A brighter today

God amazes me. I could leave this post at that, because it pretty much sums up everything that I've been feeling over the past 24 hours. He is incredible and I am grateful He is so gracious in reminding me of this simple fact.

My life is so different, different from even yesterday. My past doesn't matter anymore, what has happened has happened. I have gleaned wisdom from those experiences, but they will not control me in my future. They have shaped who I am and allowed me to develop as a person, but their hold on my life has vanished...and it's all because of God. I am so excited about my life now, it is so great :-D

Today

Today was a bad day. I have bad days sometimes. I don't talk about them, they conveniently happen when I am by myself for most of the day so I don't have to talk about them. My bad days stem from memories...I have some that aren't so pleasant and I'm afraid they will forever haunt me.

I had a conversation today with someone that struck a nerve. I don't know why really, it's never happened before. I've remembered and been upset about things on my own before, but never just from talking. It's been 5 years...5 years and I can still sob until my entire body aches, until I make myself sick because I can't stop crying. You know that gut-wrenching pain from sorrow? It's an awful feeling if you aren't familiar with it. It takes something that cuts into the very core of your being, tears you apart, leaving you forever scarred no matter how much time passes. You heal eventually, but the wound is so deep it takes a period of time, an unknown period of time unfortunately.

I don't cry, not often at least. I shed a tear every now and then, sure, but only a handful of people have ever seen me truly cry. Today I cried...really cried. I cried until I had no more tears, my heart ached, unbearably ached to the point where I was in physical pain. I cried like that for most of the afternoon, remembering things and realizing that it hurts just as much...just as much as it always has, despite the amount of time that has gone by. I don't deal with things, I force myself to quit thinking about what has past and try to forget it ever happened. I used to deal with things in a deconstructive way...I came the closest I've come in a few years to going back to that today. I got out of the house, went to the gym...swam for an hour, came home and felt a bit better. It's still bothering me though, the hold that is still there, the power that he still has over me..."If I can't have you no one can." He's won in a way. Hurt me in every imaginable way...broken me, brought on numerous insecurities and fears, took away my power to accept what I've always wanted...to believe that it really exists: Love, real love. You know, the kind where you know as long as you have that person nothing else in the world matters? It's because they are your world. That kind of love. I'm capable of loving someone in that way, wholly and completely, but to accept that love in return? I don't know how to do that...I don't know how to let love in, to be vulnerable, I've lost that ability. I feel like I'm being unfair, letting someone love me in that way, but not being able to really accept it. Part of me thinks I should never marry because of what's happened, but then...he really will win, and I don't want that either.

Am I just being selfish? Would I be selfish if I let someone marry me? Or is it more selfish to be the burden to someone as I go through the torturous healing process? Do I pick up the scattered pieces that are left and try and piece them back together as best I can...I don't know if I can hold it together on my own, I've done it for so long and I still fall apart. No one sees that though, I won't let him win there...no one sees my brokenness, no one sees me suffer. The anguish, unbearable and excruciating pain...agony...no one sees that, I won't let them.

How does a damaged person accept love?

It's about time...

I am going to make a resolution (not a New Year's one-after all, February is almost over) to try and be better about updating this thing...so life update and then some thoughts is what this post will entail.

My roommate got a job at the Art Institute here in Chicago. I'm super excited for her (and for the free perks that I will benefit from!!). We also took a Latin dance class. It was super great and our teacher seemed to think we did an "awesome job," which is fun for us. We learned the salsa and the cha cha, both of which are great and fairly simple. We also learned the merengue, rhumba, and the tango. It was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to taking a couple more classes at the end of March. As far as my job goes, I'm still working at the same place for now, nothing new to report there really. In other news: I am the newest member in the Oakton Community College Jazz Ensemble. They needed a pianist and so I applied and got in, hooray. It's been okay so far, they've all been playing together for an entire semester already, so I feel sort of behind, but I'm hoping that will pass. It will be alright, we've only rehearsed together 4 times...I'm still trying to get the feel of the group, but hopefully that will come soon. That's the most recent stuff, how about some other things that have occured over the past couple of months...

I went home for 5 days during the Christmas holidays! My flight was sort of a nightmare, but I ended up making it home and spending some good quality time with my family, even though it was too short. Alex came to visit me in Chicago during the holidays, the longest span of time we've spent in person together. It was a good visit and it was nice to have him around for so long.

