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the silence doesn’t scare me here.
the stillness doesn’t frighten me.
I don’t feel judgements of the simple things I want to do. I don’t feel the rush or the push or the impending “should’s” looming over every day. I feel confident in my choice to lay in this bed, open my book, and savor the natural light pouring through the floor to ceiling window at my right side.
I feel space
I feel breath
I feel comfortable
I feel confident in my simplicity.
I feel love.
arrived.
made risotto.
feeling true joy.
when things are this simple my anxiety subsides. I would be happy if this was a regular part of our lives.
Double therapy day
Excited to see Danielle tomorrow
This idea that the way I speak is my big move with RumiKub and When someone tries to clarify why I am talking about what I am talking about I can get frustrated and lose my train of thought and not win the game.
My brain pulls up 3 panels on any given situation and I have trouble navigating and managing it while figuring out how to be prestant.
Didn’t want to write bc I didn’t have anything to say
Time seems to be going by so quickly but I am unable to remember where it passes to.
I should be on my 25th entry before 30 but I am not sure where I am missing time? Today was the Super Bowl.
Kayla has still not picked up her items from the lobby and I am not sure what to do about it. It makes me feel bad. More specifically it is an unaccomplished item that I don’t feel like dealing with. I feel myself curbing daily activities in anxiety about if I will see her, if I will have to communicate with her, if I will have to shed non preferred emotions surrounding her.
When will enough be enough? and what in the world does that look like?
I want to close the shopify Kapwa shop. It is so disheartening and devastating that this beautiful and inclusive word - this world encompassing connection and respect physical, emotional, and spiritual has become tainted to me. There is something that hurts on a deeper level because I already have some insecurity around my connection to my Pinoy roots and here I am feeling like I am being othered once again.
I feel like I have no control
I feel upset
I feel taken atvantage of
I feel smothered at the same time - by hopeful and supportive people, by not being able to go through and sort through these feelings in private.
I want to be alone but not lonely
I want to be able to proccess by myself and then him rejoin me
I want something that is totally and completely mine
the lingering smell of alcohol seeping out from his pores next to me make the crisp white sheets feel dirty. The pungent rank of his sadness from this loss of a football game embarrased me. Every exhale he blows in my direction makes me fume.
I want to go to the couch
I want my best self practice
I want him to leave
I want privacy to lick what ever wounds
I want to scream
I want to tear
and yet
I find myself silent-
my stomach turns, hopefully he can’t hear the knots twisting and groaning within my abdomen.
and for some reason I feel like I am the problem. Like I am the one who took a day and ruined it. But if I relfect there is nothing inherent I did wrong.
So why do I feel this ache that I had a responsibility to do something well (this day) and I failed?
PS
Fixed the numbers. They got a little funky around when I was back filling Cancun from notes. But I am all on track again. Mislabelled - not missing.
Prepping for Guido’s birthday and superbowl.
We drove to Jersey and we were there from 11:30- 4:30 and it was such a nice escape from the city.
Shopping cart surfing
Twerking in the isle of the wine store
Suburban Starbucks run
Hip Hop, R&B, Bad Bunny through the speakers
Quick nap in the backseat
All of this much needed.
Last night I cried for an hour in the dark to Ben about feeling scared and volatile. And he responded with what if one wish for today. I said my gut reaction was joy but I feared it was too big of a hope. And he said “How can your feel joy with hate in your heart.” I feel like this is something I would think is obvious and maybe heard once in childhood, in the portable classrooms, at my Christian elementary school. But to have my husband offer this to me at an extremely vulnerable time and it not feel like a criticism or judgement was just what I needed. And I am so thankful he is my person. I am so thankful for the people we claim as our inner circle. I am so thankful for our home. I am so thankful for all the individuals who have sacrificed and invested in me.
Today was needed.
I felt joy.
