I thought for many years that words spoke louder than anything else. I’m learning lately how completely wrong I have been all along. After many failed relationships and a failed marriage, I have learned that words are very fascinating. “I love you” is easy to say and it’s a natural progression in a relationship. I think we say it while not fully understanding what it means. I know, that may sound really whack, but it’s really true. We tend to use it to fill up space in a conversation when it’s going south. We use it as closing statement. We use it when we feel our partner finally listens to us. We use it when they give us something. They buy that piece of jewelry we have been eyeing for months and we love them. I am learning at a very slow pace that love is shown through different means. Love is holding my hand when I’m scared to death in that waiting room at my doctors office. It’s frustration when I’m throwing punches in the air but letting me feel my feelings through anyway. It’s listening to an apology you thought you weren’t even interested in hearing. It’s understanding that words are words and they are not absolute. Love is intensely more than just a word. It’s like, everything else.

I believe in God. Yet I haven’t believed in Him my whole entire life. When I was younger my mom would always take us to Sunday school and religion was engrained in my mind and eventually turned into my beliefs at an early age. As I got older and life started wearing me thin I completely stopped believing. I will not get into the details of my journey but I do know that after dealing with the lowest of lows, I began focusing on my spiritual path. I believe with my whole heart that my life started to gain momentum and I started to experience personal growth as I have never experienced before. My relationship with God is far from easy. It’s not a walk on the beach. It’s rough. It’s a love full of doubt and worry and uncertainty and joy and peace and it’s difficult. It’s a perfect storm. I learn about Him through the pages of a book. Thousands upon thousands of words upon words. Many different versions and interpretations of the word. I don’t know about you, but it’s the same experience I have in relationships. We hear every single word differently.

Another topic that is brought up so much in relationships is passion. What happens to the early stages of a relationship when you just can’t get enough of that person? Typically the first year is the best year. You go on lots of dates. Hold hands. Kiss like mad. Fights are minimal but they are exciting and passionate and the making up is so sweet. You stay up until 3 am talking about everything and nothing at all. You get butterflies when you see their name appear on your phone and their mere touch can send an insane rush of excitement through your body. In every single relationship I have been in, those moments tend to occur less and less as the months go by. As you start doing life together, you start to settle into routines and plans and monotony. I will be the first to say that I equate passion with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. If I’m crying about feeling neglected and unwanted and my boyfriend is looking at me with a puzzling stare, it is beyond hurtful. I wonder why my level of passion is not equal to his level. In those moments I feel like the louder I become, the quieter he is, and it’s downright maddening. Passion is just a word. We hear it differently, don’t we? He hears passion as white noise. It’s ineffective. It’s a sign for being out of control. I hear it as movement. It’s motivation. It’s effective. We will never see it the exact same. It wasn’t until our last argument that I started seeing the world through his eyes a bit. I didn’t care at that moment whether or not he saw it through mine. In a sense I started shaming him for not feeling passion the same way I do and I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Is it fair for us to believe that our significant other has to fit the entire list of our wants and needs? Am I that lofty to believe that I fit his? If I want to vent about my crummy day, I know which girlfriend to call. She finishes my sentences and she agrees with absolutely everything I say and she’s on my side 100%. Why do I need that from him?  I have been so fixated on finding a partner who is on my side 100% and who finishes my sentences and who can match my personality. It’s a self serving sort of love.

I feel like we are all guilty of praying to God for some self serving sort of reason. God, I hope I can stretch this $5 I have I my bank account until I get paid again. God, I hope that my boss will be nice to me this week so that I don’t lose it. God, I hope the weather is nice next weekend because I have outdoor plans. God, I hope I have a good hair day because I have a huge meeting tomorrow. God, please send me Mr. Right, because I’m so sick and tired of getting all of the losers. Love isn’t asking for something and receiving it. I think it’s more than that, and I think we need to rethink the way we view love.

It’s faith. It’s lowering our expectations. I’m not suggesting we settle….I just mean we lower our expectations so that we can experience a love like none other. I don’t need a perfect love. I need work. Compromise. Struggles. I need to experience the lows so that I can appreciate the highs. When you place so many demands upon another human being, they become unattainable to you. You will never quite experience them because they don’t fit your perfect mold. You are always waiting. Waiting for them to actually listen to you. Waiting for them do take you on that date you have been begging for. Waiting for them to answer that prayer you have been praying for the past 10 years. Yet, in that waiting? You miss them. You end up missing the sweetest parts of them. You miss the love that was meant to be for you. And you end up missing out on like, everything.

