The Sun Shines Today

Guys!

I can do things!

Today I finally felt brave and awake enough to go out into the world and I love it!

There’s only local businesses around me, as in there are so many little mom & pop places that it’s actually difficult to find a franchise.  And I love it.  Everything is so unique, and ernest and ready to be explore.

I started the day (by getting paid finally) and getting a NY bagel the size of my face.  I then moved onto getting my nails done, my one every-so-often treat; and believe it or not I actually found a place cheaper than in the ghettos of LA or Chinatown in Philly.

I then strolled towards the post office, hitting a place that was like a cheaper CVS.  For $20 I got a trashcan, hardcore sponges, a trashcan, some toiletries, wall hooks, a closet organizer, two name-brand air fresheners, and two key-differentiate-ers.

I then was frustrated with my hands full of home needs and toiletrees when I had planned to go to the Post Office.  But guess what….??  Unlike errands in LA or even Philadelphia, I live so close to all of these places that I simply WALKED HOME and then back to the post office.

I know that must sound small and meaningless, but for someone who spend a year asking for help just to get my laundry done…. This is incredible.  There’s nothing I can’t achieve on my own.

I brought a cart to the post office, übered home with my four boxes, and all on my own carried them up three flights of stairs.  *self-high-five for being stronger than I was even a month ago, because I definitely could barely have managed that physically.*  I’m getting stronger.

And I have 100% access to everything I need and then some.

I saw a youtube video for handmade hard candies, and after a quick google search, I found the place and it’s a 20 minute subway ride from my work.

I was giggling in the home goods store earlier because of how much was easily within my reach…. There’s a neat architectural choice here, to have residences so close to businesses.  It makes a community instantly.

I love where I am living and I love how much is within my grasp.

I can’t wait for each day to get easier and bring with it more to explore.

I am excited.  Still overwhelmed, but very happy with my choices and luck.

A Happy Check Point:

Hello my loves.

I’m in a good place today.  I’m hopeful.  I’ve slept enough, it’s not unbearably hot in my apartment yet, and tomorrow is Spencer’s birthday.  (Don’t worry, more on that will come.)

As far as work goes, I love my job.

Yesterday I got to help a crowd of people easily understand ideas so complex that if I told them how complex they were, they’d insist they were too advanced; I’ve found that people’s biggest obstacle in learning is themselves.  So getting past that and helping them learn was incredibly rewarding.  

After that, I spoke to a young guy I swear will change the world.  We discussed how people value the wrong things these days.  Certain sports shoes are popular out here, for instance, and he was saying that people only like them because someone told them too; a blog post, a celebrity, a friend.  That most of the people he knows gets them just to look at, not even to wear, and, again, not because of their own passion.  And he added that he knew two people who were killed for their shoes.

I was speechless at that point.  What can you say when you’re confronted with a society that values shoes more than a human life?  We talked more on what matters to him, and how he cares about originality; someone who follows their own happiness, not what others say they should value.  He was a magnificent soul and I hope the right luck finds him, because he absolutely is a visionary.

And this was someone I’d probably never meet outside of our store. 

Demographically we have little in common, and yet — I want to say spiritually, but by that I don’t mean some greater force guiding us, but rather the yearning that we both feel as humans to make something out of this short time that we have to be alive — and so spiritually we completely understood one another.  Nowhere else would I have been given the time to get to see this stranger so truthfully.

I’m so happy restoring from back up can take a few minutes :P

I also met a law student who was studying for the Bar Exam, and every time she was waiting (for her appointment, for the answers about her computer, etc) I would quiz her on what she was studying.  In that small time, I could see her kindness, and tell that she’s going to be an incredible lawyer.  Not one that entered that field for money, but rather one who prides herself in defending children and victims, who speaks up for those that are voiceless.  She is selfless.

