Brilliant, entirely too true…. the reason Ryan’s Girls exists…. the reason I am passionate about making a change.
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More Murakami…. More memories.
“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn’t give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.”
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
It’s funny because it was closer to eighteen months ago but I remember the moment I read (and re-read) these words for the first time. Lying on a blanket in Astoria Park in the sun. One of the most incredible men I have ever come across lay beside me. We weren’t friends…. something more. But not a something more that I could really explain. What I loved most was that silence between us was ok. I loved that we could lie inches from one another on a summer afternoon, both in our own worlds but acutely aware of one another. It wasn’t like any relationship I had ever experienced. To be honest, I didn’t put much thought into defining anything-trying to figure him out. I was happy to co-exist in that way, and in the way we did after dark. Our long walks during which we talked and talked and I found myself saying words I didn’t even know existed in my deepest, most private thoughts. It wasn’t until the summer ended and I stood with him, on my doorstep, as we both mourned the end of summer and his departure to a city halfway across the world. I think that was the day I realized I had fallen in love with him and didn’t even know it. In fact, if the thought had crossed my mind any sooner I would have run away as quickly as I could.
Later….much later…. I realized my love for him had brought about a love for the parts of me I never knew existed. The value of a two month relationship was immeasurable. And as we cried together, it suddenly occured to me that despite the pain of goodbye and the knowledge that the separation wasn’t temporary…. I would heal. It didn’t erase my fear of falling in love but it did make me realize that love isn’t always a slow release poison, not always fleeting. It is ever changing and sometimes painful…. but a necessary part of self discovery. I have loved since, and lost. And I speak not only of romantic love as I have seen love in many capacities (no form scares me any less.) However I have come to see how the pain is justified by the process…. the progress. I am growing. Not all people, no matter how deep the connection I feel, are meant to stay. Some simply have a message to send, a small piece to contribute. When they decide leave, it’s best to let them go (both physically and figuratively), not discounting the pain but embrasing the memories.
Innocent adoration….
(November, 2004)
Comfortable09: a rainy day with you would be better than a sunny day in heaven
Comfortable09: <3
KixieLala: I owe you about a gazillion really big kisses ():-)
Comfortable09: well you’ll be out of debt soon..
KixieLala: never
All Said and Done, by Simone de Beauvior, pages 1-3
“Every morning, before I open my eyes, I know I am in my bedroom and my bed. But if I go to sleep after lunch in the room where I work, sometimes I wake up with a feeling of childish amazement- why am I myself? What astonishes me, just as it astonishes a child when he becomes aware of his own identity, is the fact of finding myself here, and at this moment, deep in this life and not in any other. What stroke of chance has brought this about? If I look at it from outside, my birth in the first place seems unlikely. The penetration of that particular ovum by that particular spermatozoon, with its implications of the meeting of my parents and before that of their birth and the births of all their forebears, had not one chance in hundred of millions of coming about. And it was chance, a chance quite unpredictable in the present state of science that caused me to be born a woman. From that point on, it seems to me that a thousand different futures might have stemmed from every single movement of my past: I might have fallen ill and broken off my studies; I might not have met Sartre; anything at all might have happened. Tossed into the world, I have been subjected to its laws and its contingencies, ruled by wills other than my own, by circumstances and by history: it is therefore reasonable for me to feel that I am myself contingent. If I had not been born no question would have arisen: I have to take the fact that I do exist as my starting point. To be sure, the future of the woman I have been may turn me into someone other than myself. But in that case it would be this other woman who would be asking herself who she was. For the person who says ‘Here am I’ there is no other coexisting possibility. Yet this necessary coincidence of the subject and his history is not enough to do away with my perplexity. My life: it is both intimately known and remote: it defines me and yet I stand outside it. Just what, precisely, is this curious object? Like Einstein’s universe, it is both boundless and finite. Boundless: it runs back through time and space to the very beginnings of the world and to its utmost limits. In my being I sum up the earthly inheritance and the state of the world at this moment. Any good biographer is aware that to make his hero known and understood he must first deal with his hero’s period, civilization and society; and that he must go back along the line of his hero’s ancestors as far as he can. Yet even so, all this information put together amounts to the merest trifle compared to the inexhaustible multiplicity of relationships that every element in an existence maintains with the Whole. What is more, of these elements each has a meaning that differs according to the point of view from which it is seen. The statement ‘I