I went to Victoria’s Secret today and all I ended up buying was some 75% off lotion. I wasn’t planning on going there, but I had just come from clothes shopping and as I walked past that store, it started calling my name. When I walked in, the size 0 employee cheerfully asked if there was anything she could help me with. I was like…yeah right. I told her that I was interested in seeing what they had in the way of slimwear/shapeware. When I started to explain to her what part of my body I wanted to slim down she walked me all the way to the back of the store and led me to this desolate area in the fitting room. I felt ashamed.

Since I already embarrassed myself enough by making the walk of shame, I decided to look through the items. It was a body suit. One in a brief form and one in thong. I sat back there rustling through the packages until I found the ones I wanted to try on. Finally, the other size 0 employee came back to help me with a fitting room. She gave me a super weird disposable undergarment to try on in addition to the body suit and I was like….ok. She told me to ring the bell if I needed help. I looked at her and said “If I need help….like I got stuck? Or if I need another size?” Super annoyingly bubbly she answered “either!!!” Ok. Yeah totally, I’ll call you if I get stuck. Like, never.

I took my clothes off and I started to put this body armor on. I couldn’t even believe I was that flexible. The total of 10 days I had spent in the gym my entire life was finally paying off. I felt like I was in the middle of a yoga class. Which, by they way, I have never been in one. I just so happen to have friends who are insanely into fitness so as I’m scrolling through my Instagram at night, I see pictures of their contorted bodies. The only difference was that I wasn’t smiling like they do. I had this look of utter disgust and I was wildly out of breath.

Once I had this thing on, I looked at myself from the front and then the back and I was shocked. I looked absolutely terrible. The girl kept coming by my door and knocking on it asking I needed anything and I kept yelling at her “NO!” I sat in that room for about 10 minutes. Not going to lie, I wasn’t really sure how to get out of this thing alive. But more than that, I was wondering what the hell I was even doing there.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge proponent of taking care of your body. I love when I feel healthy. But in that moment, I didn’t feel healthy. I felt like I was about to spend $35 to make me look like something I’m not. I left everything I tried on in the fitting room, and I left. I walked by the lotion and perfume and I bought some crap that smelled good and when the cashier asked if anyone helped me today I was like…”Yes, absolutely. Her name was Chelsea and you have no idea how much she helped me.” This little 18 year old was like “cool” and she had no clue what happened in that fitting room.

I understand feeling vain. I never walk past a mirror without looking in it. I have a compact with me every single moment of every day. I take selfies like their going out of style and when I take one that looks good without a filter, I secretly say to myself “you’re welcome, world.” Although, that moment that I looked at myself trying to look like someone I’m not made me super sad. I don’t want to look like anyone other than myself. I don’t mind my curves, and I don’t care to cut back on wine to save the calories because I really like it and I’m not a quitter.

I don’t need to spend $35 to make me look different. My fluctuation in weight doesn’t define me. When I gain 10 pounds, I don’t lose my friends. In fact, they don’t even notice. And if I gained more friends because I lost some weight, I wouldn’t even want them in my life. I’m ready to look in the mirror and love me for me, absent of fear to make me look like a different version of me. I’m ready to love, me.

A couple of months ago I had this idea to feed the homeless in our community. It wasn’t brilliant. It had been done a thousand times over. I remember sitting in a leadership meeting at our church one night and our Pastor asked us to break up in small groups. We were then instructed to brainstorm on some ideas we could do as a church and for our community. Our church and community. Are they one in the same? I wanted to break out of the safety and comfort of our church and gather up volunteers to serve lunches to the homeless community in Folsom. It was a great idea, my group loved it, and we presented it to all of the members and it was a huge hit. I walked out of there that night super excited and ready to conquer the world. A few weeks had passed and I didn’t hear anyone talking about it. There wasn’t any follow up and I thought the project was squashed. Until one evening I became a little brave after a few glasses of wine and I had this brilliant idea to email my Pastor. I told him I had this great idea at our meeting and I’m finally ready to bring it to life. I hit send and I sat back with a smile on my face and I waited. And waited and waited. The next day I got an email back from him, way more eloquently then I will describe it, saying “Great! Love your passion! Can’t wait to see what you do and let me know if you need anything.” I sat there for weeks thereafter during all of my planning and gathering volunteers and using whatever resources I could scrounge up and I found myself becoming resentful that he wasn’t helping me. And it was in those moments that I realized he was actually helping me. He sat back to watch whatever I had a stirring within me and allowed me to discover I was far more capable then I ever imagined.

