On relief and love.

I couldn't be more overwhelmed with amazement and awe right now.    

The worst part of this move is done. 

Christmas shopping and scrambling is done. 

The nightmare of the last few nights is done. 

The emotionally charged reaction to the craziness is done. 

And now, as I lay comfortably, eagerly, and excitedly on the bed of all beds..

This long wait is almost done, too. 

Hurry up, time!  

Best of all, I am completely astounded and amazed at the goodness of this heart I love. And the people in my life. And the ever growing admiration and love that I have in my own heart, evolving and growing even when I thought it couldn't anymore. My heart can't contain what I feel for this soul I love so much, it spills out over everything I do and touch and say and think!   

They say... A true person in your life is the one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. Well, that's this. 

Ahhh. 

This serendipitous perfection is not mere coincidence, but completely preordained felicity. 

And I am thrilled. 

 

Everything is gold.

My life is gold. 

My joy. 

My loved ones. 

My career. 

My soldier. 

My friends.

My church.  

My goals. 

My life. 

My future. 

My music, art, books, ambition, dreams, my whole life. Love. 

I am swimming in pure gold and feel like the richest woman on earth. 

The uninhibited version of me.

Seeing as how this will be my very first piece of publishable (or gosh, maybe non-publishable?) writing as a 25 year old, I thought I would do it differently.  

Unplugged, unrestricted, unedited, uninhibited.  My life undone, unanalyzed, unjudged.  And now I'm making up words as I go.

To be 25 is like to be finally fitting comfortably into my own age. When I was 17, I felt like I was 20 with 12 year old restrictions.   When I was 21, I felt much older.   Now I'm 25 and while I've made jokes about being in a "quarter life crisis", I'm really not.  I'm more just, undoubtedly feeling the most comfortable, alive, and at home in myself than I ever have. It's like I've finally arrived where I've wanted to be for years and now I'm in the journey I've always wanted to be in.

I wouldn't say I had lost myself along the way. In fact, I was always soul-searching yet I always knew who I was at the same time.  The difference now is, I am unrestricted and uninhibited.  Within myself.  I'm not allowing circumstances, situational experiences, or events change me.  Everything in life shapes who we are and how we react to things, but I'm not letting any of these superficial outside influences change me.  That's the difference.  Instead I'm choosing to always be who I've always been, to always act, do, and say what I always know I want to act, do, and say. From the deepest parts of me, my soul and heart, I am letting it out without any fear of repercussion or consequences.  I'm not going crazy, but I'm not hiding behind myself anymore. 

To me (and this is what I've truly realized this last year), the consequence of not living, or living for what you don't believe in, or living for something else other than your own heart's desires, is so much scarier than choosing to live, breathe, and feel through all of it, even if that could be painful. 

I have always been looking for ways to not disappear, and this is it.

Of course I'm afraid of hurt and pain and loss and abandonment. What human being isn't? Of course I don't want those things. But I'm not letting the fear of them dictate my choice of feeling something. 

I've said goodbye to indifference and apathy, I've said goodbye to that inhibition. I couldn't describe that feeling adequately enough with what the English language offers for vocabulary if I tried. Instead, I show it in my actions. My freedom in living, my overflowing heart, my complex soul. My life. 

In everything I do, I do it for feeling, love, and meaning. Holding fast and staying true to that means I don't disappear. I never want to disappear again and me, unrestricted, unjudged, and uninhibited gets to give this to other souls who have felt disappeared. 

This is me. The uninhibited version of me. And world... I hope you're ready for me.  

The fear of all fears to face.

Face a fear is on my bucket list. In fact, it's been on that list since the beginning, years and years ago. From earlier conversations, I discovered I could use scuba diving as a double cross off and kick off face a fear all in one experience. 

But today it hit me clearer than it ever has. 

What if my fear is loss?

How do I face that?

I'm talking loss in multiple forms, not just death or abandonment. 

Loss of self. 

Loss of passion. 

Loss of love.

Loss of depth. 

Loss of meaning. 

 

Loss of something you've never even had before. 

What?

Yeah, how the hell do I face that fear?

Nah, I do want to face a tangible fear, like swim with sharks maybe, or jump off a cliff into a large body of water. Something like that would be a priceless fear to face and an amazing, exhilarating invincibility would surely come of it. 

But regardless. There are pieces of my soul that must try and face the fear of loss, and that is a terrifying thing. It's like an I-can't-take-in-enough-oxygen-to-sustain-my-life kind of thing. A panic. No, I can't lose this!

Well, deep breath. My answer to this is to love anyway. Breathe anyway. Take risks anyway. Be alive. That's how I will face this fear. Sit by the ocean, breathe deeply with my eyes closed, arms out, and live through the waves. 

Yeah, that's it. 

The happenstance of a single smile.

Being the perfectionist, planner, and action-taker that I am, I find it a new experience to just sit, be, and not let the unknown future cloud my happiness or peace. My logical brain sees it as an easy feat, but my emotional brain wants to fight it because of the anxiety that comes when I'm not taking action. It doesn't realize that no action is action.   The less I fight it, the more I'm able to be calm and enjoy each day for what it is.

Once the chaos of myself subsides, I bask in that unknown.  The unknown holds a hope, a peace, and a future for me.  As I've written a lot lately of indifference and mundanity, I am happy to be ridding myself of those things.  While I thoroughly enjoy a time out, it does not equal apathy. As a result I can allow the fire to grow under my soul so that the depth has a place to go. It no longer flickers to smoke, it's blazing strong and giving me a new breath to my life and beat to my heart.