was born in Paris’ does not mean the same thing to a Parisian, to a person from the provinces, and to a foreigner. The apparent simplicity of the statement is scattered and dispersed among the millions of individuals who have varying relationships with the city. And yet life is also a finite reality. It possesses an inner heart, a centre of interiorization, a me which asserts that it is always the same throughout the whole course. A life is set within a given space of time; it has a beginning and an end; it evolves in given places, always retaining the same roots and spinning itself an unchangeable past whose opening towards the future is limited. It is impossible to grasp and define a life as one can grasp and define a thing, since a life is ‘an unsummed whole,’ as Satre puts it, a detotalized totality, and therefore it has no being. But one can ask certain questions about it. How is a life formed? How much of it is made up by circumstances, how much by necessity, how much by chance, and how much by the subject’s own options and his personal initiatives? One thing that helps me to reflect upon my own is the fact that of the experience as one has lived it, but the tale exists in reference to that distinguished. Although the experience implies infinity, it takes on the form of a given number of words—words that could be counted, if one set oneself to it: but these words have reference to a knowledge that in its turn embraces the infinite. When I write’ I was born in Paris,’ the reader to whom I am speaking understands the sentence without my having to locate Paris in the history of the world or upon a map. There is also the objection that ‘telling’ means setting the hard outlines of the written phrase in place of the fluid ambiguity of actually experience. But in fact that images called up by words are floating and imprecise; the knowledge words convey is not sharply defined. In any case I do not intend to lead the reader through a waking dream that might bring my past back to life, but to examine my history from the standpoint of certain given concepts and notions. There is one of these that will act as my leading thread- the notion of chance. It has a distinct meaning for me. I do now know where I might have been led by the paths that, as I look back, I think I might have taken but that in fact I did not take. What is certain is that I am satisfied with my fate and that I should not want it changed in any way at all. So I look upon these factors that helped me to fulfill it as so many fortunate strokes of chance.”
This particular piece of writing, which I have come across at various times in my life, has had a completely different meaning each time- as the very body of it would suggest. Tonight it evokes tremendous emotion, yet unclear thoughts and not an ounce of commentary on my part. So I will let it lay as simply an incredibly relevant force on its own instead of following my natural instincts to stay up all night trying to make sense of how something I have read over and over has suddenly overcome me. Maybe it’s just too many days in bed…. too much time spent alone…. But the very notion of chance feels all to relevant and entirely overwhelming right now.
Audio post - Played 4 times
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]A simple canvas smiling at the day….
Lauren Hunt~Doin’ Time
Sandstorm.
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” — Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
Murakami, translated Japanese to English and still so powerful. One of the greatest gifts given to me by Dannyboy was the knowledge of his writing.
All day I have tried to put into words this battle I have been fighting within my head. Whether I would rather be what I call “skin deep”…. living in the decision to allow only what I choose to penetrate my skin and the rest to roll off like rain drops. To lessen the pain of the casualties of dreams by diving into a new one, or simply another one. I watch others do it and envy their happiness. Yet all the time I question how “real” it is. Won’t those memories haunt them someday? And if not…. aren’t they missing out on something?
I am a firm believer that we can’t feel true elation if we don’t feel deep and paralyzing pain. Would it be easier to dive into something else and ignore what doesn’t feel good? I have no doubt…. but I do know that is not how I want to live. Skin Deep doesn’t do it for me. I have no disrespect for those who chose to live that way- but it’s just not for me. A million times over I have been told to be more careful with my heart and the hands I place it in…. but no storm has changed the fact that I’d rather risk it all. I’m grateful to be someone who lets it all in, and then lets some of it out…. in time. n that respect, each storm has changed me because I allowed it to. It may not be an easy life…. but it’s one worth living. Every time I’m not sure how I made it through…. every time the “blood” falls, I am reminded that I am stronger, smarter and more beautiful. I Perhaps not to the world, but to me….
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IF…. a short film in the making.
Those who know me know well of my passion for advocating for women with eating disorders, positive body image and access to treatment. Many don’t understand this particular illness and why it takes more than having someone force food down ones throat to invoke recovery.
In the very early stages of putting together a short film about recovering from eating disorders, I asked several young women (still struggling as well as those in recovery) to respond to the following quote: “I don’t know the first time I felt unbeautiful….The day I chose not to eat. What I do know is how I changed my life forever….”
