Spinning Plates

To be me, you'd have to spin plates like a busy carny. You'd need to posses an overactive mind. One that has no shut off switch. You would need to love your family but love yourself. You'd need to know how to say no. Now I'm never ever perfect. In fact, I often have moments that I think about endlessly with regret and unease until a new moment comes along. I have two people in this world who love that about me and forgive me without thinking and who understand my mind and my heart. I'm lucky to have them.

I have to have control. I've always been someone that had to have her bed made, her things in order, and then my mind could relax. I don't think this is a bad thing. In fact, I love this about myself. Sometimes it's a burden and I obsess over minute details when I could be stress-free and over it.

I see all the people around me and the degrees of control that they have over their lives. I realize more and more what I want. I realize more than anything else what I don't want. That's what they should ask kids when they graduate. You just finished high school/college and now that you have your GED/diploma/degree. You have this whole life ahead of you... what don't you want to be when you grow up? I bet kids all over the world know the answer to that. Really it's what people should steer away from that people should focus on.

I found myself comparing myself to students from my high school. I had a dream when I was a freshman in high school to be valedictorian. I wasn't, to say the least, but I'm ok with that. I think I had forgotten that was my goal by the end anyhow. But then I enter college. I was a juggernaut and nothing could've stopped me. However, I can tell you honestly that the stress of that lifestyle made me gain weight, and so it's a bittersweet thing to dream about the spinning plate that is my scholastic future. I think of how I could be perceived by other former classmates. The anonymity of college with wonderful. And lonely. I could've have had parties and hang outs. I chose not to. I had good friends and people I met in college that I keep vaguely in touch with. But it's not their opinion that I'm scared for. Why people from high school then? Well I think I have this super power. My inner "me" can take the form of any person. It can taunt and judge and lie and give me endless hell about my weight-gain, about my degree, about the short snippits that are my life on my facebook profile. What if I'm a mother? Would I be seen as wasting my degree? Why would anyone care? Well the obvious answer is that I tricked myself AGAIN.

I haven't keep any or many friends from high school. Why? Well, people make mistakes and people make bad choices. People made fun of me, said bad things about me, held harsh feelings against me, and I did the same to other people. So now, instead of facing some humiliating and terrible memories I just say "I hate that person" or judge the imaginary life they have that I've thought up in my head. But I don't really know them do I? I was thinking about a high school reunion. I thought of what it could be like. I know many people change physically. Many people change personality-wise. Many people's lives have dramatically changed by way of trauma or blessing. I'm with Kris now. And I know that he has changed. He's funny and outgoing and gentle and he'll look you in the eyes. I am still feisty, but I have confidence overflowing and enough insecurities to counteract it. I have ideals, a solid lifestyle, and thoroughly thought through values. I actually sat down and thought of the things and people I do and don't want in my life. I have dreams and I have plates. I have these spinning plates and what people don't know is how easy it is to screw it all up. What people see is me, the carny freak show, spinning those plates. They want me to drop them as much as they want me to keep them up. Those plates are my dreams about having a baby, about having a healthy home, about a beautiful supportive marriage, about a career as a scholar and librarian, as a spiritual and intellectual woman. And people will see me, not those nameless plates. That scares me. I'm afraid they'll judge me too quickly and too harshly. And I know I will watch people with their plates and judge them lightning fast and without cause. Thinking about high school makes me feel like I'm in it all over again. What I really think about my life is how awesome I'm doing and how I am needing less and less outside approval. I am realizing the only opinion that matters about my life is mine and I must fight for it.

I think I'm ready to be done running from ghosts. I'm ready to fight my demons and love myself no matter what and no matter who.

I'm so... LOST!

Do not read if you don't want spoilers....

LOST ended. It ended. I watched all the way through 3.5 hours. Ok maybe I was stitching and sewing for part of it, but I absorbed the jist. I was confused, so looked to my fellow fans and what the blog discussions were brewing up.

This comment in the blogosphere enlightened me the most:

"**in my reading of tonight's episode, though, everyone died in the plane crash featured in the series premiere. Agree?**

NO.

Every that happened, happened. Whoever survived the crash, survived the crash. But they were all dead at the end.

Boone died from the falling plane. Shannon was shot. Charlie drowned. Jack was knifed at the end.

Those that were alive at the end of tonight went on to live their lives, and they died whenever they died.

The Island was NOT purgatory, but the Sideways Reality WAS a kind of waiting room between death and the "next step," which we saw as the bright light when Christian opened the door. The Sideways Reality was an artificial construct, which did NOT take place in 2004, as we had supposed, but was timeless, it existed outside of time. It was a construct, as Christian said, so that, after their individual deaths, whenever they happened, they could "find" themselves."

