SaturdayBlogDay?? Just
kidding. I will still be writing on Thursdays but settling back in to life here
in Ventura has been more than consuming and I haven’t quite had a chance to sit
back and think. Since last Tuesday when my aunt passed my life has been far from
normal and I’ve never craved normal so much. Celicia made it back to
California, I am so proud. I think my luck must be turning around, at least
according to my boyfriend it is. I drove my 1990 Celica another 1200 miles
after just making that drive a month ago and bought my first surfboard for a
steal. However up until last night, in the midst of the excitement of moving in with my friend
Kylie for the summer, trying to find a better
job than nannying, and simply figuring out where the grocery store is closest
to my house, I haven’t had a second to process the past month of my life.
In just one month I have gone
from a dorm room in Santa Barbara, to home in Seattle and a restaurant job
there, a funeral for a close relative, and back to California. The amount that
has unfolded since school ended a month ago is huge, and last night I realized
just how stressful that was. While it was all piling on one day after another,
I did not really feel the stress of being so far from my boyfriend, working 12
hour days at the restaurant, being present for the sudden death of a my aunt,
and putting my foot down on leaving while my parents so firmly disapproved. Now
that I have unloaded all of my stuff again from Celicia (that’s my cars name,
read previous posts;) ), I feel like I have finally settled in again. I feel
like I am home. I left so much in boxes at my parents’ house while I slept in
my sisters bed with her, and went back to a restaurant that stayed there all
the time while I was gone and growing and changing for months at a time. I knew
I was in transition so I didn’t settle back in, but a month of transition is
harder than I thought it would be on my soul.
In this past month I have
cried probably more than I have cried cumulatively in the past three years. I
cried when I left Santa Barbara, I cried when I told my parents I was leaving
Seattle, I cried a ton when my aunt passed away, and a few little times in
between when my heart ached for home and the ocean. For those that know me
well, this is incredibly unusual for me. I almost never cry, and usually hate
doing it. I have prided myself for years in having less emotion than your
average man.
In January I was talking
with the girls I lived with at the time, all of whom I miss very much, and I
realized I had worked hard at being emotionally unavailable. I should also give
some credit to Annabelle who has had so many conversations with me about this.
Whether it was to men, my family, or others coming into my life, I held people
at arms length. I realized while I sat there that it was a combination of not
wanting to look like I didn’t have control, and letting people close is a
release of control, and that would require a vulnerability I did not like. In
letting anyone close, they have the control to handle that as they please. This,
as we all have seen at one point or another, leaves one vulnerable to this
other person’s actions and emotions. It is however human nature to want to let
people in, we crave the love and acceptance of other people. I had worked hard
at not letting people in, and I was sick of it.
My heart felt cold. I worked
at keeping people far away and I was ready to let people in. I consciously
decided to let people in to my heart, at the risk of being emotionally harmed
and possibly looking stupid. I have taken a chance that not many people have to
take in their lives; for most it comes a little more naturally to end up
vulnerable. Since January not much has changed in the grand scheme of life, I
still have the same goals, attend the same school, and drive the same car,
except for deciding to let people close and let myself feel for the first time
in years.
I am a woman and I will have
emotions, squishing them when I do rarely feel them does not mean I am strong
but instead it means I am cold. I am scared of the goals I have; what if I am
not smart enough, quick enough, or hard-working enough to be a doctor. In this
pursuit of a career I have put my family under a new financial burden, run
myself to the ground studying and learning to work hard, and somehow in the
midst of this paid a strange attention this idea of the woman I want to become.
Women are hard-wired to be relatively more emotional and this must be
advantageous evolutionarily or it wouldn’t have been carried on all these
years.
I will worry for myself and
for those around me, I will be nervous about what is to come to an extent, I
will be scared, I will love, and I will let others love me. A strong woman is
not a woman that does not cry, a strong woman is one that is driven. The women
I admire are not the ones that have never had anything to cry about, but instead
the ones I admire are the ones that have been shattered and risen to the
challenge.
These women I look up to
also love like crazy. These strong women love their families and they love what
they pursue. One does not look at a strong woman, one that alters the presence
of a room when she walks in, and say, “Wow, she’s so strong, she must never cry,
ever”. But instead, the hard work she has put in is written all over her face
and it is so intimidating.
So man, I feel like a woman,
and I’ll take the emotions that come along with that. Life can bring it on,
because I haven’t been beaten too bad yet and I don’t plan on it.
