my dark side

I don't know if everyone has this but I do.  It's like an evil twin.  This person that lives inside of you that likes to whisper into your mind.

She creeps in during moments of weaknesses and starts to take control.  Whispers of doubts.  Whispers of shortcomings.  Whispers of hopelessness.  Whispers of darkness.

I used to believe that this only occurred because I was unhappy.  Not true.  She's always there just waiting for a sign of weakness.  An opening to pour in through.  At a moment in my life where I am truly happy I am discovering that she will probably always exist.  In the past I've been so unhappy that she lived in a constant state of control and my true self only had brief moments of life.  But since August I've taken control of my life.  I took back my mind.

But in a moment of silent weakness where everything around me seems frozen in time, she found a way to creep back in with full force on a day where I should be rejoicing.  I have a week of vacation ahead of me.  I had a wonderful day at work where my boss praised me.  I have a fiance on his way to my house.  But she sneaked in.  The difference is that now I understand myself.  The difference is that now, hopefully,  I'm strong enough to deal with her. 

Hello world.

With my last post being in September I'd say it's time for me to post again.  Kevin is supposed to be holding me accountable to write something every day--be it blog, journal, novel, or a free write.

Here is my biggest writing hang up:
                                                    I'm really happy.  Like REALLY happy.  I write dark and depressing items.  I like to write when I'm in a dark place in my mind.  But this dark place has been pushed aside by sunny rays---how sickening it that?  Who knew I'd be one of those sunshiny people who wants to write about rainbows and love?  Well, as happy as I am I just can't write about rainbows.  I want to write about heartache, death, despair, and uncertainty.  So my challenge is to find a way to unlock my dark side when I need to sit down and write. So, we will see how that goes.

But I do have a good story to share.

There was this girl, let's call her Jenna, she had to visit the detention center yesterday (for an undisclosed reason but not a bad reason at all!).  Upon leaving this detention center she found herself in grey, rainy, cold weather.  Sitting in her car, let's call it a mustang, she went to back out of her parking spot.  Being a careful driver, she DID look behind her.  Let me point that out again.  She looked behind her and seeing nothing, she proceeded to back out.  Then...

THUD.

At that moment it became clear to her that she hit a car.  It also induced a slight panic attack that her beautiful, red, phoenix mustang might be hurt.  Jumping out of her car she looked at the car she hit.  A grey car (which would be why she didn't see it).  Not only was the car grey, it had this word in all capital letters on it:

SHERIFF

Thinking she was seeing things, she looked again:

SHERIFF

Yes.  She had hit a cop car.  A parked cop car.  With a cop in it.  In the parking lot of the detention center.  In all honesty, it took all of her strength not to laugh.  And that my friends, is when you know that you are in happy place in your life.  When you have done something incredibly stupid and potentially financially damaging and it is taking every fiber of your being not to laugh.  Not that I would know--this story is about someone else ;)

An hour later, after watching CSI take pictures of the "crime" as they called it, I--I mean Jenna--was able to finally drive away ticket free with an undamaged mustang.

Well, I'm glad to be back blog world. 

Boat Dream

     It was a large boat.  I've stood on top of a life size replica of Noah's Ark in Hong Kong and it was pretty big to put it lightly...although not as large as I imagine the Titanic being.  This boat was larger than both of those boats.  Standing on the top deck I had a hard time imagining that we were actually floating on the water and not hovering above the earth.  We were enjoying ourselves--mid-laugh I felt the presence of something--I felt him.  Looking around I couldn't see him but he was somewhere close, I knew it.  I could feel it.  Standing up I began making my way through the crowd of people, searching.  I saw him nowhere.  Making my way to the edge of the ship I leaned over the railing and I saw him.  I hadn't seen him in so long and even now he was so far down that he was only the size of an ant--just a tiny ant swimming in the water.  The boat was so tall that the water seemed a world away.  I couldn't make out his facial features or even the color of his clothes but I knew it was him, my bones felt his pull and my heart seemed to be clawing out of my body to get to him. 
     I turned towards my friend and whispered, "Do you see him?" 
     "I see him."  She replied with a look of concern etched on her face.  I turned back to watch him swimming in the water below. 
     "Why is he here?" I asked without turning my gaze from him.  "Where is he going?"
     "I don't know."
     I needed to know.  I needed to ask him.  I needed to look in his face.  I began to climb the railing until my friend put her hand on my shoulder, "You can't jump in," she whispered, "You'll die.  It's too far down.  Even if you survived the fall you would land too close to the ship and get sucked under."
     She was right.  I put my feet back on the wooden deck and took a long look at him in the water.  I turned away and walked towards the middle of the deck and turned back to face his direction.  The wind was lightly whipping my dress against my legs and my hair danced in the air.  I could feel the rough wood of the deck against my feet, the splinters pressing against my heels.  Taking a deep breath I sprinted towards the edge of the ship and jumped just in time to clear the railing and I soared towards him..

The Apartment

I move a lot.  That's not a secret.  I've lived in the same house since I was two but once I left for college I began a whirlwind of apartment changing.  I've grown to love packing--and I'm not being sarcastic.  I really do love it.  In less than two weeks I'll be moving again and as I pack I've been thinking of the all of the places that I've lived.  Hands down my current place is the nicest apartment I've lived in.  But it's not my favorite.