We found the wine for our second year wedding anniversary and maybe it felt like a sign. To not stop looking or trying. To stick to what I believe in. It will find me and I will find it when it is meant for me.
The rest of the bullshit- just let it go.
I feel aimless. I feel like I don’t know where I am or what is in my house where.
Judgemental. Careless.
It’s like my brain is not just lagging the fog feels like it is empty.
I feel lost in my own head.
Things keep slipping through the crack.
Loosing a wallet.
Wrong appointment times.
Memory loss of what book I was reading during Christmas.
If someone found my wallet they can have it I just want my license. I can’t renew online because it is almost expired. And I have to go back to CA in person to get a new one. My brain can’t navigate the logistics needed.
Trying to figure out how to move Claire to HI. Finances attached to flights. We need to cut back, I need a job.
Loss of appetite.
My birthday is next week and all I can see it the money we are loosing and that I am not worth it.
I catch myself staring blankly into nothingness. Maybe if I don’t blink some of my thoughts will come back. Maybe if I stay still enough I could feel like myself again.
Heaviness.
My body feels bloated. Like I am trying to move forward but there are restraints creating tension from behind and the dexterity in my feet is replaced with clumsiness.
I can’t remember the question Dr. Halpert wanted me to write about after leaving…
We ended talking about … there was anger, sadness, disgust, vulnerability… I don’t remember the substance.
Maybe there is a piece of me that feels this is karma getting me. Because of all the nasty things I shared out loud in therapy, put out into the world, gave life to, something had to happen to humble me. Remind me that I am clumsy, and flawed and when my heart is ugly I am ugly and bad things happen to ugly people. There is a myth there.
________________________________
I cleaned all my uggs today
I practiced patience and haven’t brushed them
I want to
There is a strong urge pull
I feel I am denying myself honoring any impulses.
Smoking. Cutting. Sleeping. Brushing (the uggs).
I guess someone from the outside could say, “that is a little win, good job.”
But all I can think about is wanting to brush the fucking uggs
___________________________________
I lost my wallet today.
A thought haunting me.
A man yelled at the 57th street station.
I kept moving forward.
I was not curios.
I did not turn.
Did he find my wallet today.
____________________________________
I think I am so - or I am performing I am so disappointed in myself mad so Ben won’t reprimand me maybe. If I wail on my emotional self enough… I am tired. The performing in my own home. Wanting him to think my days are filled enough. That I am doing enough. That his sacrifice is worth my what ever the fuck I am doing enough. It’s not. I need something that is mine. I thought this business was that but I want to cut my losses. I need this chapter to be over. I need it to leave my life. I want to be done.
cut my fucking losses
Frantic.
I am setting up and I can’t get out of my head that connor and carolina will be with us. I want our house to be perfect more than perfect.
I lost the lemon tree photo of inay. I have the one of Lola but not of Inay. I have looked through ever book and every organizational cube. Our home has half filled cubes everywhere- where is the system- it’s a mess.
I spread every photo I have out on the floor- not there.
Irresponsible.
The space for guests looks good I guess.
I took my nighttime meds and so I feel the juxtaposition pulling me between a fog and productive high energy. I want to vacuum but the neighbors wouldn’t like that. I want to move furniture but Ben is laying on the couch across from me and waiting for me to go to bed. It is only a matter of time before he tells me I have to.
is that what my subconcious wants- because if he tells me - the myth is he cares about me- and therefor . . . special.
I don’t feel like that’s the case I just have extra energy and I am afraid to go to sleep. Because if I go to sleep this motivation won’t be there in the morning. And I don’t know how to have it roll ovr.
I want to be a person who rolls out of bed and has initiative to start their day. I want to feel confident again so much so that I am overflowing and I have energy to truly give to people. I want to want to move my body. I want to love my body. I want to feel purpose and clear way toward what I am meant to do.
I don’t want to act out of spite or fear anymore.
I don’t want to be motivated by spite or fear anymore.
