Why is it so hard to be ourselves around people we want most to give our hearts to? Almost everyone experiences the nerves that accompany being in the presence of one you're attracted to. If you're not one of those people - I envy you with a passion. And the rest of the world envies you as well. People like that seem so fearless, or perhaps they just don't care. Either way, it's a skill I have yet to obtain - being completely normal around someone who makes my heart beat faster. It's one of many failures of the human existence - fearing that which we desire most. Rather than being able to attack, to be ready to take on the next adventure...we analyze, we lie in wait and we only take a step when we're sure. Averting eye contact with those we want to make it with, holding back from someone we want to embrace. It's such a natural resistance, but it's so counter productive. Why can't we mentally overcome this with self talk? Why is it that some can talk themselves into literally jumping off a cliff...but can't sit beside a person they desire without becoming a bumbling fool? Why can I have no fears about interviewing the President of the United States, but shut down when someone I'm attracted to enters the room? Why do we fear this so very much?
The reason, I believe for most people based on conversations, is a sense of internal loss and a true blow to your whole self. If the object of your desire doesn't desire you back...it's a reflection on who you are. Someone didn't want you. That's the killer. So many I talk with are in agony, in pain in their very core because they dream of this person, want to be in their arms and yet are too scared to take the leap. But even with that knowledge, the rejection and the fear, I personally know that not everyone is right for everyone...so rejection means you just haven't found the right person - but why isn't that awareness enough? How do I still drink myself into a complete stupor or become completely stoic to prevent the real me from coming out? It's just a person, as real and as human as I...but they seem so much more than that. As the arm chair psychologist I am, people seem to open up to me, which I love, and it allows me to see the agony in their turmoil. I understand it. I see the tears in their eyes when I ask the hard questions and it almost always results in them being sure the other person cannot possibly reciprocate their feelings. I know that's a problem for me. It's a problem for many. How could this person you hold in such high esteem feel the same about you? I believe even a fully secure person can still succumb to this fault because it's more than just being secure with who you are - it's trusting that someone else could see that too.
In books I so rarely read about the fear of someone you desire - perhaps because I read things outside the teen fiction sections, but still...shouldn't it be out there more in novels? I'm guilty of it as a writer - long glances turn into a rushed kiss, a night of passion or a long embrace on a cold night...I'm guilty of omitting the thing I hate the most about myself. In some of my character relationships it does come out, but mostly to prove a point about that character - her weakness and indecision. If we know this is the reflection timidness towards desirables gives, why am I unable to prevent myself from giving that appearance? Why do we fear what we want?
No amount of advice, self talk or awareness will help this problem. All you can do is mindlessly take a leap. Jump when you are inclined. Take a risk. Jump...and maybe one of these days you'll be caught.
Live. Laugh and Above All....Love.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Love
As a writer, I feel like part of my job is to record experiences. It's not always easy to do, to admit things and share them with the world. But being a writer means I have an ability to record, and just as a doctor has the ability to save a life - I have the ability to record emotions. Not that I am particularly gifted at this, but I think I can do at least a decent job at the task. So, I'm recording something that's hard for me to talk about for a variety of reasons - most of which are far too personal to share online. Even this is personal, but it's just a feeling, one many experience, but maybe not to the extent I do. Who knows. It's a comparison no one can ever really make. I'm rambling.
Feeling things has been an up and down battle for me. I've been through times when I thought my chest literally had a hole in it and I've had times when I felt nothing for months on end. I've had times of such utter ecstasy and I've had moments of uncontrollable sadness. The worst was the time when I stopped feeling. For a few months in my life...I felt nothing. Pages were blank. I was bland. My friends saw me smile - it was all just so no one would ask me how I was...because I didn't feel anything. Not feeling, being at a 5 constantly is unbearable. I'll take my highs and lows any day.