On to other news! The kittens: are growing so fast! :-( They are still adorable, but they are no longer little anymore. Manny is probably up to about 7 1/2 pounds, and Raja weighs around 6. They are almost 5 months old and have managed to learn to love people. Raja in particular loves attention and chirps constantly when you are ignoring her. Manny enjoys his space but he still likes having people around. Strangers are still terrifying for them and they don't like our intercom, but for some reason they both have this weird obsession with the bathtubs and water. We haven't really figured it out other than assuming they are freaks, but it's okay, cats have weird quirks.

My best friend is getting married in 2 1/2 months, I'm the maid-of-honor so I've been helping (sort of) with wedding stuff. She lives out in the burbs, but I've seen her quite a bit over the past month which has been great. Her getting married makes me ponder things in my own life...but I will probably leave that for another post.

That's about it really...so the thoughts didn't come in this post, the life update was long enough. I'll just keep you all in suspense until next time...

The time has come for another update! Both of my browsers have eliminated my ability to choose the font I want, so I don't know how this is going to look when I am done, bah!

So things: Thanksgiving happened, I spent it in CA. It was a pretty good trip and considerably warmer than Chicago so I enjoyed that part of it immensely. The kittens are growing, which was bound to happen, but they are still adorable. They will make their first visit to the vet on Thursday, I hope they do alright. They aren't used to being around other people and are still really scared when strangers come over. Work hasn't changed, which is also good. I get to go home for Christmas which I'm really, really excited about. Even though I never went home until Christmas break while I was in college, it feels like I've been gone forever. Perhaps it is because so much has happened over the past months.

I have started to make some progress in the way of music. I now have my own studio I can practice at whenever I want, for FREE! I am auditioning for a choir tomorrow night *fingers crossed* and I am doing some piano stuff next week. It's not much, but it's definitely better than nothing. I'm still super frustrated though. I have this degree and it's done me no good thus far, I don't regret doing music...but maybe I should have taken the hint when everyone always asked me "and what can you do with that?" Too late now! I'm sure things will come along eventually, I'm doing all I can do really: I search for music stuff every day, apply for what I find, and then wait to see what happens. It's not a very good system, but it's all I've got for now.

Who am I kidding? I am in a horrible mood to be updating this thing right now...it was something to do to fill my time, so I think I'll end this and find something better to occupy myself with.

Recent Things

I've decided that I am awful at keeping this updated but don't really care all that much. So here is what is currently going on in my life:

I have started listening to Christmas music as much as possible. Some of you may feel that it is too early for such a pastime and to you I say, "Bah Humbug!" I absolutely love Christmas music and would listen to it all year long if I had the notion, however it is special because it only comes about for a couple of months every year and I will limit my listening time to those couple of months...plus I might not love it as much if I listened to it all year long. However, a little bit of Bing and Frank brightens my day! (If you don't know who I'm referring to then I will be more than happy to introduce you to them!)

Work is going well, it's pretty much the same thing every day but I am grateful for my job and the people I work with are rather pleasant. We had a fire drill this past week which was interesting, I felt like I was in HS all over again filing down the stairs in an orderly fashion. At least we only had to go down a few floors and it broke up the normal monotony of the day. I waited for ECobb to get done with work last night because she was working late and I felt it would be safer for her to have someone to ride home with. So I hung out at Borders, bought my sister her Christmas present and then went and spent the rest of my time at Argo Tea. Those of you reading this not from Chicago will not know what that is unless you've had the pleasure of visiting Chicago since they currently only exist in this city. So if you come and visit me perhaps I will take you there! Anyway, we got on our bus and found a knife/switchblade thing that was longer than my hand so probably around 6 inches or so...it was a pretty big knife. Freaked us both out a bit and so I took it to the bus driver because I didn't feel it was safe to leave it laying in the seat by us. Especially since a couple of creepy guys got on the bus shortly after and sat by us, Cobb was grateful that I had stayed to ride home with her.

I am going to be a hair model. ECobb was getting her hair cut on Tuesday because it was her day off and so I went to meet her after I was off work because we were going out for a friend's early birthday celebration. Anyway, I was sitting and waiting and one of the stylists came over and started talking to me and asked if I would be interested in being a model for one of their classes for their students, apparently they need people with naturally curly hair and she said I have really great hair, so I figured why not? It could be fun!