I want
I want
I want to feel joy, gleeful, youthful radiance. I want to feel at peace when there is silence socially or energetically. I want to feel secure, grounded, planted and begining to intentionally root in my values, my truths, my activism.
_______________________________
I just became self conscious.
the tizzy in my head manifested
in the disarray of objects strewn over the apartment
Photos gathered in a crescent, fanned out, leaving just enough room for me to step in and out of the barrier.
Organizational cubes placed on any surface and their contents vomited
He turned the light on for me
I organized our whole book section.
Rearranged our….
I’m avoiding.
Could ben fall into the trap of Alysa, and Stina because they had to go through these moments with me. Granted I think the writing has helped with the feeling that I am not changing anything. Dump my thorughts. But I am aware I want to clean but I don’t want his judgements… I don’t want him to tell me to go to bed. I know it’s coming - soon.
___________________________________
Tizzy
Dizzy
Fizzy
intentionally placed.
body gliding through a fog.
perfect
placement of every object,
emotion,
body
clarity in purpose
in this moment I am living above the clouds
Stomach ill.
Seeing your name occupy the space on the front of my lock screen.
Frozen. But my fingers move anyway. I respond anyway.
My stomach feels like it is made of gears and there is something wedged so to make the mechanism stop. Then once it begins turning over on itself the internal motion makes for no space to breath or swallow. My unconcious body functions feel foreign. Suddenly aware of labored breathing, aware of the difficulty of gulping saliva gathered in the base of my mouth under my tongue, aware of the heat building above my brow and every open and close of my eyelids.
Fear. I once told you I was not afraid of you. Well, I don’t know exactly when it happened but I am. You terrify me.
What is the similarities between these women. Oldest siblings. Challenges with feeling free from responsibilities of their families. Times when they enter my life: at chapter turns, when I am learning new things, they give me something- and in turn I believe I encourage authentic freedom. I feel I owe them myself, pieces of me feel they save me, grow me, love me. And I don’t know what turns. They want all of me and to not to belong to anyone else unless on their terms. Middle to lower socioeconomic class- I feel I can lavish them.
Anger. These women walk around the world and know some of the most precious pieces of who I am and could ruin me - have ruined me in some sense and I hate it. I hate that these people know or knew the darkest parts of me and now they are no longer close. And I am sure it makes them feel special to “'know” something no one else knows about me but there are few individuals who get to stay for the next metamorphosis. Witness the next break through.
Protection. I physically feel the need to protect my mind from you.
I never got over the way you did not just untintentionally hurt me at coffee. You wanted to hurt me. You wanted to guilt me and make me “pay” for what ever insecurities and stories you made up in your mind. You didn’t come open ready to work through the hard and collaborate and comprimise you came to make sure I felt little, small, incompitent, irresponsible, worthless. And guess what. It worked. I spent weeks questioning myself. Feeling that the life I live is not enough by your standards. That I have no actual impact on the world. That waking up and being a good person to myself and my loved ones is not even close to enough.
How dare you?
How. Fucking. Dare. You.
Claim to be a partner, a friends, a confidant, and then speak to me that way. It is obvious you don’t know me at all. Or worse you do know me and you chose to act and speak that way regardless. It is a privilege to know me. It is a privilege to be loved by me. It is a privilege to be in my inner circle with the people I call close friends.
So yes. I am running. I am avoiding. I am hiding.
Because
you
Scare
Me.
I want to cut and cry.
I want to scream and throw something.
my blood boils but I am silent. face stoic. movements labored yet sharp.
but my breath is shallow and my breast bone tight.
i am angry first because I finished making dinner 2 hours ago.
but our responsibilities are him completing his work day. Bentley has a hair cut tomorrow and we had to cut his face. It all just took longer it’s no one’s “fault” but i feel like there is a world where maybe I was important enough to stop and eat with…
I made myself a cup of tea I am not going to eat beef and potatoes at 10 at night. It makes me feel un important when after we finish cutting Bentley he turns and asks me if I am ready to eat. No. NO I can’t eat that right now at this time. The question is out of touch.
