Ignore-ance

I am doing it. I am running away. I am quitting my job, I am going to Africa, I am going to have surgery on my vocal chords one last time, I am going to have no money and no job and I am going to go back to school to learn how to help other people. I feel I can do it all. All of a sudden.

When I told my mother that I was definitely having surgery and that this time I would take my recovery seriously, I assured her I would. And I got boiling mad. Inside of course. I did not let her know. There is no point. My mother quivers in fear when it comes to life she does not know. She is always questioning my decisions unless they are in line with hers. Ignorance I call it. And I am ignoring it.

I also know that she is not wrong. I have picked things up, talked worlds about them and then dropped them. I have done this. The last time I had surgery on my vocal cords, I was back at it again in no time. Drinking, smoking, treating my health and body badly.

This time it feels different. I feel like I am changing my life, my life style, my life choices and I am ready to recover. I am ready to do the things I am afraid to do. The things I am afraid to be good at. And I firmly believe that there is no reason to not be as good as you are.

Just because something does not happen overnight, does not mean it will never happen at all.

Maybe I am being Ignorant.

But I am going to ignore that possibility for now.

wanna hear something funny...

After all this, I miss my voice and myself. I am applying to grad schools in social work. My friend Scott said, wow, that is so not you. He is right. I told him the truth is, I want to pursue my voice again. I want to do what it takes to make it sing musicals again, the way it used to. I want to act and sing again. I have been sabotaging myself since I injured my cords the first time and I am spent. I have wasted 6 years treating myself like shit. I want it back. I am 28 and I want it back. I am told, 28, is not so old. Why will I spend my day tomorrow applying to school. Because I want to keep my life logical. I want to appease my parents and I am incredibly interested in human beings and the psychosocial dynamic. that is actually the truth. But what do I want. I want to sing. I want my voice to be the easiest part of me again. I want to achieve what I have convinced myself is the impossible, cause its not. I want.

9:19 am

It was 8 years ago at this minute that my mother called my cell, woke me up on my only late class day of the week and told me to get out of my dorm room twin sized bed and look out my over sized window. There they were, running for their lives. The television went on, the footage repeated the actions that had happened less then an hour ago. The world changed, Manhattan changed and it felt like my surroundings turned in circles for days following. My thoughts are with those who lost loved ones, those who volunteered their hands, time and lives on that day and even to those who were too shocked to figure out how.

Please forgive....

I forgive you. Is that weird, because I mean it. I mean it because I feel happy for you. I mean it because forgiving you means happiness for me. Relief. I want to listen to music again. I want to wake up early again. I want to be close to new people. I want to run into you. To smile in your direction and say hello.

I don't know where it stems from other then the idea that maybe people who hurt one another are not to blame, but to be understood as an experience to be had, towards your own truth, something to hold onto and then just let go of, something to appreciate for whatever the experience brought to you, good or bad.

I am not angry anymore and I don't feel bad about it either, none of it, just that we lowered ourselves to the level we did and lost our friendship along the way. My only regret. Don't think we can ever get it back, but at least would hope that the next time I see you, with her, we can tip our hats to one another, and say remember when...only the good parts, of course.

I am having a very hard time concentrating today. I am not sure that Friday should even exist as a day wherein which we should be expected to concentrate. But then I wonder if Thursday would take Friday's place.

The speakers on my computer have been broken since December. And for some reason it has not been a top priority of mine to get them fixed. My computer has no more memory on it, so I have never been able to sync my iphone to my computer and that means my iphone does not have any music on it. I got my iphone in December. Since December, essentially, I have been relegated to Pandora. On my computer at work and on my iphone. I have not listened to the music that makes me happy since December. I work in music. Music is supposedly my passion.

Supposedly.

But here I am again, watching my passion for something slowly wane. And I think it really is indicative of the fact that it is time for a change in my life.

Change has always scared me. Taking care of myself has scared me a bit too. I like to glide along, uninterrupted. My lifestyle indicates that I appreciate challenge and some adventure, but the truth is I have not moved much in my life.

Or maybe I have and not paid attention. That is my fear, that I have spent my formative years, my adult formative years, that is, not really paying much attention to my changes, to my growth and to the process. And here I am at the end of this era. I have had many experiences but not much to show for it, except for lists of outlandish experiences. Sometimes my friends tell me my life is like a movie, that they wish they would take a minute to write it all down. Mostly because I am impulsive, I do what I want when I want to do it without thinking of much consequence, at least within the confines of the tri state area.

I know a million people, I am popular, people know who I am when I walk into a room. People think I can help them, they think I am important. I must have succeeded in a way then. But is it really what is important? And why do I always want to run away from what ever it is I have found.

Like now.

I am ready to change again, but this time for good. I am going to go back to school. I want to be a Doctor now. I want to be a psychologist. And when I make the move, I make it for good. It is not a profession you can do and try and do everything else you want to do at the same time. The pattern I have created for myself up until now. It is also something you don't just up and walk away from.

Do I get upset about it? Leaving part of me behind? Does this change who I am inherently. I know, intellectually, that the answer is, no. It does not. But it feels a bit like it will. Like I am graduating from a period of my life. Should that be shocking? That is how we spend the early part of our lives, graduating from one era to the next. I see people from eras gone by and can not remember their names. I am also infamous for carrying eras over into the new ones. Will I do this this time around? Or will I walk around in 6 years forgetting the names of people who were integral in a moment of my life.

