A Special Valentine for a Special Lady

Happy Valentine's Day! 

I am sending this out without the least bit of bitterness or condescending tone. I get that this day can be a bit morose for those of us who are of the single persuasion but I like to think of it as a day to tell all the ones you love that you love them. I invite you to take the time to send some love to everyone in your life that is special to you and don't dwell on the fact that you maybe minus a mate. If you have a mate remember that you should be loving them all year round. I hope you all are spending this day with at least one person you care for, I decided to write to the person I care for the most in this entire world!

Love and Other Drugs

This post is random and doesn't actually have to do with anything on my list but I kinda wanted to share.

Every once in awhile I talk about relationships of all kind and how they have affected me. My friend recently had this suckie situation end and she shared with me some serious insight on relationships. She referred to relationships as drugs..WOAH! So I am going to share some of her experience, hope she doesn't mind. Then add my own pseudo-philological thoughts.

she recently made a slip up and drunk dialed this guy and was kind of freaked out about it. She said:

"the drunk dial didn't set me back,  hey it happens but I think what upset me the most was that I even made it in the first place. It came out of no where, I  have been thinking about him less and less and I've been intoxicated several times prior to this and have no even come close to calling or texting.To me, the drunk dial came out of nowhere. I think I was freaked out that this happened now and I think it is because I don't trust myself not to do it again"   

She then went on to say that:

"his presence in my life became a drug that I absolutely needed. Our relationship was rough and ugly at times but it made me feel good, even if it was a false sense of euphoria. I am fine on my own but I liked it when he was around"

What does that say about relationships....in any form? Do they become drugs? Can we be addicted? Even when you know the side effects and outcomes are bad you still want it. Even when you know that you are way  better off you yearn for it. I am not sure why it happens or how it happens but it sucks.

Anyway, I think it is interesting to think of relationships of any kind as a drug but it makes serious sense. Like a drug, a relationship can make you feel good and when that presence is gone you withdraw from it; sometimes it hurts and is painful. Over the last few years I have gained and lost some relationships in my life and I find that regardless of how those relationships ended there is still a small inkling for that previous familiarity and I think about how quickly one can fall right back into it. I guess like most things in life, getting over a relationship takes time and care but most importantly I think it takes a conscious effort to recognize where you are in the process.

Daddy's Little Girl...with Issues

Here are a couple things you should know before you read this post.

1. This post is pretty personal; I try and keep things I share at an appropriate level of personal.  I think I share enough for you to get the idea with out crossing that over share line. However this post dives a little deeper and I think it is important that it does, in order for me to check daddy issues off of my list.

2. Just so you follow a long, sperm donor = SD = biological father, Dad = my step father

3. If you disagree with any or all of the things I say below please don't argue with me, my findings come from years of scientific research and anthropological viewing.

4. Also this post has a PG-13 rating due to a few F-bombs! {I love them so} 

5. It is long..so get a cookie

Some of you may remember in my {With Every Heart Beat} post I talked about the importance of dads. I can speak to the importance of them due to my lack of one. I have found that an absence of a father in a girl's life often leads to a girl with daddy issues. Furthermore having a bad father can also lead to daddy issues, lucky me I got both!

With Every Heart Beat

This past weekend was the 5k walk/run for the American Heart Association. We gathered both generations of X members plus some friends and raised money to help fight heart disease. The walk was great, a little cold but we all had such a great time. We walked in love and happiness and celebrated some awesome dads. Together we raised just about $3000 dollars for the American Heart Association which is absolutely amazing! Thank you to everyone who donated!

As you know I spent the last two years working for City Year and those two years were two of the most life changing years of my life. I got to work with amazing people and did so much in such a short time.  I have posted about my experience before and I probably will again because those people mean the world to me. I fully expect to experience all of my teammate’s weddings and have them experience mine. My teammates from my corps year and I often discuss how it came to be that we ended up with each other; the only answer I have is magic! We were absolutely magical because we all loved each other so fast, you would have thought we knew each other for years. Simply, we became a family.  We fought like a family, laughed, loved and cried as a family. It was even more special for me to bring X 2.0 into that family!

I will often say that it took tragedy to truly forge the special bond that we had. During my corps year two of my teammates lost their dads to sudden heart attacks; those are days you never forget. You remember where you were, what you were wearing what the air smelled like; it’s almost like you were taping and can play it back at any time.  So many things in this city are reminders and send me hurtling back in time to those days. For Shannon we were on Thanksgiving break and he experienced his loss away from us but it was still heart breaking for me, who was miles away. To know Shannon is to know an amazing person but most importantly an amazing MAN; he is smart, quiet, thoughtful and kind. I always feel a sense of calm in his presences and seek his ear for guidance. He has become a brother to me and it was hard to see this man struggle in his thoughts. He asked us to go about business as usual and he would let us know when he needed us, I can only imagine it must have been a comfort to him. His was always the hand I could expect to squeeze under the table or the one to pass me a note {preferably one with a robot} during a rough meeting just to make me smile and I remember just wanting to be that for him in his loss.

What Was Old is New Again!

I was going over some old blog posts from my old blog and I found this one called "Actions are regrettable...but are feelings?" Sometimes I am blown away by my level of deepness, and I had to repost it, see what I mean below!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Actions Are Regrettable..But Are Feelings?