His words are “I want you to live the life you live when I am not here, while I AM here.” That want and wish is a sweet sentiment but directly conflicts with his life… and maybe I feel angry because I feel since his life funds us, feeds us, houses us… his life is more important than mine… and I don’t have the right to feel angry and I should eat when it is conveinient for him I should wake up and make sure the mornings are filled for him I should be happy for him.
and all of this makes me really freaking angry
as tears of frustration run down my face I can feel myself slipping this large feeling under some metaphorical rug somewhere inside of me… because I don’t feel like fighting.
I know: he has to work.
I know: we had to cut bentley
I know: i could go do sleep right now
I know: i am hurting a lot right now and it all happened so fast
I know: the moment it happened. finishing the resposibility. seeing the time (9:30pm). being asked if I was ready to eat happily. thinking of how that would make my stomach feel this late laying in bed/ but then remembering he doesn’t go to sleep until 12:00 because he gets off at 8:30 or 9:00… and feeling out of control and un important.
I go to turn on the shower and a rush to tear my skin flashes through my gut up my sternum and stuck in my throat. Get out of the bathroom. Grab my laptop. Sit on my bed and begin to get it all down. Here. He comes in and asks if I want to watch a show and I respond, “I just need to process through my emotions right now, I’m not sure.” Again, this feels out of touch as I just told him my best self routine…. but I want to spend time with him. If I don’t keep him happy he will leave me for something that is available when ever he needs it.
Suddenly I feel hollow. Con-caved seated at the end of my bed, slowly the sole feeling I can recognize in my body is an aching in my epigastric area.
I am important
I am valuable
I am special
I am worthy
I am enough
Shouldn’t I feel confident in finances by now.
I feel ill- physically sick.
Sharing with Ben I needed help with my student loans - meaning could he pay them for me and I am late. I gave him the opportunity and he was kind and gentle. But that almost made it worse. I feel embarrassed.
I think being right up next to such a traditional carrier path sheds light on my insecurity around my fluid life path.
I know comparison is the route of a lot of distress.
I think there is alot of insecurity that I still don’t feel I have a clear path and it is stifling - in getting a side job in wanting him to be proud of me.
Spontaneity
We bought last minute tickets to the Warriors Nets game and the Warriors won and we had so much fun. I think that these are the moments I am looking forward to when we live together- new activities in the city i have never done before either.
This feeling eclipses the fear of him crowding my space.
I think in these moments I really do feel like I married my best friend.
Youthful fun.
Thankful for this feeling.
Thankful for this moment.
Movies that make me cry.
It used to be A Walk to Remember… now … A Man Called Otto…
There is something about the relationship between him and Marisol that feels familiar. Maybe has an essence of what I had hoped to be for Uncle.
Even though I knew what was going to happen it was like I watched it for the first time again.
There is despair in the ending a heart wrenching sadness but also a hint of gratefulness. A thankfulness that she loved him. She chose him- over and over and over.
Sitting on opposite sides of the couch from Ben’s curled up body tucked under the Pottery Barn blanket both of us quietly letting tears trail down our cheeks. Until, they start falling and I see out of the corner of my eye him reajusting, using the movement to wipe his eyes. My breath is deep and full yet stretches a soreness in the empty space between my ribs. Emptiness..
Seeing my grandparents take their last breath. Deep sadness for their physical absence from my life. Maybe it feels like the ultimate abandonment at times. I wanted them to see me do so many more things. I wish I would have started earlier, I wish I would have accomplished more. I wanted them to meet my children (if I decide to have them). I wanted them to be at my wedding. I wanted them to meet my dog. See me on stage one last time.
And there is a hint of what is the point if they aren’t here to see it…
and the whole purpose of the movie I think is importance to keep living even after we experience loss. Yet, I still feel like I am in mourning.