I mean that is what it is. A moment. Of my life. You have one life full of lots of moments, experiences, coincidences and because I continue to live it on my own, I can really jump in and out of different ones.

My father feels bad for me when I tell people that I used to be a singer. USED to be, I say, now I am something else. Maybe he is right to writhe when I say that. Maybe it is wrong to suggest that one moment can not carry into the next. I will always feel like I never really succeeded though. Like I did not achieve what it is I thought about when I was a little girl, fingers and toes crossed, eyes pinched shut dreaming, daytime and night time. That was one part of me I did not think would have its era, opening and closing. That should have lasted forever. But it didn't, just like nothing else does.

Will love be the same for me. Just eras running into one another, nothing long lasting? Nothing consistent?

I don't know. I can not predict it. I don't even know what will happen to me 5 minutes from now. But I do know no matter what in 5 minutes I won't be exactly the same as I am right now, so I don't know why change really stares me in the face,, full of fear.

The one that got away that keeps coming back....

Maybe if I write about it, I will be less afraid of it. I spend a lot of my empty thought time trying to figure out what went wrong for us. I have these perplexing, Homer Simpson style, "doh!" moments, literally smacking my forehead in disbelief. We've been friends for so long, family friends, friends of friends, "beneficial" friends-as the story goes. When I am with you I feel at ease, when I think about you I get a stomach ache. Yet I have broken your heart and truthfully you have been one of the many to put a dent in mine. Though years have passed. Sometimes I sit at my desk, look at my computer screen and wonder why the hell I don't jump the next train to DC. Sometimes the only thing stopping me is Charley (my puppy). Then I get lost in my life and forget about it all, lost in my circle of friends who mean nothing to me, lost in my doubts that our life together would be 100% perfect. Not that anything is ever 100% perfect.

I want to let you know that when we tried last time to put our selves together I freaked out. I just did. It felt manipulated, it felt fake. It was not that I did not feel for you, I just felt like we were trying too hard. I am afraid to be loved like that. I am afraid to let someone be nice to me. I am also afraid to try and start our relationship from scratch, because it's not scratch, it is 20 years long. Childhood into adult childhood.

My first image of you is your boxer short clad figure, dancing across your sisters room singing the Lion Kings version of "In the Jungle." You mooned me when I was in the sixth grade, cornered me in your parents bedroom while your sister begged you to stop. I blushed and I still do as I retell. I remember high school, your long hair, how beautiful you thought your high school female best friend was, how much you liked her, but you never got her, how jealous it made me, even then. Our trips out west with our parents and siblings, to Israel. The trip our families took to Africa, the last trip where our friendship maintained innocence and allure, the last time I could look at you, love you from afar, keep it close to me and to nobody else, flirt with you, watch you, wonder about you.

The next summer you took me, we took each other, right in our parents houses, a house to house escapade that lasted quite a while. One of the hottest, most exciting, most dangerous things I had done, I was 19 and you were 22, over ten years into our journey. And it sealed it for me. I wanted you. But you lived in California, you were young and you had your dreams at arms reach, you were busy and you were far away. I did not think you saw me like that, maybe you did and maybe you did not, but it seemed unrealistic, so we went about our lives. You visited often and a lot of the time you stayed with me. Our friends, our siblings, they knew, it made them uncomfortable, it made one of them envious and I got drunk enough to sleep with him too, hoping to make you jealous. It didn't work. We persisted, started and stopped and started again. You would catch me when I fell, every time, without fail. You gave me the strength to leave my first serious relationship, then you moved to NY and fell into one of your own. I dated your friend instead. And tug of war continued. You filled up my mind, I think I filled up yours.

Then I found Adam and Kyle and eventually Dean. And I loved these men and forgot about you. Or buried you. After Kyle you came around, you thought it made sense, so we should try it and it felt unnatural to me and I walked away without an explanation. Even explaining it to you felt too vulnerable. It has never been the same. Not since then. So many moments through the tumult that was Dean I looked at you and wondered why I did not fall your way. I still wonder.

I think I am scared that we have a future. That it could be real, that it could be ridden with happiness and sadness alike, that we are able to spend real time together, that life might get hard and ruin us. Our life's passions have ignited and burned out, they have singed us each and we don't know where we are headed, professionally, but we'd have each other. It scares me to be with someone who does not seem happy in their pursuits, it scares me because it reflects me. I am afraid to sleep with you again, I am afraid it will be bad and more afraid it will be great. I am uncomfortable with the comfort. Pain is simpler then ease for me. It has been for a long time.

And this consumes me. Every day, the wonder. But I have no one to talk to about it, its been talked about. Our families, our friends have all been witness and if we were to do it all again, it would have to be just us in it this time. Alone together. And that scares me too. It will have to come from me this time, I know that for sure, you have given up, but I can see it when you look at me and feel it when you touch me. And I fear I am racing against time.

And I hate losing.

As far as you can throw

I know that you think about it too, about us, about why you did not take to me, about how it would have been better if you did. I want to help you, I care about you, I care about your happiness. I am here, I am listening, I always have. I can't help but tell you the truth abut how I think things should be. I wish you could see what I see, what other people see. I wish you could see me. Why is love always uneven, why is it a different experience for everyone, why are people only happy when they are unsatisfied, why is satisfaction so frightening to people. When does it feel right, when do you give in, when do you settle for what you thought was not for you?