Once I decided to run with the project, I created an invite through Facebook to ask for financial donations, volunteers, prayers, and I relied pretty heavily upon my boyfriend for his mad computer skills to help with the flyers and also for like, everything else. As soon as I posted the invite on Facebook, I received an outpouring of help from not only my friends and family but strangers as well. Messages like “what can I do” and “where do I donate” and “what do you need” were clogging up my newsfeed. It was honestly the strongest sense of community I had ever felt. And the best part? They weren’t offering to help me. Their hearts were in the spirit of the project and they were ready and willing to help the homeless. It was humbling, to say the very least.

In the beginning stages of planning, I wanted to just keep it simple and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pack snacks in a brown paper bag and call it a day. I had this romantic idea that all of the volunteers would just gather around the morning of the event and make lunches together and laugh and have coffee together and walk around the streets of Folsom feeding the hungry and making the world a better place. Man, was I wrong. What I quickly learned was that the homeless community in Folsom is vastly different from the larger and more populated cities such as Sacramento. Homeless shelters and food banks are typically found within metropolitan cities and you generally see homeless people roaming about the city that they live in. Smaller cities, such as Folsom, do not have the proper resources to fund and maintain such facilities so the homeless people tend to hide and feel shame and get harassed by the authorities for being out and about. I partnered with a local ministry called Powerhouse Ministries because they are pretty intertwined with the homeless community and they agreed to work with me to get the word out among the community.

I didn’t want to take the easy route. I didn’t want to slap some peanut butter on a piece of bread and sit at a park and hand them out as if they were little birds waiting for food to drop. Not that I’m saying outreach projects in larger cities are not warranted, it just wasn’t the direction I wanted to go. I changed the project from lunch to breakfast because I discovered that they tend to get up early in the morning to do what they need to do and beat the heat. I didn’t want to serve a continental breakfast because it’s easy. I wanted to make food with my own hands and I wanted to prepare it with careful thought and love. I wanted to bring church to the community and I wanted it to be mission style. I don’t even know if that term makes any sense, actually. My church travels for missions in Guatemala to serve those in need and financially, I just can’t do that at this time. Yet I can certainly serve those within my own community and hopefully change some lives within my own backyard.

Throughout the entire planning process for this project I prayed pretty heavily. And honestly, I’m not really the praying type. I will bow my head every Sunday morning at church and follow along with our Pastor’s prayers and I will whole heartedly say Amen afterwards. I truly don’t pray on my own because it’s weird for me. Anyhow, during this project, I prayed constantly. I prayed for people to show up to volunteer. I prayed for people to show up hungry (although I truly wish that every single person in the whole world would never have to feel that in their entire lives). I wanted all of the food that was donated and prepared to be eaten. I prayed to meet some people who loved Him as much as I do. One night I was doing some writing and painting to sort through all of my emotions. I painted a picture and after I was finished, I thought it looked horrible so I threw it into my sink. I started running the hot water to wash my paint brushes and all of a sudden the colors started to sort of make sense. As I shut off the water, I looked at my painting amidst my dirty dishes and a mess of colors and I thought it was nothing short of beautiful. I started crying and I thought to myself: “this is my church.” Church isn’t the Sunday show of lights and music and cameras. The production is pretty grand, but it’s not church. Church is a personal relationship with God. It’s falling in and out of love with Him. It’s getting frustrated and doubting and sometimes walking away. It’s rediscovering all of the reasons why you fell so madly in love. It’s a relationship. I sat there in my kitchen and I watched the colors fade and run into one another and turn into something magical. Something I almost gave up on. I knew right there in that very moment that I was meant to see the world through others eyes.

Fast forward to the day of the event. It was the first day of summer vacation and I’m not going to lie. I was terrified to wake my daughter up from a deep sleep fearing what she would do to me. She surprised me in the most beautiful way. Not only did she get up on time, but she started cooking the 5 dozen eggs that needed to be prepared for our breakfast without attitude and without hesitation. We left the house that morning early and with time to spare. I arrived at the church to set up our food and I looked around and took a deep breath and I prayed. Volunteers showed up with huge smiles on their faces and everyone just started doing something. Before I knew it, tables were set up, food was beautifully arranged, and we were ready to serve. I would say that during the nearly 4 hours we were there, we served about 25 people. I didn’t know what to expect, so I had figured enough food for 50 people. At one point, my sister came over to me and whispered “Look over there. You’re feeding children.” That day we helped serve needy families and the elderly and the homeless. It was nothing short of beautiful.

