"Love" and "Acceptance": we are unraveling

I feel like somehow my life is on consistent repeat. We all imagine that as we grow up we change, and we leave behind a million versions of ourselves. We believe that when we change we are this totally new person, that we have somehow adopted new ways of life… but yet I always seem to find my way back here. I feel like I have a pattern, a pattern that I wish I could break, but one that I know will somehow continue on forever. Every couple months I end up back here, back to my writing, and inevitably back to reading quotes in order to feel better about my life. I want to feel like someone out there knows how I’m feeling. But the problem seems to be that I cannot for the life of me figure out how I am feeling in the first place. My intention was to find a quote to summarize my view of life. I wanted something poetic, something groundbreaking. Needless to say, I did not find that. I think the only way I ever would is if they tumbled out of these misguided fingers without purpose or pause. Anyway I found myself drawn to the quotes about love. And a general theme that I was not expecting to notice was the theme of acceptance. Love is when a boy listens to everything you say, and accepts you for your flaws. Love is when a boy sees through the disguises, and chooses to stay. I’ve had mixed thoughts about my current love situation for a while. I thought that I was going through some stupid time in my life where I just cannot handle to be held down, or expected to do certain things. I thought that this whole thing was my fault. I was confused about my past “love” for another. I was confused about my motives and my intentions when I left home each night without him. Was I going because I needed my own life, or was I going because I just didn’t want to be with him? The real problem was not apparent. I have all of these ideas about love. I have this picture of what love should be in my head, just as I’m sure everyone else does. Something that has been molded by Disney movies, and Dawson’s Creek, and romantic movies. Love should be epic. Love should be earth-shattering. Love should stop time. Love should consume you. And this love is not that, for one reason. He cannot accept me. I’m a girl that has made my fair share of mistakes. I’ve loved the wrong man, stayed in destructive relationships for far too long, and let my heart lead me to places that I knew I never wanted to be. I’ve had meaningless sex. I’ve had secret trysts and reveled in the danger of getting caught. I’ve broken hearts, and other’s trust in me. The list goes on and on. I know I’m not perfect, but I also know that to regret those decisions goes against everything I stand for. I want to be genuine, authentic. I’m going to be me and I’m going to make the wrong decisions sometimes, and I might even be aware of that fact as I’m making it. But I will not regret a single thing, because that’s who I wanted to be in those moments, somehow whatever those things were, were important to me. It’d be ridiculous to deny it. So I’ll wear my mistakes like badges, and find honor in the display. Because I’m okay. But when I come home I feel as if he wishes I was someone else, someone better. He regrets the things I do. And it is because of this that I wonder if he really loves me, or if he simply wants to, but cannot. It’s not a problem of him loving another, or me loving another, it’s about him not really loving me. I don’t have those earth-shattering moments with him, he does not stop time. He makes time better, and I love the way it feels to be in his arms. But he makes me want to hate myself sometimes. He makes me question my motives, question my intentions, when normally I would not. Normally I wouldn’t have to. So what do you do when you cannot love someone, or that love has somehow faded, because his love was never genuine to begin with? I need someone I can share my secrets with, someone that’s just going to listen and laugh at me, and tell me that none of that matters. Because why should it? I wish he could just give me that.
But he cannot, or maybe will not, the string that unravels the tapestry that we call “us”. And all I can do is watch as I dive in deeper because I feel like I can save it. I can make him see, but somehow deep down I know that he doesn’t want to. He wants me to be something more than I am, something different, but I cannot be anyone but this. And so here I am left to revel in yet another destruction, wondering if the next guy will fault me for this too.
Unraveling us, to uncover me and you,
JL

The road to becoming a “counselor”

To say that this week was a learning experience is quite an understatement. I feel as if the past 6 days has been 6 years. The things that I have learned about myself, about my abilities, about my limits… they are infinite. I come home changed. And I know this. I can see it in the mirror. I can feel it. But what I truly wonder is if they will see the change too. In my head this change is so drastic that I wonder how they could miss it. I wonder if they do miss it if they truly know me at all. But at the same time, I wonder without experiencing this with me how they could see everything that I expect is written across my face. I feel as if my forehead has been branded, but in a good way. I feel like the girl that traveled to dallas no longer exists. She is lost somewhere in the world, and this new person has taken over my body. This confident person, this insightful and amazing person that finally has a direction in life is sitting in this chair now. I always felt so lost before this. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. I went back and forth on a daily basis of who I wanted to be, who I wanted to be with, how I wanted to be, and who I wanted everyone to think I was. Now I feel as if this huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders and I can just BE. I can BE ME. And for the first time I realize that that person is not stagnant, that person will change, is changing all the time. If I was not changing I'm not sure what I would do with myself. If I didn't leave tomorrow up in the air, I just don't know what I would do. My whole life I have been dependent on other people whether it was my family and friends or my lover. Now I know that I can exist on my own. I can be without having to be anything for them. I think the thing that has come as the largest revelation is that I can overcome my past. I can overcome that 13 year old girl that lost her father, and her family, and her reason for living. I can overcome anything. And for the first time I can see that I can do that alone, but that today, I don't want to.