That leads me to feeling love. I'm an intensely loving person. I don't know yet if it's a gift or a curse - my extreme desire and ability to love. Most would default to it being completely wonderful...but understand that being able to love incredibly deeply, means you are much more likely to feel pain as well. When someone attacks a friend, they are attacking me. They're attacking my heart. I become a lion if I have to be. As a friend drifts out of my life, I feel the distance. I actually notice space between us and it saddens me more than it should. I feel like a piece of my heart gets cut away every time a friend does - even if that friend was nothing but toxic to me. It's because I love...despite what that person does to me. I still love. I still have love in my heart for them. There have been a small handful of people who have really left my heart and it was freeing - what I imagine most people experience when they lose a friend. I don't get that relief often. When I do, it usually takes years to occur.
More than just friends - I love very deeply and find that I love more than I probably should. I can build up a moment and live on that feeling for days. I can feel a sensation on my arm and it washes over every nerve in my body and lingers. It's because I attach. I link. I connect. I embrace. It also makes the severing of that love even harder. I feel like I lose hope, lose a piece of who I am every time romantic love slips through my fingers. Every time I get an inch closer, I feel like I've just gone a mile...but when reality sets in...that I only made it an inch...well. It feels like a weight on your chest - if you can imagine someone loading it slowly with bricks. A longing for that hope, that moment when you could imagine what the next encounter would be. You want to be back in that blissfully unaware and hopeful little moment. But time marches on and you come to reality. That's when the bricks start getting laid. Not being able to have love is when the pressure reaches the most. It's a hole - a missing part of you. There's so much love I have to give to someone that it almost makes me explode. I'm like a thundercloud with lightning ready to strike the earth - but with no place to direct it. For those of us with so much love in our hearts - the best we can do is hope that one day, we'll be able to direct it somewhere.
Despite the pain and sense of distance loving causes - I can't stop. I don't want to stop. I get to experience relationships so deeply, and that's irreplaceable. I don't want to stop loving this much. Someday I'll find someone who loves as deeply as I do and hopefully he'll direct that at me. While I search for that, I still get to love my friends and my family with a fierceness I can't live without. A dedication I have to breathe in. It's worth it, I guess - the love even with the pain. The ups are only as great as the downs. So if my downs are really deep, I suppose that's why my highs are so incredibly high. It's a rush. It's a rollercoaster ride...and one that I'm taking in stride. Even on nights when I want to die the lack of love hurts so much. It's still worth having because the hope of having more is still there. Without that love to look forward to...what would hope be?
Live, Laugh and Above All...Love.
Feeling things has been an up and down battle for me. I've been through times when I thought my chest literally had a hole in it and I've had times when I felt nothing for months on end. I've had times of such utter ecstasy and I've had moments of uncontrollable sadness. The worst was the time when I stopped feeling. For a few months in my life...I felt nothing. Pages were blank. I was bland. My friends saw me smile - it was all just so no one would ask me how I was...because I didn't feel anything. Not feeling, being at a 5 constantly is unbearable. I'll take my highs and lows any day.
That leads me to feeling love. I'm an intensely loving person. I don't know yet if it's a gift or a curse - my extreme desire and ability to love. Most would default to it being completely wonderful...but understand that being able to love incredibly deeply, means you are much more likely to feel pain as well. When someone attacks a friend, they are attacking me. They're attacking my heart. I become a lion if I have to be. As a friend drifts out of my life, I feel the distance. I actually notice space between us and it saddens me more than it should. I feel like a piece of my heart gets cut away every time a friend does - even if that friend was nothing but toxic to me. It's because I love...despite what that person does to me. I still love. I still have love in my heart for them. There have been a small handful of people who have really left my heart and it was freeing - what I imagine most people experience when they lose a friend. I don't get that relief often. When I do, it usually takes years to occur.
