Is this a date?

I went on a date today, and I didn't even know it. I met a man the other night while I was at the mall and we got to talking for a while. He was still new in town and he suggested we go out sometime. I agreed and today I met him for brunch. The thing is that I have a lot of male friends that I hang out with all the time, and for the most part they see me as just one of the boys. I guess I kinda do now too because when he referred to me as his "date" I was so surprised I didn't know what to say.

I don't remember the last time I went out on an actual date - the kind where a man picks up the tab, picks me up, opens doors, and sits and talks to me. Somewhere along the way I think I became dating retarded. The men that I usually meet are the type who don't call me when they are sober, have girlfriends or a fiance that I didn't know about, or use me to fill in the space between girlfriends. I get to be fill-in girl while they search for a real girl to date. It's like I'm invisible to someone who is staring right at me, and it's a frustration I can not explain. Everyone has been in this position. My scars are not unique and my battle is not unusual. Knowing this doesn't make it any easier.

I'm Different, and I know it. I'm not typical, and easy to read. I'm complicated and impulsive. It's impossible to figure out if I'm coming or going and by definition, I'm a gamble to love. In a world where uniqueness is so extremely undervalued, I and many others who have the yearning for the unusual and the unconventional walk alone through life. I love people who are a little different. Their qualities appeal to me. The man who up and moves to Thailand because he always wanted to go, or decides to learn a new language or trade at the age of 30. Those who have seen the world, and have stumbled and fallen over and over again have a view of the world that can not be replicated. As people, our scars tell the story of our life far better than the list of our accomplishments ever could. The bumps and bruises we acquire along the way add pages to our stories that should never be left out.

I digress... I'm hanging in there. I am making new friends everyday, but I still miss the true friends who have left the island that I don't get to see anymore. I think my loneliness of missing them has lead me to actually want something more from the men I meet. I seek companionship that I no longer have in my friends here. I have come to realize that I don't do well with being lonely. I need to be surrounded by amazing people to share my days with. There is only so much I can do to keep distracted from this void in my life. But none of this is ever going to be possible if I keep showing up to a date not having any idea that I am on one. :-)Someday...

I found a letter...

I found an old letter last night. It both touched me and crushed me - simultaneously. Dug out from the ditches of my soul, long before my heart became tainted for the final time by a man who never meant me any harm. Isn't it strange how the ones who hurt us most do it with smiles on their faces - completely oblivious to the fact that they are doing any damage at all. Of course, they don't hurt us with the words they say, they do it with the words that they don't... They crush us with the affection they never showed, the phrases never uttered, and the gestures never made. They make us doubt our self worth, and question the validity of our own love: could it be real, could his be real, and do either of us deserve it anyway? I thought I had found the love of my life, only to have it gone 2 months later. It is this man that made me say "enough is enough, I give up" and he might have been the nicest, truest man I ever met. He understood me, and accepted my instability and impulsiveness as beauty instead of chaos. It was me, however, who couldn't accept his stability and mild mannerisms. I expected so much more from him... The letters speak of these beautiful plans and exchanging of hearts. The phrase "I'm not going anywhere" stares back at me from the paper with such an irony that I am forced to look away. "You might not be going anywhere, but I sure am..." It's almost as if I had been looking for a way out all along...

I still think of this situation, sometimes wondering if I had made the right choice back then. How is it that a person who will treat me with such respect and delicacy completely lacks the ability to speak to my soul? Why is it that the people who should mean most to us end up as the ones who we find the most disposable? My heart doesn't respond to reason, nor does it understand practicality. Instead it speaks fire - always seeking that spark to make it ignite. I understand the world in feeling more than I do in reason, and I respond accordingly. I can offer up no reasons for my actions other than "that's just not what I wanted." It's such a lame excuse to give to someone who literally traveled across the country just to be with me. All I can do is trust that the decisions I made were the best for me at the time. Maybe one day he could have been all I needed and more, had I been willing to wait. As fate would have it, however he ended up a mere signature scribbled down on a plain white sheet of paper in my scrapbook of lovers who I left along the way... And there he will remain...