Game Changer - any action that changes the direction or outcome of a game or activity
 
Okay so I just pulled that one out of thin air but I felt that it sums up a shift in a friendship. Yes, this is the same friendship that I raged on about a few posts ago. Those feelings were raw and passionate and though all may not have come from sound mind they came from the purest heart. My friend and I talked and worked our shit out, but he said some things that cut a little deep. Not painfully but honest and though I don't want him to be right he was. It is funny how my feelings changed once looking at things from a different point of view..his. Communication really is the key, it can unlock so many dead bolted doors. 

Game Changer- I fell unknowingly hard and expressed it knowing that he couldn't be about that. Duuummb! I'm pretty good at expressing feeling and to do so with a person who isn't so good, leads to confusion. I don't regret the feelings but I regret expressing them because although we're good, we're different. It hasn't been established if it's good different or bad different but that air of carefree inappropriateness is gone and in its place is left a grey area of caution and censorship. His precaution for my feelings and fear of leading me on and my censorship of overtly sentimental comments that are too reminiscent of a loving intimate relationship. That's not what we are; point.blank. period. The funny thing is neither of us are particularly "loving" people, I don't like to be touched most of the time so to refer to us in any kind of romantic way is kind of laughable really. I don't think you can label a friendship like ours, its ever changing and analytical, complicated and raunchy and carefree and easy..well it used to be. I say we can go back to the way things used to be, he says we can't. You know how you have definitive moments in your life, like "I was this way before this happen and I am this way after". I wonder if our friendship hence forth will be like that "before heavy awkwardness annnnnd after"

So in that case I had to ask myself can one regret a feeling? The conclusion I came to is no. Your emotions are consistently changing, kind of like water colors. If you add more water it dilutes the paint and the pigment isn't as strong. If you add a new color it never quite looks like the original color but the change is made, no going back. When the paint dries you still have to appreciate the picture and I think I do. At that moment in time I felt those feelings and was overwhelmed and thought I should share them. In hind sight that was poor judgment on my part and this is where the regret steps in, but I learned a good lesson and at the end of the day, I can't be upset with a chance to grow. With this experience I've grown at least 3 inches, or maybe that's just the imaginary pair of Christian's on my feet.

Happy Birthday Month to Me!

Knock knock...
Who's there?
The month of my birth...

November is here and my birthday is tomorrow! Although I have to tell the blogging world that I have been a little ho hum about the big day. I haven't made plans to celebrate and I have no big party plans to kick off 27 in Three.Six.Five. I am not really sure what the deal is, why I'm so bla about it but maybe it is because I have had so much on my mind. School..finding a job...finding and trying on bridesmaids dresses, SCHOOL! between all of that my bday kind of just popped up. Everyone else seems more excited about it than me. As the sun sets on 26 I find myself feeling a little sad about it. It was such an eventful year and so much has happened {some of it I would like to forget} but I remember thinking a few days ago that I really have learned so much in a year. I think me now is  a little better than me at this time last year; I guess that is part of growing up and becoming an adult. Truthfully I am just happy and thankful to have seen another year.

I have a pretty awesome week ahead, Thursday is the Watch the Throne Concert! I am soooooooooo excited! I am proud to say that I am going by myself and I am NOT ashamed of it. Saturday is the walk for the American Heart Association {donate here!} and I get to spend the afternoon with some of my favorite people, my X teammates! I promise to post pictures of both!

I look forward to tomorrow's sunrise and I plan on enjoying my day to the fullest. It is supposed to be nice so I definitely want to enjoy the day maybe a bike ride to a museum, lunch date with a friend and then a coffee date with my mentor. I  promise to put on a fresh coat of nail polish {my new favorite color for Fall} and a show stopping outfit {anything that doesn't involve chucks or sperrys} and head out and enjoy my birthday!

You Never Realize What You Have Until It's Gone

First I want to say that no one has died (I realize the title of this post is a bit ambiguous)! All of this talk and excitement that has been generated due to my  approaching (very fast approaching) 27th birthday has really allowed me to think about my life and who I am as a person. I think for the very first time I am comfortable in my own skin and even though I question my position in life I have few regrets. I've learned to feel beautiful in my {plus-sized} jeans but more importantly to be proud of the voice that I have learned to use. I bet you are wondering where this sudden rush of joy and strong fierce attitude has come from? It is simple: it came from a realization of exactly how lucky I am due to my experiences. Let me try and make some sense!

Background 

I spent the last two years working for an AmeriCorps program called City Year. I worked full-time in schools tutoring kids. City Year is a program that is all over the country and it uses service to make a positive change. My job was hard. The kids were rough, the hours were long, and the pay....well let's just say non-existent. However the things that I gained from my time with City Year are numerous and have infinite value. I can't put a price tag on my experiences. I have to say that I made some of the best friends of my entire life in this program. Working every day in tough settings with the same people day to day really does something to a person. I love my team mates more than words can say. The kids (as bad as they were) changed me in ways that were more than physical. Yes I dropped 2 pants sizes due to running up and down flights of stairs in heavy ass timbs and pants made of some material that did not allow for circulation of air but those were all physical. The biggest changes were all inward. My experiences in the school and with my team helped me become a much more dynamic person.  I fell in love for the first time, that may not sound like a big deal but falling in love wasn't something I thought I would do EVER. I figured I would be destined to live a life of spinsterhood playing the role of bridesmaid and making a home with my dogs. But my students allowed me to open my heart and feel for the first time and even though that "relationship"did not end well I do not regret any of the decisions I made in it. I will take the lessons learned from him and it and move on to the next one. The thing that is important here is that it HAPPENED, I allowed myself to go there and I was happy.

the 09-10 X team at the White House

Pool fun with the 10-11 Xers