More than just friends - I love very deeply and find that I love more than I probably should. I can build up a moment and live on that feeling for days. I can feel a sensation on my arm and it washes over every nerve in my body and lingers. It's because I attach. I link. I connect. I embrace. It also makes the severing of that love even harder. I feel like I lose hope, lose a piece of who I am every time romantic love slips through my fingers. Every time I get an inch closer, I feel like I've just gone a mile...but when reality sets in...that I only made it an inch...well. It feels like a weight on your chest - if you can imagine someone loading it slowly with bricks. A longing for that hope, that moment when you could imagine what the next encounter would be. You want to be back in that blissfully unaware and hopeful little moment. But time marches on and you come to reality. That's when the bricks start getting laid. Not being able to have love is when the pressure reaches the most. It's a hole - a missing part of you. There's so much love I have to give to someone that it almost makes me explode. I'm like a thundercloud with lightning ready to strike the earth - but with no place to direct it. For those of us with so much love in our hearts - the best we can do is hope that one day, we'll be able to direct it somewhere.
Despite the pain and sense of distance loving causes - I can't stop. I don't want to stop. I get to experience relationships so deeply, and that's irreplaceable. I don't want to stop loving this much. Someday I'll find someone who loves as deeply as I do and hopefully he'll direct that at me. While I search for that, I still get to love my friends and my family with a fierceness I can't live without. A dedication I have to breathe in. It's worth it, I guess - the love even with the pain. The ups are only as great as the downs. So if my downs are really deep, I suppose that's why my highs are so incredibly high. It's a rush. It's a rollercoaster ride...and one that I'm taking in stride. Even on nights when I want to die the lack of love hurts so much. It's still worth having because the hope of having more is still there. Without that love to look forward to...what would hope be?
Live, Laugh and Above All...Love.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Rock Chalk
I've never been a big sports fan. I liked playing sports, I loved softball when I played - 10 years - I liked tennis a little, I hated soccer and I'm way to short to have ever dribbled a basketball. Watching them was a different story. I felt pride when the Diamondbacks won the the World Series back in 2001. I was sitting in my mom's big California king bed with a four-year-old brother bouncing beside me in a little purple and silver shirt and hat. He didn't really fully understand the magnitude of such a young team winning, but he knew we were cheering for the boys in purple and that everyone was excited when Louis Gonzalez made that homerun - so he cheered. I was about 12 and was excited about sports for the first and only time until I came to KU.
Sports fandom wasn't big in my family. My dad never pronounced "The Celtics" right, always using the Irish iron-age pronunciation and making it very clear to anyone he spoke to that he didn't follow basketball. I went to maybe two games at Bank One Ballpark (BOB as we called it). I never went to a Suns game...and remember, they were an incredible team. I watched Garrison play T-ball. That was my introduction to sports. Then I met my stepdad, who, among so many other things he's taught me, brought me into the world of sports...to a degree. My stepdad is no sports junkie, he hates professional basketball, will MAYBE go to a Royals game...but unless he's in a luxury box with air conditioning and Fat Tire...probably not. We do watch Chiefs games sometimes and the Superbowl. But what he introduced me to most - was the Jayhawk Nation. He was one of the first people in my immediate family to wear collegiate attire a lot. He sports his fandom all the time on the weekends - and now on casual fridays, despite being the head of the legal department....he rolls in wearing a KU shirt on fridays.
As a freshman and sophomore at KU, I still didn't get "Jayhawk Fever." I was commuting, which I think was a major problem. But then...2008 happened. I was sitting in an upscale bar/restaurant in Overland Park with 2 Alumnas (my stepdad and a family friend whom I babysat for), their respective spouses, my brothers, my sister and the kids of the other family. Alex and I, being by far the most ridiculous ones in the family, wore all red and blue, including face paint and bandannas. We looked absurd, and it was amazing. The game was exciting - but the moment Mario laid that 3-pointer in....I honestly had never felt pride swell in my body like that. I didn't know you could feel that high, that buzzed, that elated from something you weren't physically doing. I didn't put that shot in the basket, but I felt like I had. That sealed it. From then on, I knew why people were fans. I felt the connection to tens of thousands of Jayhawk fans across the world. I felt a part of a whole.