Dreaming of you...

As is the case with any college student, the end of the semester brings about many sleepless nights to finish papers, and projects that have been procrastinated for too long. My lack of sleep for about 2 weeks now had finally allowed me to take a long nap yesterday after my final exam. I laid down in my bed, and fell into a deep sleep for over three hours, and the dream I had has been haunting me ever since. It was so intense and real, that I woke up confused as to which was really my reality - the dream or my waking life. It was so soul touching that I'm still reeling from it a day later and I feel compelled to conserve its memory forever in my blog.

The dream started in a place that reminded me a lot of my hometown. I was in a house with several of my friends, but they weren't really the friends I have in real life. I left this place looking for some sort of Christmas present for my niece and I met up with my mother and my aunt (who passed away about 5 years ago) to go looking for it. Then a man showed up. He had brown hair and he was calling me "Baby". I don't remember his name, but I was instantly confused as to why he was there. I didn't like him very much at all, and him calling me pet names really bothered me. I asked my mom and my aunt who he was, and they told me that he was my boyfriend and that he was the father of my unborn child - that I was pregnant... I found this to be a shock. I had no idea and I felt my stomach and explained that I didn't feel pregnant at all - that I thought I should be nauseous or in pain or something. They ignored me and told me I would be fine. The end of the scene faded out with me walking past these HUGE rolls of Christmas wrapping paper - they had to be about 15 feet long and at least 3 feet in diameter and I saw my aunt tear off a piece and start wrapping a present.

After that we went home, to a place that I thought I have never been to, but apparently I lived there. The guy with the brown hair was there and he sat down in the living room. This is where I found out that I apparently had a fiance too, and he also lived in the house. This news threw me for a loop. As I have stated earlier in my blogs, I don't really think I want to get married or have babies, so I was confused as to who these people were and how I had gotten myself into this predicament. My head was spinning. I felt sick to my stomach thinking that I was pregnant with another man's baby while I had a fiance. One of my teachers from last semester made an appearance in the dream and he looked at me and started talking to me. he said "So you are pregnant with one man's baby and engaged to another??? How could you do that to a man who loves you that much? Why would you?" I looked up at him and I could feel myself getting ready to cry and I said "I have no idea. I don't know what is going on. I don't know these people." He told me that if I wanted to talk he was there, and then he left.

I walked into another room in the house. It was a dim room. It has white walls and no furniture, with one set of windows with thick curtains that allowed just a tiny bit of sunlight in. There was brown carpeting on the floor and the man who I understood to be my fiance was sitting across from me in the corner - just sitting on the floor. With his head down. He was thin, and a little taller than me with slightly tanned skin and sandy blond hair and blue eyes. I still had no idea who he was, but I thought to myself, "If this is the man I am going to marry, I might remember him if I kiss him - maybe I will get a feeling from it to confirm everything." So I crawled across the room to him and lifted his head up toward mine and kissed him on the lips, once, and then he kissed me back. Instantly I had butterflies in my stomach. I felt so peaceful. He stopped and smiled at me. I told him "I'm so lost. I'm confused. I don't know these people . I don't know how I ended up here and I'm scared." He put his arms around me and held me and told me that it was going to be ok - not to worry. I said "They tell me I am pregnant with that man's baby, but I don't feel like I am, and I don't remember any of this? I don't know why I would do that if I was going to marry you" he looked at me and said, "That's because you aren't pregnant. They are trying to take you away from me, and they told you that so that you would leave me." I thought this was awful. I asked him "You know, I didn't like him from the start, I don't trust him, and I didn't understand why I would be with someone like that, but you... You are so nice and so gentle... I'm usually crazy. I party, I drink, I go out all the time... I don't understand how I ended up with someone like you either. How did we even meet." He took my hand and smiled and said "You always told me that that's the thing you loved most about me. You said that you wanted to get out of that life, and you love that I took you away from it." Then he proceeded to tell me this beautiful story of how I had met him. I don't remember the details, but I felt my heart break as he told it. Then I looked up at him and said "I don't know how I ended up here, or anything else about this life, but I'd really like to get to know you if that's ok." Then he smiled and kissed my cheek and I woke up...

