Friday, May 20, 2011

a dose of therapy

/heavy tl;dr post/

I discovered this inspiring blog today and it filled me with so much hope.
Usually i'd hear these words of wisdom from a friend, but i'm thankful that this blog gave me all that I needed. Drop by her blog if you can. :)

Here are just some random parts from her blog (not the entire thing because she just has too many good points):

I do not know what demons she is facing or why she was so desperate for someone — anyone — to sit down and tell her that everything was going to be okay but I did anyway. The honest truth is that I don’treally know if things will actually get better. Maybe she’s at rockbottom and her life is utter crap. Maybe she’s dealing with wounds that will take a lifetime to heal. But I believe we are able to recover from everything. I believe we were wired that way. Call me an idealist but I believe that if a broken man searches for hope and is patient with life, he will find it. I believe that we are covered in a beautiful mystery called grace, which picks us up from the wreckage and restores us in ways we could not even begin to hope for. But we have to let it.

It still surprises me how many people out there are waiting for even the smallest glimmer of hope to come piercing through. Well, guess what? We’re all windows with the potential to shine some light.

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Be brave.

Being honest. Having the hard conversation. Being a friend in time of crisis. Waiting. Showing kindness when you don’t feel like it. Loving. Keeping a promise. Staying. Admitting your mistakes. Apologizing. Choosing to stay outside of your shell. Forgiving. Saying no. Saying yes. Obeying. Sharing your pain to someone because you can’t keep it in anymore. The simple act of getting out of bed in the morning. Accepting people. Hoping. Leaving. Choosing goodness always. Believing the best in everyone.

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The first kiss is messy. Sloppy. Usually unpredictable: in the dark. On a warm drunken night. With your eyes wide open. With a stranger. With your first love who will break your heart. In a rush, in a panic. Forced. Exciting, maybe traumatic and always ALWAYS scary.

The second kiss is always tougher than the first one. And that first kiss, it’s the passionate one, it’s the one fueled by desire, and attraction, and all of that. The second kiss is rational. You’ve got time to think about it, worry, and overanalyze. Most women, they prefer that first kiss, but I’m partial to the second one. Because it’s about something more. You’ll get that second kiss and when you do, it’ll be great. It’ll be real. It’ll be meaningful.

— Betsy Potter, Dawson’s Creek

In the tradition of Greek mythology, heroes must always leave the lives they once knew in order to go on a quest – to seek greatness. It is in their leaving that their stories of adventure, romance, and heroism are made known. And on the occasion of your high school graduation, do find yourselves among the ranks of Odysseus, Hercules, and maybe even the likes of Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter. Remember how the tragic Sylvia Plath once felt at seventeen – “the world is mine for the taking”. It really is. Be infinite; this is the perfect time. -

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A lot of people go through life without a best friend and that’s fine. But I think that best friends make everything — road trips, food trips or summer trips — a lot more fun. They are the people you can readily say yes to life with every time. But the label isn’t important — I have a lot of great friends who I walk through life with who I don’t consider my best friends. Doesn’t make them any less awesome.

What’s important is to have someone who will readily assume all your emotional junk. Someone who is happily obligated to hear you out, even on the days that you sound like a sick irrational mess. Loneliness is the human condition and the only way to overcome it is to have someone you can your share your heart with — especially when it’s breaking.

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I want to be taken seriously. I want to be seen as well put together. Call me corny but I want to be seen as a woman. As a flower and a storm, if that even makes any sense at all. I want to be seen as someone that the word cute cannot even begin to encapsulate.
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The one that got away:the golden relationship that, for a variety of different reasons, just didn’t work out.

The one that got away is always lost to circumstance; to a situational divide. It isn’t the lack of love but the inability to sustain it. You might call it emotional euthanasia — letting someone go, not in the name of fairness, but because it’s what’s right. Freeing someone from the clauses of a relationship when you don’t want to is the ultimate act of grace.

That’s what immortalizes the one that got away, makes them so irritatingly unforgettable.