At one point we were all standing around and decided we should pack up some breakfast burritos and drive around looking for those in need. I went down the street with a few people including some kiddos. That’s when I met A.J. I describe him as a cat who has 9 lives. I dropped off some food to him and he was most appreciative and as I was driving away from him I asked if he needed anything. He said no and then as I drove off he yelled “Wait! I do need something. A life.” I asked him what his story was and he told me that I wouldn’t want to hear it. I told him it’s really the only story I want to hear. He’s been down for many years, lost all of his family, attempted suicide repeatedly and kicked his drug habit. I got out of my car to talk to him and get to know him a little bit and his smile was contagious. He was fully aware that God had another plan for him. He has not clue what that plan will be and he’s walking around with a fear of the unknown, but his smile was huge. His heart was warm. And he gave really good hugs. I was super lucky to have met him and I’m looking forward to seeing him again.

This project was so not put on by myself. I simply had the idea and I had the passion to see it through. Without the help from all of my friends and family, this would have never happened. They worked way harder than I did. A core group of us will be meeting again in the next couple of weeks to plan another event in September. We have an opportunity to see lives changing right in front of our faces and I’m so proud of my church. We didn’t need our Pastor to guide us through step by step. We didn’t need divine intervention. We didn’t need a copious amount of money or resources. We needed a group of people to show up with caring hearts to serve. It was really as simple as that.

John 17. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. If you aren’t a believer in Him, then disregard that part. You can even look at it from a different perspective. Doesn’t matter how you believe we got here. Doesn’t matter who or what you follow. You can believe in God. You can believe in nature and the sun and the moon and the stars. We are all here to help one another out. We all have stories. Some are great. Some are pretty terrible. Some we don’t even speak of. You don’t fully know somebody’s story until you have walked in their shoes and have witnessed the world through their eyes. But you can sure love them with all of your might. I will never again experience the world without remembering that we are they.

“..and these disciples know
That you sent me on this mission.
I have made your very being known to them,
Who you are and what you do.
And continue to make it known,
So that your love for me
Might be in them
Exactly as I am in them.”
John 17:24-26

I subscribe to many blogs and I have a plethora of magazine subscriptions and I find myself lost in the “Life Lessons” section of the Huff Post. “Five Tell Tale Signs He’s Not That Into You”. “Four Signs Your Relationship Will Fail.” “Ten Ways to Save Your Marriage.” “20 Ways to Capture His Attention.” While I balk at these titles, I still read them, and sometimes I even share them on my FB page. Some are interesting and some are funny and others are so sad that I truly hope nobody follows any of the advice they just read. The thing about those”Top 10 Ways” lists is that they work well for the person who wrote them. They have been tried and true for one human being. There isn’t a cookie cutter approach to relationships. I haven’t met a perfect one yet, and I never will. I will be the first to say that when I see people who depict theirs as such, I laugh on the inside. And sometimes out loud. Not that I revel in others misery, but it’s that I appreciate the honesty. It hit me the other day when I was talking to a friend about dating do’s and don’ts these days especially when you have been out of the game for a billion years. I started laughing at some of my advice. And I think the blank stare on my friends face was their polite way of saying “oh yeah. I’m totally not listening and you really suck at this.” Because I sort of do. All I know are my truths, and what works for me will not work for you, and I’m divorced, so clearly the secret to an everlasting relationship is lost on me. Although, I have learned some things along the way. So here we go….

1. Don’t go to bed angry.
You know that artwork that people place above their beds that say “always kiss me good night” or “never go to sleep angry.” Yeah. I’m going to have to disagree. When I’m angry about something and it’s time to go to bed, I want to go to bed. The last thing I want to do is kiss him and hug him and pretend everything is alright just so we can have pleasant dreams. Because in reality? I’ll kiss you really quick on the lips and stomp up the stairs to cry myself to sleep anyways and then wake up in the morning and post some real passive aggressive shiz on FB about how angry I am. I’m not always ready to move past the argument at night before I go to sleep. Sometimes sleep is just the only way I can get away from him and get him out of my thoughts for several hours. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to let a fight linger sometimes that way each person can move on from it organically and not have to sweep it under the rug because some writing on the wall tells me to.

2.  Don’t call him. He’s the guy, wait for him to call you.
Um. I’m in my mid 30’s and if I want to initiate a conversation with someone, I totally will.

3.  Wait for “The One”
I don’t truly believe we ever find “The One.” I think we end up finding the one human being whose little annoyances are more manageable than all of the others. The one you can actually tolerate listening to while he chews his food. Or the one who tells the same exact same joke at every single social gathering because it’s the only one he’s got but you laugh because he tells it slightly different every time. The one you don’t want to kill when he asks if you’ve done something different with the recipe knowing that the reason he’s asking is because he thinks it tastes like crap. The one you don’t want strangle when you finally become brave enough to squeeze into that lingerie that has been collecting dust for the past 10 years and you find him asleep on the couch. You walk up to him, kneel down, kiss him on the forehead, throw a blanket over him, and make that chocolate fudge sundae you have been salivating over all day. You find the one that makes you appreciate the struggle.