It seemed so real, he seemed so real, and in my grogginess I woke up with this overwhelming sense of loss that he wasn't real. I wanted him to come back. I don't know what it was. This man in my dreams spoke to me so sincerely and so gently - like no one I had ever met. I just had this complete feeling of being safe and at peace - even in the state of confusion I was in. It was just amazing... like nothing I have ever experienced in my waking life, and the feeling rocked me to my core. I have been haunted by this dream ever since, and I can't seem to stop thinking about it. I have never seen myself as the kind of girl who would say any of these things, but maybe there is more to me than I know yet... All I know is that I am completely reeling from this dream and I hope I figure it out... Or have a sequel to it and meet him again... Dreams are such powerful things. I had no idea...

Sometimes you just know...

For as long as I can remember I have questioned the spiritual world. What has happened in the past, what will happen in the future, and if there is any way that we as people are spiritually connected to it in our subconscious. Is it possible for us to know the fates of ourselves and of others before an event actually takes place, or is life just a series of coincidences??? This is definitely an age-old question.

My father has had a gift for as long as he can remember. He just knows when things are going to happen. As with anyone who is a parent can probably attest that they can do for their own children, he just knows when I am up to something. Even as an adult he will still call me right in the middle of a dilemma or a heated conversation just to ask if I am OK. But it goes much further than this. For example, he drives by a place on the street and he will visibly shudder - 2 days later there is a horrible accident at that location. However, the best example I can give of this came when my 18 year old cousin was killed in an accident. It's never good news when the phone rings at 2am, we all know that, but out of all my elderly relatives and grandparents that could have caused this phone call, my father sat straight up in bed and said "Michael is Dead." This story still haunts me to this day.

I remember myself the first time I felt this. I guess to everyone who has experienced something like this it comes differently - sometimes in a dream, or a feeling... Mine experience speaks to me in a clear voice - not an out loud audible voice, but a voice just the same and I will never forget the first time I heard it. I was 12 years old and I was playing in my front yard - leaning on the branch of the tree with white bark by my mother's window. It was my grandmother's birthday, and I remember it stopped me in my tracks when it said "Enjoy this time, because it is the last birthday she is ever going to have with you." I burst into tears... I heard this voice so many times after - as if it was preparing me for what was to come in a way that no one else would. The next time I heard it was 4 months later -when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. My mother broke the news to me and I went out to take a walk to sort out my thoughts. This was the end of November 1995. On my walk I heard the voice say "She will leave you around Christmas Day." I was shocked. Where on earth was this coming from?!?!?!

Fast Forward to the day after Christmas. My mother and I were in her car and she was telling me that my grandmother was getting worse and that it was a matter of weeks before we lost her. I just knew she didn't have that long. The very next day my grandmother passed. The whole day is so full of activities that I can't bear to write them all down, but I do remember one part the most. I was in her house - as I had been everyday for the last month. My dad came by on his way home from work. He said his "hello's" and then decided to go home to change and grab dinner and then he was going to come back. He asked me if I wanted to come with him. I was suddenly faced with a serious moral dilemma - I knew that by the time I came back she wouldn't be there. I decided to go... I couldn't bear the thought of watching the woman I loved with all my heart take her last breath. Looking back now I don't think she wanted me to either - I had been staying at her house everyday for a month, and the 20 minutes I left for was the time she decided to let go... I got home with my father and not 5 minutes later my uncle called - saying that she was taking a turn for the worst and we needed to get back because she only had minutes left. We jumped in the car and sped back. I was silently praying to myself in the car - asking God not to take her please... We got to a part of the Main St that intercepted a street called Garden Road, and all of a sudden I stopped praying, looked up in the sky and heard the voice tell me "She's gone." I never forgot this. I also never spoke of it again for years, but little incidents like this continued to happen regularly.

