Letting Go

Its been a few years now and yet sometimes my dreams reflect the bruises left by my past. I've gone through the steps; denial, hurt, anger, understanding, forgiveness.. yet why am I tormented by dreams of the past? You never forget the things that makes you who you are, you carry the experiences with you forever dictating your life by what you've learned from them. I hope that I take away from my experiences, empathy and mercy. From what it stole I have now retrieved. If I could completely let go of the faded memories that create tattered responses to a long ago cause maybe I could move on with my life... Even though I still have the remnants of a bad experience the baggage has significantly decreased. The child harboring hurt until it imploded has now been replaces by a woman not afraid to speak up and give a voice to the past. I am not afraid to speak up, walk away, and live my life.

Maybe its bad, maybe its not. but all I know is what's going on inside my head. The force of my recognition has tapped into my writings now, captured and held them hostage. Its a passion that's fiery and bold defiant and cold yet the root is simple emotion and for the first time I'm experiencing it. I now understand the consistency of it and I'm not sure If I'm ready to relinquish myself to it... Its a beast that I'm attempting to slay yet have become the slain. Its quick and painless until its taken you and then your stuck in the whirlpool forever drowning. Somehow it manipulates you to do the unthinkable, unimaginable, and at times truly extraordinary. Its terrifying exhilarating and amazing, and finally it's mine.

My mind is crowded. I need my life to be as easy to organize as stack of papers. If only I could go through my normal routine and sit in the middle of my floor, stacks of papers around and make order of the chaos. That would just be too easy now wouldn't it? Instead I'm stuck contemplating my current dilemma... I've become swept up in my emotions and found that I've fallen for someone, someone who I can't stop thinking about and that is a dilemma... My mind belongs to me yet somehow someone else has taken up residency in it... I worry that my writing will reflect that yet my writing always reflects my emotions. I'll need to learn how to channel it but until I'll enjoy it and revel in it because its now where I am in my life.

miss you

I thought that not feeling anything other than a desire for freedom and carving out my own place in this world was all that I would need. I reveled in the fact that I needed no one but my freedom and that everyday was an adventure full of mystery and no attachment. I was conmpletely free of emotional attachment. Yet I'm home for the night from college, I fly to Michigan in the morning to spend a week with my wonderful sister and brother-in-law relaxing and doing the things that sisters do to corrupt one another but something else is tugging at me. There's a small town that someone once told me "If you blink you'll miss" that holds something dear to me. Its not blinking that is making me miss Iva though...

I've never considered myself one to be very superstitious but I've always believed in signs. I've grown up into a world where everyday I find proof of a greater plan, a master design, a purpose for everything, yet sometimes even though all the signs are there, I still hold out. I would say its a fear of being rejected but that's not true. I fear settling for something that causes me to lose my whole self and miss out on the greater things in life. I was with a man, really a boy, for a very long time. In those years we were together I lost a large piece of myself in order to measure up to his twist view of what I should be. When I broke those chains and broke away from him I promised myself that I would never sacrifice my hopes and dreams for a life I wouldn't have otherwise chosen. Since I've made that decision I've stopped letting anyone get close to me in fear that I would fall for them and in return have to be the decision to be with them and follow their path or be free yet alone. A struggled with this for a year before I met him. I wouldn't say I believe in love at first sight, but I do believe in an instant connection because there was something about him that made me gravitate towards him. I'm a very guarded person, even with my family, but somehow he's managed to break down several barriers that has taken those I love the most years to climb, much less shatter. I'm not saying he's managed to do this with every wall and that he is the answer to fixing my problem. I have learned that only me can make me happy and I'm good at doing that. But I am saying when I look at his face, its the face of a man who genuinely cares for me; and to see that in his eyes is like being a child waking up on Christmas morning and knowing you got every present you asked for because to me it is, God's given me the present I've wanted but never would ask for.

Happy

I've been going through the motions of my everyday life for the last year, I've settled into college life, I've accepted my individuality, and I had decided that being one of one instead of part of a whole was just fine with me. Forgive my metaphors, but to come out and say that I had accepted being alone and figuring out how to be happy that way, is much harder to say than not being part of someones whole. Yet I had decided that I could see myself, a year or more from now, single, happy, and following my own path. I had relinquished control and I was happy. Its been said to me before that when you truly give in and make yourself happy is when you find what your looking for, I guess the whole point of that is to stop looking. I am happy and I wouldn't trade the experiences I've gained this last year alone for anything. I've grown up so much more than I could have imagined. I've learned that my family is the most precious gift given to me and that nothing can seperate me from them. I've learned that I can apply myself and be proud of myself. The best part about relinquishing all control and stopping looking for the one guy to make me happy, is that when you finally do stop looking he finally finds you.. the real you.

Time

Some days it feels like I'm floating in time. I know that saying that doesn't make any sense, but I don't feel like any of this is real. It's like i can picture myself doing these things, loving these people, creating a life for myself, but somehow something is holding me back and I'm not sure exactly what that is. Every person has baggage, perhaps that's a better way to phrase it then to say scars. I know I have my fair share but I wonder if they are the reason I am here in a small town, at a relatively small college. Is this college teaching me how to not lose myself or am I falling further away from myself? My dream is to move away to a big city, to fall in love with that city, and use the emotions and passions I find there to capture and document life. I want the feeling, the freedom, of being one lost in a sea of many. I want to find myself away from everything I've ever known, then make my way home, whether home be in that new city, or back in my small town. Either way I need the infinate possibilities... I need it just to survive... I have to hold on to the idea that one day I'm going to provide for myself, and make my own dreams come true.