4.  Your insecurities will push him away.
I make no qualms about my insecurities. I don’t let them take over my life, but I have definitely got them, and some of them seem to be here to stay, and others I hope will be lessened in time. I am that girl. The one who is out to dinner with her boyfriend and who can’t focus when she sees his gaze fixated on something other than her. As I follow his eyes and stumble upon that 25 year old size 4 waitress, I find myself with my head down and slowly slouching into my chair. I don’t think that makes me less of a woman, I think it makes me an honest one. And one day, I will find that person who finds beauty in all that I am. And gladly take the responsibility and find it to be his “job” to round off the edges in those insecurities. I say own it. It’s what makes you…you.

5. If he spends money on you, it means he cares about you.
I have been on some pretty amazing first dates in my lifetime. I have been whisked away to Hawaii, I have enjoyed 5 star restaurants, wine tasting and I have had walks on the beach. The beginning stages of most relationships are based upon these elaborate dates. Getting all dressed up and going somewhere fancy is exciting and most of us look forward to those types of courtships. I also find it just as beautiful to be invited over to his house for dinner with music playing, lights down low, a little bit of wine (ok, a lot), slow dancing in between the slower parts of cooking, all while the kids are running around like mad breaking things. Money is fleeting. It’s here today and gone tomorrow. It’s great while you have it, and it’s scary as hell when you don’t. But those moments of just the two of you while the world is spinning and you look into his eyes amidst the madness and you feel your heart skip a beat or two. Ah. That’s the good stuff.

6.  Before you start dating, create a list of what you want and don’t want.
Lists are so absolute. I can’t stand them. I don’t even make grocery lists, because I don’t want to be confined to that. I want to walk down and aisle and just figure it out as I go. I remember right after my divorce, a girlfriend of mine told me to write a list of my “non negotiables.” So I did. He had to be this tall, he had to make me laugh, he needs to be employed, etc. What I found, is that during every date I went on, I barely listened to what they were saying and I was focused on the physical and materialistic attributes of that person and if they fit everything on that list. Nothing was happening organically and I realized pretty quickly that just as I’m not perfect, neither is he. We don’t live by lists in real life. There isn’t a perfect checklist that you mark off as you move along. I have all the friends I need. Check. I have my dream job. Check. I’m in a relationship. Check. Bought a house. Check. Things don’t generally go according to plan and sometimes the unexpected happens and you realize that those rules and lists that you have created are useless. You gotta kinda know what you want, but don’t be afraid of the unexpected. You might be pleasantly surprised.

7.  It’s not official until it’s on Facebook.
Oh man. This one is even tough for me. In this day and age, social media plays a huge part in dating. Girls seem to get it more than guys.  When you are finally committed in a relationship,  you so badly want to see that little notification pop up that he has listed you in a relationship with him. You get giddy, you approve it, it’s posted, and soon enough you have a ton of likes and comments and you feel….validated. The problem is, most guys will never do that, and getting them to even like or comment on a photo or post of yours is like pulling teeth. PDA these days is far more than kissing in public. Having a guy you are dating post a picture of you on FB or IG is like…..heaven. I’m in my mid 30’s and I would totally sigh over that. With all of that said, there’s something pretty cool about keeping it private for as long as possible. That relationship between the two of you is literally just between the two of you. Absent of outside influences and outsiders comments and advice and whatever else. It’s not tainted. It’s pure, and it’s just you two until it’s time to share with the world. I wish we could savor those moments and hold on to them tight because those moments don’t last forever.

8.  An ex is an ex for a reason. They should be left in the past and never spoke of again.
Not really. I sort of learned this the hard way. I married someone who had an ex wife and two amazing children (who I still consider my stepchildren). I was super jealous and did the whole….you can’t talk to her sort of thing….and it was one of the many reasons why we didn’t make it. It is very true. And ex is an ex for a reason. But sometimes, friendship prevails, and that is more powerful than the actual relationship, and he may still talk to her. And that’s ok. Now, if kids are involved, that’s a whole different ball game. They will talk every single day, at all hours of the day, if need be. And you have to really be alright with that. Those kiddos are number one, and they deserve that amicable relationship between Mom and Dad. Let those insecurities go. You’ll never win that battle.