About 3 years later an aunt if mine fell ill. She had a heart attack and was in critical condition. Everyone was worried about her. My mother was sitting in the kitchen crying - worried about her aunt, and even though I had a strained relationship with her I decided to console her. I sat down next to her and said "Mom, don't worry she is going to be ok this time. She is going to recover completely and come home, but in a few more years she will get sick again, but right now she is fine" My mother was so shocked that she stopped crying and asked me "Why do you think that" I told her that I didn't know how I knew - but I just did... She looked at me and said "you are truly your father's daughter" she then told me the story of my father and my cousin, and the things he "knew" over the years. She told me I should talk to him. So I did. I entered the conversation a few moments later and told him the same thing I had told my mother about my aunt. I told him that I don't know how I knew, I just did... He looked up at me and said "I know you do. Just like you knew the night your grandmother died." I was shocked. I asked him how he knew about that. He answered "Because looking at you is how I knew she was gone. I will never forget the look in your eyes when we passed Garden Road that night" I was floored...

Since that night these feelings haven't stopped. Sometimes they are direct and sometimes they are not. The night that my house was broken into I was feeling uneasy all day. While sitting on the couch doing my homework that night I was hit with the voice in the form of a question "if someone were to walk through that door right now, what would you do? Where would you go?" I was so preoccupied with this question that I got up to double check the lock... this is how I know that the man who entered my house did it deliberately. He had to pick the lock in order to get in. Just a month ago I heard a voice in my head tell me that I would be hit on my Scooter sometime soon. I thought I had paid my due when I slipped on some oil in the street and went down in traffic, but the feeling didn't go away until 2 weeks later when a car side swiped me while making a left turn from the right hand lane. But how could I have known that?

I have tried to reason away these feelings and thoughts. I have tried to dismiss them. I have tried to discredit them. It makes me think I'm nuts sometimes for thinking these things, and giving merit to some crazy hunch. But what if it is more??? I have said before in a previous blog that I believe that there are many levels on the scale of consciousness between being awake and being dead. What if some of us are just fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to get a glimpse into these? I mean we have all heard the stories - of people who regularly dream of the future, or who have dejavoo. I'm not sure if it is fate, coincidence, a spirit, or even God himself telling me these things, all I know is that they have touched my life and peaked my curiosity enough to write about them, and ask questions of others who have had similar experiences. In a world full of so many tangible matters and issues that can be defined as only right or wrong, it makes me feel good to be reminded that there are somethings that we just aren't meant to have answers to. In this crazy busy life, there are still things that open our eyes to the beauty of possibility. They happen for a reason - to teach us a lesson, or to help someone who needs us. My personal experiences have brought me so much closer to my father - who I wasn't really close to at all before we talked, and I consider this relationship a blessing everyday. I have to say, no matter where these feelings or voices come from, I hope they never stop.

The everyday...

I'm sitting in my living room listening to the tropical rain falling outside my window. My roommate is sitting on the opposite couch from me studying for her CPA certification. The sound of laughter echoes from my other roommate's bedroom. We look up from our books to make a joke or gripe about our tasks. She takes random breaks to smoke a cigarette, which I accompany her on - not because I smoke but because I love the chats we have out on our front stoop. I learn so much about my friends while doing nothing. I'm amazed everyday. It's amazing to see where someone came from, and to know where they are heading and to analyze the contrast. To look at this successful woman who has more drive than anyone I know, it is proposterous to think that she had a juvenile arrest report, yet she does. I love people with a history. It gives them character.