And I also worked with a fellow poet, and got to share with her my new favorite gadget for creating.  She also complimented my look, and in the spirit of honesty and not vanity, I get that a lot at work….and that’s exciting.  I am different and always have been, and it’s great to know that it’s manifesting into something notably confident and distinct.  It gives me hope that when I start acting again, that when I walk into the room, they’ll see that too, and perhaps that’ll give me opportunities that I long for.  She also had that look to her, not my style per se, but something completely different and thus compelling.  It was a wonderful way to end the day.

So I love my job.  I get to connect with strangers, as I enable kindness, growth and art, both within them and myself.

So it’s no wonder then that I don’t want any other role.  That’s why I’m not in Philadelphia right now.  There was one position there that went to someone else, and I don’t want to move there an wait three years for another opening in the role that validates who I am and who I want to be.

So instead I’ve been looking for cities near Philly (so I can still see my love bugs there) but where I can also work this job and towards a career in art.

Have you guessed it yet?

I had an interview this week for a store in New York.

And I almost started crying, it sounded so amazing.  Their trainer team is twice the size of mine, which means the community openly embraces coming in to learn.  And most of what they do (PHOTOGRAPHY WALKS IN CENTRAL PARK) is so unbelievably brilliant and beautiful that I can’t believe it’s real.  They’re ideas you’d entertain for half a daydream, and then realize there’s no way that could work…and yet a someone there it more thought, and found a way to turn those dreams into a reality.

Soooooo clearly I want to be there.  To work in an environment so open to possibilities and growth and change?  That’s my dream.  I’ll hear about what’s next soon and will write more then.  But I’ll say this: it feels like the right path for me.

***

When I was seventeen, I was taunted about wanting to study theatre in college.  An unwanted authority boomed that I’d be “missing the boat to [my] life.”  I skipped the fight and instead wrote my response in one of my notebooks: that “there are enough people in this world and enough things to do, that you might as well do the thing you love.”  I still stand by this.

And I know New York is another city, but my main complaint here is that I can’t get anywhere on my own.  I want to explore, and to run errands, and to feel safe after the sun sets, and to get places without it taking two hours in each direction…and this city is isolating.  You don’t talk to strangers, or make friends in line at coffee shops….and that’s clearly a huge part of who I am.  I want to feed that part of my soul.

And I also love moving.  Not the act of dragging everything I own from place to place, but being somewhere totally new.  Being frustrated with something from your old world and going somewhere where that isn’t a problem.  It solves things, it creates new opportunities, adds new places to explore, and best of all: there are new people to meet.

The store in New York that I’m talking to…has over seven hundred employees.  Just that alone is awing.  Seven hundred people with a common shared experience to talk about….how can I not find at least a dozen new best friends?  Not to mention the millions of others who live in that city.  How could anything feel mundane ever again?  Life wold be extraordinary.  And I’m hoping that dream is another the store turns into a reality.

Here's some of what I've created at work this week:

To Build A Home

And at last I stood on the outskirts of my struggle, staring at what had become my home.  From a distance I saw my once supportive beams, now fallen, splintered and harmful. I recalled how that roof over my head had become toxic, and how climbing out from under it had left me bruised and exhausted.

I was still sore, still sick and still on my own.

I finally realized that here I was, stuck in a pit of my own creation and my own demise. 

To fill it and rebuild sounded like more effort than it was worth.  I had fought so hard, and what had it been for?

This empty pit. This lot of nothing, a painful reminder of my efforts at construction that quaked into a wasted year.  I had already discovered this spot as turbulent and sterile, so why was I still trying to make it my home?

It took me a lot of time to see this clarity. It was as if I needed to escape the pit and wait for the dust to settle to finally see. And as soon as I did, I booked a flight and went back to my old loves. 

I wanted to look at my old home.  Though I did worry how much of its stability was rested upon the ex; was he the reason it hadn't collapsed?  And now without him, would it still be the stable home that I needed?

And the answer is yes. My friends, those coworkers turned to loves, are my beams of support and light, even helping me find more people to keep building up my life. 