My favorite apartment was an apartment that was rented by drug dealers before I moved in and had a dent in the door where somewhere had tried to break in.  It had bugs, squirrels, leaky ceilings, a smell, and odd objects sticking out the floor that would slice your foot.  It was fantastic.  So fantastic that it's the only place I lived at for a whole two years.  It may sound like a horrific dump but the memories I have of that apartment are some of my favorites. 

My last two years of college I lived there with my best friend Sage the whole two years while Paige and Kara lived there for a year each.  I remember the first night we stayed there Sage and I each slept with a butcher knife next to our bed scared to death someone was going to break in in the middle of the night (it wasn't the best neighborhood).  One night we heard something and Sage and I put on our brave faces and grabbed a butcher knife and baseball bat and proceeded to search for the cause of the noise.  The place was three stories and had about ten closets--we took turns rounding each corner and opening each door.  Turns out we had imagined the noise but when I look back I don't remember how terrified we were--I remember us laughing nonstop about it the next morning.


The place was infested with gigantic crickets that seemed to live in the downstairs bedroom where Kara and Paige lived.  Not only did we have a cricket problem but we also had a squirrel problem.  That's right--a squirrel problem.  Imagine your roommate waking you up at 3AM to tell you that she just trapped a squirrel in her closet.  I never thought I'd ever have a squirrel running around loose in our apartment but that little fellow kept coming back no matter how many times we called animal control.  That bushy fellow kept me up many nights laying in my bed listening for the sounds of his little feet scampering across my floor.

That apartment was where Kara and I learned the Single Ladies dance, where our fog machine set off the smoke alarm and we got to try on the firefighters uniforms, where I kissed my first love, where Paige and I discovered that we have very different reactions to tequila, where we threw up black sheets over the windows so we could have a perfect area to watch a Dexter marathon without a TV glare, where I put on my cap and gown for my college graduation, and where I learned that friends can become family.

That apartment represents my last two years of college--which are the best years of college.

Escape

I have an intense desire to escape.  Not just for an hour, a day, a week, or even a year.  I want to really escape.  Forever.  Disappear into another life. 

No, not another life---

                             I want to escape into the life that I yearn for.  The life where I am what I'm meant to be; not this current life of shuffling back and forth watching what my life could be disappear.  I can hear myself screaming inside; beating at the doors desperate for a way out.  I'm inside yelling at the top of my lungs but I can't quite make out what I'm saying.  The answer is there but this veil that shrouds my belief in myself is keeping it completely hidden.  I'm angry for not being able to hear my own desires. 

                      For not being able to set myself free. 

And I'm hurt that I'm only the one who knows it.  Others can't see me at all.  They only see the veil.  They see the smiles.  They hear the laughter.  They can't see the trapped girl huddled in the corner in defeat.  I've betrayed myself.  I've pushed myself into a jail cell and thrown a bag over my head so I can't see the opening.

But I still have the will to escape.

Regrets

 I woke up this morning with a message from a friend of mine concerning life regrets.  She listed off regrets that she has about things that she did...and things she didn't do.

I remember filling out one of those silly questionnaires that would get passed around on facebook in college and answering a questions about regrets.  You know the questionnaires I'm talking about ---the ones with questions like:  What is your dream vacation? (Hogwarts).  What is sitting immediately to the right of you? (The cat).  What did you eat for breakfast? (Coffee). People would fill out those things like they were popping M&Ms in their mouth. 

I remember a question that went something along the lines of this:


"Do you have regrets?"  Arrogantly I answered with some remark about how life should be lived without regrets.  Each moment contains something that you can learn from so therefore you should never regret a single moment of your life.

I'm pretty sure that the answer seemed reasonable at the time.  In fact I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time--my life was close to perfect.  And I still believe that my answer is partly correct.  You can learn from every moment in your life--but why should that mean you can't regret it?  Why can't you vow to cut out your very heart in hopes to go back and do something differently?

You see the thing is...if you don't have regrets, how can you ever learn from them?
Take a moment and list out your three biggest regrets.  I guarantee you that you'll figure something out about yourself.

Mine?
1.  Ruining what was a wonderful and honest friendship.  I'll never stop regretting that he isn't there anymore.
2.  Quitting theatre. I loved being onstage and I let the world tell me to give up.  So I did.
3.   Not believing in myself and settling in life.
 

The Trapped Turtle

I watched this turtle the other day.  It was beautiful.  Shocking yellow stripes that dazzle in the light.  People walked by and stared through the glass at him oooing and ahhhing and commenting on how wonderful it must be for him to live there, in that beautiful aquarium.  Safe, well fed, nothing at all to worry about.

But he looked sad.  I watched as he swam to the edge of the glass towards me.  He followed my finger as I waved it back and forth against his cage.  I wondered if he had some insane hope that my finger would magically create a hole that would allow him to escape.  To escape the entrapment of a life filled with longing to be something more.  A life where he doesn't wake up and face another day of swimming back and forth in the same pattern.  A life of adventure. 

And why shouldn't he be free?  Free to roam the waters of the earth--investigating every stone and every crevice he can find.  Riding the waves and currents--feeling the adrenaline pulsing through his veins.  He should be given the chance to be who he was meant to be. 

Putting away the picture I took of him, I clock back in and stare at my cubicle walls.