I think that as I travel this path, this “pursuit of me”, I’m finding that I don’t have the answers. I suck at dating. It’s not a comfortable space for me. I love a good partnership and I long for a relationship but I dread the beginning stages. Just when I think I know what I want, I realize that I don’t really know. I’m absolutely mesmerized by relationships and I am scared of them to the core. It’s an interesting ride, that’s for certain, and one thing I know for sure is that the “rules” of dating are obsolete. They encourage dating to be this game which nobody ever really wins. And that’s not really what it’s about. It’s about choosing to love someone or not. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.

I go through this life with an observant eye. I read a lot. I research a ton. I listen intently. I read stories sometimes about motherhood or relationships or marriages and they are super beautiful and mesmerizing. I see pictures my friends post on FB and Instagram and I’m sometimes in awe of their lives. Kids are playing at the park, or picking flowers, or helping Mom and Dad bake in the kitchen and I’m like, woah, their lives are spectacular. I see a lot of posts about healthy eating and exercising and honor roll and I am sitting there watching with stars in my eyes. As my child is throwing the biggest tantrum in the whole wide world and my food is burning in the oven, I am like, wow. I’m missing something. Or am I. I want to write honestly. Because secretly, I want to run across stories sometimes that I can actually relate to. I love my life, and I love my daughter, and motherhood is truly the most amazing thing in the whole universe. Relationships are also messy and confusing and I don’t think we are failures because we speak the truth. It’s actually refreshing sometimes to see the messiness because then I don’t feel so alone. I want to talk about the weird stuff for a minute. And I don’t want to post it in bullet point style. It’s all going to run together messy and out of order because, well, that’s just how I like it to be.

Some of my photos are staged. Ok, a lot of them are. If I took an honest picture of my daughter sitting in my living room while playing Monopoly, you would see dirty socks in the background. A plate full of chicken nuggets and french fries on the table (processed food because I didn’t want to cook. Not because I was too tired, but because I just really didn’t want to cook). And she wouldn’t be smiling. She would have the look of “MOM. Stop taking stupid pictures and play the game with me” smile on her face. Dirt. I love when my daughter plays outside. Truly, I do. It’s super cute to see her dirty hands and face and watch her jump around in puddles. But as I’m watching her, I’m also thinking about the many hours I’m going to spend washing her clothes and sewing the holes in her jeans. I feel so good admitting this. I don’t regret it at all.School projects.So much fun. Great learning experience. Love the hands on approach the schools are encouraging. But come on, seriously. Most of the projects are completely over their heads and the parents end up doing most of the work. Let’s talk about homework. I’m 36 years old and I don’t know how to do 5th grade homework. I don’t want to ever…do 5th grade math. And, PTA? No thank you. I’m not interested. Relationships. They are super messy. When I was going through difficult times in my marriage, I remember feeling so alone. It was so shameful to me to go through those tough times. I would go out to dinner and look around at all of the seemingly happy couples and think to myself….is this for real? Did that couple over there get into a fight on the way to the restaurant because she took too long getting ready? Because we did. Did that couple argue about the fact that he spends way too much money on frivolous things and skips paying important bills? Because we did. And did that couple over there almost turn around and go home? Because we did. Relationships aren’t pretty. They are tainted and flawed and beautiful, but they take work and consistency and grace. I learned that the hard way. Once you have kids, life will never the same. I was just talking about this the other day with my friend who does not have children. Life will truly never be the same. “Say goodbye to sleep.” Sleep changes. You don’t get to stay out all night and come home at 2 am and sleep until noon the next day. But you get to wake up at 2 am by the sweetest little baby who only has eyes for you. You get to hold her in your arms and rock her to sleep and wake up at 4 am only to fall in love all over again. “Forget romantic nights out with your husband.” Cozy little tables for two in a fancy restaurant may temporarily be a thing of the past. But you get to watch him across the kitchen table fall in love with your child. As they wrap their little hands around his finger, you see the look of true love in his eyes and that is enough to make your heart skip a beat or two. “Labor is the most painful thing you will ever experience.” It’s pretty painful. It hurts an awful lot and it’s uncomfortable. But that pain is bearable and forgettable when you hear your baby’s voice for the first time. And that moment your baby lays upon your chest, skin to skin, is completely indescribable unless you have lived it. I wish I would have read books like that when I was expecting. Life will never be the same, but in the best possible way. I don’t always believe the Pinterest quotes I post. Sometimes I post them for passive aggressive purposes. I don’t even feel like I need to elaborate. I’m not confident that my daughter brushes her teeth. I ask her a billion times every morning if she has, and she swears to me that she does. She offers to let me feel her toothbrush to prove she brushed them. But honestly, she could have just ran it under the faucet as far as I’m concerned. She also offers to let me smell her breath to prove she brushed them, and I’m like, oh hell no. Small talk bothers me sometimes and makes me super uncomfortable. When someone I barely know asks me how I’m doing, I really want to honestly tell them how I’m doing. I want to see the look on their face when I veer from the typical “good, how are you” response and tell them that I’m really crappy and life sucks today and that I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown. When a guy I’m really into refers to me as his friend rather than his girlfriend, it really sort of sucks. This life is not rainbows and butterflies and it bothers me to the core when I see people depict their lives as such. I crave honesty and I’m not hoping we all display our demons, but damn it, it’s ok to be real. Oh, and I like to drink wine. Sometimes it’s all I have for dinner. The end.