Our kittens are getting bigger, here is a picture of them sleeping by my head:



They are pretty adorable. We bought them some toys and a scratching post today, early Christmas present. We also got a tree stand for our Christmas tree, whenever we get that. Perhaps on Sunday? Cobb and I also our official Illinois residents! We went and got our driver's licenses today and passed with flying colors. We only had to do the written of course since we already both had driver's licenses from our home states. I am pretty excited about it because it means that I am now completely official to live here, yay!

It snowed for the very first time this past weekend. Beautiful big flakes just sort of floating down out of the sky, my favorite kind of snow. I went outside and just stood there because I was so excited...that was short-lived since I wasn't wearing a coat but it was worth it. Winter is fantastic! :-)

I have exciting things that will be happening this weekend so I will write about them probably later, but that's all for now!

Kittens!

So much has happened since I've last written in (on?) here, I doubt I will remember it all.  Also, if you're expecting pictures you're still out of luck...deal with it.

Halloween in the city proved to be as uneventful as halloween everywhere else.  Perhaps this is because I'm not willing to dress myself up in either a skanky or ridiculous costume and parade myself like a drunken fool, as is the custom on this day in many bars and clubs and at various events/parties throughout the city.  I am much more content to observe others in their foolishness and let them serve as my amusement.  Like these two guys I saw on the "El" on my way home from downtown.  They were dressed as nuns: ridiculous and not that creative, but still funny.  Another amusing costume observed on my way home was a man dressed up as Peter Pan, which was extra funny because he was not a small man.  In fact he was a rather large, football player-build, African American...and I think he was probably gay.  So it was more of the man in the costume than the costume itself that made it comical.  There was also a parade of bicycles around the Daley center before I had even left downtown.  I'm not really sure what that was all about but what I do know is this: it went on for about 10 minutes and prevented me from crossing the street to get to where I wanted to go and eat dinner while I waited for my roommate to get off of work.  Some of the people were dressed up, others were just normal-looking people.  If you're wondering why I didn't just choose to cross the street somewhere else it is because of this: the sidewalk where I could have crossed the street and avoided all of that nonsense was closed!  It has been for quite some time due to construction, and even if I had gone down a block I still would have had to wait for the stupid "parade" to be over because it covered that wide of an area...so I waited.  I did see the "Hi Guy" in the parade so that was cool I guess.  I eventually made it home with my roommate and we spent our evening watching a scary movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  For those of you interested, it's called The Haunting and has no gore or anything of that nature and is not really your typical scary movie, which is why I like it!  It actually has a story beyond, "we did something to some person and now he is pissed off and wants to kill us all."

And if you're wondering why I was even downtown waiting for my roommate (which you're probably not but I will explain anyway), I have a job!  My official title is "administrative assistant," but what I do isn't really what you'd expect based on that.  I spend most of my day working in the company's database system entering in changes and adding new vendors to the system.  I don't want to bore you with all the unnecessary details, but what you should know is that it's a good job and I like the people I work with, as far as I can tell anyway.  I haven't been there for very long and I don't really know anyone all that well, but that will come in time I'm sure.  I'm shy enough that I could stay unnoticeable, at least for a while I think.  I would like to be doing piano stuff, but again, that will come in time I'm sure :-)  I actually am playing piano at a church tomorrow morning, I'm just a substitute for their normal pianist, but if all goes well perhaps this will lead to other things!  That's what I'm hoping/praying for at this point.

Okay, so a lot of other things have gone on this past week or so, but I'll write about that later...for the rest of this post I will divulge what my adventures will be for the rest of the day.  Today I am going to visit my old roommate, Sarah, at her apple orchard/farm and maybe bring home a pet or two.  ECobb and I decided we wanted kittens to keep us company so I am going to go and look at some at Sarah's place and maybe bring them home with me.  Now the trick is, we'd have to come up with names.  This could be a difficult task since we're both creative people and would like unique names for our little furry friends.  Feel free to leave suggestions!  I will post pictures of them...eventually...just like the apartment, ha!  That is all for now, I will try not to leave you in suspense for too long and post pictures within a week, hopefully we'll have real internet by then so I can do it via my own computer! :-)

Chicago and things

So I said pictures would come once I've moved into my new place... Well I've been living in my new place for about 2 weeks, but I do not have internet on my computer so I'm using my roommate's until we have our own internet.  Her computer is able to pick up many wireless signals, mine doesn't.  Point being, pictures won't happen until we have our own internet connection.  I could upload pictures to her computer, but rather than do that you all can just be patient until I can do it on my own comp.  Deal with it!  I also have a job, but will elaborate more on that story later.