Fear

I think writing is about tapping into the emotions of your everyday life. To find the rhythm to my writing I close my eyes and let my feelings flow from my heart to my hands. So why If it's so easy to let my feelings flow from my heart to my hands then why is it so hard to have them flow from my heart to my mouth. I've prided myself on never being afraid to talk to someone, and I've learned how to say what I'm thinking but when it comes to saying what I'm feeling my mind goes blank and its just raw emotion stuck in my chest and I'm unable to give my feelings a voice. Maybe I'm scared of hurting someone, maybe I'm scared of confrontation, maybe I'm scared of rejection. But amoungst all of this all the common thing is my fear. If I overcome my fear will I overcome my inability to discusse my feelings?? All I can do is try, and that's something I'm not afraid of.

and I can feel again...

Sometimes something takes over your life. Your not sure how to escape from it, and your not sure that you want to escape from it. You try to avoid it because you want to be different, you don't want to conform, and you sure as hell don't want to know that in reality your just like the others... But just when you think you've finally grown up, that your past whatever it was that had you stuck in it's grip, it hits you. I've spent the last ten months trying to hide the fact that I bet everything on one person. I claimed I didn't believe it love anymore. I doubted that I had ever felt anything real in the first place. I said I never wanted to get married and that I couldn't stand children... Yet in reality I want children. I believe that there is someone your suppose to spend the rest of your life with I believe that everyone finds there one exception to the rule someday... I've lost myself for ten months. I forgot what I believed in. I forgot what I loved, because I was trying so hard to break free of who I was when I was with you. I thought you were holding me back, and you were! But in my struggle to not be held back by anything, I wasn't... My morals, my hopes, my dreams were put aside to chase something else. I thought I was chasing my freedom but instead I found it right where it always was. By trying to sever any emotional attachment to anyone I've bottled all my emotions but today I'm going to shatter the bottle that's held all those emotions. Maybe they'll explode into the world a menagerie of colors sounds lights and hope. But whatever happens I remember what its like to feel again... and if that's all I learned from this... then thats okay by me.

Adoption

My whole life I've only ever thought about adoption through my eyes, the adoptee. Yet tonight I thought for the first time about what it must be like to give your child; the child you carried and loved for nine months, felt move within your womb, the child you birthed through physical pain and incredible strength then gave up for a better life. Everyday I think about my birth parents. So I can only imagine what it would be like to know someone else is raising your baby. Do you wonder if I'm happy? Do you wonder what I look like? Do you wonder if you cross my mind? My whole life I've wondered about these people who gave me a chance at a better life. I've spent hours and hours searching for you. I go back to the city where I was born, I scan the street for a face that I might recognize as familiar to my own. I search not because I'm unhappy, or don't love my adopted parents. I search because these people gave me life, they are my biological family and because no matter what there will always be a bond between us. You gave me life... Thank You.

Andy

My eight am class was cancelled. I could have had an extra hour of sleep. I climbed back down the stair case and out into the frigid morning air toting my book bag and coffe and wondering what I was going to do for the next hour. Going back to the dorm without running the risk of falling asleep was nearly impossible. I decided to set up base in the student lounge until my next class started. I'd been there for a good fourty mintues before they walked in. I noticed him first. His hair was a platinum blonde and his eyes a soulful brown. From the moment he entered the room I was his. She was older, with a hardened look to her face. Her eyes were a deep chocolate brown. They sat across fro me in an empty room full of chairs. He diligently waited on her to be seated then sat himself. After a few quiet moments I had to make my presence known. "what's his name?" I asked. Obviously I had startled her. She apologized for not knowing I was there, and introduced me to Mr. Tibbs. I commented on his good behavior, and we talked a moment about his skill as a service dog. I was about to go back to my note cards when she spoke again. She told me that although the students at our college knew Mr. Tibbs by name, no one had ever taken the time to find out her name. I could hear the loneliness in her voice as she introduced herself, Andy. In the twenty mintues I had left before class I learned that Andy had lost her sigh eighteen months beforehand. She was a truck driver before that, and now was going back to school to recieve her bachelor's in English with a concentration in professional writing. Andy told me of the church she joined, of the weight she'd gained, and of how getting up and attending class changed her. It let her out of the house, and let her talk to real people. As the clock reached nine am, Andy and I said our goodbyes. As a fellow English Major I was sure I was going to see her again. She asked that I introduced myself, because it would take time for her to learn my voice, when she said this her phrasing caught me off guard... "...If Iever wanted to speak to her again.." as if I wouldn't want to talk to her after this morning. Somethign about the wording she chose touched my humanity. I vowed from that point on that everytime I would see Andy I would make it a point to talk to her. By the end of the conversation I had all but forgotten Mr. Tibbs, the adorable yellow lab, but Andy had left an imprint on my heart.