I’m a fan of words and how they sometimes get strewn together and end up creating some pretty dope sentences. I love how I can read each one of my poems and know the exact space I was in when I was writing them. I remember who I wrote them for. I recall where I was sitting. I even know which pencil I used and which journal I scribbled it in. Writing is just a pen and a piece of paper. A blank canvas to throw some words and make sense of our complicated, very messy, and quite beautiful lives.

Incomplete tone.
Sitting together, the air
felt heavy and cold
reminiscent of that night.
That moment we realized
words were almost
too much to bear.
With your strong hands
and heavy heart
playing the piano
drifting in and out of song,
telling a story.
The restlessness of your
body as the notes become
more aggressive and precise.
Intensity of your eyes
with each painful strike
of the keys.
I saw you. Sweet you.
Lost in the lyrics
that you believed only you
could hear.
I heard them. Loud as thunder.
And as the tears began,
your voice slowly became
peaceful and honest and beautiful.
Remindful of what we had hoped to become.

Weightless.
I feel the bricks
piling upon me.
I feel the cold, hard, concrete
on my face.
I see the darkness within my soul.
I hear the sound,
the silence
within my heart.
I embrace the emptiness.
The longing for something.
So deep it is unattainable
yet substantial.
It calls to me.
I crave the comfort of knowing
what’s real. And true.
It’s you.

Silently lovely love.
They sit there. And admire.
And they speak with their
hands, and their body,
and their eyes. Its all there.
Unspoken.
The silence is a beauty
like none other.
It’s charming. It’s unassuming.
It’s not vacant.
It’s not deafening.
It’s real and it’s loud and it’s fireworks
and it’s lovely.
All the while I’m dreaming of the love they have,
I stop. Instantly.
Knowing theirs is a love that found them. Without hesitation.
It spoke to them, I’m certain, in a thousand different ways.
And was heard with their whole heart.

Just, this.
And he had this careful way
about him.
The way he allowed
the weight of her body
to rest upon his.
His steady and upon
her wavering.
Words became unnecessary.
His eyes pressed to hers
and the intensity
and stillness in the blue.
She looked down
and as he lifted her head she
shifted it to the left
and he held it there.
In that exact place
and where she needed it to be.
With those hands of his.
Never faltering.
Allowing the vulnerability
and sadness
in her bones to subside.
And it was that moment
that neither intended.
His lips pressed upon
her cheek and she succumbed
to the feeling of weightlessness and the
unknown and she was alright
in that moment
she was his.

That one time.
He asked her if she would be his.
She answered with a
slight whisper,
head to the ground,
that she was his
all along.
And as she took a
deep breath,
he took her face
in his hands
and took her breath
away.

Bare.
Tired little eyes.
Drowsy limbs…
lets sleep
and drift away
into a deep and translucent dream.
Get lost in the madness
of our love.
Laying underneath the covers…
laughter our only music.
Your sweet breath
on my lips.
Your hand on the small of my back.
Your sleepy little smile.
Feel my weight shift,
raw and completely bare.
Vulnerable.
Talking for hours about everything
and nothing at all.
Looking up at you with such innocence.
Intently listening to stories
about you.
All while kissing.
Knowing at that very moment
yours was the only voice I wanted to hear.
Wishing the world could just stop for a minute.
Time to stand still.
As the sun rises, I see you in a whole new light.
And same sleepy little smile,
I’m completely comfortable and safe.
Looking at your tired little eyes,
I take a deep breath.

It is well.
His forehead
to hers.
His eyes fixated to her lips
pressed to his.
The crease on his face
from the smile in his eyes.
And in that moment
she couldn’t help herself.
She was too far gone,
lost in those hands which
held her in the sweetest of times
and in the darkest of hours.
The ones that seemed to draw her in
every time she forcefully
pulled away.
She wanted to capture that
time she looked up to
his smiling eyes.
With his head to the pillow and
her head on his chest,
and that hand carefully
placed on the small of
her back.
She realized that all
was well with her soul.