Perhaps he was my windows, my guide to the outside world, but with the warmth of those I adore, my house is well heated enough not to need his glass panes. (And who really wants to rely so heavily upon something so fragile?)

Even as a visitor, I feel more at home here than I've felt in months.  Some had said well I only had a year to build that western home and yet I had the same time here. And between an empty pit and a cozy and warm cabin, there's only one choice:

Happiness. 

This is the city where I fell in love. With my love at the time, with my coworkers-turned-to-family, with my jobs, this city, my life and myself. 

So considering that in under a week a rediscovered more happiness than I found in a year, no, I don't want to go back to that pit.  

I didn't waste my time, as I learned there that no path is worth permanently leaving behind a home where you are happy..... I just wish I could have learned that without the constant struggle of this last year.  

So I'll see what it is like to go back to the pit.  And if it doesn't seem worth it, I know where my little cabin is, with loves waiting to adventure with me. 

Post-Mortem on West Coast Me

          I have had a pretty rough year.  I moved out here under the pretext that I was paving the way for my love and I to live together in a city we had dreamed of for two years.  I want to work in TV/Film and he could do anything out here, acting, programming, urban farming, literally anything, but he just wasn’t ready to leave yet.  So I moved out first and stayed with one of my best friends.  I knew her and her family for over a decade and was so thrilled for the opportunity to save some money as I lived with people that I loved.  

Within the span of a month, however, my once-love said that there was a possibility that he would never move (something that absolutely would have kept me from leaving had I known this before I was already here) and my friend’s family said that they needed my room back and that I had a month to find a new place.

          So I found a place quickly.  It was far from work, however; one day I left three hours before my shift and was still late.  So obviously I needed a different space.  I applied for a room somewhere, almost lived in that landlord’s guest house, and then there was another space that was available in the original building.  It was her old office and I loved it.  It had a loft for the bed, a little patio, and more space than I’ve ever had.  It had a shared bathroom down the hall, but honestly I’d rather share a bathroom than a kitchen, so I was happy.  I also knew that my love would like it, if he moved out here.  He always loves little balconies and there was definitely enough space for both of us.  It was terrifyingly more than I had paid for rent in my entire life, though, even though it was considered cheap for this city.  So I knew that every financial woe I’d associate with him, for making me believe that he was going to come here as my partner, and instead he abandoned me to figure it out on my own.  I realized he wasn’t a part of my life out here, and wasn’t try to be, so I called something that was already done.  Plus without the pressure of him coming here to be with me and to help me, perhaps I wouldn’t resent him for how much I was going to struggle.

          And things were okay for a little while.  It was hard being on my own after a few years of living with a love and before that being surrounded in school by people who knew you and could see you change.  That’s one of the best things about friends; they remind you of when you grow.  And yes, I made a few friends out here.  I pushed myself to go out more than I usually would and with the safe umbrella of my coworkers, I felt confident in my West Coast body.

Things were getting harder, though, and I was losing weight from not eating enough as I couldn’t afford much food after paying rent.  I don’t know how much that ended up attributing to my health, but about two or three months later I was in the hospital.  You know that story though; I was in for 8 days, out for 6, back in for 10, and when I got home I saw that my landlord wanted the space back as her office.  I had signed a year lease, but she never gave me an original copy and when I requested it at this point, the contract now said that it was a month-to-month lease.  She also had a commercial license for the building, not a housing one, so I didn’t have any renter’s rights, and so I had to move.

          Also, at this point, I had lost about half the friends that I made out here and half of the ones that were leftover from high school.  And it makes sense; my life is anything but easy.  Some did it tastefully, some in a way that hurt so much it’ll be hard to ever forgive.  Basically I was in this space of feeling alone and like a burden to everyone I loved, fearing constantly losing those that were still by my side.  It made me afraid to reach out to anyone but I still so desperately needed help.  There were many nights that I wept alone, simply wishing for someone to hold my hand.