I think I miss him more than I've ever missed anyone else. I don't just miss him persay either. I don't miss his conversation, or his guitar playing, or anything he does for me on a daily basis. I just miss BEING with him. I miss those moments where we aren't doing anything. I miss the moments when all is quiet and all is silent and I can hear his heart beat through his chest. I miss how I make him feel, and how he makes me feel. He feeds a part of me that no one else ever has. And yet somehow, when directed into that happy place, that place where everything else goes away, and all is quiet and calm, his arms were not the ones I wished were holding me. I was torn. No happy place could be found because I wanted him, I wanted his comfort, and his presence, but somehow I wanted another's arms around me. I went back to a night not too far in the past when I could smell another, be held by another, and the rain started to drizzle ever so slightly, but neither one of us wanted to part. I don't know why this is. I've always been a big believer in the fact that I could not be in love with two people at once, but if I truly look at my life, and I look at where I'm at and who I care about, I am. I love him with everything that I am, but I have not yet let go of a love that I have had longer. It was his arms that were around me, his smells that overtook me, his presence that calmed me. It was his voice whispering to me that everything was okay, whispering in a voice that soothed and calmed, and brought me to a place where I could be free of the counseling world, and the distress that it puts on the soul. Can I be in love with him, and find my strength and calm in another? I feel as if this should be wrong, but it felt so right.

And I guess what I truly wonder, what I'm truly afraid of, is if this new and "improved" me will make a new decision. Will this new me not be satisfied by the path that I had started to nervously wander before I came here, before I grew into "me"? I feel as if the life that I had started to leave may not be enough for me. In saying that do I mean that I wonder if he will be enough for me too? I don't know. So here's to finding out. Here's to living a brand new life in the same old world. Even as I say that I know that the world has changed too. The way I see the world is drastically different than I saw the world before. Everything looks different, better. Everyone is better. There is strength in this world that I did not stop to notice before, beauty that I was not attuned to. This world never again will be what I thought it was. I just wonder whether that is something I should revel in or fear. Who will I be, where will my life go, if I am no longer on the path that I began to carve in the world?

Fear of the unknown is not new to me. Somehow this is different though. I'm not sure if I'm afraid of what I don't know anymore, or if I'm afraid of what I do know. This new outlook on the world is terrifying. So many new options now exist.

Getting caught up in the beauty of the world is terrifying in a new and exciting way.

So here's to finally SEEING, BEING, and CARING,

Jenny Leigh.

i'm staring down at the world from 30,000 feet, and I am jealous of the order life seems to have from these heights. It's geometric from this viewpoint. People fit into tidy little boxes, and move in methodical logical patterns. Everything seems to make sense from such a distance, somehow the chaos is masked by the illusion of order. I am jealous of this because from this vantage point I am not part of it. I, along with my fellow passengers, am exempt from this illusion of safety and order for the next 2 hours and 58 minutes, approximately, as my captain would emphasize. I am jealous of all of their illusions. From here there are no labels, or assumptions. Each person is but a microscopic dot on a surprisingly orderly map. They do not have problems, or pain, or anguish. They do not have to think, because they are dots, on a map that is far larger than they could ever imagine being. They move in tune with one another without question or pause. Here, in this pressurized cabin, we exist apart from them. We move in chaotic polite fashions that, for most of us, are insincere and annoying. We do not know each other, nor do we care to. And yet we are bonded in the fact that we alone are exempt from that land-locked order. Our problems are somehow larger here since they are confined in such a small space. Life is in the balance here, and we risk everything we are simply by being here.

But in 2 hours and 5...3 minutes, approximately, I will return to ground level and realize that this illusion is just that, an illusion. The chaos of the streets will return, and I will have no need to be jealous of those people thousands of feet below because I will be one of them again. I will return to the world that is far more chaotic than ever seemed possible from 30,000 feet.

Is it wrong that I am in love with an illusion that, in all reality, I cannot ever be part of myself? I am in love with the efficiency of the world that I see out of this airplane window. My mind is, and has always been, largely mathematical. Angles make sense to me. Lines, and perfect shapes amaze my mind. I love the fact that there is always an answer in the mathematical world. And so, from above, that is what these people seem to have. They seem to have clean cut lives with absolute answers. People are but ants in a colony venturing through their daily routines with ease and reason.

Those of us above are in purgatory. Condemned to battle our demons in a cabin stuffed with others doing just the same. Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but this 2 hours and 58 minutes make life much more real. It's do or die up here. It really puts the important things in perspective. Looking at all the order of the world below makes you contemplate how much chaos you are creating.

Which brings us to the real problem...the only question that in this moment matters...does the world only seem so orderly because I am not in it?

Forever the creator of my own chaos,
Jenny Leigh