So... SPOILER ALERT... They are all dead. They are leaving for their ending. They are saying goodbye to their lives. The sideways universe was just a universe to wait in, to prepare in for when they'll all come to their realizations. They are finally with their loved ones. They never truly die, but they are dead. Everything was real. But so was their ending. Wow. I should be in bed but I'm philosophicizing about LOST.

Wow.... we will all die one day and that's so sad. I hope my life has that ending. I hope I meet Kris again in my sideways universe and he and I have the reunion Sawyer and Juliet had. (I need a hydrogen bomb first.......). Kris is my Sawyer. Maybe he'll call me lovey and I'll remember. I'll see it. And we go together to a beautiful church. And we say hello to everyone we ever loved. And we see a light and we.... are as we once were. We leave because it's our time. I now love the ending- but only for its poetry as applied to how I could only hope to go.

If my LOST ending with Kris doesn't work out- I'll do one of those Titanic ones. Not the Leo and Kate version- but the old couple who hold each others hands as they are surrounded by water. That's what I would want- second to the LOST ending.

Moral of my deranged late night blog: I love my husband a lot. More that anyone in this world. I'd be lost without him. He is my Jin to my Sun, my Bernard to my Rose, my Hurley to my Libby, my Jack to my Kate, my Sawyer to my Juliet, my Sayid to my Shannon.

We live together or we die alone.

cool quotes

"Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men." Dr. Samuel Johnson

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." Helen Keller

"Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves." Helen Keller

"Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to get leisure." Benjamin Franklin

"Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards." Benjamin Franklin

"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." Albert Einstein

Quotes

A Manifesto: Lady Gaga

There’s something heroic about the way my fans operate their cameras. So preciesely and intricately, so proudly, and so methodically. Like Kings writing the history of their people.

Its their prolific nature that both creates and procures what will late be percieved as the “kingdom.” So, the real truth about lady gaga fans lies in this sentiment: They are Kings. They are the queens. They write the hisory of the kingdom, while I am something of a devoted Jester.

"It is in the theory of perception that we have established our bond. Or, the lie, I should say, for which we kill. We are nothing without our image. Without our projection. Without the spiritual hologram of who we percieve ourselves to be, or to become rather, in the future.

When you’re lonely,

I’ll be lonely too.

And this is the fame.

love and art 12/18/1974

-Lady GaGa"

Should I believe her? She walks around with an air of royalty for sure. I thought I her worshipper. Perhaps she is right, she worships me. And in me lies her, and we together see out into the world and into ourselves. So little can be said about the raw emotions I do have, but I can always ramble on about how I used to feel. Why share those things that are not present? Those things are easier and less complicated. Filtered and diluted and concentrated to make a potent and coherent mixture anyone could stomach. Maybe I need not look to pasteurize my thoughts. Maybe it is right to explain the sickest, most complicated feelings of the present that make me feel godly and gritty. An aged thought goes down like velvet. The rough truth is like a sick feeling you get before a fever peaks. It is thoughtless and mindless and visceral and irrational and beautiful in a sick, unfocused way. She is not just a pop star. Not if she can see into my soul and be a revelation to my eyes. Those who see her for her know her. And those who do not, would never understand.

To give, even when I don't want to

What do you get when you serve others? What's in it for me? I feel like these are questions that I rehearse when I think of giving. If someone is ungrateful, why should I give? If someone doesn't notice or acknowledge or reciprocate, why would I give any of myself and my service to them?

There is a dilemma in me. To not help or give to others, I don't give or help myself. I am emptier because of it. I feel helping my family and friends is second nature. Those in my life that walk over me or intimidate me or drain me don't deserve my love and service... which is exactly why I should give. I feel too weak right now the persist, but persist I shall. To have a spirit of service does not make me less, it makes me more. I feel it every time I leave something better than I found it.

If I deny people my service, I do not only punish them, I punish myself. Even as I say it, I want to deny it and pull back myself from those who exhaust me. Even those who seem to not need the help, I need to realize that I am useful for them too.

I'm not mediatating on this, I'm bouncing between surrender and self-absorbtion. Perhaps I know what is right, but now I feel so empty that I cannot imagine giving. But maybe the only way to fill myself back up means giving something I don't have. Or is it not my job to save someone if they don't want to be saved. Even as I write this, I am neither here or there. I am living one of those paradoxes life carries "embrace the world/escape the world."