It was moments like this that made me really miss my love and my makeshift home out there.  I had more people in Philly telling me that they wished I were closer so they could help, than I had friends left in this city.  And I became nostalgic.  It could be a “grass is always greener” mentality, but I longed for the happiness that I had there.  I tried to get back together with my once-love, too, offering anything: to leave the West Coast, to move wherever he goes, to start over somewhere new, to wait for him until he was ready, even to pay for a plane ticket for him to see if he could be happy out here; because I realized that more than a career in TV/Film, I want to have a life with people that I love.  And in the last two years I have lived in four cities, and was happier in the three that I was together with him, than I have been here without him.  He declined.  It’s so hard to know exactly what I want and not be able to work for it.  Everything I’ve ever wanted I could achieve with hard work; it may not have been easy, but it was always worth the happiness that I made for myself.  And I’ve discovered a key to escape my unhappiness here and was told not to open that door.

Also around this time was when I moved in with the roommate that after one day together decided she wanted to break our lease.  That actually was to my benefit, ironically, because I didn’t want a roommate anyway (especially one that was that unaccepting) and our building manager showed me a studio in a different building that he manages and it’s exactly what I can afford and it’s all mine (and no shared bathroom this time).

          So aside from feeling like I am in a city where I’ve only felt pain and loss, I have the perfect apartment.  It’s also about the price that a studio in any city would be, so it helps me feel less like this city is taking my money and my freedom with it.  That said, I don’t know how to find my happiness now.  It’s not that I need someone else to be happy; I’m happy by myself and like myself quite a bit.  Instead, it’s that I feel a greater joy at making those that I love happy.  I’d sooner get my once-love a toy from his favorite anime, than spend that money on something for myself.  I’m not selfless, I still take care of me….there just isn’t that much that I need.  A roof over my head, food that doesn’t make my belly hurt, a blanket because I’m always cold…and that’s about it.  For instance, my little hermit crab has a mansion with three water dishes (salt, fresh and gatorade), two kinds of food, coconut substrate AND sand, mineral cubes, a climbing branch, a giant “tree” to climb on/in, a hermit hut, two sponges and three extra shells.  I also have a humidity gage and thermometer, as well as a nighttime heating lamp to make sure that my baby one has the perfect conditions for the happiest of homes; because seeing him happy makes me happier than anything else.

This is the capacity of love that I want to give.  And without my once-love, I don’t know where to begin in rekindling that extra happiness.  I think the first step is getting out of this isolation of no work and no socializing.  I need to be around people again.  That’s why I decided to go back to the East Coast for my birthday.  So many people I love are there, and it’ll give me a chance to see my former city without it being tied to my ex.  Perhaps it’s the layout of the city that I love.  Maybe I identify more with the hard working East Coast over than the lax spirit of the West.  I could miss traveling and hopping on a bus for two hours and being in a different state.  Perhaps I miss walking around for everything I need and feeling independent of rides from friends.  Maybe it’s that I felt safer there than I do here.

          One of my doctors thinks not feeling safe is a key to why I’ve been in pain.  She thinks that my brain has been mimicking the symptoms of my Crohn’s disease to warn me that I’m in danger.  Perhaps it could be that I no longer have 3,000 miles between me and the woman that abused me.  Maybe it’s that my ex always made me feel safe, and now I’m on my own.  I don’t know how to feel safe by myself.  And I don’t need anyone to help me with the battle, I just want someone to hold my hand after the fight.  (And the hardest part is I know whose hand I want to hold, and don’t really want anyone else’s.)

          So I’m really excited to see what this trip brings.  I’m hoping for clarity, less pain, lots of fun, and to get to see the people that I love so much.  I really felt like myself last year, that I was growing into the person that I want to become.  Hopefully this trip will help bring that forward motion back to a city that’s felt pretty stagnant.  Maybe even, through the eyes of my all-knowing friends, they’ll help me see that in this year, which has felt a like a waste of my time, actually helped me grow into something I can be proud of.  That’s what I hope for the most.  This city has never been very good to me, and I’ve lost so much this year; I don’t want to regret moving here.