The fault in her eyes.
That time she waited
tirelessly for those
words to be spoken.
She lingered upon
the minutes which
consumed her thoughts.
She stood in a world where with every
passing of the second hand
made the seconds feel like a thousand years
had passed her by.
Never quite aware
of the soft spoken truths in his eyes.
The firm grasp
on the small of her back.
Those hands could tell a million
stories that words could never describe.
The regrets she felt
as she heard the carelessness of his voice
and the sharpness of his tone,
deafening.
It was clear in that moment
that all was not what it seemed to be
and the fault seemed to be
in her eyes.

It’s been a wild ride. I made a promise to myself years ago that I would never again make another New Years Resolution. They are lofty and mostly unattainable and they beg to be broken. I’m a fan of working on my health and wellness all throughout the year rather than January 1^st. Resolutions have always been odd to me. We live in a very rapid moving world and we have a very “now” mentality. We want a new iPhone, TV, new boots, new car…we want it now. And if we don’t have the cash for it, we can charge it and pay later. Yet, if we want to quit smoking or lose weight or curtail our frivolous spending, we wait. The materialistic things in life? We want them when we want them, which is right now. Our well being? That can wait. We’re an odd bunch.

This past year has been a crazy ride of ups and downs and everything in between. It’s been great, it’s been not so great, it’s been a blessing, it’s been pretty difficult to navigate, and it’s been interesting.  I have fallen in and out of love. I have let go of some friendships that weren’t adding any real value to my life. I am surrounded by the some of the most strongest men and women I know. My friendships are my everything. I couldn’t possibly walk this crazy life without them in it. I am so blessed to have an amazing family which I believe to be pretty hardcore. We have weathered some pretty angry storms all the while soaking up the sunshine from the break in the clouds.

I have learned an awful lot about myself. I have rediscovered my love of words. I may not be super great at writing, but I’m super in love with it. I have journals all over my house and in my car and in my purse and I never miss an opportunity to write something down. It can become a beautiful poem or a hot jumbled mess. Either way, I’m happy to write about everything and nothing at all.

I have learned that this life isn’t made up of absolutes. Nothing is forever and this world isn’t black and white.  I have had my heart broken a billion times and I may have hurt a few as well. Relationships that I thought would last forever ended sometimes just as briskly as they began. I have a tendency to internalize every single failed relationship in my life. I am analytical by nature and I pick it apart down to the minute. Sometimes even seconds.  Ever since I was little, I was super observant.  I am probably the worst person to go out to dinner or be in a crowd with. My eyes are constantly wandering and I’m trying to figure people out and study body language. My problem is that I tend to do that in relationships as well. I can’t just take things for face value, and while I’m a fan of words, if the body language and the vibe doesn’t match up, it drives me mad. I have probably destroyed some pretty potentially great relationships because I’m super good at pushing people away. I tend to believe that those relationships which never quite took flight were clever little stepping stones placed before me to lead me to something greater.  I’m a pretty lucky girl, absent of a man, and completely on my own. But, there is this guy that I happen to adore.  And I’m pretty sure he is aware.

One of my greatest accomplishments in my life is my daughter. We fight like mad but we love even harder. This life is difficult as a single parent, but I’m doing this life with her the very best I can. I will not get into her personal life, but man, this life has thrown us some curveballs.   She is every bit of strong and lovely and tough and super sensitive. She’s a perfect little mixture of crazy emotions in a world full of love and hate and she’s figuring out how to fine tune it all. Well.  Aren’t we all.

I think we need to stop waiting. I think that in those moments where we are right in the middle of the chaos and the madness, there is much clarity. We realize pretty quickly what we want and/or what we don’t want. I don’t want to be so scared that I miss out on some greatness. And while I believe this world is made up of some pretty dark and daunting and tragic times, I believe it’s pretty fantastic. I say we throw this idea of starting over on January 1^st out the window.  I say rather, we reflect on the past year and all of the years leading up to it and we thank our lucky stars to be alive. Because January 1^st is going to come and go just like every other day has. It’s these moments, right now, as you’re reading this. Or the moments when you drop to your knees and pray. The moments where your daughter comes up out of nowhere to give you a great big hug for no apparent reason. The moments where you take that leap of faith and accept a new job offer. That moment where you meet someone and your heart skips a beat, and you feel cheated because you missed out on them for so many years.  Those are the moments I don’t want to wait for.  Pretty frivolous of us to throw those moments away because of waiting.