I received several responses…. Here are two:
In society today, women (and often men) are defined by their shape, their size, their appearance; I began to equate my value similarly when I was fifteen years old. I remember thinking to myself “I have to be strong, I have to feel the pain, and one day I will be beautiful, perfect maybe.” It is ironic how later I would find myself inches from death saying those same words, “I have to be strong, I have to feel the pain, and swallow this food to be healthy again.” There is a sense of hopelessness that eating disorders bring to any sufferer, because you want to survive the disease but to do so is to fail at it. And the rest of the world seems obsessed with counting calories and burning fat when we are trying to forget it, and just listen to our bodies, be in tune with our senses. As if fighting an epic battle with the most deadly physiological disorder isn’t enough, we also find ourselves in a constant war against the media and society as a whole. Recovery often seems impossible; pointless; in vain. It isn’t. After four years, five treatment facilities, a hell of a lot of therapy, I am far along in my recovery from anorexia and bulimia. I look at old pictures of myself and cringe, how could I have told myself that was beautiful? The media plays sick tricks on impressionable women and men, and society does nothing to change it. But I choose to turn a blind eye to those hanger-models, de-tox and Alli commercials, Jenny Craig Infomercials and the like. Instead I embrace the family who loves me and puts a smile to my face, the beautiful women in the world like Carrie Underwood and Beyonce who are recognized for their talent rather than their emaciation. I spend my afternoons reading (without shaking my legs incessantly to burn calories) and watching chick flicks (no comparisons to the movie stars anymore!). Eating disorders have taken way too many lives of young women and men today, and its damn well time we take them back.
-L
When I try to go back and remember the day it all began, I find myself stumbling and running in circles. The day I first looked at myself in a tank top and despised my arms? The day I quit ballet because I didn’t think I was as good as everyone else? The day a relationship ended? The day a destructive one began?….. It all seems to blur into the day that 1000 calories felt like way too much. The day I ran one more mile just in case I got roped into eating dinner. The days I took three or four showers, just to try to warm my body. The nights I tossed and turned because my hungry body was keeping me awake.
There are so many memories of pain and so many of comfort. The illusion of control that sometimes seems so worth the reality of being completely out of control. The slips, the falls…. relapse, recover; fall down, stand up.
What never ceases to amaze me is that the whisper is always there….. More than anything my disorder served as an identity. First, the sick girl. Stuck in a cycle of isolation, scales, caffeine, nicotine. Treatment, tears, fear. Recover, relapse, repeat. Misery somehow evolved into comfort in the tiny existence I created for myself. Sure, I had friends…. and for a long time a fantastic way of hiding. And then one day I decided to move on. In “recovery” I was allowed me to grasp tightly to the one value I hold closest- my desire to help. Which morphs into people pleasing, and in doing so pretending, lying, hiding and trying desperately to fix what I had no business and no means to fix…. BUT this is certainly a more reputable “identity” when you are seen as the strong one. The one who has overcome. The one people can turn to with anything and everything. Most of all, an identity which somehow justifies the former. And I lived as this girl for quite some time. It was a black and white world…. and I had come out on top. Nonetheless, it was a lonely one. Sure, it gave me the opportunity to drown in the problems and tears of those I cared about and push my own so far down that I hardly knew of their existence anymore…. but in those few moments between crisis I had to risk sitting with myself. A future I couldn’t escape and finally came to embrace. And so I was faced with the choice of which girl to be…. the one who is sick or the one in recovery…. over and over. And then one day I realized there was a place in between. Just as lonely, as it requires me to be alone so that I can discover the girl that is me, undefined by a disorder or lack of one. The gray that I am so afraid of. I am sitting there now. Not sick, not recovered. And I hate it. As team once put it, its like standing at the edge of a cliff being told to jump with the trust that something better is at the bottom. I haven’t jumped yet….
-D
An old antic….
It was over seven years ago when I read this for the first time, but it still makes me laugh, sigh, giggle and smile like the girl I was then….
“What she doesn’t know will kill you
by Matt Brochu
November 21, 2003
You met her a few months ago, and somehow she managed to seep into your subconscious like that “Suga how you get so fly” song. Just like you have no clue who the hell sings it, you don’t know why she’s there. But she is, whether you like it or not. You know her cell phone, her room phone. You can dial her Aunt Doreen’s house in West Springfield (where she goes to do her laundry every two weeks) faster than you can peck-out 911. But she doesn’t know.
Her screenname, that generic one with her first name followed by three to five random numbers or UMass, has its own category at the top of your buddy list. Not only do you know what a “Buddy Alert” is, you’ve rigged your computer to play “Fat Guy in a Little Coat” from “Tommy Boy” every time her screen name changes from gray to black. Then her away message comes down, and you have a decision to make. To IM or not to IM? These are the ridiculous games that you play on a daily basis. But she doesn’t know.