With the upcoming birthday…
I miss them…
Tears gently nestle themselves in the base of my lash line. With the fan blowing you wouldn’t be able to tell they were brought to the surface due to an emotional recall.
Keep watching movies that make you cry. It’s important. I can feel but I won’t be chained by that feeling for forever. Even if it lingers in the back ground. Let it linger.
engagement party
sitting in bed faded
marker moments
people form the past in our present
people who who have seen us grow up
amy
david
i think maybe there is a moment where i wish sarah was in my life and if she was would she do the same for me
i documented via film
i captured moments that are fleeting
moements we can never get back
precious
freindships almost 10 years long
knowing eachothers childhood friends and appreciating them. meeting family and learning to love them. being authentic from the start.
feeling special.
even though it was their night I think there is a part of me that feels that everyone always l9ves ben and i and it feeds into the special tht no one else can replace
being asked about my tattoo and talking about how that is hat my dad prayed over me and wanted to be my purpose. to make people feel loved for where they are and where they are able to go to. To provide warmth love and light.
though ths night wasn’t for me i found myself at the center.
maybe i was hoping this would be the answer I have been looking for in my creative life
that everything would line up and i would feel like “ah, thats where i belong.”
and I feel nothing actually
not good or bad
not that i belong or don’t fit
and it makes me feel unsettled
I want to belong somewhere that feels recognizable
somewhere that from the outside i am proud of and at the same time it felt good doing
and it felt like nothing
I didn’t feel emotional watching it back
i didn’t feel connected to the character’s arch
it just felt like nothing
even 4 white claws later nothing
and I think i feel puzzled at the emptiness
shouldnt i feel an opinion
shouldnt i feel self concious or proud
shouldn’t I FEEL SOMETHING
maybe tomorrow
tommorrow is today
today is yesterdays tomorrow
maybe i’ll feel something today
these are the moments where I feel an urge to carve
like i need to feel something
something
SOME
THING
ANY
THING
but there is nothing
and i don’t act on it because it wont change the nothing-ness
My voice hasn’t recovered from Cancun and it has only been one day yet I feel pressure to be better- “back to normal“.
There is strong discomfort in trying to get back into my routine. It is a pattern I have to fight for anyway built on things that balance and make me feel good but stretch me. I can understand why it takes me two weeks to adjust and fully adapt to it before it feels like mine. Right now my best self pattern feels like it belongs to someone else.
I want to be alone - not so he is not here but so i can fall apart and refind myself BY myself. There is something extremely vulnerable about that process. And I understand or perceive that there is only so much patience he will have for it - for me.
But
I sit here.
Back in my chair draped with my cream throw.
Light box above me
11:00 am
and begin to write and I feel a small step closer to the pattern of my best self or “who i want to be when i grow up”
15th day
the half way point until the marker of 30.
— From Notes (Day after Cancun 2.1.24) —
Woke up at 11:30 am
Coco Pebbles & Sorted the laundry
Back to bed at 12:30 pm
Woke up at 5:30 pm
Fed Bentley & Went to Sav and Guido’s
In bed at 12:00 am
- From Notes (Cancun/NY 1.31.24)
Im tired angry
Pressure to unpack and live the way he does
he is right i am wrong
I am lazy
almost took my Crayola scissors to my own hair.
- From Notes (Cancun 1.31.24)
Last day feels holding space for ben.
Last breakfast will we ever be here again.
Does this day feel more precious because there is the potential it will never happen again? But isn’t that everyday? Everyday is one of its last?
- From Notes (Cancun 1.30.24)
A different connection to an earthly home.
Enveloped in liquid blue, salt on my skin, sunshine above me.
A freedom
Maybe the place I feel most beautiful.
Everything is stripped away and all I need to depend on is myself.
A sense of one-ness.
and the picture is complete with you next to me. Floating along side me.