I knew from the very first moment I felt this spark of fire that there would be something I would gain from it and something I could give greatly, I just didn't know to what extent. It is grander and larger and more beautiful than I thought it could ever be. In fact, I could see it would be beautiful to the point where I almost panicked that I would lose it.  Experiencing a glimpse just to watch it disappear would've disappeared me even further, and I knew that wasn't something I could survive.

Yet here I am, with my original hopes and excitement coming to fruition as I maneuver these new roads and I couldn't be happier about the stumble.

It was the smile and the knowing eyes that pulled me away from disappearing into impassivity. And I understood immediately that this void was filling with a light I so desperately needed.

A soul to smile with is a soul to love.

Dared.

I moved. I lifted myself up off the floor. I pushed beyond my walls of insecurities, doubts, fears and barriers. And it feels similar to my soul being just, completely freed. 

I'm in this floating world of freeing air feeling nothing but weightlessness. A calm silence of a chaotic storm in my heart. 

I don't know what the implications are of this newfound freedom, but in the midst of the fear I am ready. I am ready to feel, ready to fear, ready to love, ready to be broken to be the whole person I've been needing to be for so many years. 

It is time. And it's now or never. 

To be known.

Oh, the dreadful disruptive nightmares! When they make me wake up hysterical and irrational in the middle of the morning, I can't help but remember old memories of night terrors as a younger person. The violence and fear and lack of control are the most prominent feelings that overtook me as I woke, and it felt so real it was like I could've actually been there experiencing it. The brain is an awful and wonderful thing all at once.

But repeating those words in my head throughout the day is a peaceful answer and calming solution to the nightmare panic problem.

We are real.  The dream is not real. Everything is okay. 

What gets me is when someone is so real with their responses that it stops me in my tracks and makes me have to catch my breath through the moment of real. That's what you did.  Anybody can say it'll be okay. Anybody can say oh it was just a dream. Anybody can say anything, but when the words are sincere, authentic, thoughtful, and completely and totally tailored to the person they are talking to.... that's real. And that's what I latch onto because it makes me not disappear.  It makes me seen. And heard.  And known. And cared for. And almost, just, embraced in a way. Like I'm being held, anxieties eased and fears erased. 

Thank you for that.   It's what saves my soul every day from indifference and disappearance.

We are real.
And I've got it on repeat.

Joy is.

Tears of loneliness brushed away by a stroke of serendipity, a late night of perfect chance.
Hours of good conversation over entirely too much coffee.
Burying the world between the pages of writing and art and everything else.
Soul searching and discovering ways not to disappear.
Clothes that still smell of coffee and the sea after a moment when time no longer mattered.
Being somewhere that is home, and knowing that home in a soul is the best home there is.

Only of depth

The moment when the pieces and meanings of this life in the universe come together so serendipitously.. with a beauty only those experiencing the same thing could ever understand... it makes me want to grasp that feeling and never let go. In the past 24 hours I have been more ecstatic, inspired, and alive than I have in a long time. 

It had begun wonderfully as it was, but when the world decided to expand its grace and beauty to catch my heart in its tracks I couldn't help but let the tears flow through my smile from there. 

Being the deep person that I am, I live for lasting moments like this. For something real and authentic. For souls worth knowing and worth loving. To be understood at a level deeper than a superficial "oh I get it". To be understood at a profound level that shakes my very soul with a meaning so beautiful. A true legacy. A purpose, a connection. I know not of anything superficial. Only everything of depth. 

These things make me a thorough unbeliever in coincidence and I love it. 

There is no more room for loneliness in this crazy place I call my heart. 

It's gonna be a lonely day.

This is one of those lonely days.   Within one week my entire view on my life has switched and while I like the new perspective, new energy, it also puts me in a position where I don't know what to do with it.

With that change, I get stuck in a corner of loneliness that only laughter and friendship can kill. I have no outlet for this profound return to my normal self.   I feel like it's a crisis, when I'm stuck between two possible worlds, one that I have lived for years and haven't liked, and one that I am in love with that I want nothing more than to live in.

What is stopping me from jumping two feet into this new energy, new life, new view of myself?  Or should I say, what is stopping me from returning to what I know best of myself?

Normal is as normal does

Throughout stressful and difficult times I've been finding my outlets in different places lately. At least, what I thought was different places.

As I was listening to some Rage this afternoon, I realized that as I grow as an adult finding my outlets and my means of stress relief, I am not finding it in different places.

In fact, I've been finding it in all the same places I used to find it in.

Before judgments.
Before insecurities.
Before worrying about what others would think of me.

I am finding it in my angry music.
I am finding it in my comforting foods, teas, socks, and books.
I am finding it in my own punk, my own self expression of hair and clothes and belief systems.
I am finding it in other realities, in make-believe places that I choose to believe to be real in my heart.
I am finding it in my truest nerd friendships, my writer and reader friends, my bloggers.
I am finding it in my seclusions in nature, my writing, my connections to creatures.

Somehow along the way I lost that.  Was "taught" and "molded" by society that angry music is bad, that fandoms and nerdcore is a crutch, that self-expression is weak, that choosing to have and embrace an identity won't change the fact that my identity is anxiety.

But that's wrong, and somehow along the way through college I began to think that way.
That it's just the way it is.
That you just have to power through it.
That you can't have these outlets and be okay.
That you must listen to The Man and go along with it, and hold it in, and not admit to weakness.

No, that's wrong.

Now it all boils down to doing exactly what I want. Saying no when I want to say no, listening to my Rage when I want to listen to my Rage, and escaping in whatever worlds I want to escape in.

I'm not delusional. I'm not irrational.

I'm normal ole me.