She’s it. All right, so maybe not “it” it. Not necessarily Ms. Right, but closer to Ms. Right-up-there-with-Anna-Kournikova-and-L
izzie-McGuire-on-your-list-of-people-you’d-give-anything-to-be-stranded-with-on-a-broken-down-elevator. But it’s about more than that. When is it ever about more than that? Never. Not like frilly white dress, overpriced catering, embarrassing drunk in-laws more, but closer to UMass sweatpants, two D.P. Dough Roni Zonies, a futon and a movie you have no interest in seeing more. But she doesn’t know.
She’s gorgeous, but gorgeous is an understatement. More like you’re startled every time you see her because you notice something new in a “Where’s Waldo” sort of way. More like you can’t stop writing third grade run-on sentences because you can’t remotely begin to describe something … someone … so inherently amazing. But you’re a writer. You can describe anything. That’s what you do: pictures to words, events to words, words to even better words. But nothing seems right. More like you’re afraid that if you stare at her for too long, you’ll prove your parents right: that yes, your face will stick that way. But you wouldn’t mind.
You wouldn’t mind that the questioning, “Hello?” on the other end makes you want to smile and throw up at the same time. You wouldn’t mind worrying about what to get her for her birthday and spending $300 when you only have $17.50 and a Triple-A card to your name. You wouldn’t mind that she left your TV on and the blaring infomercials wake you up at 4 a.m. … because it gives you a chance to watch her sleep. You don’t mind that you’ve slipped up twice when you were hammered and hinted at how you feel, but she was too drunk to remember. So she doesn’t know.
Sure, she’s pretty, but it’s about more than that. You two connect. Anything you throw at her, she can throw right back. You figured out what’s going on in that predictable head of hers in under five minutes, but something tells you her heart would take about five years.
You remember everything she’s ever said to you, and when that freaks her out you blame it on your photographic memory (which is a lie, you have a 2.7 GPA). You can’t remember your teaching assistant’s name, and you can’t remember that your Puffton rent check was due four days ago, yet you remember the middle name of the kid who tripped her in fifth grade and gave her that cute little scar on her shoulder. Maybe it’s because you actually listen when she talks. When do you actually listen? Never. But she doesn’t know.
But she has a boyfriend. The kid is a tool, and you are not. He has no redeeming qualities, and you have about 38, even when you’re hung over. You could kick his butt, and you’ve never been in a fight in your life. He treats her like crap, and you would treat her like the princess she believed herself to be on Halloween in 1988.
But she loves him. He wouldn’t know what he had even if she slapped him across the face and dumped him, but somehow she still loves him. And somehow she still doesn’t know.
Then, out of nowhere, she slaps him across the face and dumps him. She comes to you. You’ve been there before, so you seem like the smartest guy on earth. She cries, but your corny half-joke, half-compliment somehow gets a smile out of her that almost makes you feel ashamed that you’re the only one around who gets to witness it. It looks like you might make her realize that all guys don’t deserve to have rocks thrown at them.
But nothing changes. She doesn’t know. You get that library elevator feeling in your stomach that she’ll never know. You get that feeling that you’ll be forced to write a cheesy Collegian column about her that makes “Sleepless in Seattle” look like “Girls Gone Wild.”
You go to sleep. You wake up. She doesn’t know. You’re not in love. You’re not obsessed. You blame it on the fact that you just need to get some, but still, it’s about more than that. It would just be nice if once in your life, things worked out the way you wanted them to.
So ___________, it’s about time you know*.
Now cut this out, fill in her name, and give it to her, coward. Just let me know how it works out.
And so it begins….
I feel like I should begin by justifying my starting a blog— those that know me well are all too familiar with the fact that I feel the need to justify everything. I suppose it stems from a desire to fill my time alone with something that feels real and tangible. I’m not sure whether I would care if no one ever read a word of what I say, but by putting it out there it feels more real to me. I’ve spent too much time hiding, and probably more time disclosing far too much…. But I feel like my story has something in it for everyone. As scattered as it is. So maybe there’s something worthwhile in posting my not-so-fleeting thoughts on the internet.
I remember a moment, almost a year ago, while sitting on a pile of self-help books and smoking a cigarette out the window while staring down at a quiet city street at 3am, I decided that I was going to write a book. My thoughts seemed more interesting than those on the pages that were supporting my ass at the moment. I write because, like I said, I love it. And in some ways, it is an enormous release that I simply cannot find in any other venue. Many know that I have an extreme passion for music…. theme songs for moments, for places and (of course), for people. But sometimes, I just can’t find a song…. melody or lyric that fits the moment. And so I create.
So…. don’t read if you don’t wanna know. Although this internet stuff leaves room for self-censorship, I’m steering clear of the un-post option. It may not all be rainbows and roses…. but truth in the eyes of a far from simple girl learning to live in the “gray”.