This all hangs in a delicate balance. I know that in one year I will move on from this place and this beautiful chapter in my life will be just another page in my scrapbook. Random cigarette breaks, Rockband in the living room, and the goldfish tank on the corner will be but distant memories somewhere in the future. I want to pause time and hold onto these minutes before they pass me by. It is these moments that I love to look back on - not just the big stuff of vacations and weddings and such. The things I love to remember most are the small details of the everyday occurrences that make my life wonderful. The humidity in the air, the feel of the cheap suede futon cover I'm sitting on, the cooling feel of the tile on my feet, and the low hum of the ceiling fan will be my favorite memories of this place. Right here in this moment I am happy.

"I remember feeling low, and I remember losing hope, and I remember all these feelings and the day they stopped..."

Late at night my mind wakes up. It comes alive with feelings that I never knew I had. I could lay on the couch all day and think of nothing, yet the second the day fades away and the midnight moon makes its debut in the sky it's like my thoughts and emotions unlock that hidden door to my unconscious and let me in. I love it.

In these late nights, my brain and my heart allow themselves to truly feel and identify how I feel about the situations going on in my life. I can be free with myself. Aside from this blog, I never admit my secrets out loud to anyone. I'm probably the only girl I know who lies to her own journal. I'm always afraid that someone will see it or judge it... that they will judge me.

In ordinary circumstances I don't care what anyone has to say about me, but when it comes to the words that my heart speaks aloud, I am guarded with them. I'm possessive and always on edge - like I'm just waiting for someone to cast the first stone. these are not unfounded feelings. In my past life, someone always did.

This blog, to me is a way to be honest with myself. I am telling the story to myself, and I am but a phantom - a shadowy figure you can picture and imagine however you see fit. I am in no way ashamed of the life I walked away from, but instead I am afraid that my former life will change the way the people I love see me. Here in my life, I am happy. I am free and I wake up every single day absolutely ecstatic about the day. Every single day of my life I wake up with things to look forward do, and it is the most amazing feeling I ever had - and I did it all myself. I once made the mistake of sharing this previous life with a man I was dating years ago, and the conversation turned into an argument of "Why" I didn't run away, or defend myself, or take advantage of the options available to me. for 45 minutes I had to listen to a man tell me all the reasons I should be mad, and unforgiving to the people who hurt me in the past. How does one justify making a girl they claim to care about question herself and her strength - just because he needed me to need him. It's disgusting actually.

I sometimes look back on my old life and I ask myself the same questions... "Why didn't you leave? Why didn't you run away and never come back?" I know why I can never answer myself... Because an adult, who has so much more life and experience than a child does could never truly understand the reasoning for their decisions. I have to trust that when I was there, I made the decisions that I could live with. My 12 year old self would have never responded to these questions - she would have said "you could never understand my life" and walked away. she probably would have flipped me off on the way out the door too. I'm letting her go. Why should I question her motives... The decisions my 12 year old self made might have been hard at the time, but I never let life break me down, I kept my eyes forward toward the light at the end of the tunnel, and I turned that terrible childhood into an amazing life. With so much to live for and so much to look forward to, how could I regret any step of this crazy, happy, sad, and mixed up journey that has become my life. I can barely stand the anticipation of what will happen next.

My Secret

So I have been following the Post secret project for many many years now. You might have seen in on this site under the heading http://postsecret.blogspot.com. It's a project where you mail in your secrets and Tom, the guy who started the project posts them on the internet every week. He also prints books withthem. I have to say that it is an absolutely inspiring and fascinating project, and I have been addicted to the blog for years now. I also own all the books!

Anyway, Years ago I too mailed in a secret. My deepest secret. It never appeared in the page. I almost felt like I needed to see it though. It needed to be tangible and real, and put to rest... so instead, since I blog anonymously anyway, I am posting it here. So here you have it, the secret I mailed in with a piece of a 15 year old suicide note attached to it. It said:

"In all seven suicide attempts the one thing I have learned is that I am an utter failure at death - but that it is the only thing in the world that I will ever be unable to conquer."

Goodbye secret. Rest in peace. I don't need you to define my success anymore, I'll let my happiness do that instead.