---

It doesn’t matter how you spin it, breakups suck. They’re messy. You invest, put all your walls down, set your fears aside — I mean, you literally deal with all your personal crap and take this huge gamble on someone only to end up alone. It’s ridiculous. You let a person mean something (or everything) to you, accumulate memories and history just to watch them turn it into nothing in a single life-altering moment.

It’s emotional injustice at its finest.

---
In love, so many people drop out of the game prematurely because it gets too hard, without realizing that how it’s supposed to be. They eventually develop all sorts of emotional diseases. Among them: walls, phobias, a lack of passion, an unresolved past and unhealthy tendencies to quit and run every time they meet even just the slightest resistance. In the end, they give up completely and settle for anything. Anything at all — just as long as they aren’t alone.

---

When you’re 15, you’re ballsy enough to jump into love haphazardly, without thinking twice. You say things — make ridiculously crazy promises — all in the name of real Shakespearian romance. If the person of your affection so much as looked you in the eye (and God forbid they say your name out loud!), your stomach would instantly release a battalion of butterflies and you’d fall into a feeling you’d swear would last forever.

When you’re 15, you will build your heart on the way he smiles and holds your hand; the countless ways he can make you laugh. You will break rules — self-imposed and otherwise — and set flight into a bold unknown because your heart will convince you of compromise and sacrifice; the great distance that all lovers are destined to travel.

---

She is a life force. An explorer. An adventurer. She believes in good things — faith, hope, love — because she has a good heart. Over the years, it has been broken open to make way for greater doors (and windows) of opportunity, which she doesn’t hesitate to grab. She tumbles into these new things with beautiful childish recklessness, with such a wild sense of abandonment, because that is who she is. She is a girl who shamelessly flirts with life.

---

Done holding on to baggage that I don’t need to carry. Done caring about opinions that do not matter. Done holding on to people who do not want to stay. Done listening to a lie that couldn’t, can’t and could never fill me. Done judging and hating and hastily condemning. Done overthinking and overanalyzing.

And yes, I am definitely still really messed up but now I am living in the light of a new freedom, realizing that I am holding on to hope, the promise of redemption and the knowledge that I can always start over.

---

Learn to be more trusting.

Most of our insecurities come from not being able to trust ourselves, trust other people, or trust God. Because of this, we tend to be afraid to go out there and make a choice or do something.

Sometimes all it takes is a little faith.

---
I do not want you to beg because I do not think you ought to be with someone who got browbeaten into becoming your boyfriend. I do not want you to beg because I truly believe that when a man loves you, he pursues you and you never ever question what or how he feels. I do not want you to beg because you owe yourself more than that and how can you expect great love when you can’t even demand it for yourself? Great love is never born out of tyranny.
---
What 2010 gave me, more than another chance to get things right, was the opportunity to build my backbone and use it. I guess what I discovered in the end is one of the truest cliches I know: that everything it takes to fight and beat my personal demons is within me and has been there all along.
---

Ah, but New York.

It’s like walking through a pulse, it throbs and it thrives. A city so alive that you can’t really help but start living yourself. And so people from different cities and countries and suburbs move to this place, without money or well thought-out plans, because its life force beckons them. That is the seduction of New York: it calls you. Asks you to walk the tightrope. Take a risk. Before you know it, you’re standing in the middle of Times Square, asking yourself: WHY NOT?

--

And a lady, to me, is someone who is able to carry herself with grace in all things — from the way she dresses to the way she acts. She’s someone who won’t use the sexual revolution as a standard for attracting men. She won’t compromise her dignity or beg for love. A lady would extend kindness, even if it hurt. She’d uphold her principles even if she was the only one left standing. A lady is sexy in her own skin but would never flaunt it to gain attention. A lady does not need a quick fix, will do things the hard way as long as it’s the right way and is genuinely respected by men. A lady believes in the beauty of other women and does not tear them (or anyone else for that matter) down.

