents you from accomplishing that which you need to do, it feels shitty, you dislike yourself and nearly everyone around you, and it's just depressing and unmotivating in general.  But sometimes it's necessary to get through life.  And sometimes it can't be controlled.  And it will most likely end.

But for tonight, I am drowning in self-pity.  And "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

On the Subject of Love

Love.  This is a topic to which I'm sure I will return time and time again, as it is too deep and complex to cover in one night.  But as I lay in bed, it is on my mind, and my thoughts are random and interweaving.

Does true love exist?  How does one find true love?  I believe it exists, but have no idea when it will be upon me, if it will take work to cultivate, or if it will hit me like a hurricane gust.  And is the person with whom I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life someone I know currently, someone I've been friends with for ages, or someone I'm just meeting or even have yet to meet?

Love, to me, is something precious and priceless.  However, is it something for which one needs to fight, or will destiny bring lovers together in the end?

And can one's heart be in more than one location, with more than one person?  To me, it feels like cheating; it feels unfair. I feel like I cannot fully give my heart to someone when there are other people in the world who hold a piece of it.  And I'm not sure if I even know what love is yet!  After all, I'm young and have not had ample time for love to flourish.  I have not had the experience of loving someone so much it hurts... or rather, loving someone I am with so much that it hurts when everything comes to an end.  I'd imagine it's beautiful - feeling so attached to a person that it feels as though your world is ending when they're gone.  Instead, I live with potentials, yet never fully allowing them to develop.

Why?  Why do I cut relationships off before I give them a chance?  Am I afraid to find love?  Am I holding out for "true love" to hit me?  Am I waiting for someone specific?  Or can love be found with any person, if only they're allowed the opportunity?

There are so many questions I have unanswered.  All I know is that stories like Romeo and Juliet and movies such as "Letters to Juliet" (which I just finished watching in case you're wondering what prompted this blog) move me and touch the romantic inside of me.  They reassure me that although life may not always be long or end the way we expect, there is true love in the world and that I will not let it go once I find it.  Yet, unless God is standing there with a flashing neon sign and an arrow saying "true love, true love," will I see it there in front of me?  Or let it pass me by, thinking that destiny will work itself out in the long run?  I suppose only time will tell...



Dear True Love,
I'm here.  Currently still sorting out life on my own.  But I believe in you. I know you're out there.  We will be together some day, of that I have no doubt.  Until then, take care of yourself.
Love from Simply Me

Sunday Mornings

I awake on most Sunday mornings without my alarm clock - for who could possibly set an alarm on the weekend?! - to a large sigh and the thought: "It is Sunday."  And while this, for most, is a calming feeling, for me it seems always to bring immediate anxiety.  I'm not talking about panic-attack anxiety, more just a general underlying disquiet.  After all, Sunday mornings are supposed to be peaceful.  You're supposed to either sit around  most of the morning in your pajamas or put on your nice clothes to sit in serene reflection in church.

Yet, for me, most Sunday mornings cause confusion.  I want that peace that a Sundays, stereotypically, bring upon arising.  I want to be able to lay in bed, thank God for everything he has given me, and just enjoy that moment of being awake and alive in a world such as this.  But therein lies the problem: this world in which we live.  Or at least, this world in which I live.

My thoughts, on Sunday morning, begin with "sigh -  It is Sunday" and immediately jump to, "It's Sunday.  Which means tomorrow is Monday.  So what needs to be done first that I did not finish this past weekend?"  How can I find peace with that?!  With the immediate ordering of a To-Do list going on in the background of my head, I try to stay where I am  - comfortably tucked under the covers, nice and warm in my bed, still half asleep - but my mind has begun the whirring.  It's in the background, like the white noise of a TV when it's not all the way turned off (I despise that noise, by the way), but it's there as an annoying buzzing in my ear so that, try as I might, I cannot relax, I cannot be grateful, I cannot be in peace.

So to me, Sundays are a contradiction.  They say (Who is this "they" anyway?  I want to meet them) that Sundays should be a day of rest, but how can one rest in the world when there is so much to do, and so little time in which to do it?  I feel like the change must come within me - that I must learn to close my mind to my To-Do list and my stresses, and just be.  This is my goal.  I know it will be hard work, for I'm a person who always has at least one more thing on her plate than she has the capacity to complete, but I feel like just 30 minutes to myself, to just exist and enjoy the moment, will be enormously rewarding.  It doesn't need to be on Sunday mornings - in fact, I'd rather I could find this serenity at any moment - but Sunday mornings are when the lack of this peace are most apparent.  After all, they say we're supposed to be productive each moment, work hard, and get things done, yet they also propose a day of rest.  Contradictions prevent peace.