I spent this past weekend visiting my college roommate.  She is recently engaged and her mom was throwing her and her fiancee an engagement party.  Since I am the maid-of-honor it was natural that I be there, and she doesn't live too far outside of Chicago so it was an easy trip to make.  It was quite a fun weekend and I really enjoyed my time spent there.  Her house is always a great place to visit and I'm treated like family so it's pretty awesome.  

The weekend brought mostly discussion of weddings and that sort of thing.  I can't say that I don't understand why people want to get married, I do.  What I don't get is all of the time and energy that is spent putting into this one day of your life, especially when nowadays, a lot of people go through this "one day" multiple times due to divorce or other circumstances.  Sure, a wedding is supposed to be what every girl wants, but not every girl has spent her entire life planning what her wedding day will be like or even wants to get married!  Society seems to think those girls are "abnormal," but are they?  I, for one, don't think so.  Love sucks and from what I've witnessed, marriage is no picnic either.  My own experience makes me biased in this regard, but I have yet to be shown/proven otherwise.  Love, in the romantic sense of course, has either ended up being a lie or a cheat (which also is lying, but not all of my liars have been cheaters).  I have more than just one example, there's actually a good amount of evidence I can give to support my opinion in this matter.  *Disclaimer: I don't feel sorry for myself and pity parties don't do anyone any good.  I'm merely stating what I know to be true in this regard.  I'm not looking for advice and/or sympathy, so please don't try to be "helpful"*  

People can say it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.  But when you have poured your heart and soul into someone, trusting and opening yourself up to them wholeheartedly, and you lose that...I don't really believe I'm "better" because of that.  I think I could have been a much happier person had I never experienced it.  Sure, you gain wisdom and grow as a person, but is it really worth it?  I haven't been able to justify it thus far in my life and it's only caused issues for me personally when in other relationships, being dating or friendship.  I've watched marriages fall apart because people just "fall out of love" or "grow apart."  Did they really love each other to begin with or was it something that both of them just wanted so badly they convinced themselves they were in love with each other, only to realize later that they were just in love with the idea of being "in love."  I think if you tell yourself something for a long enough period of time, you start to believe it as truth, even though it may very well not be.  People use the word "love" so flippantly.  It is such a powerful word, one that should never be taken lightly.  It causes many different emotions, from complete bliss and joy to utter turmoil and despair.  The fact that God gave us this ability and power to share with other human beings is beyond my comprehension.  That being said, it is not a word that I use unless truly meant, (this applies only to people, my "love" of chocolate is on a completely different level).  Hence the reason why love has caused so much pain in my life, whether it be romantic or platonic, (I know there are latin words for those types of love, I thought I would stick to vocabulary that is easily interpreted).  The pain I've experienced has led to fear of love, whether it's loving other people or accepting that love myself.  It's something that I struggle with and don't readily give or accept, perhaps this is a good thing since it keeps me "safe" but I'm not sure that is what love is about.  Love, any kind of love, is more than just a feeling, it's a choice.  It is a terrible and wonderful thing all at the same time.  You can choose to love someone and risk the danger of losing them or causing you a broken heart, or you can choose to not love someone and keep yourself from that pain and anguish, but you may be missing out on what could be an incredible friendship or in some cases, a future life partner.  It's a tricky balance and is not an easy choice, no matter what the situation, whether it be friendship, family, or a relationship, you can't know where love will take you once you decide to love someone.  You can only make the choice and decide to stick with it, no matter what.  There is a line in the movie Love and Other Disasters that puts it quite well, "True love is...a decision to take a chance with somebody, to give to somebody without worrying whether they'll give anything back or if they're going to hurt you or if they really are the one.  Maybe love isn't something that happens to you, maybe it's something you have to choose."  In this instance, the character was obviously referring to romantic love, but with the exception of worrying about whether that person is "the one" those things can apply to all types of love.  

Funny how this blog was going to be about how anti-love I am...perhaps I'm not as biased as I thought myself to be.  Either that, or I'm a hopeless optimist which could be translated into a complete fool I suppose, who knows?