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And I’m coming to see this as a real vice in itself because it means that I’d be perfectly fine with staying with the wrong person for the wrong reasons. I can take your emotional baggage, your vices, your worst personality flaws and your ugliest habits but for some reason, I will draw the line at long distance. It has always been a non-negotiable. But that’s just me.
---

the reality is: sadness is a good thing.

One: it gives you character. People with sad stories to tell have depth and insight. They’ve actually touched the rawest form of human emotion. And as unfortunate as their circumstances are (or were), you can’t help but admire them. Someone who is hurting is actually snuggling closely to the core and center of what it is to be alive. About heartbreak, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote: “It means you have tried for something.” Sad and hurt people have not been cushioned by comfort. That’s exactly what makes them interesting.

---

I guess we’ve all got to let ourselves feel. The falling apart is a key element in rebuilding. It’s one of those crazy paradoxes of life. Some people ignore their feelings completely, feigning euphoria instead. And it seems like an admirable effort at first, the fake-it-till-you-make-it technique, but it’s really just another way of masking reality with delusion.

You’ve got to go through the motions. And afterwards, once you’ve exhausted your sadness, you’ve got to decide to be strong.

---

In all honesty, I think women are so afraid to be brave. It’s much easier to rely on Mr. Charming to save the day but what happens when he doesn’t come through? I believe that every girl needs a strong woman they can look up to.

Because here’s what I’ve learned from my mentors: Don’t wait till he finds you. Be your own hero. As important as it is to have faith, have balls.

I look up to these female characters because they pursue life with a fiery passion. They know exactly what they want and they don’t skip, leap or run. They chase the damn dream. And the bedrock of that passion comes from having a solid backbone.

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But naivete is a curse. We live in a world where there are beasts and killers and people who are set to bring us down. A world where evil actually wins. And it’s easy to whistle a tune and turn a blind eye or call for someone else to save the day but most of the time, you’ve got to grab the bull by the horns. Wrestle with your demons.

---

I don’t mind eating alone, shopping alone, driving alone, traveling alone — I am perfectly fine with my own company and in true Penelopefashion:

I like myself the way I am.

And I just don’t feel like I have to be somebody else in order to have someone in my life. I don’t feel like I have to compromise my standards for the sake of a stupid status change.

---

To write is to make literary music, to compose a symphony that swells. To rearrange prose so gracefully that it sounds like poetry. To write is to breathe life into a sentence, to amplify words on a page so that they dance — first across the eyes then through the brain until they settle, quietly, into the heart.

The thing about my writing voice is that it is very quiet. It’s water. Soft. Pliable. It can be so cliche, so sickeningly heartwarming. There’s no other word for it: soft. And sometimes I am able to induce passion, make a tsunami out of a brook, but a lot of times, I let it dance lazily. Like ballet on a summer afternoon.

The writers I admire write with fire. They engulf. They’re stronghearted and unafraid and they get into peoples’ hearts and cause explosions. It’s wonderful chaos. Literary anarchy. I am very far from becoming that kind of writer.

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And the ‘relationship’ was really two teenagers’ pursuit of a counterfeit love. Let’s be real: we didn’t know jack about commitment. And the gigantic C word is the foundation on which all real relationships lay. And thrive.

I liked him because he was cute. And nice enough.And sweet enough.And alright. And it is this lukewarmedness that tells me, more than anything, that it wasn’t love at all.

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Breakups don’t just deal with people. They deal with emotional people. Unlike other institutions, they deal with people who stand on the verge. People with hearts on their sleeves who are fragile. Vulnerable. And the worst happens when you cap it all off with love. Put love on the table and it complicates things even more sublimely, creating a very delicate and messy cauldron of dysfunction. The emotional explosion caused by the termination of a relationship results in nothing less than chaos, leaving the breakup institution hopelessly powerless.

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Okay, I think this is too much already. I will leave the rest of the reading to you guys. I hope her words have touched each one of you in some way. I know it did to me. :)

Have an enlightening day, dears. :)

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