This year, I got to really feel the road to the Championship. Having people around me to cheer, get excited with and bond with - those are memories I will never forget. Those are people I will never forget. I never thought I could scream walking down the street, be part of a mob, or be in an environment where people are climbing stoplights. That's a world this once quiet little girl never thought she'd live. Now, I can't imagine my life not being this connected with people. I now crave connecting. That's why I ask people's names - I talk to waiters by their first names, I ask the stranger I'm standing by at the corner their name and how their day is going. I make connections. The more I do, the more aware of the world I become and I don't know how to express in words that feeling. Usually I express myself best in text, but feeling like I didn't ignore the person I just passed on the street...it's a wonderful feeling. I'm so much happier and I find my life gets put into prospective a lot because of it. I commented on the necklace a worker at McDonalds was wearing and she told me she had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer last week. That's why I comment, I ask, I talk to people - because you connect with someone...you don't blindly go through life.
Fandom has given me that. It's made me comfortable to walk down The Strip in Vegas with a KU shirt on and high-five every Jayhawk fan I saw last year during the Elite Eight. It helped make me bolder and helped me realize - we're all in this together. So Rock Chalk and let's bring it in together on monday, boys!!
Sports fandom wasn't big in my family. My dad never pronounced "The Celtics" right, always using the Irish iron-age pronunciation and making it very clear to anyone he spoke to that he didn't follow basketball. I went to maybe two games at Bank One Ballpark (BOB as we called it). I never went to a Suns game...and remember, they were an incredible team. I watched Garrison play T-ball. That was my introduction to sports. Then I met my stepdad, who, among so many other things he's taught me, brought me into the world of sports...to a degree. My stepdad is no sports junkie, he hates professional basketball, will MAYBE go to a Royals game...but unless he's in a luxury box with air conditioning and Fat Tire...probably not. We do watch Chiefs games sometimes and the Superbowl. But what he introduced me to most - was the Jayhawk Nation. He was one of the first people in my immediate family to wear collegiate attire a lot. He sports his fandom all the time on the weekends - and now on casual fridays, despite being the head of the legal department....he rolls in wearing a KU shirt on fridays.
As a freshman and sophomore at KU, I still didn't get "Jayhawk Fever." I was commuting, which I think was a major problem. But then...2008 happened. I was sitting in an upscale bar/restaurant in Overland Park with 2 Alumnas (my stepdad and a family friend whom I babysat for), their respective spouses, my brothers, my sister and the kids of the other family. Alex and I, being by far the most ridiculous ones in the family, wore all red and blue, including face paint and bandannas. We looked absurd, and it was amazing. The game was exciting - but the moment Mario laid that 3-pointer in....I honestly had never felt pride swell in my body like that. I didn't know you could feel that high, that buzzed, that elated from something you weren't physically doing. I didn't put that shot in the basket, but I felt like I had. That sealed it. From then on, I knew why people were fans. I felt the connection to tens of thousands of Jayhawk fans across the world. I felt a part of a whole.
This year, I got to really feel the road to the Championship. Having people around me to cheer, get excited with and bond with - those are memories I will never forget. Those are people I will never forget. I never thought I could scream walking down the street, be part of a mob, or be in an environment where people are climbing stoplights. That's a world this once quiet little girl never thought she'd live. Now, I can't imagine my life not being this connected with people. I now crave connecting. That's why I ask people's names - I talk to waiters by their first names, I ask the stranger I'm standing by at the corner their name and how their day is going. I make connections. The more I do, the more aware of the world I become and I don't know how to express in words that feeling. Usually I express myself best in text, but feeling like I didn't ignore the person I just passed on the street...it's a wonderful feeling. I'm so much happier and I find my life gets put into prospective a lot because of it. I commented on the necklace a worker at McDonalds was wearing and she told me she had been diagnosed with Breast Cancer last week. That's why I comment, I ask, I talk to people - because you connect with someone...you don't blindly go through life.
Fandom has given me that. It's made me comfortable to walk down The Strip in Vegas with a KU shirt on and high-five every Jayhawk fan I saw last year during the Elite Eight. It helped make me bolder and helped me realize - we're all in this together. So Rock Chalk and let's bring it in together on monday, boys!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)